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Welcome to the re-launch of Accursed Farms. The first thing I want to emphasize is that very little, if anything, on this site should be considered to be in a final state. As of right now, this site should be considered in an alpha or beta state. The old site kept getting hacked, so it was important to get a new version up as soon as possible that still gave people access to the movies. This one is based on Wordpress and will have multiple web programmers and designers having access to it, so the site’s ability to function will hopefully not rest in the hands of just one person like before. There will be some immediate benefits of drawbacks of this site over the old version, though I think over time it will be purely a beneficial thing. Here are some of the immediate changes below:

 

MOVIE LINKS: Unfortunately, due to a new system, the old movie page links are all no longer valid. I apologize for the broken links this will cause, but the good news is the new naming scheme will be a little more intuitive and not contain just a seemingly random number.

 

USER COMMENTS: The good news is all your old user comments made on the old site have been transferred onto the new site. Also now when you log in to comment, you will STAY logged if you choose. The bad news is you may have to re-register your name. The other bad news is I’m no longer allowing anonymous comments. When I initially created the videos, I was happy for all input since my viewerbase was so low. Ever since about last year however, the situation has degenerated more towards chaos, so I’d like a little more accountability as to what people are writing. I’m not trying to discourage dissent or criticism about the videos, just people acting like jackasses. For the majority of you to whom this probably doesn’t apply, my apologies for the extra inconvenience. If you don’t want to register on the site, but have something you want to say, you can always email me.

 

LAYOUT / GRAPHIC DESIGN: The design of this site is absolutely in a temporary state and will certainly undergo changes over time. If you’re a graphics or web designer, feel free to contact me if you have proposals as to how site should look or how the layout should function. You can send me mock-up pictures showing how you think the site could look better or be more intuitive to navigate. In general, I want a dark, but clearly readable theme, plus I have some graphics I created for the Accursed Farms logo that might help accentuate parts of the site. You can find a few of the graphics to work with here. I can’t promise I’ll use your design, but if I like it, or elements from it, we’ll work towards implementing it into the site and give you credit for your work. Also if you have any ideas on how to make the FAQ more readable and navigable in particular, let me know.

 

NOESIS TUTORIALS: As some of you may know, I was contracted by Noesis a while back to create tutorials for how to make machinima in the Source engine called the Source Machinima Choreography Guide and the Source Machinima Cinematography Guide. Recently however, Noesis is changing their business model so that they won’t be selling conventional tutorials like they did before as they want to avoid piracy of the guides. Thus, the old links I had on the site are no longer valid. Their plans are to start posting ALL of their tutorials on design3.com with unlimited access for a subscription fee instead. I’ve been told my guides will be appearing there at some point in the future and there may still be some DVD copies on Amazon.com

 

FUTURE CHANGES: In the future, I hope to implement many more features. While I’m offering no dates as to when these will happen, here are some things you can hopefully expect in time:
-An official forum dedicated to the videos and misc. related topics
-An “extras” page which will contain some audio outtakes, alternate camera shots for some scenes, scripts, etc.
-A twitter posting with boring and dry updates about what’s going on with production from a technical standpoint
-A better looking design (hopefully)
-All the videos available in more formats besides WMV
-Many more subtitles for existing videos

 

CREDITS: All I did was manage the development of this site, the real work was all done by other people who I’d like to recognize:
WALT SNIDER - Programmed the back-end code of this site and is responsible for importing all the old news posts and comments and is handling the security of the site now. You can check out his homepages at WaltSnider.com and JobWellDumb.com and korenewmedia.com.
RICH SMITH - Assisted Walt with converting over the old database and all the comments. His homepage is at CodeLizard.com
ZACHARY REIDELL - Created the front-end work for the site you see right now and got a lot of the functions working, like all the movie pages. He was able to get this page constructed very quickly. You can check out his homepage at http://zchr.org/.
”VLAD” - Was also working on the front-end work with a more complicated, but ran into health problems that set him back. I was worried he was going to keel over dead. You can see his homepage at orangestonephotography.com
JERRY BRAMSTÅNG - Has done a lot of minor feature and repair work in the background on the old site for a long time and has generally been the guy I turn to in emergency website problems.
PRESTON JOHNSON - Has helped me for a long time and almost created the original site and almost created this site, but has had setbacks both times. I think he might be a secret agent, I don’t know.
MIKE SOUTHWORTH - Created the previous website of Accursed Farms and has since moved on the greener pastures.
ANDREW THEIS - Is the current host for the site. You can check out his homepage at andrewtheis.net.
Also “Will” for creating the favicon and everyone else who’s offered me help on the website so far.

 

In the meantime, my main focus still remains to get more videos out, so that’s what I’ll be working on. -Ross Scott

Hey people,

This is sort of an 11th hour situation, but I’m going to be having another live audio interview tomorrow at around 10:00 PM EST (3:00AM GMT I think). While my policy is still generally to postpone all interviews until I’m done with the next CP episode, these people contacted me many months back and I agreed to this date, so I don’t want to back out on them. The people interviewing me are are Moonhawk Studios Presents, who create a webcomic called Starship Moonhawk. They interview a lot of different webcomic creators on their podcast, but they’ve expanded their criteria enough more recently to include whoever. I really don’t know what they’ll be asking me, though they’re generally pretty laidback. They also have a guy who can do a good Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

If you want to listen in on it, I’ve been told to go into their chatroom around 9:45PM EST on August 18th at this location:

Interview location

I’ve been told you don’t need the program TalkShoe, but it helps and that the listener limit may be around 200 people. If you’re not available for the interview at that time, they’ll post an MP3 of it afterwards that I’ll put a link up to later on.

