Ross Scott

Yes, AFTER. I think if the Industrial Revolution continued without labor laws and rights for workers, it might not have changed much. I think there's some misunderstanding. I agree with you. I DON'T think its the descendants fault for the poor's problems nor is it their fault. What I'm saying is, it erodes the concept of a person's right to property for me when it's the direct result of property acquired through immoral means. Yes, the descendant of a slave is still free to earn money, but if they were illiterate for generations, then discriminated against through a good portion of the 20th century, that puts them at a big disadvantage in becoming prosperous compared to someone from a wealthy or middle-class background. I'm not saying affirmative action is the answer, what I'm saying is the "every man for himself" mentality doesn't resolve that problem. It's like having a race where one runner gets to run in professional sports shoes and has a personal coach + training, and the other person gets to run barefoot with one foot tied behind his back. No, he doesn't need all the advantages the other person has, but it would be a better race if you at least untie his foot and get him a pair of shoes. See, I put the right to life ABOVE property rights, like in the belladonna berry example. You seem to think they're the same, though I think that logic is flawed. Afterall, you can live without property, but you can't have property without your life. As for property rights being a human right, I doublechecked in the dictionary as to the definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/human%20rights They're saying rights that fundamentally belong to ALL persons. To me (and the dictionary), that's not property rights. Take a prisoner who has been locked up. He has no right to property, he could be very dangerous with whatever you give him and he's being punished. However, he has a right not to be tortured, has a right to have food and water, and other basic needs met. Not providing him THOSE rights most of humanity would consider to be inhumane, even for prisoners. You're saying property rights are a basic human right. What about highly dangerous criminals or mental patients? Should they be allowed to possess property when the only thing they'll do with it is hurt themselves or others? Because a HUMAN right means ALL people are entitled to it. Actually I'm not, I'm saying it's society's responsibility, so to some degree it's then everyone's (within their means). The rich have a lot more means than everyone else so they get more attention. See this isn't how I'm interpreting it at all, which I think is part of what leads to our disagreement. What I see the OWS movement being about is that SOMETHING is wrong with our system. The rich getting richer while everyone else gets poorer is a SYMPTOM of this. Wealth level isn't important in itself, but not having a system that provides basic needs for its citizens and can allow for wage slavery IS. To make it muddier, SOME of the rich ARE responsible for this, but certainly not all, or even the majority. Like if you're paying lobbyists to railroad a special interest clause in your bill that ensures your company is getting preferential government treatment, then yes, you're a big part of the problem. However, the fact that this is happening on such a large scale now means maybe there are bigger problems with our whole system. I personally think our government's now largely corrupt and not really doing its job of representing the people's interest. Government is supposed to be the power to stand against the elite, because it's a representative democracy. If it's just another tool OF the elite, then that leaves a lot of people kind of screwed and not knowing what to do about it. The OWS movement I think is just sort of an existential manifestation of that, because people don't know what to do. Anyway, that's my interpretation of the LEGITIMATE claims of OWS. Obviously if some guy is protesting because he majored in Classical Literature then is shocked when he can only get a job working at a coffee shop, that doesn't mean too much.

My favorite FPSs: System Shock 2 Deus Ex Strife Painkiller series (haven't played redemption) Serious Sam series (haven't played 3 yet) Unreal Tournament 2004 SiN series Half-Life (though doing the videos may have taken some of the fun out of it) I also think Unreal had fantastic music and atmosphere, but I found the gameplay pretty so-so FPSs I plan on playing: System Shock with mouse aiming mod Realms of The Haunting CyberMage: Darklight Awakening After I upgrade my videocard: Bulletstorm Crysis Singularity Hard Reset The Ball

