Ross Scott

Pretty much no armor is bulletproof, but there's different levels of bullet resistance. 9mm shots can be shrugged off more easily than .50 caliber: It depends where he gets hit too. I figure some rounds bounce off, most hurt like paintball or more, others could still punch through the armor. Well that's easy, don't get hit. In reality, if you're taking enough damage to need multiple medical treatments like that, you're not going to be combat effective for very long.

Nah, I don't like spoilers, but I'll assure you that I won't treat it like a dream if I make a sequel.

I really like it in videos when I have some lines or scenes that perhaps a minority of people will like, but for others it's a real highlight.

Download 672x384 WMV (86MB) Freeman's Mind continues with a new episode. I'm mostly happy with this one, though it becomes difficult for me to tell what's good or not the more of these I do. I'll continue to update the progress chart, though I may forget some days. This episode got delayed for release more than most. This is part of the reason I never like to give release dates, I never know them myself. Machinima.com works in mysterious ways. The progress chart on the right will tell you at least what's been completed. The brightness / contrast levels seem to be off in this episode on the Youtube version. The downloadable copy will have the original game light levels once it goes up. Also the resolution is being reported at 1280x720 on youtube, which is incorrect. I was told to submit it at 640x360 for Youtube. The original footage is now recorded at 848x480. Going to HD resolution really isn't worth the slowdown in processing for me for Freeman's Mind, since this is just Half-Life, there's not much to show off visually. I plan on releasing copies of all the videos at original resolution and with higher quality codecs/formats in the future, it's just something I haven't gotten around to yet. That and some people appreciate smaller copies to download. So the current 672x384 WMV copies are just a temporary compromise between higher quality, lower size, and player compatibility. You can look forward to more videos coming one way or another.

When I first played the game, I remember being surprised I was launching a rocket or wondering WHY I was launching a rocket. Having played it again for FM, I STILL don't know why it's being launched. My memory's faulty since I started this a while back, but all I remember is one guard mentioning a rocket being necessary for the scientists via hearsay. As for his motives, that's my interpretation yours is clearly different. I'm not as intelligent as Freeman is implied to be, but if aliens were teleporting around me and soldiers were shooting at me, I wouldn't be terribly concerned with long-term ramifications of events taking place there. I'd be more concerned with just staying alive for the next hour. It depends on personal motives. Look at it this way: Option 1: Risk your life unnecessarily, perhaps die within the next 24 hours, but have a chance of saving all of humanity. Option 2: Minimize risk, leave everyone to their fate, survive probably for weeks, months, years, even in a worst-case scenario provided you can escape. Both are valid options an intelligent person could make, but motives make a huge difference.

Machinima.com has been mostly focused on that new Mortal Kombat series they're promoting. I think they were reserving FM for more of a downtime in their schedule. It's a pretty big business now. I'd release the videos right now, but I'd get into contractual trouble that way. This is unusual though, usually the delay isn't this long. I know it stresses some people out, but from my perspective the videos will all come out eventually and I'll make news posts when they do (and have permanent movie pages), so it will get sorted out in the long-term. Delays from them generally don't bother me. M.com is so huge now I try not to bother them unless it's something really important to me (the soundtrack usage was an example of that).

I haven't read through this whole thread, so I apologize if this is repeating something. While I'm adding a lot of color to it, the thoughts regarding the overall plot of the series / game pretty much represent my own when I first played the game. While you can wax intellectual about what's actually happening because of some slipped hint in an interview with a Valve employee or something, at FACE VALUE the game explains almost nothing to you. You're involved in some science experiment, something goes wrong. Aliens start teleporting in. You try to escape. You can't escape. Scientists goad you into teleporting into another world. You fight more monsters, unclear towards what end. Every character knows more about what's going on than you do. Your character never says anything. From what I remember there was no indicator you were actually saving the world or just fighting more random aliens. To add insult to injury, for HL2 you obviously DIDN'T save the world, so I'm not sure what was so dire that was within Freeman's control anyway. The game has an unprecedented level of wiggle room here and I'm basically exploiting that. A theme you'll get from FM and even moreso from CP is that the perspective you're supposed to assume may not be the correct one, there's simply not enough evidence given. The presented storyline of the games is so nebulous that if these events were really so self-explanatory I'd never be able to get away with assigning all these extra traits to Freeman. I know I personally would just get the hell out of there in that situation, but the game won't let me. To me, the game really doesn't make it clear that Freeman is some grand hero. The level design leads you around like a sheep from one event to the next that you have to complete in order to proceed. Freeman doesn't save any of the scientists dying around him, you can even MURDER OTHER CIVILIANS and get away with it scot-free and yet he's still the "hero." In my eyes, what's notable about Gordon is not his deeds, but that he's just a seemingly ordinary scientist that WILL NOT DIE despite all odds that he should.

I have a lot that aren't mentioned here at the bottom of my PC Gamer interview, but about half of them are graphic adventure games. I'd probably add Supreme Commander to that list as well.

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.