Guard Dog

Wasn't Atari/Bioware the target of something like that after NWN came out? IIRC the healing kits had a red cross on them. Then after the first patch they were gone.

You are right on the money there. I always thought of the NWN OC as a half-a**ed showcase for game content. As story goes, they clearly threw it together at the last minute. NWN2 looked more like they had a story in mind and built a game around it.

Nice interview and it sounds great. But doggone it let's get some details on the content we are getting here! New interior tiles? New monsters? New textures? C'mon guys!

I wonder what Santa would say about the Russians claiming the North Pole?

Hmmmm. I thought it was the United Way that was caught misappropriating donations following 9-11. My support for RC comes for two reasons that I will admit were personal. After Katrina the dog rescue group I work with sent volutneers to N.O. and Biloxi to help with dog rescue. It was a well intentioned and utterly half-a***d effort on our part. They went there with nothing but pick up trucks, several hundred pounds of dog food, cages, and a single pop up tent/gazeebo. The regular emergency groups there were doing nothing for the dogs, and the animal groups were taxed to the limit. The local red cross let our team borrow one of their trailers, power it off of their generator, and even gave them several dozens cases of bottled water and first aid kits. The other reason I like the RC comes from back in 1991. It was in in the pull out phase of D.S. We were setting up a radar and nav-aids becaon near the airfield at al-Wafrah Kuwait. You can imagine what late summer feels like in southern Kuwait. The air field was in the middle of nowhere and the only thing that was delivered to us on a regular basis was diesel, water and MRE's. Then after nearly a week of operations a Red Cross truck shows up with a freezer full of ice cream (a lot of other stuff too but the ice cream is what I remeber the most). I never saw any other groups out there except RC and the USO. I guess that's why I donate to each group every year.

We have a topic on NWN2 mods but I notice on the vault NWN1 mods are still coming out at a pretty good rate. Does anyone still check them out? I do have an ulterior motive for asking BTW. Since CEP 2.0 included a lot of CODI material, I picked back up a Planescape setting mod I was toying with back when the Sigil tileset came out. Well, now I have two other builders interested in collaborating on completing the storyline. So far I have well over 100 hours in it and a 6-10 hour story line that is in in either completed or better-than-rough stages. I was curious, is anyone was still even playing NWN1 material? By the way, I do have a lot of Planescape source material on .PDF. If anyone wants it, PM me an email address and I'll zip it up and send it.

There is one other thing NWN1 mods had that 2 has not, yet. Recognition. Case in point, Adam Miller's Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher mods were mentioned in a several PC gaming magazines. That probably brought a few modders to the table once they saw what was possible. Those modules have been long surpassed in technical excellence but at the time they are a big depatrue from what everyone else was doing. NWN2 has not yet had a "break out" mod that really gets eveyones attention.

Also worth mentioning was the whole Sleeping Man subplot in the last chapter of HotU. On the whole NWN writing was so vanilla it really was forgettable. The coldwood quest in the OC was an exception. But with HotU is was pretty obvious that each chapter had a different writer. And chapter 3 was far and away the best of the NWN official material.

I'll check this out tonight. I can't view youtube from work. BTW, I saw on the news you guys had another earthquake yesterday. A 7.5 no less. I hope everything is ok there.

There are many charities I am extremely disdainful of but the Red Cross is definitely NOT one of them. No other group has done half as much good world wide as the Red Cross. This stupid lawsuit just proves how utterly cynical this world has become. I expect you are correct, this will become a PR disaster, and i am amazed the folks at J&J cannot see that.

You are an intellectual type so I agree with Giftd, go with the Sherlock look. It will add a certain restrained diginity. If it were me, I'd go with the corn cob pipe. It will go well with a clay jug full of moonshine and a rocking chair on a covered porch.

I agree with ML on that point. I have "heard" of people losing mods to corruption, even spoken to one but it has never actually happened to me. Also, I have yet to use the .2da editor. It's funny, it was something we were all screaming for in NWN but now I still use excel just like always.

That also happened to one of the builders on the FRW project. After months of work his module and back up were corrupted and lost. I know that swore him off of NWN2 modding too. But hasn't that been corrected via a patch by now? Josh? Alvin? Anyone know?

That brings smuggling to a new low. Too funny!

You have a really good point there. In a hypothetical future war the opening battles might be fought by robots but in the end it will be human against human. An entire nation will not surrender and submit to an invader just because the enemy's robots beat their robots.

