Ross Scott

I guess this is old news, but I only recently heard about it: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalyst122precertifieddriver.aspx Apparently Radeon 7000 series cards now support supersampling antialiasing in Directx 10 / 11 applications. This is good news all-round for trying to improve image quality in gaming. Nvidia doesn't support SSAA at all officially. It's capable of it with the program Nvidia Inspector, but I've never been able to get it to work in DirectX 11 game. While I think with enough tweaking, Nvidia cards have greater AA compatibility than AMD ones for DirectX 9 games and below, this may push AMD ahead for better AA compatibility on DX11 games. If anyone out there actually owns a Radeon 7000 card and is willing to make some screenshot tests, please message or email me, I'd love to compare the quality or see how compatible it is.

Well I think if you had people that you were paying competitively to develop ALL your assets, textures, models, animations, and all, the total would definitely run in the millions. As it is for my movie, I plan to use as much content from other games as is practical, it's mostly just characters that will be custom developed. Also marketing will eat up as much money as you're willing to throw it. I haven't seen Iron Sky, but I've heard of it, I didn't realize they had finished.

Well for a project with 18 million in funding, I'm pretty damn sure I could be persuaded to go back to Source and find enough help to get all the problems with it fixed. I can guarantee the Source engine they'll be working with is not what I've been working with. Probably on modellers, animators, higher end motion capture, and marketing. This also kind of shows the divide between costs of an animated movie. They're operating at 18 million, which is considered economical in Hollywood terms. So far I think the donations page has raised over $1,800, most of which will go towards the movie project. While that's more money then I've ever had to put in a project in my whole life, that's still 0.0001% of the budget for what's considered "economical" for normal computer graphics movies. Guess we'll see who gets done first!

I haven't looked into those, but unless it's a hybrid drive, I can't imagine them coming to close to SSDs in terms of random writes and reads, which really is the biggest bottleneck of mechanical drives anyway.

Man I don't get why the hell someone would convert already compressed audio to lossless instead of leaving it as-is. I'll try and upload the extended soundtrack sometime.

You've got your facts wrong. It was a motherboard Northbridge chipset where the heatsink came loose and caused the problems, the processor was fine. Also the last Intel CPU I had was clocked at 450mhz. Nowadays I go with AMD for 3 reasons: 1. While Sandy Bridge has shaken things up a bit, for a LONG time AMD has had the best price to performance ratio, especially at the range I buy at. I haven't checked lately, but it used to be if you were looking at a CPU in the $80 - 120 range, AMD was pretty much the best option period. 2. It depends on what you do, but for a lot of CPUs, the performance gains between a cheaper AMD chip and a more expensive Intel one are pretty small on most games, especially considering the money jump. While there are exceptions, Far Cry 2 being a notable one, the majority of games today are GPU-bound, not CPU-bound. For Unigine there's almost NO performance difference between a top-end AMD CPU v. a top-end Intel one. So the extra $100 - $200 you spend on an Intel chip is likely to get you somewhere between 5-10 fps on most games, whereas if you put that same money into a beefier GPU, you're talking anywhere from 20-50fps more. If you're a gamer, it's hard to justify the Intel premium unless you have extra cash to burn, and even then you get a better payoff putting it into the videocard first. If you do a lot of other CPU intensive chores however, Intel CPUs likely pay off more. 3. Intel has proven they are BASTARDS. They've engaged in predatory pricing, monopolistic practices, bribing and blackmailing vendors, a lot of business abuses all round. Back in the early 2000s when AMD was actually kicking Intel's ass, AMD gained almost NO marketshare despite having better products out. Intel was actively engaging in all sorts of illegal practices to supress them and it paid off. Even though they got fined later by the European Union for $1.45 billion , it's really a slap on the wrist compared to all the money they made during that time despite having an inferior product. If they had actually played fair and not broken the law repeatedly over the past decade, then who knows. AMD might have gained more revenue and the market as a whole might be more competitive instead of Intel dominating again. For this reason, unless Intel gains a de facto monopoly again so there are no competitive options, I try to avoid Intel CPUs in general. AMD to the best of my knowledge hasn't done anything shady at all in their business (not counting the GPU department, which is really just ATI rebranded). In fact, they were a supporter of manufacturing computers at rock bottom prices for children in impoverished regions. I think they're overall just a more honest company to give money to.

Well this is just an experiment right now. Who knows, after I finish the movie, if I actually have enough money (which is a big if), I could see traveling to different locations to do this sort of thing if there was enough interest.

