Ross Scott

I'm moving this back to the Gaming section since even though it's the engine, this isn't a Valve game. Also in the future, leave a shadow topic, I though the thread got deleted.

Well I'm just wondering what the chain here was. I was using XP until 2011 and I still remember occasional viruses slipping by, though by far the biggest reduction was from Ad Blocker. I use Avira Antivir, which has a very high detection rate (may have more false positives though): http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_od_aug2011.pdf Once I switched to 7, this pretty much ended. So whether my contraction method was from an actual OS hole or not is debatable. Some of it was DEFINITELY from Flash, but even if all of it was, my point is that there seems to be more protections within 7 to block the virus contraction in the first place. So even if XP may not have holes in it, 7 seems to have additional protections so that even programs with holes in them, like Flash, can't get as far as they would otherwise. Again, this is objective, but I do feel like 7 is the more secure OS given my experience with it. And also, I never had security problems with XP for probably the first 6 years or so of its use.

My bad, I didn't think to check for another thread, I just looked at the main page. Well there's Out of Hell, one UT mod I've been meaning to play.

I just want to encourage more people to play this mod, I think it's great. It's a multiplayer zombie survival mod and is basically the game I was hoping for instead of Left 4 Dead. I thought the pacing on Left 4 Dead was too rapid to build suspense and felt more like an arcade shooter to me than anything else; with zombies running at me OVER and OVER and OVER again while I have hundreds of rounds of ammo. Here you have fast zombies, but the ratio of them to slow ones I'd guess is around 1 out of 20-30. Ammo is quite limited, your teammates clip into you and can botch things up, you (or them) can become infected from bites, you can use boards to build barricades in doorways, it really adds a survival feel to the game. Here is a machinima someone made of it: XYS_raQUrqQ The beginning is something from Garry's Mod (the snow level isn't from the game), but starting at around 2 minutes, it's all actual gameplay (though you don't see the rural levels in it). Anyway, you can download the mod here and it's free to play: http://www.nomoreroominhell.com/

My point was that when you can in essence bribe chunks of congress to pass laws, especially when it's in opposition to the majority of your constituents, that's not democracy. That's what I mean by overstepping authority, regardless of their intent and implementation. Except that in the case of the grandmother, the computerless family, the dead person, and many others, that's a false statement. My point here was that the RIAA has a long history of abusing what authority they do have. Actually I don't, but the police do. And the key words there are PROBABLE CAUSE, not "suspicion based on automated algorithm search" No, that's the completely wrong analogy. Do you recognize the difference between making something illegal versus how that law is enforced? This bill was not about making piracy illegal or not. A better analogy would be "We already know X is illegal, and it's likely some X activity is going on in this neighborhood, so we should arrest everyone on the block. Some of the innocents will be found guilty and imprisoned unless they have money or good legal assistance, and some of the guilty may get caught, it's hard to say" It doesn't directly, but it establishes a precedent which is then used to wield influence. Here's an explanation of one of the more recent examples, where the USA put pressure on Spain to pass a SOPA-like law. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikileaks_proves_us_forced_spain_to_adopt_sopa-sty.php It's basically a form of blackmail, just at a macro level.

Well I plan to make a bunch of headway on MKV copies and updating site links after #42 is done.

I don't use AVC. The videos will all be converted using handbrake (I found it had better playback compatibility than x264 commandline) from uncompressed AVI which I'll decompress. None of the sources are encoded in WMV, that's only what I've released. The original sources are all either HuffyUV or Xvid AVI. The early CP episodes were stored in HuffyUV, the 1280x720 ones (prior to The Tunnel) were encoded in max quality xvid, and the Freeman's Mind episodes were a mix between using a quantizer of 1 or 2 for the Xvid content. You guys may hate me, but I wasn't as concerned about ultra high quality for Freeman's Mind, though it still looks clearly better than any of the WMV copies.

This is just a subjective account and is maybe just bad timing, but I'd disagree. My computer got compromised multiple times on XP (even though I had multiple spyware scanners and cycled through different antivirus solutions at the time). I'm pretty sure I can trace it back to viruses being delivered using flash ads as a vector. The last straw for me was I remember visiting mobygames.com and have the virus scanner immediately go off once it loaded. The infection rate dropped DRAMATICALLY after using ad blocker, but it still would happen every once in a while. Since I've been on 7 I haven't had any infection issues, so it's been a smoother experience overall. I mean you could just blame it all on flash exploits that Adobe fixed around the same time, but since the issue hasn't happened to me on 7, I personally lean towards Vista / 7 having SOME security bonuses over XP just from the results. It is worth noting that BEFORE 2008-2009 or so I can't remember ever having security issues from the internet on XP. I really think Flash has done more to undermine system security than anything else in the past decade.

I'd be surprised if somebody doesn't come up with an unauthorized patch to add back in the original music. I read a while back that Crazy Taxi was being re-released also where the axed the original soundtrack along with Pizza Hut and KFC ads. That one's less of an issue though since the original was ported to PC and I believe still runs.

Even though my earliest experience of the internet comes from BBS, I guess I'm immigrant. I can't fathom wanting to switch between media 27 times in an hour. Even for games I always like them to be full screen, I find it less enjoyable if they're windowed so I'm receiving other information. I generally have a good attention span as long as exercise, but I can handle rapid multitasking (like a RTS) as long as the decisions and operations can be done in a few seconds. If they require more in-depth thought, then no.

Well the way to look at that analytically would be to see what percentage of the rich donate to charity and what percent of their income compared against the middle class (the working class likely wouldn't be able to afford to donate much). Again, we're talking about averages, not individual cases.

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.