And of course, you have to mention HK-47s entire dialouge tree in KOTOR. Anyone know who wrote that part?

KOTOR2 was pretty well written from top to bottom. But the part that sticks out to me was the cutscene where the LS Exile confronts the 3 jedi masters on Dantooine and Kreia intervenes. She reveals why the exile turned his/her back on the force. That was so well done, and so not Star Wars in theme which made it good.

Believe in aliens? Heck I've seen aliens! I used to work in Eagle Pass, Texas, right near the Rio Grande and the Mexican border and you would see.... oh wait, thats not the kind of aliens you meant. Nevermind.

That is so f'ing true. I have that same problem. When I have three or four projects cooking at once you can be sure not one of them will ever get done.

There is no way around it. For a CRPG to be any good it MUST have a well written hook, good story, interesting characterization, and sharp dialogue. Game play mechanics are not enough to save a CRPG. If you think about the really good games, they follow the novel formula point by point. Introduction, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion. But as important as good writing is, it is so rare in games today. That is the reason why we still talk about Torment now almost ten years later. That is why we still play BG over an over. Good writing is what separates NWN2 from Dungeon Siege. It's why you remember and replay one, and remove the other and sell it on eBay. So what are some examples from games you have played where the writing was just exceptional? It can be a particular character that was well written, a particular dialogue string, subplot, character back story, or something else that impressed you. For me the one that made the biggest impression was the first conversation between TNO and Deionarra's ghost in the mortuary in Torment. Up to that point I was wondering what the heck that game was about, a why was I playing it. After reading that and hearing her fore telling, I was hooked. That has to be one of the best hooks in any game I've played.

I have created a number of NWN mods and I've been working on an NWN2 ever since I opened the game box. I think there are a few reasons. 1) When NWN came out that toolset was unique. No other CRPG gave you the flexibility to actually create your own "games". Most toolsets allowed you to modify the OC and add your own elements to the game as it was shipped. But with NWN, you never neven needed to play the OC. Now it seems the novelty has worn off a little. 2) NWN now has 5 years, two expansions, and a ton of community made tools. NWN2 has a handfull of user made tools, a very limited Monster selection, and no expansions. And has been out for less than a year. The first expansion will soon be out and may well add enough content to kick start the modding community. The NWN modding really did not hit it's stride until after SoU and the first CEP was released. So it is a little early to call it dead. Granted there were some really good pre-SoU mods, but the best came after. Another thing to note, by using Granny, Obsidian made it difficult to create custom content like new monsters and animations, tiles, etc. With NWN it was not easy, but with NWMax and a few tutorials anyone could do it. That is not a criticisim of Obsidian, I know and understand the why behind the decision. Some things cannot be helped. 3)The tileset system in NWN made it very easy for a rank amatuer to create a decent looking area in a short time. The trade off was, it did no look that great and became horribly repetitive. The NWN2 height mapping is... extremely detail intensive. It is not impossible to use by any means, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort than the NWN Tilesets. The results when done right are really, really impressive. And when done wrong, extremely discouraging to the modder. When it comes to placing objects, triggers, etc it is really not much different from NWN. Scripting of course is the same. But making a good looking playing area requires a lot of thought and effort. And it takes a lot longer. And the sad truth is, not that many modders are investing the time it takes to learn, or are becoming frustrated and giving up altogether. But it is still too early to give up. Wait until after MotB then see what happens.

Free Beer? Where and is there a limit, I will put em out of business. Take the brewery tour and they let you have free 8 oz samples. They say one per customer but there is a table for each kind (Bud, But Lite, Busch, Natural Lite etc) and nobody knows who's had what. Plus there are like 200 people in there at once. The beer boy making minimum wage does not care how many you get. I must go there next year And you can take the tour as many times as you like. They do one every 2 hours or so. no i must go for the free beer You have to do the tour to get the beer! They have a little taste testing session at the end.

Ok that was a little funny...

Free Beer? Where and is there a limit, I will put em out of business. Take the brewery tour and they let you have free 8 oz samples. They say one per customer but there is a table for each kind (Bud, But Lite, Busch, Natural Lite etc) and nobody knows who's had what. Plus there are like 200 people in there at once. The beer boy making minimum wage does not care how many you get. I must go there next year And you can take the tour as many times as you like. They do one every 2 hours or so.