Acting on the philosophy of "It's better to regret something you have done, than regret something you haven't done", I've had an idea for a while to see if anyone was interested in doing a meetup for Accursed Farms. You would get to meet me, maybe F.C. Meixell (voice of the shadow man from CP), and maybe Craig Mengel (voice of Dave from CP) although Craig may decline on account of him thinking you people are psychos. Right now I have no solid plans at all, I just wanted to see if there was any interest in this. I was leaning towards going to an amusement park as a venue for this. That way if nobody shows up, I still get to go to an amusement park. If hundreds show up, I don't have to worry about facilities to handle that. I currently live in Blacksburg, Virginia, so you can look that up on a map to figure out where a good location for everyone might be. The farther away from me the location is, the less likely I want to travel there for this; especially since I don't currently have a car, but I can try to figure something out for that. Again, there are no definite plans for this right now, I don't know when, where, or if it will happen, but if there's enough interest in this, I'm up for it. Finally, I was hoping to have this post after the next Freeman's Mind was released, but since that's gotten delayed a few weeks due to a sound editing hold-up, that unfortunately won't be for a little while still. EDIT: It looks like there's definitely enough interest, I'll figure out specifics and have a new post with the details later on. [poll id=6]

I like Google Streetview because it can give a good idea of what a place looks like. I'd love to look at more areas I may or may never visit. What I hate about Streetview is if you don't have a stellar connection it can take several seconds to load, then when you move forward, there's an animation played, then it takes several more seconds for your new location to load. So if I want to see an area of a street it may take me a minute of loading and navigating. What I would LOVE would be a way to plot out a route (or select an area) along the roads it has covered and tell my computer to cache every image stored from Streetview along that route. Then once it was done downloading everything, be able to navigate it via keyboard with instant transitions like a slideshow. I did find this: http://www.labnol.org/internet/street-view-time-lapse/20504/ though the methodology the guy describes means that when a road makes a turn, the camera will stay cocked at the angle it was before that. Also you can only go in a straight line, but that's not a bad start.

It's probably going to something like 95-98% just counting the time in between when I sent the footage v. when I'll get it back. Still, glad I picked this episode to show the time measurements on. This is a perfect example of why I can't promise release dates. I'm hoping that once the next episode comes out, it will motivate more people to audition for sound editing. While I have worked with different sound editors, I've had mixed results compared to Otto. He really does an excellent job each time. In the last FM episode I used more sound editors, but it involved a total of 3 revisions for sound effects, 3 for volume balancing, and even then, I had to come in afterwards and spend about 5-6 hours fixing things up. It's not that I CAN'T do all the sound editing myself (I did in the early episodes), but there are so many other areas I can keep working on (and have been, I've been spending most of this time learning UDK), it's really worth it to me to have someone else tackle it. I plan to make an official news post repeating this stuff later, but if you want to get a head start auditioning for FM, go ahead and pick a 30 second sample from anywhere in Half-Life or a previous FM episode, scrap all the existing audio, then add in your own effects (they don't have to be from the game, they can be from anywhere). The more audio details you have, the better.

That plus the melodrama, the character behavior, and the hair styles. I'm actually convinced there must be a gene or something that determines whether people like anime. I realize this is about gaming, but the same issues with Japanese games I'd argue are synonymous with anime. While I can appreciate some of the fantastic ideas in stuff like Akira or Ghost In The Shell, the melodrama and the behavior of the characters are what kill it for me. In anime, people don't behave like real people, Japanese or otherwise. Even in "serious" anime, you always have characters striking an overly dramatic pose every 5 minutes. You also always have someone making this pose: Nobody in real life does this, not even embarrassed people, it's just strange. Yes, people put their hands behind their head, but then they don't proceed to make that face unless maybe it's a woman posing for a calendar. Also when anime characters get angry, they look like this: What can you say to that? I'm willing to give anime and japanese games a free pass because they're alien enough that they sort of get a natural exclusion of being taken seriously, since their whole medium is entrenched in having a separate reality for human behavior from everywhere else. But with that logic, I'd say sexualization isn't the only major barrier to it being treated seriously otherwise.

