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Ross Scott

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Everything posted by Ross Scott

  1. Ross Scott
    Hell yeah: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/12/fortnite-will-be-a-pc-exclusive-and-epics-first-unreal-engine-4-game/
  2. Ross Scott
    No I'm just waiting on getting final details, I plan on making an announcement soon. It's going to something like this: Probably 9 - 11 meetup somewhere outside of King's Dominion so people who don't want to pay parking fees and buy a ticket don't have to 11 - meetup up for a little while in King's Dominion parking lot afterwards - go inside King's Dominion and latecomers can track me down (I'll wear something with high visibility)
  3. Ross Scott
    I appreciate the gesture, but I think you maybe don't work as a scientist. You seem to be missing the evidence here: Old mic = mostly alright new mic = shouting sounds dumbed down so it seems less intense My conclusion: something about the new mic has different properties from the old one that produces these results. No software settings have changed since using the new mic, so there's only one variable here. While it is possible my soundcard is doing some compression on the driver level, it wasn't a noticeable problem on the old mic, plus I don't have control over the software that deep. Besides volume levels, the only options offered for recording in the soundcard software are to change the pitch, reverb, and an anti-reverb control. I have all of them disabled (on the old mic as well as the new) as it just distorts the sound. Your instructions are just talking about recording levels and the 20dB boost. If a voice sounds mild, increasing the volume is just going to make it louder, not change the tone. I think it's pretty safe to conclude the problem I'm having is with the mic (not that it's bad, just that it's not what I need). The unknown variable for me is WHAT properties of the mic are causing this? Anyway, you'll see more on this once the next episode goes up.
  4. Ross Scott
    Well it occupies this weird hybrid space between beginners and more advanced users. The animation tools I've heard are pretty similar to what you get from Softimage, so that's hardly beginner stuff at all. Like if you want to animate EVERYTHING, but don't want to create a bunch of new assets, the SFM might be pretty helpful for you. On the flipside, the player recorder function is incredibly useful for people who want to make more Red v. Blue Machinima, but don't have the actors for all the roles, they can run around and do it all themselves. For me, I'm drifting towards having more flexibility in what I animate, but still be able to take as many shortcuts as I can without having things look too bad. I WANT to have the AI figure out the best way for a character to walk down a hill, or to takeover some physics simulations, etc. Anything I can do to make the animation process easier without having it look worse I'm likely in favor of. The SFM seems to drift away from that direction for a lot of things.
  5. Ross Scott
    Here's a quick breakdown from what I've seen compared to regular Source SDK with HL2: +Much better camera controls +improved lighting +more flexibility with model manipulation +easier to record and export video +supports depth of field -having a non-TF2 character walk up / down a hill and look good is about 10x more work than with Hammer -doesn't support scene file playback from faceposer -missing many npc manipulation options that Hammer has -Less flexibility on AA use -Misc. limitations of things that would be possible in HL2 Hammer. -Haven't figured out how to have use of physics objects -Can't do 1080p video The short version is that compared to the HL2 SDK, some things are much better, some are much more limited. There is a straight tradeoff of functionality in various areas. The only thing I see being a pure advantage are the lighting and the camera controls. Everything else has a downside to it compared to what you're getting. I think my original assessment was correct in that if this is the best Valve has to offer, UDK really makes sense for the long term.
  6. Ross Scott
    No software came with the mic, it's analog. Also this wasn't happening on the previous mic (also analog).
  7. Ross Scott
    Wal Mart stopped selling microphones actually. I ended up buying this one since I'm still relatively ignorant of mics: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Samson+-+Dynamic+Vocal+Microphone/8427151.p?id=1182557417472&skuId=8427151#BVRRWidgetID I plan to make an official post on this once the next episode comes out, but I'm having an issue with it. The regular voice quality is fine, but my main problem is that when I do intense shouting, it somehow makes it sound like I'm just raising my voice or something, much less intense than the reality. This means I have to shout EVEN LOUDER to approximate what I was aiming for, which has just been brutal. Does anyone know what causes that? What specs should be avoided or sought in a microphone that have an impact on that?
