I have heard countless stories about ghosts and djinn yet I havent experienced any of those myself.

Ghost stories here are developed from urban legends - those rumours that were developed before the email forwarding chains, were they developed from children's tales? I will never know.

I have heard about a story about a building in Alexandria, called the Roushdie building. It is a residential building that has countless stories about why does it have ghosts, and how if someone enters, they will be killed by ghosts. I have heard some hollywood-grade horror stories, starting from blood crosses being drawn on the walls to headless victims wandering around the building, smashing and breaking things to terrorize the - once then - residents of this building. All stories I heard about this particular building are your generic hollywood stories: block was built on a graveyard of mysterious murder victims, partner was killed in a quarrel...etc.

Also, my grandmother told me from her father that he once rented a different flat - also in Alexandria - in a first floor with a friend of his, he was your classic muscle man - those guys who look fat-ish but actually really, really strong. Anyways they heard noises and really did not care, then our hero went to the toilet and saw someone else sitting on the toilet and looking at him. They both ran and jumped through the window.

Also another djinn story I heard from a friend, one day they were driving on a desert highway somewhere I do not remember, and it was really dark but for the street lights that went suddenly blinking, the driver tried to play some quran through the cassette player to "drive away bad spirits" but the tape keeps on ejecting, and ofcourse there was no signal on the radio to receive the quran radio channel. They just kept on driving and reciting parts of the quran until they arrived safely.

Another tale I heard, someone I met was in his mandatory conscription service, and to his luck he was stationed somewhere deep on the Sinai border, and he remembers that it was winter in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so temperatures are typically around 0-4C with no central heating. He vividly remembers himself being alone and trying to sleep, and feeling really warm breezes and gusts of wind every now and then - remember, as he reiterated that he was alone that night, so it's not someone who was lighting a bonfire or whatever - then after long thought, he figured that it was djinn. So every time he feels this warm breeze he says his greetings and how he came in peace and means no harm. The warm breeze left him after a while and never witnessed such again.

Ofcourse, all of those stories might be true, or might be the result of boredom, or heavy doses of hashish or LSD. Who knows? But I sure had fun listening to those stories.

>>13736
In case anybody interested - evolution of HECU soldeirs models from Half-Life.

1.Original Half-Life soldier models. Pretty low poly and sometimes pretty funny, I'd say. Black marine guy that smoking is head from cuted model of cool sergant with gatling, when his model was scrapped because was not serious enough for more final desighn concepts. I like original half life faces textures, they drawed in some... kinda strage way. Most of this faces in later games and addons and models will mostly be redone to level when they not recognisable - like barney, for example. For their animations, complections and overall look in-game they always reminded me "ninja turtles with guns"

2.Models from Oppsoing Force - OF, since it centered around soldeirs, redesighned them in slightly more high detail and there also much more variation exept this four, like two guys (medic and engeneer) I posted above. Possibly, the best model varaints in my opinion. Yes if you get close they slightly done in different style from way valve did original HL1, but this is in all aspects really better - more detail, more elements of equipment that much more logically look like some real life military equipment, and faces look like faces, but yet that still have proper detalisation to not be out of place from Half Life level of detail and engine capibilities.

3.So called High defenition pack - HD pack is something that run by default in steam versions of games, trought you can now disable it from menu and I recommnd to do so. I not in any way fan of this "HD" pack. Initially, this was moldes from cancelled Dreamcast port of half life made by Gearbox same as opposing force... but there they for some reason started really experement with models, changed style and other elements of overall look. This models was kinda improved and then relised on PC as this "HD" pack that features new weapons models and new npc models and come together with blue shift (blue shift was meant to be exclusive dreamcast content campain originaly). In case of NPCs - HECU included, I don't like new style, new faces and they feels way overdetaled for HL1 detalisation level and with vanilla limited animations that just looks like some kind of bad "hd mod" made by some fan. There is example of awesome very detailed models for goldsource that looks organic, but this example is clearly not of them.

4.Playstation 2 port models - PS2 port with it's excusive pack "decay" featuring a lot more improved model with this new style, and HD pack models was even more improved there. There was kinda updated version of engine that gearbox will lately use in their james bond game, also for models was made more animations and new "bones" - they finnaly can rotate eyes and blink, more smooth talk animations and so on made them a little bit more organic. And because there was updated even more models and objects on map, it look really more organic. However, I may say that I find their style even less appealing than HD pack one. So my favorite remian OF ones, if someone can properly made them more HD but same time more organic, it'd be really cool.