Because the majority of women are going to be turned off from these kinds of games altogether, despite whatever merit they may have elsewhere and as it reinforces a stereotype that playing games in and of itself is immature, because look at the kind of content they get exposed to. Again, for me it's not about who is offended or not. It's about the rest of the world (females included) thinking gaming is immature and adolescent. A high degree and frequency of wanton sexualization treated in an unrealistic manner that's presented humorlessly goes a long way towards enforcing that perception. In other words, the more of this that dominates the landscape, the more it makes all gamers look bad. I haven't seen the movie, but I've seen the trailer to "Suckerpunch." It's full of women dressed in schoolgirl outfits shooting guns and wielding samurai swords. What I saw looked like definitive man-child fantasy material. Now imagine if HALF the movies released in a year or more had material like this. Not only do I think less women would stop watching movies as much, but it would make the whole medium look bad and immature, even if there were exceptions to the rule. I feel that's where the gaming industry currently is. I consider the frequency of erotic material in games irrelevant, it's how it's handled. Even though I have other issues with it, I thought the game Indigo Propehcy / Fahrenheit had a decent protrayal of sexuality in the game. That's because it's more or less the way adults act, not a 13 year old's idealized sexual fantasy of how women are.

That motherboard appears to have a Supreme FX III sound chipset. I haven't heard of it before, but it seems to be an offshoot of Creative Labs' audio (which is weird since Asus makes their own soundcard chipsets as well). From the time that I had a Creative soundcard, see if there's an option to change the default sound from "headphones" to "2 speakers" in any sort of software that came with the onboard soundcard. I remember Creative's software would essentially make the audio sound worse all-round in headphone mode, even on headphones.

I don't really any problem with this, because that picture is obviously meant to be farcical. It's like trying to take the movie "Machete" seriously, it just isn't intended that way. Same for Duke Nukem, Leisure Suit Larry, and a FEW other games. Whereas here are some random box shots I've seen of games where I'm pretty sure they're trying to present the character "seriously": This is nothing but fantasy material for the man-child stereotype. And these are just box covers, videogames as a whole are absolutely rife with characters presented this way in games. The prominence of this sort of thing in games is quite high, so much so that it's more the exception not having at least one woman portrayed this way. For me personally, I'm not really thinking if it's offensive or not, but more the fact that the sheer amount of this sort of thing in gaming as just an embarrassment for the medium in general and makes it look really immature.

I'm still waiting on audio back from Otto. I've kept records on how long everything is taking, this will all go in the time log I've made for this episode. I've also contacted backup sound editors for future episodes and only one has responded to tell me he's too busy, the others haven't responded.

You always have the lowest common denominator stuff in any medium, I have no problem with that. The difference here is that when it comes to games and writing, that's almost ALL you have. I mean how many movies come out each year that have very good or great writing? A dozen or more? In the gaming world, how many games come out each year that have really great writing? 0-2? If there are more, you REALLY have to search for them. I feel like in movies you'll constantly have ones that are really thought provoking and provide really interesting and new ideas about people, humanity, the world, new concepts, etc. In games, I run across ones like that maybe every few years. If you don't count games in the graphic adventure genre, then the ratio gets really anemic. I realize this is a bit of a nebulous statement however, so here's something more concrete. Many movies you need to be of a certain maturity level to fully appreciate. I don't mean violence or sex, but just being able to understand or relate in terms of life experience (or even brain development). Some movies you simply need to be an adult to fully appreciate, others you're missing nothing if you see them at 13 years old. To pick a few random examples, I'd say the movies Pi, The Informant, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind are all movies that if I had seen them at 13 years old, I don't think I would enjoy or understand them as much than if I had when I was older. They simply deal with more complex themes and are aimed at adults. Alternately, I think a movie like Jurassic Park, Back to The Future, etc. can be enjoyed equally by a 13 year old as an adult. They're great movies, but they don't require very challenging issues intellectually or deeper themes other than what you're presented with. I feel like with VERY few exceptions, the game industry has almost entirely the latter kind of content. If you ignore sex and violence, I feel the vast majority of games are written to be understood in their entirety by an audience no more mature than 13 year olds. In many cases, I would go so far as to say they're more on the level of Saturday morning cartoons. I personally find this frustrating that the ratio is so poor on what I consider actual adult content in games, which is why I really agreed with the author's point in this case. And yeah, on the piracy issue, I felt like his statement was very one-sided. I felt like it was accurate, but not giving the full picture either. I would comment more on that, but that's kind of a separate rant in itself.

Sorry, I should have clarified, this part of the article I didn't care about either way, though his point about online experiences I think is semi-valid. While I've seen exceptions, in a lot of online games, the degenerate asshole frequency can be very high. I would argue Silent Hill 2, I'd say it's on par to a movie like Jacob's Ladder. Also I don't know if I'd classify them as "great", but I'd say The Black Mirror and Still Life are on par with the maturity level of most mystery movies or books. I haven't finished them, but Culpa Innata and The Longest Journey had promising stories. Also for me personally, I thought Puzzle Agent had a great story and great writing. Easily on par with something like Fargo, just not as violent. I think games with good stories are EASILY compatible, but this seems to be an exceedingly rare event for whatever reason. It's not just blatancy, but frequency. I mean here's a quick question, how many fantasy games have a woman in a combat role portrayed in an armor bikini of some sort? I'd argue the majority of them. I feel like when you have stuff like that that's so blatant, it undercuts the rest of whatever merit the game may have regardless. Well yes, that's a COMIC BOOK movie. I haven't seen The Avengers, but I'll go out on a limb and say it's not going to win any awards for best writing. I think that's the point, games very rarely break out past anything with more intellectual merit than that.