  8. Ross Scott
    It will import a lot of maps and models from other games, you just won't have facial animation for the characters, so it depends on what kind of video you're trying to make. EDIT: Looks like it actually is possible, just had very hidden settings.
  9. Ross Scott
    I've come to understand that facial animations can't be done on HL2 characters for this, only TF2 ones. Since TF2 lacks the ability to call forth faceposer scenes from within the map (has to be done in console, which is too sloppy of a way to do it), this really limits the usefulness of the tool outside of TF2. So I guess I return to my original stance before I edited the news post. And that's until the code to this gets hacked, it's going to produce spectacular TF2 videos, and not a lot else, or at least nothing with facial expressions.
  10. Ross Scott
    Post updated for King's Dominion discount. Still figuring out the parking situation.
  11. Ross Scott
    I don't understand why the hell they have to make it a private beta instead of just making it an open one and saying it's currently unsupported.
  12. Ross Scott
    I have a confirmation from Carowinds about the reduced ticket price. They'll be $36 if you use the link provided in the post. Still waiting on information from King's Dominion, but I should hopefully have an answer soon. One thing that sucks is that BOTH of these places seem to have a parking fee of $12. I'm trying to brainstorm if there's an alternative to this for people who don't want to get gouged by this. I did see this link: http://coastercrewnetwork.com/blog/kings-dominion-reaches-record-numbers/ Where some guy says he parked in a nearby soccer field. If anyone lives in the area and has suggestions about evading the parking fees, feel free to post here or contact me.
  13. Ross Scott
    See that was my first thought. TF2 doesn't have NPC manipulation entities the way HL2 does, so I thought even with imported content, this would still have significant limitations. After seeing the puppeteering video however, I think that completely changes what could be done with it, so it makes it much more viable. I still consider UDK a smart move regardless, but Source has the advantage of more assets ready to go, more mapping talent, and I have a lot of experience with it. Assuming things work as they should, that only leaves potential lighting issues and model importing / exporting compatibility as the main obstacles in Source. Regardless, it's something worth considering now.
  14. Ross Scott
    I was thinking parking lot, but it looks like they have a damn $12 parking fee, I'm trying to figure out if there are more economical options for everyone. If you've already gone there, feel free to give me a lowdown.
  15. Ross Scott
    It would fix some major problems with recording and open up animation options. Unfortunately I'm not sure Freeman's Mind would be compatible at all with this, because either HL:S would have to be recreated inside TF2, or else the code would have to be adapted to HL:S.
  16. Ross Scott
    There's been a ton of stuff going on lately, here are some highlights: T-SHIRTS People have been asking me about producing t-shirts for a long time. I've never really made much progress with it because I'm really not a businessman at heart, I always rather focus on making more videos, so t-shirt production has been constantly postponed. Fortunately, a personal friend of mine, Evan Anderson, has been VERY interested in helping me print t-shirts and take over the business aspect of things so I don't have to mess with it. His enthusiasm level for this reminds me of Steve Ballmer, if Ballmer didn't act like someone who was on cocaine. We're still just starting off, but there will be a trial run of SHIRTS FOR SALE AT THE MEETUPS coming July 22nd and August 4th. They will be basic ones, most with the Freeman's Mind logo, and a smaller amount with the Civil Protection logo. The price for one will be 0. Our plans are for Evan to sell shirts in the parking lot of the amusement parks until he runs out. Right now we're looking at having around 200 shirts total at the North meetup and then see what happens after that. For everyone else, don't worry, there are plans to get an online store going on the site for selling shirts and maybe other things like coffee mugs. I'll be in charge of which designs go on the shirts, my friend Evan will be handling pretty much everything else. Besides the logos for the shows, I have plans to print some of the better one-liners from Freeman's Mind along with accompanying artwork to go with them. It will be a gradual process, since setting up a small business can be very complex, but I want to let people know that it's coming. Also while it's probable the shipping costs will be higher, I'll make sure that future shirts will be available to be shipped internationally. MOVIE DOWNLOADS Good news, all the downloadable copies of the videos have been converted to x264 MKV copies. This means that the copies you download on the site will be about as high quality as possible for the space size. You may still see some minor compression artifacts in the older Freeman's Mind episodes, but that has more to do with me not following great archive practices rather than the codec itself. Even with the minor compression artifacts, you can know that all the downloadable copies of