Ross Scott

I read this article, it's interesting seeing multiple studies confirm the findings: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/10/rich-people-compassion-mean-money_n_1416091.html I also saw this study a while ago, but you could argue it's less conclusive by itself rather than having a multitude of them in different scenarios like the previous article: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/shame-on-the-rich.html?ref=hp Again, these are just averages. It doesn't mean every rich person is less compassionate, just likely the majority of them.

This could be the sort of thing I could see adding for donators (depending on how many lines a GPS system needs, I imagine it's a lot)

-16x anisotropic filtering -4x4 supersampling antialiasing (with Nvidia Inspector, AMD has standard-grid supersampling on their videocards, but I think it tends to blur Source games for some reason) -recorded at 180fps (not in real time), then downsampled to 30 to add motion blur -Colton Rappe adds lens flares and stuff to the intro footage

Well fair enough, but I think it's possible you'll be surprised. Look at this way, which would you rather show to someone, a dozen Saturday Night Live skits with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, or the movie Ghostbusters? That's the best comparison I can make to the difference between the movie and Freeman's Mind. I am only too happy to delegate huge chunks of the movie to other people, but from my experience in other videos I've made, anything volunteer-based can easily evaporate without much warning. I mean what do you do in scenarios where all your "trusted" people have become too busy or disappear and trying to work with new people is a dice toss as to whether they are competent or reliable or not? Go to moddb.com sometime and see how many mods get started that never get finished. The only reason my videos get finished is because when people bail, I'll finish the work myself (except for coding or modelling, I'm at people's mercy there). Once I get more done on Freeman's Mind, I plan on adding a "help wanted" section to the site for specific positions I need help with on the movie (not at all once, otherwise I wouldn't be able to manage it all). Well on one side, this isn't a democracy, I am going to work on different video projects, regardless. On the flipside, I'm not trying to piss people off when their preferred videos or requests get neglected, I just simply have lots of different things I want to do and limited resources to work with. If ALL I had to do was writing, directing, and voice acting, things would be 10x faster, but that doesn't really happen outside of a studio environment.

I record in-game audio directly from the source engine, which does it in stereo when you output to video (even if it supports 5.1 in-game). Sound editors add to that, which is also in stereo. I guess 5.1 mixing would be possible, but I don't really see it as being worth all the extra time. Besides, I keep the sound effect tracks, in-game audio, music, and dialogue separate for almost the videos. If I ever make something good enough to warrant 5.1 sound, someone could always come back to "remaster" it later.

It's on hold. I won't be making new CP episodes while I'm focusing on the movie.

This was my idea and I gave the decree for it. I've found it confusing that people keep doing this so I don't even know what to refer to someone as because some people change names constantly. I didn't even realize this was a feature when the forum was created actually, if I had I would have set it that way then. If you don't like it, then too bad, I'm not really sure why it's an issue to begin with.

It was released for free back when the game out on EA's own website. I have an extended version of it with extra tracks by Rom Di Prisco lying around somewhere that I could put up sometime if you can't find it elsewhere. One of the tracks actually appears in the computer room in an earlier Freeman's Mind.

I'd say there's only 2 realistic options: 1. Let population continue uncontrolled until it reduces naturally from people dying off from not enough food, water, health care, whatever (like deer do with food when they're overpopulated). 2. Enforce child limits, like they do in China. I'd say it's the people who GET IT that are the problem. Also a point I see missed in some debates is that there's a big difference between acting entitled versus not wanting a stupid allocation of resources. I like to make up the example of pretend you have an isolated medieval village that has learned invaders are coming to raid them and are a few days out, but they have a big stockpile of wood. A few people want to build a wall around the town. A few other people want to fashion the wood into weapons. But the big debate for most of the townsfolk is whether or not to build a giant wicker man statue in the center of town and which direction he should be facing.