I figure he walks in a Gamestop, barely sees any PC games. IT MUST BE DYING.

I came across this article and agree heavily with about 95% of it, especially #3 and #4: http://www.cracked.com/article_18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre-gamer.html I am guilty of #2 insofar as anti-aliasing goes. Also while I don't disagree with it (except for the PC gaming dying part), I do think #1 only tells part of the story. Even though I like games, I feel like the majority of them are garbage as far as writing goes. For a lot of them, that doesn't matter. I don't need a storyline for a racing game with exotic locales. However it can make the medium hard to defend on any intellectual grounds. A big part of the reason for my interest in older or obscure games is occasionally you have ones that are much more cerebrally oriented than the majority out there since the market wasn't as enormous as it is now, so developers didn't have as many assumptions about the players. I feel like the graphic adventure genre as a whole has a better track record of bucking these trends more than any other, but even then, it's hardly immune and is pretty much a niche genre these days.

Yeah, if the hardware is dated, XP is still a good choice, I just had issue with saying was "as secure" as 7. Hell, even though I was late getting 7 and skipped Vista entirely, I was an early adopter of XP, moving from 98SE. The whole 9x line-up was simply unstable. You WERE going to blue screen in Win9x, it was just a matter of when. Whereas if you have good drivers for 2K/XP onward, you can keep a system up indefinitely.

Well is changing the maximum tilt angle on the replay camera really so much harder than changing the extra lives value though? Also if you know of forums where people might be more interested in this (I plan to try at vgmaps.com), that might be helpful too.

This is my favorite duct tape project: qZDCBVy22W8

I played it some in high school, then sold my collection. 10 years later a friend of mine is into it, whom I'm calling Patient Zero, and is eager to get a game going. Another one of my friends had his collection around from high school, so he brings it out, I borrow a simple deck and we end up playing some games. It reignites interest in the other friend and the next week he's buying a couple cards, I figure to round things out from his old deck. Around that time he moved, then later I moved and I lost contact for over a year. When I come back, he's moved back and now he has a LOT of cards and is having sessions regularly and has guest decks people can use. He's also indoctrinated his girlfriend into it (who never played it prior to being with him), and they're both borderline obsessive with it, talking about how much time they put into selecting the perfect cards for the decks they're using. He always gets quiet and tries to change the subject when I ask how much money he's sunk into it. Meanwhile, Patient Zero has a lot of really potent cards and did small tournaments for a while, and is trying to ween himself off of it, but I think he's like Frodo being the ringbearer, fighting the temptation to buy more. I think his influence alone has collectively caused the local game shop to have about $5000 or more than it would have if he never started. As for me, I think it can be kind of fun, but no way in hell I'm going to sink the kind of money into it I've seen others do. I'll play with people I can bum decks from. I really do appreciate the artwork on a lot of the cards however. I'm definitely leaning towards buying a digital picture frame, going through a collection of high quality scans of the cards, crop the rest of the image, then put all the pictures I like on the picture frame that could randomly change.

I'm sure maybe a grand total of 5 people in the world are interested in this, but I was wondering if it would be possible at all to create a map somehow of the levels from Test Drive 3. Here are some screenshots: It may not look like much, but for 1990, this game was kind of mind blowing with open sandbox racing, 3d vector graphics, semi-believable road and landscape design, etc. I'm a geek and like videogame maps, but I don't think it's possible to map this one out without modifying the code. I think it's possible though as someone already hacked the .exe to get extra lives. The game itself has a buillt-in replay and chase cam controls that you can fly around with and look at different angles. Really if the tilt value could just be modified to be able to turn 90 degrees straight down (the farthest it will go is about 45), then that and a stitching program might be all that's needed to map the game out. Unfortunately I don't have knowledge of programming or something like Cheat Engine to know how to do this. The ideal method would be to have an isometric angle render view like I've seen some people do for Minecraft and Doom, but that would probably take a lot more work. Here's a link to the game, it's abandonware now: http://www.abandonia.com/en/downloadgame/385