the videos on the site now are pretty much the highest quality copies available. During this process I also spotted an error with the previous copies that may have caused the sound to skip in places. That has since been corrected, so if you were having that problem, try redownloading the episodes. I also fixed episodes that were released too dark or too bright. I was able to update most of the links on the website for the videos, but I wasn't able to add new ones. The movie links are still very haphazard with their accuracy, I apologize about that. I was hoping to have a new and improved movie page section rolled out about 2 weeks ago, but it's hard to say when that will actually happen, since I don't do the website programming. I decided to make this announcement now because if we had to wait until things were final, it might be months from now. Expect things to be more organized sometime in the near future. If you need help finding a player for MKV files, after rigorous testing, I can recommend the program PotPlayer. I do NOT recommend VLC Player, I've found it produces some errors in playback of some of the videos, so the quality may not look as good if you are using that. SOURCE FILMMAKER I've received over a dozen emails since yesterday regarding the Source Filmmaker. This is a new set of tools being released by Valve that could assist a lot with machinima making in the Source engine. Some people want to know what my thoughts are on this, so here they are: -I'm a little bitter this is coming out NOW when a WORKING COPY of this was leaked about 5 years ago. If these tools had been more public back then, it might have saved me hundreds of hours of time collectively over the years. But, better late than never. -By only allowing this in Team Fortress 2 that normally would limit a lot of things over HL2 games, because TF2 doesn't really allow for NPC manipulation. However, the Filmmaker does seem to have much more robust animation tools that could largely compensate for this. I think there will be a loss of a lot of AI functions that can make some aspects easier, but the tools added seem to make up for it. -I think this will add a LOT of functionality to the Source Engine. I think it will mostly fix camerawork and recording issues and allow more animation options via keyframing. But I don't know if it will address many other issues I've encountered using Source that have almost completely shut down my videos in the past. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I NEVER want to have to throw out weeks or months of work because there's a bug in the software that I don't know how to fix. Working with the Source SDK for years has made me feel like that is a VERY real possibility and it's been almost pure luck that I've been able to produce the videos I have without everything falling apart. -Based on what I've seen so far, I'm not sure this software has any features that aren't already included by default in the Unreal Development Kit. While the filmmaker is enough to make me see Source as less of an outright liability, I'm not sure it's enough to avert me from steering away from the engine in the long term. I'm going to end up using whatever software allows me to get the most things done and still look decent. At the very least, this makes Source worth re-considering instead of me proclaiming it outright doomed like I was ready to in January. -This software really needs to needs to have open access (instead of closed beta) before I can do much with it, otherwise the only people who can assist me have to also have beta access (assuming I even get it). Let's hope this will happen before another 5 years! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4keTxDO6hk ADHD version: Shirts for sale at meetup! Movie downloads are now high quality! Source Filmmaker makes the Source Engine look less masochistic!
  17. Ross Scott
    I'm going to make a post with some news on stuff probably tomorrow, I'll talk more about it then. The short version is that I'm skeptical as to how functional this will be outside of a TF2 environment and if it has anything to offer over UDK.
  18. Ross Scott
    I'm with you 100%, for me AA is one of the best things ever to happen to 3D graphics. It's definitely a boon to the industry, due to its compatibility and its speed, but I'm really hoping things just don't stop there. The big problem with FXAA is that the coverage is uneven. In some areas it's as good as high-end supersampling, but in other areas of a scene, it may as well not be turned on at all. So for me personally, it makes my eyes call attention to areas that aren't getting smoothed out, because my brain is filtering the ones that are. That said, MSAA + alpha texture SSAA is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Due to the sheer amount of incompatible shaders, deferred rendering, or flat out incompatibility, their coverage often won't work at all on many modern games. Nowadays I feel like things are moving towards varying degrees of supersampling (which takes a ton of speed no matter how you slice it), or shader-based solutions (FXAA, MLAA, SMAA, etc.), and that's it. It's also huge divide between the kind of power you need to achieve either method too. So your options are pretty much a shader based solution with negligible speed drops, or else an absolute powerhouse to get full SSAA.
