Ross Scott

This is my favorite testimony on growing up with videogames: http://tiredgamer.ytmnd.com/

The downloadable copy is up. The detail on it is a lot better on the end scene with all the snow. That scene was actually a real pain to record. Normal demo recording didn't work properly and caused character animations to be extremely choppy. I had to record it without demos in-game with full SSAA at 180fps in order to add motion blur later. It was really chugging, some shots took about 20 minutes just to record.

As for TF2, I was a big fan of TFC AvD maps like Dustbowl and Warpath, and what little I've played of TF2 really slowed down the pacing for me. I think it's because it was designed with respawn delays in mind. Not only does that slow down pacing, but it discourages risk-taking some more, so you don't get the kind of frenzied chaos I saw in TFC. Also I can't say I'm fond of the cartoon-ish style (which I guess is a little hypocritical since I really am interested in Fortnite from the trailer).

No it was Ipisoft. I've been in touch off and on with the developer for that for a couple years and am lucky enough to have a free license for it. As for the music, the Simcity 4 stuff was kind of last minute, I was browsing through what I had that sounded like Christmas music, but still a little futuristic. I was also considering some stuff from Aquaria, but it was a little too sappy for the mood I wanted. I need to catch up on soundtracks so I have more to pick from in the future. Also if it helps: Scene 1: Olafur Arons, then fades into Simcity 4 music. Scene 2: Marq Maram Scene 3: Simcity 4 again Scene 4: Still Life music (great game, also takes place on Christmas)

Far Cry get psychotically hard towards the end. I had to flat out cheat at the very end at the volcano base. I think it depends on your taste though. For me, I thought Far Cry had great atmosphere, absolutely fantastic level design (I love the open-ended pseudo-nonlinear style), and awful writing.

Yeah, the animation is a bit off, it was all made with just a Kinect. I was told the results from that were better than multiple high quality webcams, though I'm not certain. Again, it's a scale of things. On this end of the spectrum, the movements are a little more awkward, on the other end, they would be much more jittery, like they had Parkinson's. I'm hoping the results can get more refined in the future. And yeah, I try not to look at Youtube comments nowadays.

Well I agree with sentiments here that a good game is a good game, regardless of when it was made. You obviously can't compare graphics across different time periods, but you can still have good art direction and atmosphere in a game with extremely dated graphics. As someone who tries to play "new" abandonware titles I've never played before, I think I'm pretty good about nostalgia not clouding my vision towards things. I get a little annoyed by "top X games" lists that have classics on the list simply because of nostalgia. It's one thing to praise a classic because it's so well done no game since has really surpassed it, it's another just because it's old and well known. By that standard, I think Doom is overrated, especially if put it alongside Painkiller, I don't think it still holds its own so well. On the other hand, Strife, a game made on the Doom engine, I think is a great game and has better writing and more freedom in it than a lot of games today. As for the list, I haven't played Amnesia, Metroid, or Dreamfall, but I mostly agree with it. I will say that GTA 3 for me, really captured the feel of being pursued by the police, which I found incredibly interesting. I haven't played 4 yet, but the other two on that engine didn't suck me in as much (except the beginning of SA). So maybe the game as a whole is overrated, but it had elements in it I found remarkable. As for me, my own list of overrated games not on there would be: Bioshock (I think SS2 is superior in basically every way) Beyond Good & Evil (I thought it was alright, but to hear people rave about it, I feel like they haven't played more graphic adventure games) Half-Life 2 (it's a good game, but reviews treat it like the second coming of christ)

OpenCircle: I was considering getting someone as a concept artist, though it would be more for managing things spatially rather than things looking extra-detailed. So I'd be more interested in someone who could draw a village area from several different perspectives just using simple geometric shapes to represent the buildings, rather than something fantastic looking. Also for an action sequence, I would want someone who could draw the different stages of it with semi-accurate perspective just using something like stick figures. It's still a little far off from me needing someone in this area yet, first I want to establish what software I'll be working in first and where I'm getting all the assets from. rrkessler Hey, your experience with the various engines is pretty helpful, it definitely sounds like focusing on character models and faces is the right step if there's a lot of trouble with lipsync. As for Unreal, I'm not certain what your experience translates to. What sort of functions would I need custom scripts for from a machinima perspective? With Cryengine, I have seen a crysis machinima before with lipsync, but they were using the default character models from the game. It sounds like lipsync would be the first thing to focus on right after character models. And yes, I agree in-game editing would be a big help, not having that definitely slowed me down a bunch on the latest CP episode. I have looked into the Cinematic mod before, but at the time (about 2009) they didn't increase the fidelity of the texture for the metrocops, only made their uniforms look grittier. Since my series revolves around them, I decided not to use it as the introduction of high res textures against standard ones would create more of a contrast effect than I wanted.

