Off Topic Productions

Hello Chris. Very long time no see

A lot's happened for me over the past however many years. Like you, PDX etc. was my main source of human contact and I occasionally think to check these forums out a couple of times a year. Congrats on graduating from uni. Glad to hear your depression is managed too, finding the right drug can be difficult.

As for me, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia (which doesn't mean split personalities) seven or so years ago, after a very public bout of the illness. On meds which are helping greatly (though they have their down sides, like sedation) and it's how I met my now wife(!). We have a mad springer spaniel puppy who is great 90% of the time and a terror the rest! I'm still very much into my photography (https://www.flickr.com/photos/alex_wendes/) and have a new darkroom now... in a shed in the garden... which is very cold this time of year. It's great fun though Otherwise, taking life as it comes.

@Jonas
Glad life is treating you well. I remember when you were just trying to get in to testing games. I'll have to give your games a go, they look interesting

Just to say, I've been playing Expeditions Viking and am thoroughly enjoying it. Combat is a bit brutal until you figure it out, but good fun!

Hah, yeah we never did figure out how to establish a gentle learning curve. Glad you like it though.

Yes, I had to repeat the bridge at the start about 5-6 times before I "got it".

Have you got any of your photography up online? Would love to see it.

No, just on Facebook

The bridge is a tough one yeah, it's a really unusual setup which requires weird tactics to get through well, and it's a bit too early in the game to throw that kind of situation at the player. If we were to ever do a Director's Cut of Viking, we would have to work a lot on tuning the difficulty progression over the first 5 or so hours of the game.

The game is definitely leading me towards a certain formation: sword/axe and shield up front, spears behind and arrows tucked away somewhere at the back. Which I guess makes sense and that's probably how they would have fought.

chris the cynic wrote:It's great to hear from you, Grammatolatry.

I won't call you "Howard", but I remember.

Call me Howard plis. It's good for the ego, and I'm honestly still chuffed. Did you ever hang out with John Young? I was meant to have coffee with him but it's not happening before I go back

@Jonas if you're going to schlep all the way to this side of the world it has to be a decent chunk of time to make the flight worth it. It IS awful... But how cool was aussie?

Australia was nice

I spent a week in Perth and a week in Melbourne. I wish I'd taken two weeks in Perth, the weather was so good. I miss the sun.

Jonas wrote:Australia was nice

I spent a week in Perth and a week in Melbourne. I wish I'd taken two weeks in Perth, the weather was so good. I miss the sun.

Mate, Canberra is where it's at.

Hi chris.

Nice to see you are still alive (and happy?). We had some interesting philosophical discussions back in the day as I recall.

This forum has a very nice color scheme, I missed it.