Lately I've worked on a series of maps for HL2 that feature no combat, and are centered around atmosphere and puzzle solving. This is how one of the areas look like. It takes place in a fictional country called Fining, which had it's entire population evacuated. It also takes place in the HL2 universe, so I've worked the story to fit in the universe.
Also sorry for not posting anything SE related recently.
And here comes the great big image dump -- my collection from last night's trip to the mountains to photograph meteors, and some other scenes while I was there.
A hiker passes by with a green LED light. Normally, I'd be annoyed at bright lights (and why not red to preserve your night vision?), but this impromptu light-painting ends up looking really cool.
Best meteor of the night.
Waves of green airglow drift across the sky. They're visible to the eye, especially with averted vision.
The zodiacal light heralds the coming of dawn. Plus a satellite flare.
The wind dies. Water turns to mirror. Orion rises up.
Right? Well, it was a grid forecast using GFS, which is pretty unreliable in the mountains. And it seems the US NWS finally is shooting that forecaster and updating its weather prediction models and servers.
For short term checks, I found the GOES satellite imagery pretty effective for getting the ground truth.
Mountains are beautiful but dangerous. I'll climb on snow with my regular hiking boots (and I take an ice axe if it's steep, and I know how to use it), but the glacial ice requires crampons and a unique set of safety skills. Because the very last thing you want is to slip on a glacier and fall into a crevasse like that. If you're not roped up with other climbers who can pull you out, you will die.
So, until I'm a stronger climber and part of a team, I stay off that ice.
ENG
New site
Pirate 
Norway 
United States 
Well, it was a grid forecast using GFS, which is pretty unreliable in the mountains. And it seems the US NWS finally is shooting that forecaster and 
Sweden 
Israel 
