Airship Ballet

Finland is nice! It's about 99.9% water and its population is still pretty much at tribe numbers but I consider that a blessing. With regards to the Lakes, there's plenty of swirling roads through the forests just to get anywhere, my work included. I've never been a road biker though, just enjoyed the hell out of trial riding in Finland on a beat-up, second-hand Yamaha YZ400F. I have scars to remember it by, given my average clumsiness.

That's the waterfront of Windermere, the little town I live in, probably should have said. All the living space towards the front there is ridiculously expensive, almost as much as the manors you get out on the islands in the lake. I live further up towards the back of the town in the tiniest of houses. They're all squished together rather than having low ceilings, with one room per floor similar to those thin terraced buildings in the center here: It's a nice place to live but very small and usually populated with more tourists than locals. You never see the waterfront as quiet as in that first picture so I have no idea when they took it =P

I'm originally from Finland, would have stayed there forever if I had a say in it, but ended up having to move away thanks to a passing in the family and consequent departure of the other half. I even opted in to a year's service in the army to put off having to make the leap. It's only mandatory for the men but also an option for cowardly women... =P Now I'm living in England in the Lake District (home away from home what with all the water) working as a network manager in a nearby hospital, nothing glamorous!

Yep, did it after posting this morning.

Depends on the speed of your hardware but there's nothing stopping you from setting it off overnight.

I'd be happy to test, can provide a video of my playthrough of it too. I'll go drop Springheel a PM if that's the standard procedure 'round these parts.

I'm fairly sure Dell machines come with their own recovery utility so you could probably have saved that minimal extra effort anyway. I get a surprising number of people coming to me at work (I'm a network manager) with similar fears but they're usually unfounded. It's been said, but there's no harm in dedicating part of a day to making a clean slate for peace of mind.

And here I am not working anything remotely related to my too-expensive degree. I had no idea they were even real paintings, either. I took Art History for a couple years as well, just as a hobby course. For shame!

I think Ivy-League is compliment enough anyway! =P

Interesting and well-written, but as a Psychology MA this is full of probability fallacies (x could mean y, so y definitely indicates z). I can see the logic, but far too much of it is just speculative assertion; using speculation as fact and then building off it with more speculation. They seem to know their tests but they don't have anything nearly concrete enough to put their subjects through them. Believe it or not I'm actually fun at parties, and this is a good examination considering the fictional context, one obviously not made to be taken seriously. All the same, it's a bad habit to build an argument off shaky foundations.

I enjoyed it rather a lot despite its shortcomings. I suffer from complete Monochromacy (completely color blind) but I still really enjoyed the level design and visuals. It feels very near-future, and the soundtrack is brilliant. Gameplay-wise it's very easy unless you impose a handicap on yourself, and even then is fairly simple to just wander around and bash people's heads together. It falls apart at the end, dumping decent gameplay for narrative and even going so far as to just give you a machine that lets you choose your ending with a few buttons. David Cage eat your heart out. They really crippled themselves by trying to make every area accessible for every playstyle in that there's always an easy way to get in or around somewhere regardless of what skill you pick, rendering the rest redundant. Visually it's novel and pretty great, but in terms of gameplay it's just too easy to coast through whether you go loud or quiet, thanks to the oblivious AI and Death Star building design. The story is simple and the moral elements are basically void, given that it's not something we're dealing with at the moment. New smart phones and rickety military wobble-bots are hardly impeaching on existential design.

It's true that they're noisy in TDM, but nowhere near as cringe-inducing as the tiles in TDP and TMA. In terms of gameplay, they're actually not as punishing as those in the latter two since you can actually sneak on tile as opposed to cheesing your way forwards with stutter stepping.

I've come across quite a few worldspawn-related visual glitches/disappearances, moreso when I cut them up. Converting them to func-statics seems to have worked in every case but it does feel like a very improper fix. I've noticed that specifically but obviously am nowhere near experienced enough to guess what causes it; I was just thinking I was doing something horribly wrong to the poor editor

They were great at the time, but now they fall very short as useless, lumbering, polygonal zombies or easily flashbombed maniacs of a similarly polygonal nature. It's unfortunate really because I first played it on Halloween when it first came out and I was scared witless =P

I prefer Thief 2 ever so slightly, namely because of its largely grounded level design. The supernatural levels in T1 haven't really aged very well while those in 2 are still great and interesting to play. In addition, the regular levels in T2 are far more intricate and interesting in terms of more advanced assets and ambitious objectives. I love 'em both pretty much the same, but would put The Metal Age just a point above The Dark Project.

It was great to play it myself, even if I did find a few more things to see the second time. It was realistically compact without feeling small at all, basically my favorite kind of mission: snatch and grab with plenty of shinies and a realistically planned building. But yeah, current projects ho!

Man, the FOV in these screenshots is making me feel claustrophobic. I haven't really been following this as much as my past self probably would have. The industry has managed to make me cynical to the point where something with prime-time interview minutes at E3 actually puts me off it. It'll most likely be condescending and restrictive, but is nice to look at if you squint and pretend the heavy-handed (pun intended) UI elements aren't there. It remains to be seen whether or not it will be fun, which is really the bottom line as far as I'm concerned. If it's condescending and hand-holding I can always impose a playstyle after enjoying myself the first time and then play it through again a few months later. If you come across coverage of something without looking for it specifically, you can guarantee it'll be rife with illusory freedom. Still, the amount of fun you have playing it is what it comes down to! Just the thoughts of a latecomer; back to your regularly scheduled speculation.

Why thank you! If you let us prosper long enough you'll be under new management in no time. I usually shudder to think about going back outside, not only in DR =P Yep! It's all for fun really. I found that starting a playthrough of something helps me to actually finish a game, since I'm notorious for buying tons in Steam sales and never getting round to playing/completing them. I don't do commentary, not only because I don't have the voice for it but I simply don't think I'd ever have anything to add to a game. It's less about me and more about the games ^^

Hey guys! I've been playing my way through the FMs available since the game went standalone, just up to the 'n's now. I used to map in Hammer a lot and found myself with a bunch of free time over the holidays so I figured I'd take a look at DarkRadiant. Since then I've put about ten hours into a mission of my own, not counting the map made alongside Fidcal's brilliant A-Z guide. I haven't been working on it regularly as the free time I do have is in bursts, and DR time within that being even more sporadic, but I do have something to show for it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH8dPTqKMz4 It isn't as gritty or cramped as most missions with an exterior I've seen but it's supposed to be in a posh area so I think it fits. What's there isn't finished in terms of detail and the actual mission itself will hopefully be about ten times bigger. I'll probably add the rest of the architecture and furnishings before getting into decals and little bits lying around but I'm intent on making the rest of it interior only: exteriors are exhausting! What I'm working on aside, hello! My name's Merry (short for Meredith, a Welsh name despite me being Finnish), simply because "Airship" doesn't really work as a given name. I'm new here but by no means new to the FM community, having played pretty much every T1 and 2 mission out there over the years. I doubt I'll talk about my own FM an awful lot beyond this until I make significant progress, but I should be posting in a lot of other threads. Also it only just occurred to me that the silent Thief stood around is actually just a little model I use for scale, not a part of the mission.