Fu'Miga and the SAGA team have conducted an interesting interview with Xaltos, creator of a file download utility called "Audolo". At least according to Fu'Miga, this is -the- persistent world builder's must-have utility and one that has the potential to 'save' PWs from extinction:

This is the second interview of our webpage section where we will interview important people related with NWN2, SAGA or other related subjects.

This time we are interviewing a great programmer that seems to be solving a LOT of problems that NWN2 has when speaking of having a solid PW online. I've met him some weeks ago and I was stunned after I decided to use his third party dowload manager that will most likely be used on SAGA PW when the time comes. We give you: Xaltos.

Xaltos is the creator and developer of an awesome utility called Audolo. You can find it for download and use at the vault by following this link. In overall this utility may soon be the answer to every single PW out there by allowing players to update files needed to play in their favorite PW's.

[SAGA]So for our readers, what exactly is Audolo?

[Xaltos] NWN2_Audolo is a small free Download program, that is designed specifically for NWN2. It will download all necessary files, unzip them and create all required folders. If you already own some of the required files, it will notice it and you don't need to download these files again.

The trick is a download in two steps. It will first download a small Ini-File with the URL and a MD5 checksum for each necessary file. After this first download, it will check the existing local files with the help of the MD5 checksum. So it will know exactly which files are still missing or needing updates and will just download these files.

[SAGA] According to my research on Audolo, I've noticed that it is very user-friendly but that some server admins have some difficulties on setting it up properly at first. Do you have or plan on having an extensive step-by-step documentation on how to setup Audolo working and how to properly use Audolo? Any multi-language documentation in your plans?

[Xaltos] The tool should be very easy for a normal player. The server admins have to set-up a place for the download of the files and they must prepare a small INI file, with the URL and MD5 Checksums.

There are currently 2 ways.

Way one is easy and it is part of my step-by-step description. The drawback of way one is, that it doesn't work 100% automatically.
Way two is a way to do all the work with a click with some DOS programs and a Batch file. I have a full working example in the download, but some people have problems to modify this batch.

I am currently working on a 3rd way to compensate some of the problems that the people had. I am hosting the files for a small test module, so you all can easily see the tool in action. Other PW servers are as well interested in it or are already using it with no problems whatsoever.

[SAGA] Will Audolo be useful to update any kind of files needed to play a PW to better serve the players that know little about computers? Like *.hak, *.tlk, override files and *.PWC files?

[Xaltos] Sure, it can update all kinds of files. But it is designed for small files. However, you'll miss the best part of the program, if you use it for *.pwc files. (A pwc files is an uncompressed *.erf file with all the walkmesh files of a module).

The best way to use it, is if you work with *.trx files. (A .trx file contains the walkmesh data of one single area.) The difference is: If you add a new area to your module, you must download the full *.pwc file again. ( e.g. 80 MByte) but if you work with *.trx files, you must only download the file for the newly updated area. ( e.g. 1 MByte).

These kind of things must be prepared by a server admin and they really decide the use. The standard player only needs to copy the NWN2_Audolo program to the NWN2 folder, copy/paste the URL of the INI-File and give it some time for the download.

Read the rest at the SAGA Project page.