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Ross Scott

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Everything posted by Ross Scott

  1. Ross Scott
    This was submitted to me by Seán Mayle. I've corrected (I think) all the correct word usage, but it may still have a few punctuation errors and could maybe have the timing and formatting refined. Feel free to look over and post any modifications here.
  2. Ross Scott
    This was submitted to me by Seán Mayle. I've corrected (I think) all the correct word usage, but it may still have a few punctuation errors and could maybe have the timing and formatting refined. Feel free to look over and post any modifications here.
  3. Ross Scott
    As mentioned in the guidelines, Subtitle Workshop is a fantastic program for editing subtitles. Here's a link to the download page again: http://www.urusoft.net/downloads.php?lang=1 I'm creating this thread if anyone has any general comments and questions about it. I don't promise to monitor it, but it might help get things started. You don't HAVE to post about it here if the thread gets too massive, but it might help.
  4. Ross Scott
    SUBTITLE GUIDELINES (If you aren't creating subtitles you can ignore this) Below are the following guidelines for creating subtitles if you want them to be considered for the "official" ones that will appear on the main site for download: 1. If you created the subtitles, add your name in the subtitles somewhere during the titles of the video. If you contributed to editing them, add your name as an editor. Do this preferably in the language of the subtitles you are submitting. 2. Unless there is a significant problem with doing so (please explain), convert your subtitles to Subripper format (.SRT) before posting. I've found this to be the most compatible across different media players, plus it is also accepted by Youtube. 3. Make sure all the lines for your subtitles are in chronological order. If you have a line inserted towards the end of the file, but the timing is for an earlier point, this can create problems with playback. In Subtitle Workshop, this can be done by clicking on Edit / Subtitles / Sort. 4. For English subtitles, please use American English (as opposed to British). 5. Try to break up extra-long sentences in multiple lines so as to reduce clutter. 6. Please add double spaces in between sentences for subtitle lines that have multiple sentences in them. 7. Hearing-impaired subtitles are not required, but are welcome as long as descriptions are not excessive. Regardless, speakers who are not visible should be identified if there are NO visual cues. So if someone is talking off-camera, they don't necessarily need to be identified. If they are talking in total darkness, through an intercom, during the credits, etc. then their identity should be listed. 8. Subtitles in foreign languages will have to be checked against approved English subtitles for the correct words before being officially approved. If the English ones do not exist at the time, then the foreign ones will have to remain in the forums until the English ones are made, sorry. This is only to ensure the most accurate subtitles are posted. 9. A small number of the episodes have timing differences between the Youtube version and the ones available for download off the site. In these cases, I'll want 2 separate copies with the timings adjusted for each (an easy function in an editor). Here are the known problematic episodes, the list will be updated as the timing differences are discovered: -Civil Protection: Friday (Youtube version occurs approximately +4 seconds later than the downloadable copy) -Civil Protection: Aliens (Youtube version occurs approximately +3 seconds later than the downloadable copy) -Civil Protection Special: What Is Machinima? (Youtube version occurs approximately -2 seconds before downloadable copy) -Civil Protection: The Tunnel part 2 (Youtube version is split into 2 parts, timing difference unknown for part 2) -Freeman's Mind Episode 24 (timing difference unknown) -Freeman's Mind Episode 27 (Youtube version occurs approximately +1.63 seconds later than the downloadable copy) Finally, I highly recommend the program Subtitle Workshop for editing subtitles. It is freeware and has about every function you could want for editing subtitles.
  5. Ross Scott
    Well the website and forum is now running on the new host, so let's hope nothing melts down again. In the meantime, I THINK the forum is stable enough now to have a post about the new subtitle section. I meant to have this done a long time ago, but it's only just now that some of the major problems with the forum and hosting have been ironed out (I hope). Subtitles are probably the most major area I've completely failed to manage properly because I've gotten bogged down with organizing and reviewing everything. It's not that I don't care about them, quite the opposite. I want to get as many subtitles up as possible and I hope to someday have Accursed Farms videos be the most-translated machinima videos out there. However, I also want to have some standards for them as well. Having a forum section devoted to subtitles solves a LOT of problems involved with me managing subtitles in the past: 1. You won't have to wait on me to approve subtitles in order to see them. This is a good thing, since if I get busy with work or whatever, I often don't have time to manage subtitles. While the first subtitles that go up in the forums may not be the most accurate, if some people can't hear or understand English very well, then subtitles that are only 80% accurate are far better than none at all. While it's still going to be a slow process for me approving "official" subtitles hosted on the site, from now on, you can always go to the forums and see the most recent user-submitted subtitles as they're created. 2. This will lead to more accurate and polished subtitles overall. Moving subtitle development to the forums means they'll effectively be "crowdsourced." Instead of just myself and maybe one or two other people looking at them, everyone can view the subtitles and suggest revisions to them. In short, everyone can now be an editor, for better or worse. 