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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Actually play de_dust.

Seriously. With paintball guns.

Counter-Strike players rejoice, for a team of like-minded obsessives is recreating the most popular CS map of all time, de_dust, for real, in Fradley Airfield, England. And then they're going to let people play paintball in it.

The PlayDust website doesn't contain a wealth of info at the moment, but from trawling the forums we've managed to garner that the construction, built from MDF, will be as close to the in-game incarnation as possible, and building will start in July, with play starting in August for four to five weekends. Players will form two teams of twelve, and dress accurately for their team. No prices have been confirmed as yet, but online booking will be available from the site soon.

Assuming this isn't a piss-take (and let's face it, it doesn't take much effort to craft a Flash animation with screenshots from CS in it), we imagine that the demand for this will be initially huge, so if you're interested then it might be wise to keep a keen eye on that site. Rumour has it that players from the US are considering a trip over just to experience Dust for real. And frankly, that doesn't surprise us much.

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