Ross Scott

It's worse than that. Not only was it originally developed for PC, but I read the entire structure of the game was changed to accommodate the console market. Originally it was going to be more like a cross between classic adventure games and sort of the free-roaming aspect of GTA games, where you really kind of explore and investigate things. I haven't played it, but I heard the modified version is far more narrow in scope and has more of a shooter emphasis. I'm sure the end result is good, but I get the impression it would have been even better if it wasn't aiming for a lower common denominator.

This is my primary concern out of all of this. I don't want it taking up significantly more time, I want to focus on the videos. When somebody donates, I'm informed of their name, email address, and any notes they add, not their nickname. I like the "donator wall" idea the most out of all of these, however this would require knowing their nicknames or having it cross-referenced by email with the forum database, assuming the donator is registered on the forums at all. I'll keep brainstorming on this. Whatever I decide on, it will NOT be designed to alienate non-donators. I don't want to give too much in the way of special privileges because some people have more money to contribute. The point of this money (to me) is to make even BETTER videos and any perks that go along with it will have to be a secondary focus.

The episode pages need an overhaul, I've been trying to get help on getting it fixed for a few weeks. They're all on the server, it's just the broken links. It's currently top priority for the website right now.

Well there have been a couple dozen donations today, it's quite surprising for me. I think I'll definitely have enough cash to get some major stuff done in the source engine if I find the right people. This may have moved up some of my ideas that were years out to maybe tackling one of them later this year. It's all Freeman's Mind in the meantime however. I do feel a little bit like the ringbearer from LOTR seeing cash come in, but without a doubt I have episode ideas I want to see get done at all costs and I think this money will help with that. I am planning to upgrade my system once some component prices drop, but I was planning to do that once I saved more money. I like this idea, I could make it as advanced as stickmen. Everyone who donates to me will receive a thank you from me via email, though there will be a delay on it, I'm still catching up on regular emails from people. A good idea, though I'm not sure what names people will want since I think Paypal only does real names and not screennames. I guess I could check it against the email addresses for the forum registration.

The glock thing is a total mistake that I feel like an idiot about. I have even less excuse since I've actually fired a glock .22 AND an MP5 at a range before (just one magazine for each) as part of a "student police academy" thing I did in college. The MP5 is an EXTREMELY smooth gun, I was amazed how little kick it had an how accurate it was. Unfortunately the game is different and makes the MP5 less accurate than the pistol, or it feels that way anyway. I'm actually intentionally trying to tone down my aim to make Freeman less of a good shot than I normally am from FPSs to make it a tad more believable. Sometimes I forget however. As for everything Freeman is carrying, I'm just going to ignore that. I'm trying to make the game seem less game-y and more realistic, but there are limits to what I can change.

No, I don't want to do that. I could maybe do some personalized stuff for donators, but not deny access to extra things. Well I do plan to set up t-shirt sales later, though that's on my ever-growing "to do" list. That sounds like a good idea. I might do that, although keeping track of the individual contributions online could be problematic time-wise unless I could automate it somehow. Donator tags is a good idea, although I may again need some automation system to show who has donated what. Also while I'm sure there's a correlation, just because a person donates more money doesn't make them the most dedicated necessarily. Somebody could never donate anything, but if he's watching the videos 10 years from now, that's great too. I hope so, that's my primary goal with this. I want to do extra things for donators, but ultimately I'd rather just make more videos. It may come down to a question of time management. I do plan to try to thank everyone via email however, but I'm still behind on the regular emails as well. That's an important point, I don't want to alienate people who aren't donating. Help with the subtitles is definitely appreciated. Suggestions for the site layout and graphic design is also appreciated. Other roles I usually make an announcement on when I need them however. Also if anyone is a soundtrack junkie, definitely check out my music organization thread. I plan to have other things people can help out on in the future as well. Even if somebody doesn't contribute anything money or time-wise, that's fine, I'm happy people are watching the videos. That's easy to remedy, but I've never heard that before. I've seen lots of software developers release everything for free, but accept donations as well. Could you link to where this is speficially stated legally or via Paypal policy or something?

Yeah this is one of my all-time favorites. I actually have the soundtrack CD that was included with a game guide (I bought the guide exclusively for the CD at the time), however the mixing quality in my opinion isn't quite as strong overall as a high quality conversion from the MOD files used for the game.

Qwk: I've tried this software in the past before. It was a step in the right direction, though not a cure-all method. I think I could organize a lot of my own music, but a less rigid system than folders is more preferable, I agree. My end goal is still just to select a general mood or style and not have to put any thought into it after that.

This is why I don't run things as a democracy.