I've seen that article, and that's the difference; I DON'T think this is very relevant, I feel like the OWS people who fit his description simply obfuscate the larger issues. I'd be curious what your opinion is on this article: http://www.nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/in-nothing-we-trust-20120419 (you can skip everything below "gutenberg to google" it becomes less focused after that) Is it desirable to have a system where someone who works hard and is fiscally responsible for 10 years has no real financial security? If so, why? Yes. This gets complicated, because there's a difference between what I think they SHOULD do and what their purpose is. I think the purpose of government is to be a defense against anarchy so civilization can function. I think the purpose of a representative democracy is to represent the needs and concerns of all its people and try its best to act upon that. In both those cases , I think the government is failing as our overall stability is getting weaker and I personally think much of our government has been co-opted by lobbyists more than constituents. As for trying to give citizens a basic standard of living. I think that's a goal that is in the best interest of people, provided it has the resources for it. I certainly see that as a better goal that trying to give additional tax breaks to people who already earn over a million dollars. No, this is a loaded and compound statement and isn't really the direction I'm focusing on. I am in favor of a progressive taxation system however, with the mentality being that if you have lots of money (business or individual), you have more means to influence your situation as you see fit than if you do not. I don't know if I'd go as far as main goal, but I consider it a very important goal. I again, consider this a higher priority than lowering tax rates on millionaires. No, it's not as simple as you're stating it, I see it as two separate issues: 1. I think the government should try to make sure all citizens (including workers) can have a basic standard of living. This isn't about dictating wages to business, it's about providing an infrastructure for people in general. Look at this way: Say there's no regulation and all the companies in your area start requiring 12-15 hour workdays because it's more profitable for them. Well if you can feed yourself and know you'll have a place to live with basic amenities, people say can "hell no" and negotiate better hours with businesses. However if people do NOT have those things and this is the only way they can earn enough money to survive day to day, they don't really have any choice and thus no freedom (except freedom to starve and be homeless). This is what I referred to before as "wage slavery." 2. I think business in general should be regulated by the government against practices that are generally harmful or abusive for a populace. This includes price-fixing, predatory pricing, polluting the environment, having unethical requirements of your workers (which is interpretive), tax evasion, fraud, etc. I don't consider it that simple either. The OWS movement is very varied, there are some views of OWS I definitely don't support. One is that the government should simple give more money to the middle and lower class, and I don't think that would solve much of anything. Another is to end capitalism completely, and I don't see that as realistic or desirable. What I support about OWS is that they're calling attention to the fact that wealth disparity in our country has become massive AND at the same time the standard of living for people has been going down. I think you're missing a lot of what I've been trying to say, sorry. You seem to think I'm focused on government v. business v. people and I don't really view it like that. I'm more focused on the objective of finding a balance between maximizing the amount of people who can receive basic needs to survive, doing what is beneficial for humanity overall (like advancing technology, not ruining the environment, etc.), and still have a reasonable amount of freedom, then try to evaluate the best method of achieving that. Okay, my perception is that you have pretty much a textbook libertarian viewpoint. You're a believer in freedom in pretty much any area that doesn't involve force against another person. I think you see protecting property rights as perhaps the single most important aspect of government and are against any compromise to them whatsoever. I think you consider protecting these rights to be more important than whatever the consequences might be for the majority of the populace and / or have a radically different perception. In fact, I think you consider this principle to be the most important aspect of pretty much any sociological discussion. I think you consider mandatory taxes to be a punishment of sorts on people. I think you generally see any elements of tax-funded socialism as being as encumbrance on people, especially those who are financially successful, like the equivalent of holding back a fast runner in a race to slow down so everyone behind him can catch up. I think it's possible you're a social darwinist, I don't know. I think you're against OWS because you generally see it as a movement of people whining that the rich are successful and everyone else isn't; and maybe perceive everyone as wanting handouts and feeling they should be entitled to things instead of having to work for them. EDIT: I saw another post you made saying you were not a libertarian, so it seems I'm mistaken. If this is the case, you might want to explain what about your views differ from libertarianism, because so far I haven't noticed any differences. It's more like you lost me, you'd have to clarify what you're or what you think I'm saying. Which theory? Not necessarily. It can me that it's a good theory for some situations, but a bad theory for other situations. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation works great here on Earth in the vast majority of situations. It doesn't work so great if you're trying to explain the rate of universal expansion. The same goes for the voluntary tax thing. I think in many cases a voluntary donation is fine and / or is more than enough that is needed. In other cases, it really isn't enough and a lot of people will suffer without mandatory measures. Well first, I think I mentioned before I don't think you can attribute all advances to capitalism that probably would have happened in our era anyway. As just a quick example, all of the first big advances in space travel and satellites were first achieved by the Soviets under a communist system (again, I'm not advocating communism, just using this as a counter-point). Second, if you're starving, that bowl of soup means infinitely more than knowing that refrigerator technology has gotten better. Again, it's not an either-or situation for me in having elements of capitalism and elements of socialism. Here's a comic to go with the concept of good:http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2560#comic No, I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying all other variables being equal, I think that kind of government I think would have a lot more starving and homeless people than one that had mandatory taxes and welfare system. I see that as undesirable for a society. , I don't think you can attribute all this to capitalism. 1. Yes, most systems are better for people than feudalism. 2. I think you can link the population explosion to oil, there's a very strong correlation. 3. This still doesn't provide any evidence that people in a system with no government intervention (that had welfare in mind) would receive MORE aid than one without it. This is a great question to respond to: No, it does benefit all individuals, just some more than others. Let's take public transportation. If I'm dirt poor, having a railway system is a godsend for me, it lets me get around. If I have a bike, it's still very nice. If I have a car, well it provides me more options, and keeps more people out of cars, thus lowering congestion. It's win-win. Now take something like food and provided housing. If I'm poor, again, that's vital to my survival. If I'm middle class, if I run into financial trouble that gives me some peace of mind, knowing I can at least fallback on that if I need to. If I'm rich, then having that stuff cuts down on crime, which can affect me, and it keeps the poorer class in a separate district from where I live, making my neighborhood more desirable. Again, win-win. In fact, give me an example where the kinds of services I'm advocating has NO benefit for someone, directly or indirectly. I honestly can't think of one. As for one man's good being better than another's, PERFECT point to discuss. If you reply to nothing else, reply to this paragraph. I see it this way: We all start off as animals. If we manage to meet our needs enough so that we feel like our immediate survival isn't threatened, only THEN can we talk about what is civil or not, who has property rights, etc. None of us really OWN anything, all we have is influence and power to keep what we say is ours. I could own a car, have the title to it, fully paid off, insured and everything. Yet, if we have a nuclear war tomorrow and there's no more government or law, the first roaming gang with a gun to my head is now the owner of it. They took it, and now they have the power / influence to keep it. I have no actual rights to that car anymore, the only reason I "owned" it before was because society at some point came together and made rules that we shouldn't do stuff like that, because life for everyone is generally better when we don't steal things from each other. The roaming gang obviously doesn't like those laws, but society decided that their good was inferior to everyone else's since it depended on ruining theirs. Now most modern societies have decided that there should be some balance between having individual ownership versus helping others who are in greater need. If you push EVERYTHING towards individual ownership, then over time you can easily end up with situations where a few people have more resources than they'll even use, and many others will have less than they need. If there's not enough respect from the people who DO have their needs met to recognize that other people need resources to survive, by any means if necessary, then there's no reason they should respect the "rules" that allowed the people with plenty to accumulate THEIR resources in the first place. So back to one man's good not being better than another's, that works both ways. Why should the property rights of a man who has more resources than everyone around him combined be respected when everyone around him has almost nothing AND he refuses to help them? Why are HIS rights to survival more important than those of everyone around him?