While this wasn't the holy grail of topics, in general I would advise moderators to give out warnings when people intentionally derail topics that the OP is interested in. If it keeps it up, they can give bans, I see this as sort of a different way of spamming the forum. Locking threads punishes the original poster more than the offenders. Take in mind, this doesn't apply to naturally formed side topics that get their own discussion. Here's an example off the fly: Person 1: Where does Half-Life take place? Person 2: New Mexico Person 3: Um, what is this? I would advise giving person 3 a warning, then a ban if they keep up similar threads. On the other hand, I think this thread could keep going: Person 1: Where does Half-Life take place? Person 2: New Mexico Person 3: NM is so hot, FM is right, you couldn't just walk out of the desert there, you would die. Person 4: You could maybe find cactus fruit to survive. Person 5: You would need a lot of cactus fruit to make up for dehydration. This topic is technically derailed, but it's from a related side-topic, so moderators don't need to be overly militant about that sort of thing.

He'll be in the Christmas episode. That's been submitted to Machinima.com, I've been told it will be out on Friday.

This isn't looking so good: http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/lawmakers-seem-intent-approving-sopa-pipa-183328

While my main focus will be a fantasy environment for this year, I'd prefer to not have to learn ANOTHER engine after I'm doing with that and go back to CP or something else. So if Oblivion / Skyrim is just as functional as something like UDK or Cryengine, then I can consider it. Otherwise, the setting along doesn't mean much since I'll probably be porting like crazy no matter what I use. This is maybe where I should start then. Again, I think I should focus on having character models with working face flexes FIRST, then see what software / engine supports those models. I know there's a utilitiy to convert VMFs into XSI Softimage scenes, but I have no idea if that's just the geometry or if it includes the textures too. Also I was talking to one person swearing by the Unreal engine who successfully managed to film a WoW video inside it (and not just green screening). So if he can bring that over from WoW, my guess is it's doable in Source. I'm not expecting the maps to have the same functionality, just geometry, static models, and textures.

Hey guys, something to think about: when making a new episode I usually like to figure out the most difficult aspect to do first, so I can be sure I'll be able to create it. The same applies here and I think the most difficult aspect of production on a new engine is having fully functional character models. I'd like to focus on what software will be best for creating new character models with facial flexes, then look at what software is compatible with THAT. For example, I'm going to need a couple dozen peasant / villager models for this movie idea I have, many of which will need facial expressions and lip sync capability. If someone were to do that by scratch for each character in 3ds Max or Maya or something, that would take forever. However look at the character creation screen for Oblivion (I haven't played Skyrim yet), I can create a new functional humanoid model with a working face in minutes. Now that doesn't mean Oblivion / Skyrim is the best choice overall necessarily, but a shortcut of that nature is a big deal for me. So before I look too heavily at what software to use overall, what software can I (or someone else) use to easily create a lot of characters that are capable of facial expressions and lip sync? CB1993: Possibly, but it would need to solve major problems besides just filming. Like for example, there's no easy way for a character to drop an item he picks up in Source. That should be a fundamental thing. I do it by tricky workarounds, Valve does it in-game by using custom code, labelled as unstable and experimental in the wiki. A Satanic Panda: Those graphics look sick, though I might not want to aim for a quality level THAT high because that would require more work making higher fidelity assets. I want to use as much pre-made content as is practical. If other games have pitchforks, haystacks, wagons, horses, pig models, etc. and they look at least as good as HL2's quality, then mission accomplished. What looks good at HL2 quality probably won't look good next to Crysis-level assets.