EDIT:

The interview went well, I was much more lucid since I wasn’t low on sleep the way I was for the Podcast 17 interview. Here are the links to it:

MP3 download

Streaming audio

Freeman's Mind: Episode 29
Youtube

Download 672x384 WMV (93MB)

Here’s the next episode of Freeman’s Mind. It’s the longest episode of FM so far, not because I planned it that way, but because that’s the only area I found a good jumping off spot. This one is pretty average. I think the next one will be better, there will be more to interact with.

This episode took longer than I anticipated. If I hadn’t done these last few episodes and if the website didn’t keep getting hacked, I might be done with the next Civil Protection episode by now, or at least the animation work. As for the website, the new version will almost certainly launch this week. It won’t be in a final state by any means, but it should retain similar functionality as this one and hopefully be more secure.

Since focusing on several different things tends to slow me down, there will be NO MORE FREEMAN’S MIND until I’m done with the animation work on Civil Protection. I don’t care how many people this pisses off, I want to finish it. The amount of time this episode has taken has become a real thorn in my side. You’ll also be wasting your time asking for release dates, I don’t know them either. I’ll make an update once the animation work is done however.

Hey people, while I’m still working on the videos, it looks like an interview I did a week or two ago from PC Gamer has gone up. I’ve been intentionally trying to postpone all interviews until I’m done with the next CP episode, but I was willing to make an exception for PC Gamer, since I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be interviewed by. They title this as me being a “hero” of the PC gaming community, which I think is really reaching. I haven’t made any games, I haven’t finished Freeman’s Mind, and I haven’t gotten to my best ideas produced by any means. I am an avid PC gamer however (or used to be back when I had free time anyway), and I plan to keep making lots of videos in the machinima medium regardless of what happens. Anyway, feel free to check out the interview here:

PC Gamer interview

On a side note, I asked a question of the interviewer that I never received a reply to, that maybe you guys can help out with. I have an interest in older games and would like to read old issues of PC Gamer. If you want to view an issue of PC Gamer that’s a few years old however, you’re out of luck. A companion magazine, Maximum PC, has put up all of their old issues online as a pdf archive and on Google Books. I’d like to see PC Gamer do something similar, maybe if you guys bombard them with requests it might happen. I think I found their contact information here if you want to email them. Alternately, if anyone wanted to mail me old issues of the magazine, I wouldn’t object.

EDIT:

The interviewer ended up emailing me back, he was away on a trip. It’s probably still worth asking them about the back issues however.

EDIT 2:

The dialogue for the next FM episode was completed on Monday, but the sound editing is going to take longer than usual for this episode.

EDIT 3:

I’ve uploaded the finished FM episode to Machinima.com. It will appear on their Youtube channel first, but I have no idea when. If you spot it go up and I haven’t made a post on it yet, feel free to email me.

Here’s what’s going on, separated into different topics:

WEBSITE:

I’m actually not entirely sure what the status is on the new website, but I think we’re getting close. Currently two people are working on it, with another person on standby. I was told on July 1st the site would be up by next Friday, then by another person that the site would be ready last week, then in two days from past Thursday, then on 2pm Saturday, now maybe tomorrow, etc. So you can see, the people working on this are as good at time estimates as I am with my own videos. I consider the fact that I keep getting flawed estimates a positive thing because it implies progress. Also I have seen some mockup designs, though nothing quite functional as this yet.

When the site launches (any day now maybe), it will NOT be in a final state at all, but should be functional enough to navigate and get to the videos. Later improvements will be added as they’re worked on. While there are many features I’d like to eventually have, right now the main goal is to get something working that’s about as functional, but more secure than what’s here right now. Later on, you can expect a forum, video extras, more subtitles, more polished design, etc.

CIVIL PROTECTION:

I’ve been working on the next episode every day and making steady progress. I’m absolutely going to finish the animation work this month, which is about 90-95% of the work involved with making an episode. I’ve had one animator bail on me, which has increased the workload and may make a couple scenes less polished, but I’m going to keep moving forward with backup methods to accomplish certain scenes that may not look as good, but will still allow the episode to get made. I’m very eager to get this episode done. Once the animation work is done, I’m making no promises as to how long the editing will take, as that will involve other people for sound and music. Also in the past, editing is one area that I’ve rushed in before, and considering how much time has aleady gone into this, I’d like to get this episode done properly as opposed to getting it done a day or two sooner.

FREEMAN’S MIND:

I seem to be getting pressure on all sides to get another FM episode out, which seems to happen whenever I devote time to Civil Protection and make real progress. While I’m tempted to say the hell with everyone and keep working on CP (especially since I’m going to have a flood of FM episodes afterwards), I’ve decided to do another appeasement episode. I’ll be starting on that today, so take your best guess as to when the episode will be done. I hate giving estimates, because they’re always wrong, which causes people to be more upset than if I said nothing at all.

Once I’m done with the animation work for the next CP episode, I’ll continue making more FM episodes while I go back and forth between that and recording/editing for CP. Once the next CP episode is released, you can expect many more FM episodes, probably a dozen or two before the end of the year. While things could easily change, I’m estimating I might be able to finish the series for Half-Life 1 by sometime in Q1 2011.

EMAIL:

I’m behind on responding to emails and currently have about 150 to write replies to. However, if you’re asking me questions that are answered in the FAQ or just want to know when the next episode will be out, you probably won’t get a response.


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