I think the easiest answer is that I'm probably trying to do too many things at once without wanting to abandon other things I consider important (besides machinima stuff too). For example, I think people will understand once it's done, but if I look back in 10 years, I'll absolutely feel better having made the movie project I'm working on rather than more Freeman's Mind episodes. As for the money aspect, I'm not sure what Youtube's rate is, but it's not like drug dealing money, it's more like burger flipping money, if that. Regardless, I do hope to have another marathon session of FM episodes at some point to give people more of a fix.

Download 848x480 MKV (109MB) After many delays, here's the next episode of Freeman's Mind. I'm hoping to get a lot more out soon, though we'll see what happens. If you like explosions, you'll probably like this episode. I ran into a bizarre bug in this episode where the skybox texture would randomly become very bright. Fortunately I was able to re-record the footage on a different system, thus you won't see it in the episode. I'll have to do some experiments to determine if the problem is something wrong with my system software or if Nvidia has decided to outsource its driver development to monkeys. For the next episode I'll be trying something new and will record exactly how much time is involved with making an episode. I plan for this to be a one-time thing, but I'll give a full breakdown of how much time is spent on every aspect of Freeman's Mind #42.

I will be taxed on the donations, yes. My guess is I'll have about $1,100 of it left to use after taxes. The amount should be enough to pay for the least enjoyable aspects of production that are necessary, specifically weightmapping on models. It is a lot, though someone mentioned this: http://www.indiegogo.com/Angry-Video-Game-Nerd-The-Movie Also I don't get a regular paycheck from Machinima, I'm not officially an employee. Any income I get from them can vary quite a bit. My rate has actually gone down to about half of what it was a few months ago due to Youtube changing its algorithms. I'd be more in favor of a progressive tax system, like in Warcraft 3.