The Lagarith codec compresses better than HuffyUV, although I've find it will occasionally crash Premiere on me. It all depends on your content, but that might get you to 30-60% of your space you're using uncompressed. Uncompressed, HuffyUV, or Lagarith are really your only options if you're going to be doing video editing. Highly efficient compression codecs like x264 or xvid rely on keyframes, which mean each frame doesn't store all the data you need, which makes seeking in the clip hell and a bad choice for editing. Really you might want to think about getting an additional hard drive, but if you want to play Tower of Hanoi, another trick you can do is make copies of all your videos at a low resolution and use THAT for editing except for your final render. In the meantime, compress your original clips down in 7z or something to get a little bit more space. It still means you'll have problems for your final render, but that buys you time. In the meantime though, use Lagarith with RGB encoding (it should handle fraps' BGR fine I believe), that's your easiest option.

I don't know about customizing it, but I can get you the one from the old HL2 or episode 1 engine if you're interested. I had to actually film part of The Tunnel using Episode 1, just because the exact same map in Episode 2 completely screwed up the grass.

Well except for the demo bug I had that did get fixed, the updates would sometimes fix different bugs as well. Ultimately, I didn't have a lot of choice since the 2010 update, Valve made it so that all the games use the more modern code now. I have an offline version of the SDK I use for working in, but I can't expect volunteers to have an elaborate system like that. Really I would have been SCREWED if I was using the auto-updated code when making The Tunnel, there was an instance where Faceposer was completely broken for 3 months. No, almost all all the problems I had this last episode have always existing in Source, it's just that this time I had real time pressure, so they really got under my skin. I feel confident the video would have been done on time if I hadn't had so many bugs and/or limitations. The next episode was more a catalyst for me to realize my work to production ratio sucks on Source and it might really be worth it for me to try something else, even if that means more of a time investment upfront. No, not at all. That's about the same priority as fixing the links on the website, emails, and getting more subtitles updated. I haven't forgotten at all about it, but it does take a lower priority for me than creating new videos. I've actually done a ton of testing on that in the background since I'll be using x264 RGB encoding for archive backups which will save a bunch of space for me. Also while handbrake demonstrated the best compatibility with players (compared to the x264 commandline), there's an additional setting I was hoping to add that will make sure the correct colorspace is used on players that are more sensitive to getting it wrong. Even then, that's subtle, but I'm still refining the process a bit. I may replace the MKV uploads I've already done later, but you probably won't even notice the difference if I do. I figure I'll pick one day eventually and go on a spree of converting as much as I can to MKV so you'll have higher quality copies. Regardless, future videos will be released as MKV. I can look into it, though I'm thinking Blender might be overkill for what I'm trying to do. While I'm sure it has a lot of functionality, the bottom line (besides having the functionality I need) is how easy is it to use the software after I've already learned it. The Source engine nickel and dimes you to death with the number of steps required for every little aspect of production. Besides figuring out what software is and isn't capable of, I'm also thinking of what is the fastest thing to work in that doesn't sacrifice my functionality / quality level. I'll probably need something like Blender or 3ds max to convert files though, but I don't know if it would be best to make that the primary work software. As for whether the videos count as machinima or not, I don't care, I'm only interested in the end result. I see machinima as a medium rather than anything I need to conform to.

CP is going to take a backseat to this movie idea I have, though I can say if you like CP, you'll almost certainly like the movie I have planned too. It's not dead, but this next episode may be the last one actually done inside HL2. That means future episodes will inevitably look a little different, but not drastically so. One of my best movie ideas is an extended CP episode actually, but I haven't considered it seriously just because I thought it wasn't possible on the Source engine.

