This turned into a project!

Back in 2003 I was in Afghanistan. I'd like to say I was doing heroic things or whatever, but the truth is I was a generator mechanic who got sent to a communications section. They had a few generators, but technically they were owned by the civilian contractors so I wasn't responsible for, more appropriately allowed to do, any work on them. So I was doing the physical labor of the communications, which really boiled down to running internet cable, while everyone else did the thinking man's work.

But I liked that job. I've always been good at doing work.

Anyway, one of the key points I picked up is this old saying, "The lazy man is the smart man, because he only wants to do thngs once." Matter of fact, we had this bulletin board where the boss of the shop used to put up these inspirational messages. I'm a bit dubious on the effects of those messages; I always thought inspiration is kind of for women because your feeling or whatever shouldn't be stopping you from doing your job. That said, I liked that message (didn't inspire me, though, I swear!) because I'm the type of guy that likes to do things right the first time.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with anything at this point. Well, the first step in your understanding is to look at these screens:







That's the Inn I was working on, and it turned into quite a project where I had to go back and redo things many times until it was right. Of course, that didn't require any fancy pants words on paper to motivate me to do it. Anyway, I modified my random spawning system to check if there is a creature at the spawn point, and choose a new spawn point if so to randomly fill the area with a variety of NPCs. Some sit in chairs, others stand, some dance on the dance floor, some are waitresses. It's more crowded at night than during the day. They all have several animation cycles they go through randomly depending on what they're doing. The band sings songs where I took lyrics from recognizable songs and changed them into parodies.

So it's a cool area if you ask me, which you didn't but I need something to talk about, right?

On a completely different note, the Module of the Year contest is going on now. Personally, I'm abstaining as my mod is on the list and I don't really hinge what I consider a success or failure by winning awards. However, as this award represents what you all, the players, think about the modules made for NWN2, this is the award I respect.

Alright, I don't have anything else to talk about right now.


-edit-

Almost forgot:

Since I'm spending a lot more time than originally intended on the city itself, how important is a theft system for pick pockets? There is currently nothing, and would be a bit of a project, probably like a week's worth of work, to do something reasonable in that regard. But as a player you'll be in that city for hours doing various quests and what have you, so how important is a realistic pick pocket system? Keep in mind it'll add quite a bit of overhead! Is it worth it?