Well the site has now been set up to accept donations. The link is at the top of the page where you can donate money if you feel so inclined and/or read my thoughts regarding donations in general. I'd like to stress that I added this at the repeated requests of some of the viewers. I'll continue making videos as long as I'm able to and I'll never hold them "hostage" in exchange for more money. If you never donate anything, that's fine; you'll keep getting videos. If NOBODY donates anything, that's fine; I'll keep making videos. I'm happy to have as many people interested in watching the videos as I do. One thing I would like viewer feedback from is I'd like to do something extra for people who donate if possible, but I'm not sure what sort of things people would like. If you have ideas of little things donators might appreciate, go ahead and post them in the forums.

I was thinking of this scene at the time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMU6xqHdvGU&NR=1

Download 672x384 WMV (95MB) Here's the next Freeman's Mind episode after a delay of me moving, doing April Fool's Day videos, trying to get the website/forums fixed, and getting a good recording setup. You can expect them to come out at a faster pace now, especially since the series has been neglected for a while. I can't record at all hours of the day at my new location however, but I should have regular blocks of time when I can get recording done for it. I think this episode came out pretty well and contains a line I thought of before I started doing the first episode. I'll keep updating the progress on future episodes so you can see how far along things are. EDIT: For some reason the video was darkened by Machinima.com on Youtube. I don't know why this is, but the downloadable copy should have the correct lighting values, it's as it appears in the game.

Looks like a pretty solid paper, I'll go ahead and sticky it. I can't really find fault with anything in here. I have heard a lot of different stories on natural gas however since there have been some HUGE discoveries since about 2009, so it's hard to say how that will play out. If you don't get an A then something is wrong with your professor.

I have a new audio interview with "Caboos15" available on his Youtube channel. He originally contacted me months ago, but I delayed him because I wanted to finish The Tunnel first before doing any PR stuff. He's conducted many interviews with other machinima makers and makes some machinima himself. He's also the sneakiest interviewer I've talked to. Once or twice he would tell me he was going to ask a question, I would get confused, thinking he was asking the question, I would answer the question, then he explained afterwards he hadn't asked the question yet. It felt like kind of a Zen exercise. Anyway, here's the interview: It's not my best interview since I think I stammered a bit, but that's also a good example of why I do multiple takes when recording lines for videos. More news and videos coming soon.

I'm fine with it if the mods are willing to sort out all the old topics once the new section is created.

Awesome. There will be a delay before I post them as the official ones, but since I haven't had many offers for Hungarian, there's a good chance these will become the official ones.

This is great. I'll let it have a little more time in the forums before I try and post them as the official ones for Russian.

Wow, that's great. I would prefer to get the subtitles up on the official Youtube videos however. While I'll wait a little longer, if it seems that no one else will be reviewing your subtitles, I'll go ahead and make yours the official ones. I would rather have translations that may not be 100% accurate, than none at all.

I remember seeing that in SimCity 2000. I didn't realize it was anywhere near doable. I looked at the story and did a quick search on google. Your article is dated Feb 13, 2008 and mentions soon the USGS will release a report regarding the amount of oil. Well I think this is that report: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 They're saying it's closer to 3.5 - 4.3 billion and it's questionable how much of that is really recoverable. Even at 4.3 billion barrels, that's a little under 7 months' worth of oil based on the USA's current rate of consumption. So that's good news, but not a fundamental game-changer. As for wave and methane power, I'm less concerned about actual electricity production, since the majority of oil isn't used for that anyway. Not really. It certainly has for the United States, but globally, it's only gone up and up until about 2005. Global DISCOVERY tapered off in the 60s however. Politics and economics off course have affected supply and prices through history of course, but that's more of an artificial limitation. It's POSSIBLE we could make some miracle breakthrough here, but right now there isn't enough farmland on the entire earth to produce enough ethanol to replace our current consumption of oil. Not across the board, though for many products there are alternatives. This is an area where the market adjusting to the demand argument has some merit. Oil has a lot of unique properties to it, however most of oil is used for fuel anyway. If that stopped, we would have enough oil for plastics and many other industrial applications for a ridicluously long time.

trankzen: I advise against using VLC for subtitles, it doesn't seem to handle them properly, especially with overlapping lines. Also, cwook's transcription is correct for that line.

I emailed a couple offers in Polish on the email list, we'll see what happens.

This is great. It's possible yours might be even better than some of the ones that overlap, though I believe all the wording is correct for the current "official" ones. I'll probably wait for someone to look over these and post any possible corrections. In general my policy on subtitles will be to let them sit here for other people to look at for a while and see if any revisions get made. After a certain length of time I'll go over them myself and put them on the site and Youtube.