sparhawk

Dont know about the U.S. but I doubt that there are any laws against it. After all, they are just buying some stuff (loans in that case) and selling them. It's not really unlawfull, it's just immoral, because they don't care about the people involved. But that's capitalism... Don't know if you know german, but here is a link to an article which describes it: http://www.carl-auer.de/blog/kasper/vorsicht-sparkasse/ The texan company is Lone Star, and they created 21 companies here in germany (all named something with Westend) to cover their interests. It's really nice to see the report, where some financial manager explains to you with a friendly smile that everything is legal while he is destroying your life.

Of course not. After all, why would you follow some law, if all you ever get is a wrist slap if you break it? While on the other hand you have a big gain by breaking it. Well, it's not my business really, but it can still affect me. What happend is the following. People get a loan from the bank to buy a house or other real estates. When you do this, there will be an entry in the cadastral register so you can not just sell the house and keep the money. This has been practiced since a hundred years now, and so far no problems arose, even though there was a lways a gap in the law. The problem is that the entry in the register is supposed to cover the loan. But the loan and the registration are two different things, which are not legally connected. So now some banks got the idea that they can sell the registration to money sharks. The claim that they only do this with lonas which didn't get billed, because they don't want to get their hands dirty by recovering the money via forced auctions (which would be a normal procedure in such a case, but gives a company a bad reputation). So they sell this registration to those sharks, and they of coruse have no problems doing the auctions. Now the problem is, in order to make it more interesting to the "investors" they not only sell corrupted loans (which would be disputable but still understandable) but they also throw in some well paid loans to give them more profit. This means, you pay your loan as you are supposed to, and suddenly somebody comes along and forces you to pay off some bigger money (because of course they also want to earn some extra with it) and if you can't (which is usually the case), the simply sell your house on an auction. This means that you are basically bancrupt afterwards, because you still have to pay back the loan, or the difference between the auction and what you already paid back, plus the extra costs for the auction and legal actions. There was a report in the news only a few days agao, and apparently this bank already sold about 50000 such registrations because they wanted to beautify their files. What really annoys me, is that I also have such a loan with that bank. Not exactly the same bank, but the same holding company, so this can easily hit me as well. The main investment comes from Texas, and they created about twenty fake companies to cover the trakcs, so you can't even sue them. Well, suing doesn't help much anyway, because the problem is that there is this gap in the law, which makes it legal.

Well, it's a business decisions. If you cheat N people, and only N-X sue you, you might come off better, so it's worth the risk. It's not moral business, but when did morale have anything to do with big business? Currently we are suffering a similar issue here in Germany with pricks from Texas. They don't care about people, they only care about shareholders.

Quite funny to re-read this thread and how naive the poeple were. Fingernail: "Just some coding and a lot of mapping" Renzatic: "Get a functional lightgem ... it's relative easy to do" And best of all I always love New Horizon's quote: "I would play it, but I can't help you." Considering that NH is really a cornerstone of TDM. Or Springheel: "This is (or will be) a fan-created mod, not a professional endeavour." Ah! those were the times. I still remember reading those thread back then, and laughing my ass of, because of all the naivity floating around. At that I wouldn't have thought that we reach the day where we are now.

Actually I was thinking of that myself as well. I guess if you have a decent room that you can light well, it could work.

Yeah. That is one aspect that they capture really good. I often go out at night with my dog, and then I encounter houses with frontgards, which really reminds me of some Thief maps. Never had this with other games. And it feels really good to see the fireplace with a fire lit, when it's cold and ugly outside. Well, a poor-mens-fireplace.

Playng Thief in winter is very special. Much different than in summer. It feels much more cozy. Well, here in Germany it's raining in summer most of the time, and that is no good way to play Thief. In autumn the weather slowly changes to rain and wind, so you get more into the mood. In winter it rains all the time, which is the perfect weather for playing Thief, until spring comes around again, when it starts to rain a lot here, and you don't get so much in the mood of Thief anymore. You need the proper winter raining to do this.

It might have a DLL that interferes in a different version. If a DLL is already loaded, then Windows doesn't load anotehr one IMO, and instead shares it.

Wow! I'm really impressed by this mod. It looks so sterile and clean (in a good way) and makes very creative use of Doom3. Usually most mods are just more of Doom 3, so I always hope for something different, and this really looks like a game I would like to play. Thanks for sharing the link. I hope you come here every now and then and keep us updated on it.

I can only second that! Nice screen!

My torrent is already seeding and I already got connections.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Hosting individual torrents for the same file would be quite pointless.

Yes. Tels will host one, greebo said he will also join and I will also set it up when I get home later. So there will be at least a few torrents available until it is picked up for good. I keep mine running 24/7 anyway.

Discussions about piracy are not tolerated on this forum. At least not, when it goes in the direction of of "Where do I find a crack for X". So please stop that.

Technically it can work for the geometry. Subtractive or not doesn't matter. The points have to be rendered in the end, so vertices are sent to the gfx card, no matter how you do it. So you would have to write a converter for that. It would certainly work, but it would be a waste of time. The project itself would be non-trivial, and in the end you still have old level geometry. As for the probabillity. I would think it's rather unlikely. First of all, most poeple want to do something new. Not slavishly following trodden paths. Copying a full mission by recreating it bit by bit in another engine is boring and tiresome stuff, so I don't think it is very likely that such a project would even find it's end. Of course that still leaves the question of legallity, but since this is just a theoretical question it doesn't matter at this point.

Yeah, that's what I said. Besides, I find this constant dissing of Unstoppable quite uncalled for. He (or she?) is posting stuff he is interested in, just like others do. So what? If you don't agree, nobody forces you to read it.

Happy Birthday.

I don't see much point in posting the patch information, as this is not the Zombi Panic forum, but then again, I also don't see why this would be "cluttering the forum" either.

The ASE exporter is a textfile included and regularly updated in the first posting of that thread.

OK. Not sure when I have time for it, but that would be a good start again.

If you can tell me what the problem is, I can use this to make my way back into the code. I'm kind of out of the loop at the moment, and this would be a good task to wrap my head around it again.

There is usually always somebody around on these forums, so why should this change after the 15th?

We have hired a support center with the international 0800-HELPTDM number to call, if you experience problems.

Well, this is a common missconceptuion. Fact is, that games are run (or should be) as normal users. And normal users should NEVER be able to crash the whole machine. If that happens it is most definitely teh fault of the operating system. If a program implements a driver on system level, this is more understandable, but a common user application should NOT be able to do this. So if you experience indeed a bluescreen, it's either a problem of the driver manufacturer or of the OS manufacturer, but not of the application developer.

Not sure. I think the internet validation is still working. When I had a firewall, I got the warning about it. It's very unobtrusive though. If the internet is available it gets checked, and if it is not available it will simply start. You don't even notice it, unless you look for it. That's also the reason why I'm not sure if it is still there or not, but I guess I could check it if I want to.