I don't think this is a good measure of prosperity. India is a good modern day example of a nation that has extreme poverty, but an incredible population. Infant mortality rates are generally a much better indicator of how prosperous a society is. Also I'm not saying capitalism is 100% evil and detrimental, I'm saying I think unchecked capitalism fails to address some serious societal problems and can create some serious problems that wouldn't exist otherwise. Okay, I have two questions related to this. You're saying what right do people have to make claims on the rich. Part of my question, is what right do people have to be rich in the first place? Say a person is born into a rich family that has been rich for generations. Also say the family originally got rich from slave labor back in the 1700s and 1800s and since then members of the family have used their advantages to invest in companies to remain rich. I think we would both agree that using slaves isn't considered right, but the wealth exists today as a result of their work. So this family may work hard at business (or it may not and simply reap from investing), but it also had advantages from slavery that the vast majority of people have not. Why does this family have a "right" to retain their wealth, when descendents of slaves were at a disadvantage for generations and could be working just as hard or not harder than the wealthy families who acquired their wealth by clearly unjust means? By that reasoning what "right" do most Americans have to be here, when most of our conquest is the result of bloodshed or betrayal against Native Americans, Mexicans, and other European colonies? Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should try to undo history and correct all wrongs, it's endlessly complex and a fool's errand; but at the same time, I feel like by placing so much emphasis on the individual's property rights, a sometimes very unjust history has to be taken into account. From a philosophical perspective, it can be seen as affirming the actions of ancestors, no matter how wrong they might be. Holding the value of property rights above all else I feel is a way of maintaining a status quo for those that come from wealthy backgrounds and intentionally leaving things more difficult for those who are not as fortunate REGARDLESS of how hard they works or what their ability is. In fact I saw a related demotivator to this recently: So anyway, sorry it's so long-winded, but that's essentially my first question. Why should we promote a system that determines your fortune in life often as much or even moreso by your birth than by your work ethic or abilities? It's of course not 100% dictated that way, like it was during feudal times, but it's still quite a real factor. Here's my second question (again, sorry about the length). Aside from the bailouts, you think the OWS people are being unfair towards the rich in who they're blaming. I am in agreement that I think their grievances should be more directed towards government. Anyway, let's take a hypothetical situation. Pretend government in the USA became extremely small and reduced taxes further, offered far less services, definitely didn't have bailouts and more or less let the free market do what it wanted. Just as hypothetical, let's say that for whatever reason, it doesn't even matter, the class divide got far worse. The upper 1% now got substantially richer, the middle class almost didn't exist, and the working class got much poorer, more comparable to what 3rd world countries have. Finally, let's say private charities existed much in the same capacity they did now. Helping many, but only had the resources to deal with a fraction of the people who were suffering. Everyone who was interested in helping was doing so to the maximum capacity they were willing or able to help with. In this hypothetical scenario, what would you propose as being the solution to improving the quality of life for the 90% or more in the working class, living like peasants? Would this even be a concern from your perspective in this scenario?

No, unfortunately that ended up not happening due to a lot of reasons. I'm currently waiting on some audio tracks before the episode can be finished.

I'll be happy to say this for the record: "If you hate me, I don't want you as my fan." Your whole post reads like you're either trolling or else you're disrespectful and ignorant. Yes, my time estimations often suck, but I've also produced six FM episodes in a month before. If you're not trolling, you should understand that your attitude makes me not care if you're upset or not. I'm not in the habit of stressing out over the opinions of people who are behaving like spoiled children (regardless whatever your actual age is). The fact that you interpreted your original post as respectful convinces me there's not going to be any rational dialogue with you. This administration does not negotiate with terrorists. For everyone who is curious about what's happening though, I really did think I was going to be able to get 2+ episodes done, but a lot of stuff came up. A lot of what has sucked up my time has been personal life drama crap that I'm actively trying to minimize. On top of that, my lead sound editor completely disappeared on me for over a week, I'm having engine bugs with recording the new flyby intro for the episode, and I've received pressure from the mod team for Opposing Force 2 to do voice acting for them. While I've even encouraged them to try and find someone else, they've been insistent and I do owe them some for them putting me in touch with people for assistance on the last CP episode. Because almost all my work now relies to some degree on other people helping, I am considering never giving time estimates again, no matter how confident I am that something will be done on time. I'm actually pretty comfortable when people think I'm dead and not doing anything. I'm also considering fully documenting exactly how much time one episode of Freeman's Mind actually takes, maybe for 41 or 42, it would be interesting, since I'm not quite certain myself.