I saw in PC Gamer a confirmation that their PC exclusive is something entirely new, so it won't be Fortnite (I really hope that one ends up being cross platform then). I consider the single player about on the level of Halo in terms of story and gameplay. I will say it had fantastic environments though. Unreal 1 was a really other-wordly experience however, it definitely paled against that. As for the music, I barely remember it, so I think that alone means it doesn't even come close to Unreal 1, which is easily one of my all-time favorite game soundtracks.

Well the thing with that is I don't want people to feel like they're second class citizens if they're not donating. I'm happy to have people watch my videos period, and only instated the donation system because people were actively asking me about it. My favorite fans aren't necessarily the ones who donate the most money, but the ones whom I think could still be watching my (new) videos 10 years from now. I'd prefer to have something where donators could get something extra, but where others don't feel too excluded.

Hey everyone, just a quick update if you're wondering why not much seems to be happening. It's mostly been being busy with getting re-situated since my move and more lately, taxes. Taxes are always an enormous pain for me due to how I get paid and where I've lived. I will be turning in no less than SEVEN forms to the IRS and State this year and it's been taking me days to try and figure it all out. I'm tempted to just mail a check for about how much money I think I owe along with a note that says "I DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND HOW TO DO ALL OF THIS AND I CAN'T AFFORD A PERSONAL ACCOUNTANT" but I think that would just lead to me going to jail; but it wouldn't if EVERYONE did that. The whole experience has been leaving me bitter, but I've tried to stay positive by imagining the people who designed these forms and/or process them as doing a the entire time. The way the language is worded on these forms seems fitting for that kind of individual. Fun Fact: Your donations for 2011 (before taxes) come to a total of $1,639.69. I've tried to thank every donator individually for that, but a big thanks again if you've been missed. This sum will go towards the movie project once I'm finally done filling out forms. I'm still open to suggestions of extra things I can do for donators that won't eat too much into my time. The webmaster for the site has suggested adding recognition labels next to people's names in the forum, which may not be a bad idea.

I think you'll like my movie then.

I was going to reply more, but some of what you're saying jumps out at me: This is so far off base with what I'm saying, I'm not sure any explanation is useful here. If you want a real response, please re-read what I said in the past 1-2 posts and rephrase your question. I've explicitly stated multiple times this is not what I'm saying, I can't discuss this further without you understanding my stance. This would be like me saying repeatedly to you "So you think people should be allowed to do anything they want, even if they kill others?" even if you've already explained your stance to me. Again, I can't have this discussion if you're not actually reading my posts: If you still want a discussion, here's some stuff I would suggest understanding before replying: -The difference between having a social safety net and some socialized services versus communism. -The difference between someone's WANTS versus their NEEDS. Too many of the arguments I'm getting from you suggest that I'm advocating communism and I think everyone's WANTS should be provided for. These are both false and I've already tried to explain that. I'll answer this though: Two part question. Why focus on the effects? This is such a fundamental thing for me, I think it would be better if you answer it yourself. If a drunk driver accidentally kills 3 people, but he honestly didn't MEAN to, why do we still lock him up? On the flipside, if someone is very mean, and secretly wishes to murder people, but has never actually harmed anyone, why do we let him free? I feel like if you answer that, you also answer why I focus on effects rather than ideology. As for your second question, I feel the ideology is probably well meaning for most people who advocate it, but the effects mean a lot less people don't get helped. A nice real-world example: When you were a kid, have you ever gone trick or treating to a neighbor where somebody has a basket of candy out that says "take one only" that is completely empty? The neighbor INTENDED to have all trick or treaters receive candy, but realistically there's usually somebody who is greedy and takes it all for himself, thus all the other trick or treaters get shafted than if he had actually handed it out himself. The parallel here isn't 100% analogous, but the mindset is. As well-meaning as the neighbor was, the reality was his plan didn't work as he intended. I don't think it is unless you can provide me evidence that private charity has raised more money to help people than the government since it instituted welfare. I made a case a few pages back that despite large tax cuts, private charity spending hasn't changed substantially since 2000, even though taxation has. In other words, there's evidence on the side I'm arguing. If this really is a debatable issue, you should have counter-evidence. And to be very clear, I'm NOT arguing that private charities don't help; I'm arguing that on the whole, they don't raise nearly as many resources as government welfare does, regardless of the amount (or lack of) taxation. I'm not unreasonable. If there was boatloads of evidence to suggest that many more people would receive help under a system with no government intervention than with it, I'd probably be in favor of that, but I'm really not aware of any evidence like that.