Here's an update of what's going on: VIDEO RELEASES FOR JANUARY: Civil Protection: The Christmas episode is practically done, it's primarily just sound editing left. While I could delay until December of this year, I'd rather just release it as soon as possible, even though it's late. Freeman's Mind: You can expect at least 2, maybe 3 episodes this month. NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION: While I'll be continuing Freeman's Mind, my goal for this year is to create a really great movie. I have an idea for one I've been interested in doing for a long time. I'm still writing the script to it, but I have a pretty solid idea of what I want it to be. It's going to be a feature-length movie and take place in a medieval fantasy environment. It will be a comedy / adventure / mystery movie. I was originally going to attempt this in the Source engine, but after my experience on the last CP episode, I'm going to use something else now. It's my hope to finish this movie sometime this year, though I can't promise anything. It depends on how long it will take for me to learn new software, animate everything, and get all the assets I need. The help I'll need will depend a lot on what software I use. Right now the only position I know 100% that I'll need help with is a creature modeler / animator. NEW SOFTWARE / ENGINE: Due to my frustration with the upcoming CP episode, I'm about ready to abandon the Source engine for anything more complicated than Freeman's Mind. Unfortunately, I still don't know what software I'll be using instead. I was originally leaning towards the program iClone, though someone has recently made some compelling arguments for the Unreal 3 engine. If I want to port over the many assets available for Source (one of the areas it really shines in) I'll likely need an array of programs. I'm still open to suggestions, but please don't recommend software if you haven't used it yourself. In my experience, there's a world of difference between what software is theoretically capable of, and what a non-programmer can actually do with it; kind of like Linux. I've made a list of features I'm looking for to help clarify things: Ross's wishlist of features for animation software / engine: -Support for importing motion capture .BVH data* -Support for lip sync and facial expressions (preferably finding a facial expression capture solution)* -Ability to create new humanoid characters with facial flexes and be able to modify things like proportions and clothing without it being an enormous undertaking* -Ability to export footage frame-by-frame (as opposed to real-time) -Ability to export with motion blur OR at very high framerates -Some sort of physics engine -lighting quality at least as good as Source's -ability to keyframe object / character movements -some system that can automate standard movements of characters, like walking and running, including on non-level terrain -some procedure for importing models and textures from the Source engine -some procedure for converting Source engine map architecture + textures to compatible format OR robust mapping community for new engine / software -decent camera controls -Reasonably low bugs *very important category, it's not even worth me considering an engine without some solution for this first So that's what I'll be up to in case you're wondering what's taking so long. Check back later this month for more videos! - - - Edit: There were several other events that came up, pushing back the FM episodes, making my time estimates worthless yet again. They're next in line to come out however.

See I disagree, I think a person can be justified doing whatever is necessary to survive. The best way to prevent someone from taking extreme actions of force is to ensure that there's a way for him to have those basic needs fulfilled. Again, I consider people's lives more important than an individual's property, up to a point. No, that's completely different. Slaveholders didn't need slaves to survive. They wanted them for economic prosperity, not survival. Also you say that I'm using the word as an excuse, as though depriving people of property is the end-goal. It's not. The end-goal for me is to make sure everyone in a civilization that can afford to do so can have basic needs of its people fulfilled. If that magically happened without intervention from government or some other force, then I wouldn't see depriving people of some property as something necessary. Historically that hasn't happened. Again, I think the late 19th century was a time period of largely hands-off government (before Theodore Roosevelt) and the results were a significant portion of the population living in wage slavery and barely having any sort of social safety net at all. I don't see that as a desireable outcome for society. This is a great question that I think leads to an important point. I don't see it as immoral, but more a sad situation. Here's my reasoning: there's no way I could possibly feed all the starving people in Africa, and it's not visible enough for me to be thinking about it most of the time. Even if I gave everything I owned to try and feed people, statistically it would make almost no difference. Thus is gets into a grey area of wanting to help, but also not wanting to do anything because it feels pointless. I think a lot of people probably think the same way. So you have a massive amount of people who WOULD help, but don't because they think their individual contribution won't do any real good, so the only people that ACTUALLY help are the extra dedicated ones. Now by that same reasoning, say there was mandatory charge where 1% of EVERYONE's income went to feeding starving people. Something like THAT would have WAY more resources than individuals to feed everyone and help a lot more people. Also on the micro scale, if I met someone starving in the woods, and I had my lunch on me, I WOULD consider it immoral to eat my lunch in front of them and not give them anything, because at this point, I alone am the only person who can solve this problem. So by eating my lunch, I'm directly choosing to allow them to die. Well by that mentality, no one has any responsibility for your life if you were dying and someone next to you could easily save you, but doesn't. While that's consistent, I don't see that as a desireable way to live in a society. If you've ever read or seen "The Time Machine" by H.G., this is exactly how the Eloi (the people who have been bred and brainwashed to behave like cattle) behave, they don't help a person dying next to them at all.