You're right in that the setting would be repetitive, though I don't think the gameplay would be, I can think of hundreds of different things you could do to cause problems in an office in a game. It would likely take a ridiculous amount of programming. There would have to be a lot of cutscenes, things like board meetings, private conversations between managers, etc. to keep the story aspect interesting. There wouldn't be specific objectives for you to do. If you did nothing, work would go on as usual, no change. Changes would only occur based on things you've done. It would almost be the player's responsibility to make it non-repetitive. Getting half your department fired, thus it gets relocated due to a smaller staff size, sabotaging the bathroom so employees have to travel to different floors to use it, starting a trash fire that spreads, so part of the floor ends up getting sealed off, there would be lots of ways to keep it going.

Well it's rumoured that the Xbox 720 will only be getting a Radeon HD6670. Lol. Someone might want to make a separate thread on that, I saw one source saying it would be a 7000 series chip. Oh I think you'll like #2. As for the hardware deathmatch idea, that's literally small enough one person or a small team could do on their own. I think the key to making it fun would be to not hold back on the variety of weapons and have endless options. If you started crafting capabilities with duct tape, you could have endless possibilities. Another idea I forgot was basically expanding upon the map "de_jeepathon2k" for Counter-Strike, it some of the most fun I've ever had in the game: 8. Have Counter-strike style combat, but with drive-bys. Both sides start off next to a vehicle and everyone hops in. One person drives and everyone else rides along cruising for the enemy to open fire on them. People could get out of the vehicle at any time, but then obviously move much slower on foot. It would be best set in a suburban setting, having random civilians running away once the gunfire starts would be a nice touch too. Maybe make the teams be rival gangs, or maybe a variant of gangs v. the police, something like that. It sounds simple, but I found it insanely fun when playing with the most basic of graphics back in the day. It was hilarious seeing people ride on the hood or back of the car just to get a ride, seeing dysfunctional people fight over who was driver, watching people fall off the car from lag or bumps, and seeing people panic when you shot their driver, so the car would coast to a stop with the entire team in it.

I already played it. My opinion was that I thought the first half was fantastic and the second half was just kind of dumb and got worse from there. I think the turning point for me was when the game switched from having a very down-to-earth setting and situations combined with increasingly eroding reality to doing supernatural Matrix-style kung fu moves versus the entire police force. No, but I remember seeing this article a few months ago and assumed Fortnite was part of the line-up: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/315610/epic-confirms-work-on-5-new-games-and-unreal-engine-4/ Epic has a history of essentially saying "screw PCs" with the release of the last generation of consoles, and now they're saying "PCs are where it's at" since the hardware limitations are becoming more apparent on consoles. My guess is they'll go back to "screw PCs" again as soon as the next console generation comes out, but hopefully they'll make some good games in the meantime. Regardless, I'm quite encouraged by the Fornite trailer.

1. Some sort of FPS / RTS / MMO hybrid where there's constant fighting, but a large emphasis on building bases. You could go out and around the world to collect resources, then use them to fortify bases and outposts and build all kinds of structures to better defend them. Balance would be achieved because the more outposts you control, the more spread out your troops would be. You COULD actually destroy the enemy base in theory, in which case, they would all turn to guerilla warfare and have advantages like being able to disguise themselves as friendly enemy troops until they could bring down the enemy base from within. If you wanted to widen the scale of the game, you could control small AI squads along with your character. Experienced players could maybe have 6 AI people, very experienced strategists could maybe have have as many as 50 AI people to command along with them. 2. (can't discuss since I'm going to turn the concept into a movie) 3. Maybe a game where you work as an office employee at a soulless company and your goal is to cause as much chaos and problems as possible without getting caught or fired. Might work as a strategy game or else stealth action one. Goals would involve getting co-workers or managers blamed for things, outright sabotage masked as accidental, just causing a lot of problems covertly. Timing your actions with coincidences caused by other employees would get you bonus points. You win the game when your company goes out of business. 4. Basic deathmatch game that takes place in a giant hardware store. The only weapons you have are things you can pick up off shelves. PVC pipe, screwdrivers, gloves + circular saw blades, etc. 5. Something similar to what The Crossing was going to be, where one person plays as the "hero" character, and everyone else plays as your generic bad guy trying to bring him down (but with much worse stats). Once you die, you respawn as another bad guy farther back. 6. Story driven suspense game where reality begins breaking down slowly day by day for the main ordinary character, contemporary setting. 7. General zombie "hold-out" game where zombies are relentlessly attacking a cabin or house or something and you have to survive as long as possible (I think I'll get my fix of this between Project Zomboid and Fortnite though).