I see piracy as necessary in cases of obscure stuff. There are dozens of games and soundtracks out there that you cannot even buy a copy of anymore, and sometimes the original company doesn't exist. Who's the mythical person you should be paying money to in those cases? More often than not the original developers would be happy for you to obtain a copy of the game any way you can when it's shelf life has expired. Even what's now considered abandonware, a lot of it wouldn't be runnable today if it wasn't for cracks made for copy protection of the time. In the case of a rare physical item, someone else would have to be deprived in order for you to enjoy it, but that's not the case with a digital medium.

I'm in Blacksburg, Virginia right now for people that are wondering. I didn't know they were making movies actually. Looks like my budget is about 1/250th of the AVGN's, but I intend to make my movie be the best thing I've ever produced. No, just some bureacratic stuff, it should be up in a few days.

CIVIL PROTECTION: Well as some of you may have guessed, yesterday's video was not actually a new game engine. It was the work of Michael Breazzeal, who has done other game-related animations. He contacted me last year about a Freeman's Mind animation he made and offered to help with the videos. I thought this style of animation would be good for an idea that had some sort of time pressure on it, since this is much faster than animating in 3D. All the animation for this was done in under a week, though he was working feverishly on it during that time. Because of the time constraints, he wanted me to emphasize that this is not his best work and is capable of better quality. This was originally meant to be a triple feature, though one of the episode ideas was scrapped to make sure everything came out on time. I have dozens of ideas for CP in my head, these were two I thought work work well with this animated style. "Reception" was just a quick joke one that I thought wouldn't lose anything by not being rendered in 3D. "Lift" was one that due to other projects I have planned would likely have been years before I got around to it. While some of "Lift" would be possible in the Source engine, doing something like that without having the lighting being screwed up would have required a LOT of tricks and may not have been possible in Source. This double feature was also another reminder as to why I try to avoid deadlines. While the animation work was done well ahead of schedule, the sound editing was not and a lot of it ended up being done at the last minute by a backup backup sound editor and myself. I had no less than four people bail on me during the duration of this episode and it was really down the to wire getting it in on time. Also while his name isn't in the credits, "Chuck the 2nd" gets an honorable mention for volume balancing work that just didn't happen in time because the pipeline was so jammed up. Finally, working on this and not having to do ANY of the animation work was kind of intoxicating. I love writing and directing videos, but animation work is usually an exercise is misery for me. While I do appreciate the cinematic feel that 3D graphics can provide, I could see doing more animation projects, so long as I don't have to be the one animating it. Any ideas that I feel like won't massively benefit from being done in 3D or else require too many resources might get transferred to animation projects instead, provided people will be able to animate it. I prefer the look of 3D graphics, however, I would much rather have more of my ideas get out in a different medium than not at all. NEW ENGINE / MOVIE PROJECT: Progress on the movie project is going slowly, but is very encouraging. I am definitely seeing benefits of allowing myself more time to write and develop the script, I think the eventual payoff on this will be enormous. I'm taking every effort to make sure this script is extremely fine tuned and is some of the best material I can come up with, a practice I think even Hollywood doesn't exercise most of the time. As for the engine, I actually did research all the engines mentioned in yesterday's post. Based on my research, I've decided to transition to the Unreal 3 engine for multiple reasons: -It appears to be far less buggy since when it was launched, and I think likely has much more functionality than Source at this point. -I've seen machinima from other games successfully ported over to it -It seems to have the most overall community support, so I won't be on my own when I have problems -Despite trends in the industry, it doesn't actually HAVE to have desaturated color, the whole screen in a tinted color, and excessive bloom everywhere. It is capable of very good graphics, so much so that I don't see obvious advantages of other engines like Crytech or Unigine. I am still learning the engine however, which will take me time. If you wish to help with the movie project, the #1 thing I want to focus on at this phase is being able to have a dozen or two rigged human models, capable of lip sync and facial expressions. I think it's unrealistic to do this all from scratch and variations to some sort of template model would be best for this. I've also heard Poser or Daz Studio may be well equipped for this job. If you have experience creating or modifying faces of 3D models and wish to help on this project, please contact me. FREEMAN'S MIND: More Freeman's Mind is coming, the next episode is about a quarter done. I actually was planning to have another video done for March, but I ended up moving again (I don't want to be a nomad even though I seem to live that way), which consumed a lot of my time, also I was trying to ensure the April Fool's Day video got done in time. Progress will resume on it very soon. - - - ADHD version: Ross is working on more videos.

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