Gmod is still Source engine. All the bugs I had this time around would have still occured under Gmod. Like jerky demo recording, AVI exporting crashes, character refusal to move because it's caught up on an invisible collision with a displacement that doesn't seem like it should be happening at all, etc. My opinion of Garry's Mod is still that it's good for comics, physics videos, but beyond that, the benefits really diminish, unless you have a specialized need that it fulfills. PoisonSonic: Well I'm not even considering something like Go Animate, what I have planned goes way beyond that. I particularly want to do adventure/comedy videos, something I haven't really been able to do yet. As for shortcuts being bad, it just depends. Again, Source can generate lip sync automatically and have it be about 80% accurate. That's much nicer than doing it all manually. Hell, even PHONEME usage is a shortcut compared to some modelling software. I think for me, shortcuts are absolutely a good thing, so long as they don't clearly hinder my ability to create the kind of video I want to do.

Well I've had some sleep and did a little bit of research. I don't know anymore if I'm swearing off Source completely, but I'm highly discouraged from attempting any big projects in it again. I was looking around at different possibilities for what I could make movies in, so far I think I should learn more about iClone. My first impression seems to have a comparable quality / flexibility for what I want to do, though I'll need to test it before making any conclusions. This software would also support the motion capture, which I think could make a huge difference in the long term. My biggest issue with the motion capture is that it's still kind of jittery, but that might be able to improve more in time. My understanding of Unreal 3 is that I would likely be exchanging one set of bugs for another. While it has gained a lot of traction with developers, I've heard plenty of horror stories regarding bugs with it as well. This makes me think I should maybe seek out something that really is designed more for videos and doesn't need such an extended feature set for gaming that might make the code less stable overall. For example, for one scene in the next episode, I had real issues with the demo recorder again. That's because it wasn't really designed to handle the complexity I was throwing at it, because the engine is designed to be able to handle multiplayer games, where you simply can't push as much data. Having software that is DESIGNED to render (no matter how slowly) whatever you throw at it could be a real boon for me. This is by far, the most important thing to consider and I do think shortcuts can exist. Even though other game engines are mentioned, the important thing to consider is what assets do I have to work with 90-99% of what I want do with videos doesn't require specialized content, it just requires SOMETHING that will work. This is where Source and the modding community truly shines. Between released games and mods, there's a ton of useful maps, models, and textures created for the engine that will work in a variety of different projects. I don't have to reinvent the wheel, I can use a lot of what other people have already done so I can focus on making a movie, rather than making an entire new universe. Really I would love it, if whatever software I use, I could find a way to import most of this content from Source into something else. This is what lies at my hesitation about using other engines, I simply can't create everything from scratch, only the most important things. I need to use existing work as much as possible. I'm not trying to steal, since I'll give credit to everyone I can, but realistically I need as much existing content as I can get my hands. For default Unreal, that means space juggernauts. For Crysis, that means tropical jungle, ruined city, Koreans and aliens. I'm going to need to import a lot more content than that Getting back to the amount of work behind the scenes, this is where what software I use really matters. Source has some shortcuts already, like good lip sync generation, great physics, relatively good (for me) lighting. It also has problems. For example, I ran into a ton of trouble with the help of multiple people getting models to compile in the recent version of the engine. Or with the motion capture, if I need to adjust the default hand position, that could be a simple process in an actual editor, but it's basically impossible using the SDK. I don't like having issues that would be a simple tweak in an actual editor, but be a total drama in the Source engine. For instance, if I want a character to drop an object he's holding, I have to do all these backwards and tedious trial-and-error tricks in order to make that happen. I'm guessing that's not the case in other software. Or one of my biggest limitations in Source is the small number of faces that can actually speak and show expressions. I'm limited to what's in the game, and anything else requires a hellish amount of work. Whereas take Oblivion's engine, where you can customize the mesh of a face easily to make it look like different people. I'm not expecting any software to do the work for me, but the more functions it has to make my life easier when animating can count for a lot. For me, this is icing on the cake compared to what the software can do. For example a common theme in Unreal 3 games is desaturated colors, shader aliasing, and a plastic look to characters. I like none of those things, but it had better capabilities than other software for what I was doing, I would deal with it the best I could. I definitely don't want a cartoon style, but I'm hardly aiming for realism either. The main thing I want is having animated things engaging enough that people can forget it's not real and be involved with the movie. In the same way old games with really good art direction can draw people in, lower fidelity graphics with good animation quality can do the same thing. I want functionality first, style is a luxury after that. That's part of it, but what kills me is when I put in all the work only to have things that SHOULD work completely break and not work and I'm just screwed until I can brainstorm a workaround. Or working on things that take many hours in Source, but would be over in a few minutes, given the right software. My main reservation about Crysis is the availability of assets for it, but the learning curve isn't a big issue for me if the software can do what I want. What is an issue is how easy is it to do things AFTER you've learned the software. Actually I DID get that fix, I'm not sure I would have even attempted the episode without it. The problems I had were in spite of that. Well, hearing this could change my perspective a lot, though I'm still thinking maybe I should look into other software might be better in the long-term for overall productivity. I never did get that second email. I do remember having to completely hound you about a few things towards the end of The Tunnel, and I thought you had become like Ryan, where absolutely nothing will ever happen unless I ask a minimum of 5 times, spread out over different time intervals. I totally understand if people get too busy to help, but I really don't want to do deal with that sort of pattern where I practically have to beg repeatedly for any help whatsoever. When I sent that email listing some stuff I could use help with, I never got a reply, so I assumed you were going to flake out and didn't follow up on it. My apologies if I was mistaken, that may have changed the course of the episode.