Well to buck the trend on that, while I think Ron Paul seems to be a very honest and sincere politician, I can't really agree with some of his policies. I think he would likely reduce a lot of corruption in government, but I also think he would erode what meager a safety net we already have. Usually areas where the conservative side are kind of weak on are energy policies, education, environmental protection, and having a social safety net for people (including stuff like health care). Best I can tell, Ron Paul's answer to most of these issues is just to let the states handle it. That feels kind of like a cop-out and bad news for states that have legitimate needs, but a lot less resources to work with. Don't interpret this to mean that I think our federal government is great and wonderful and has no problems, but there are some problems that are much bigger than any one state can handle and need to be addressed at the federal level. I also think our whole system is maybe slowly collapsing like the Roman Empire, but that's a separate issue.

I think right now we're way into Malthus territory, it just hasn't caught up with us yet. There's a strong correlation between the first oil well drilling and when global population began to start increasing exponentially. I've heard estimates that without oil, globally we can only support about 1 billion people. I think with modern technology and agricultural knowledge we could get more out of that, maybe 2-3 billion. Also oil won't disappear overnight, but once global production starts declining, I think it's going to become more and more difficult to feed even the 7 billion we already have. Modern farming depends heavily on oil both for cultivating and distribution. The higher the cost of that gets, the less farmers can produce and the more local their distribution will be. This is highly speculative, but if predictions about oil production declining in 2015 (hopefully not as early as 2013), then I think you could start seeing an actual reversal in population growth by maybe 2025.

I found out about this today, definitely looking forward to this, since I never played the EGA Space Quest games: http://www.infamous-adventures.com/sq2/index.php#

Well that might be the case for some, but if a game is dished out praise again and again and seems mediocre by itself or inferior against similar games, then it's overrated. Again, Doom is amazing from a historical perspective, but when you remove that and ignore graphics, I think it's not as fun and well done as something like Painkiller, a game which is similar enough to be worthy of comparison. Its story is almost non-existent, a lot of the music rips off well known metal (though I love the episode end music), and there's a lot of wandering with mazelike qualities to the levels even though it's designed as a fast action shooter. I'd argue the only thing it has going for it today besides nostalgia is the cyberpunk hell theme, which is pretty well done and generally hasn't seen a lot of related titles over the past couple decades. I'd say the acid test for determining whether a game is overrated or simply isn't your taste is if it's overrated, you can point to another similar game or games that did similar elements better. If you can't think of any game that comes close and just don't like it, then it's probably your own taste.

I beat this one around Halloween. It's basically a high school horror movie version of Resident Evil with the same classic control scheme. Some of the music in it is pretty nice actually, the rest is more boiler plate. If you're like me and have played some 80-90% of horror games out there and want a new fix, it's alright, otherwise I'd say it's pretty forgettable. Gameplay and storywise, it's hard to get much more average than this. Also, like "Two Worlds," I have no idea why it's named ObsCure.

Well it depends what you're doing, what I had going on there was performance-killing. I wasn't happy with how much snow there was from func_precipitation (you can see it on maximum in scene 3), so I found a way to create more. What I did was take the snow particle effect from Episode 2, realized it only covered a certain area, guessed roughly what the area was, then "stacked" them on top of each other in 3 dimensions in Hammer. Then once I had a decent sized area covered, I copied over all the particle emitters to the map I was working in, then ran it. It absolutely chugged, but I wanted snow in this episode and I think it came out well. I wouldn't recommend this approach for anything real-time however.

I'm looking forward to: Alan Wake Fortnite Project Zomboid (thought it might not get done in 2012) Path of Exile

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.