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Guard Dog
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Posts posted by Guard Dog
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I agree, no one is going to top Krookie's post! This thread is over!
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I work with a dog rescue charity and it is a 501c organization (meaning donations are tax deductible in the US). The volunteers are unpaid and 100% of the donations go to operations. But it is very small believe me. Last year I think they took in about $40k. The only board member that gets anything close to a salary is the lawyer, and she is paid an annual fee for her services. Anyway, it has been my experience that the smaller groups like that one tend to be more cost efficient than others.
For example, when I compare our cost/income ratio to the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League (a major force here in West Palm Beach) it is not even close. Peggy Adams takes in around a million dollars a year but only about 40% go to animal care and rescue. But, they have paid employees, a facility, an event staff, an army of lawyers, and a marketing firm on retainer. But inspite of their financial ineffecincy they do a lot more for animal rescue than we ever could.
The point I'm getting at here is the bigger charities are usually cost/benefit inefficient but on the whole they do more good in the world than the smaller ones because they have a longer reach. 40% of a $1M is a lot better than 100% of $40k.
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Two peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwiches on 1/2 inch thick sour dough bread, lightly toasted, with a big cup of black coffee. Mmmmm. I know what I'm making for breakfast tomorrow!
Its probably a little hard to really enjoy your "last meal". I'd think I would be a little distracted.
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Well, I am still working on one but with real world pressures I only put in a few hours a week. And as you know that produces a lot less progress than NWN1. But once it starts to pull together I imagine I'll spend more time on it. But remember, just because it took me a long time to make it does not mean it will be any good.
You might want to check this site out Monte Carlo. It is the forum for the Forgotten Realms Weave, a builder group I sort of participate in...sometimes...when I'm not too busy with work, school, or dogs, that is. But it does count the best builders in the community as members
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Personally, I've had a couple pieces of work that I put a solid amount of time into, a few dozen hours each, perhaps, only to get near implementation and then hit a wall. Not like an obstacle, where you can sort of puzzle out how to proceed, but a flat-out wall, where you have no clue how to get around it.
That was what I meant
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WOW! How did I miss this? This is EXACTLY what the mod community needed! Hey Schazz, your wall is about to crumble!
Link to story: NWN2 3dsMAX Granny plugin released
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Seeing that you can't install custom content or edit it like make the romances better, or even make your own custom npcs with romances, NWN2 has turned off a lot of modders, especially those from the IE modding scene. Its beyond me why they have the game set up like that. That is one of the great things with the IE games is being able to edit or add into the original game.
Seeing that there are a few developers that read this board, perhaps one can speak out on why you can't mod the original NWN2 game like you can with the IE games?
Well, actually you CAN modify the OC. There were a few mods that did in in NWN1. Like the one that made Mischa real henchman in SoU. But it is not a simple process compared to the IE games or the ES games. It would require making the hak with the mods, saving a copy of the OC modules, attaching the hak then the modified mod could be downloaded. In NWN2 the modules are so large it would not be practical.
Actually I like the NWN 1 & 2 modding concept better because it is more flexible. If all that could be modded in NWN1 was the OC then we would not be talking about NWN2 today because NWN would have gone nowhere with just the out of box OC. The toolset made that game what it was.
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I don't like how NWN2 is when it comes to modding, its nothing like BG2. I wanted to make some custom items and sell them in a custom store. In the BG games that is easy, you make your things and install it into the game. My store clerk shows up in Amn with my custom items. In NWN2 it doesn't work like that from what I have read. You can't install custom content like that into the original game.
No, you are correct. That is more in line with Morrowind/Oblivion modding. And the IE games of course.
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It would be nice. NWN2 needs more mods. It would be discouraging to the developers if people didn't make use of their hard worked on toolset.
You know, you have a little talent in that area too. Why not take a shot at it?
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Since the Red Cross threatened legal action against various video game devs/publishers for using a red cross as a symbol for health in various games, I think they are fair game for similar action by others.
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.
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Well, story wise I would have to say NWN2 is the best out of the bunch, with HotU being second, SoU being third and the story in NWN1 being dead last.
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.
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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!
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I wonder what Santa would say about the Russians claiming the North Pole?
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This is what I could find against the Red Cross: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Red_..._11_controversy
Even after reading that, I still have a high opinion of the organization.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Among complete strangers, quite.
Among peers, you'd be a doofus.
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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.
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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.
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The biggest reason why Nwn2 does not have such an active mod community is that the fantasy genre is dying out paired with the technical issues(very low fps and a never decreasing stream of bugs, not to mention a toolkit that takes 100% CPU power no matter what you were doing).
What put the stick in the wheel of our mod project was the endless corruption of modules. It didnt matter if you made backups, because as there is no way to tell if a file is corrupt, by the time you notice it it will be too late. We decided to call it quits and never to touch the damn p.o.s toolset again.
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?
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That brings smuggling to a new low. Too funny!
Do you believe the media serve the public interest?
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
On the whole, I agree with Tale. The news media is selling a product. Like it or not, that is how it is. Their product is their broadcast and they want you watching so they spin up and hype trivial stories into major events in the hopes that elevating the importance of BS will get people watching. Case in point, Paris Hilton going to jail.
But when the chips are down , the media is important and when there is a major event or public safety issue it is the only way to get the word out to the people and it does that very well. Where I live we have had seven hurricanes hit in the last four years, the local news media is the only way to find out what is open where, what roads are closed, stuff like that.