Hey everyone. I was really hoping to have a surprise Civil Protection Christmas episode out in time, but the time's passed for me to get it into Machinima.com in time for Christmas, so that's not going to happen. I think this may be the most frustrated I've ever been in working on a video. I might be saying this because I've been awake for 26 hours working on it with only 4 hours sleep the night before, but this video really drained me. I honestly though this was going to be a simple video, a comparatively easy one for Civil Protection. Really in concept, it still IS a simple video, but the problem is a "simple" video with relatively high production quality in the Source engine can be grueling by almost any other standard. I have no idea how much time I've put into this project, but I'm certain it's at least 250+ hours. This is for a video that's going to be about 7-8 minutes and involves mainly just dialogue. While I'm actually very pleased with how the video is turning out, I consider this ratio of work to what I can produce to be rather horrible. This video also contains more motion capture in it by far than any other episode I've worked on. I was hoping this would be a solution to animating much more rapidly and taking more of the drudgery out of making the videos. After having worked with it quite a bit, I think it has a lot of potential and can save time, but it also has many limitations as well. For this episode, I think it definitely improved the quality of some scenes, but didn't have a significant impact on production time either way. I may have hinted at this before, but I really do not enjoy animating. I do it because it's necessary in order for me to create videos. If I never had to animate again in order to get videos made, I would be happy. I still want to make videos, but not like this. I feel like this is more like a torture exercise where something good comes out at the end of it. I think there's a real chance this could be the last video I make in the Source engine because of this (then again, I said the same thing after Halloween Safety). While it's miles ahead of many other game engines out there in terms of customizability, it still has so many limitations and bugs, that I can't trust it at all not to completely ruin a project I'm trying to work on. I still want to make videos, but I really don't know how I should be doing that now. I don't want something overly simplified so that I have extremely limited options, but I'm also not trying to make a Pixar production either. I just want something that looks "good enough" without being torture to animate in. I'm still willing to put in work animating if I feel like the rate of return is better than than what I'm doing now and I'm not wasting 3 hours trying to get a character just to wall up a damn hill because the engine has decided it wants to glitch out permanently. I'm not a graphics snob at all, though I feel like characters need a certain level of fidelity to them so that viewers can get immersed in a story rather than get creeped out by stiff moving and unnatural looking characters. I would love some viewer feedback on what software / methods I should use for creating more animated videos. Before this trainwreck, I was actually planning on making an announcement on New Year's that I was going to start work on a BIG feature-length project in the Source engine. I now think that would be a mistake, but I'm still interested in making a full length movie eventually. Email me if you have experience working with other software that would recommend. I expect nothing will come of this, but I'm cyncal and sleep deprived. Anyway, I'll release the Civil Protection episode late sometime after New Year's, it's still pretty good even if it misery to make. ADHD Version: Ross is pissed at the universe and the Source engine and wants to try different software for videos. He will still continue Freeman's Mind.