  19. Ross Scott
    If you can't get the loops to work in-game, I'd say your only option is to do it manually and stack the same animation over and over in the timeline for the duration you need. You might want to have quick ramp fades to make sure the transition isn't too abrupt.
  20. Ross Scott
    It's not that simple, I've done a TON of research on monitors. Here's a breakdown: CRT: +scalable resolution (looks better than non-native resolutions on a LCD) +NO input lag +better response time than LCDs -heavier -low level radiation -hard to find now -picture not quite as crisp as LCDs As for the eyestrain, that's only true if you run your monitor at the default 60Hz. If you run it at 85Hz or above, it shouldn't be an issue. LCD TN panel (the vast majority sold in outlet stores are these kind): +Cheap +sharp image +better input lag / response time than IPS panels (but not CRTs) -poorer color reproduction -poor angle viewing (if you shift up and down in your seat, the whole image becomes darker or brighter) -images look worse at non-native resolutions LCD IPS panels and in some cases VA ones (LCDs, but completely different technology than TN's, usually have to order these) +Excellent color reproduction +Excellent viewing angles -input lag / response time not as good as TN panels (but some are good enough for twitch gaming anyway) -more expensive than TN panels There's also something in monitors you'll want to look into called standard and wide gamut, which have to do how saturated your colors are. People have different preferences, but in my opinion, I like the look of standard gamut better. In my opinion, you may not be happy with a store bought TN LCD panel if you're coming from a CRT, you'll probably notice a lot of their flaws. I would try and find an e-IPS panel, these tend to have the best of all worlds. The color reproduction and viewing angles you can expect from a CRT, the sharpness of a LCD, and still fast enough for gaming. It's your call though, you can always see TN panels on display in a store and decide for yourself what you think of them.
  21. Ross Scott
    Only if you're going to get 2 and run them in Crossfire... Then again, that's the same with everything lower than the 7970... (or the GTX 670 for Nvidia) You're gonna get I haven't played it, but at high quality with AA , Tom's Hardware is reporting closer to 30fps, 45 with AA off: Not sure if they're reporting on a skewed situation, but that's over double the speeds you're claiming. So it just depends on how smooth you want it. At 1680x1050, you get about a 5fps boost on top of that. EDIT: Never mind, looks like these are for high and he was talking about ultra, I wasn't aware of the divisions for BF3.
  22. Ross Scott
    I wouldn't worry about PCI express 3.0: http://www.overclock.net/t/1188376/hardwarecanucks-hd-7970-pci-e-3-0-vs-pci-e-2-0-comparison
  23. Ross Scott
    Since so many people are interested in the meetup idea from the earlier poll, I've decided to split things up into TWO meetups instead. I don't have all the details yet, but I wanted to give people as much notice as possible on the dates and locations, so here they are: It's over! Location: Carowinds - Charlotte, North Carolina Date: August 4th Price: $41 for August 4th if you use this link to purchase tickets. ($36 + $5 BS "processing" fee.) My apologies about the prices of these places, these were really the minimum I was able to get the ticket prices down to after a lot of phone calls. -Freeman's Mind and Civil Protection T-shirts will be for sale! -More detailed info will be up soon!
  24. Ross Scott
    Ha, this is a little tangential, but I just had to post this after the "better business practices" comment: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/linus_torvalds_tosses_f-bombs_middle_fingers_and_general_disdain_nvidia Again, ATI is no saint either, they both have their pros and cons.
  25. Ross Scott
    It could just be overheating. Try taking the panel off your computer case and blowing a fan at it and see if the problem still occurs.
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