3. I don't have to decide who works on what now. A problem I used to face a lot trying to manage the subtitles is I would receive multiple offers from people offering to transcribe or translate the episodes and I would have no clue as to who the best person to pick was. Now, you guys get to decide. If someone rushes out subtitles for an episode that are thoroughly flawed, that won't last long against someone who takes a little longer and does a much better job. I plan to let all future subtitles "cook" in the forums for a little while before approving any more official ones, so hopefully any errors can be ironed out. This goes double for foreign languages since I can't judge how accurate a translation might be, but other people who speak the language can. 4. This frees up some more time for me. I do think it's necessary for me to personally review all the English subtitles for accuracy, because my annunciation isn't always the best. Sometimes people think I say "and" instead of "then" or "if" instead of "is," etc. I'll be the ultimate authority on the correct words being spoken in the videos. Beyond that, I think it will work better if viewers proofread everything else. Proper punctuation, formatting, spelling, timing, etc. are all things that can be better handled by viewers. Even the "official" subtitles that are currently up on the site could probably use some help. So if you spot problems with ANY subtitles, now you can submit your corrections in the forums and eventually they'll get reviewed and hopefully approved. I think everyone would prefer I spent more time making new videos than editing subtitles. Right now the subtitles section of the forums have been launched with sub-forums for every language that I remember receiving offers for. This will make things easier organization-wise. New languages can be added as people volunteer to translate them. If your language isn't listed, just post your subtitles in "Other Languages" for now and if there are enough posts it will get its own section later on. You are welcome to chat in your native language in the different forum sections as that will likely make communication easier. * * * Be sure to check out the guidelines for submitting subtitles listed in the forums as this will expedite your submissions getting approved. * * * Anyway, I encourage people who are interested to submit or edit subtitles in the forums. The process will be a bit chaotic, but I think eventually it will all get sorted out. There are some 40-50 videos made and many new ones coming this year. I'd like as many people to be able to enjoy them as possible and subtitles will go a long way towards making that happen.
  6. Ross Scott
    The good news is the "forum inaccessible errors" should have stopped since about a day or two ago. The bad news it's still really murky what caused this post deletion thing.
  7. Ross Scott
    Do you remember when you changed your avatar?
  8. Ross Scott
    Hey everyone, some bad news. For reasons that are still unknown, it looks like almost every single post made in the forums from yesterday was deleted. I'm annoyed by this since not only did I type several replies to people yesterday, but I was planning to roll out some new stuff related to the forums as well. Just wanted to make an announcement in case you thought your post on how you like rabbits or whatever was covertly deleted, it wasn't on purpose. Hopefully this will get resolved soon.
  9. Ross Scott
    All the old posts have been imported over to blogspot. I still use the Youtube channel for stuff Machinima.com won't be putting up. As for why I'm with them, they still get massively more views than my stuff on its own, plus I think only 2 of my videos by themselves have even qualified for Youtube partnership anyway.
  10. Ross Scott
    While this topic is important to some people, I don't consider it civilization-threatening. I'm moving it to general discussion.
  11. Ross Scott
    I should probably change the title of it, but this forum is more for macro-level problems. What you're describing is more on a micro-scale. If you wanted to tie it back to a larger issue, that would be okay, but as it is, I may move the thread to general discussion if it continues. Also it's "socioeconomic."
  12. Ross Scott
    It's the same way I've attached other objects ever since Episode 1 came out (attaching them in HL2 original was hell). The flashlight is a prop_dynamic. Before the real scene starts, I set an animation that they'll hold still on. I then use setparentattachmentmaintainoffset command in hammer, then after some trial and error it will be aligned for the scene. Ryan McDonald created the general animation for the CP looking like he was holding a flashlight in Softimage XSI and the flashlight model.
  13. Ross Scott
    Thanks for the pictures, it's interesting how SSAA seems to produce the best image quality in some games, but causes more blurring than fixes on others. I wouldn't mind seeing some shots of Mass Effect (any area that's loaded with shader aliasing) especially, or additional shots of Rainbow Six Vegas in areas where there is shader aliasing or deferred rendering (your existing test was good, the gun rack in the background obviously has it). I'd say you don't have to bother with every mode however. I think 2 shots would be fine. Maybe one with 4x box AA / 16x AF and one with 4x SSAA, still box.
  14. Ross Scott
    Hey, Well I'm definitely interested in seeing the comparisons, however a torrent isn't the best option when you're the only host. Would you mind uploading them to someplace like www.megaupload.com, 4shared, or some other free hosting site instead?
  15. Ross Scott
    Hey everyone, just letting you know that the status of the website and forums may be really dodgy for the next week or so. In addition to me getting ready to transition to a different host, an update was made by a web admin that broke a BUNCH of work done for integrations in the forums. For the near future I can't promise anything as far as passwords working, forum links, uptime, etc. I think we'll get this sorted out, but for now we've taken some big steps backwards as far as stability of the site and forums go, so just keep that in mind. I'll resume Freeman's Mind as soon as I dampen the echo some more on my current
  16. Ross Scott
    None of the filtering methods mentioned are SSAA however. While it's structured differently from the other options in the control panel, I believe selecting SSAA overrides other AA modes, that's how it works on Nvidia cards at least. ATI's could be structured differently so that it does one full AA mode on top of another, but that wouldn't make a lot of sense since I think enabling any AA at all picks one of the modes mentioned by default. I could be wrong on this, but I'd need some solid proof established first (if you can get notable benchmark differences between the different modes WITHOUT ssaa, that would be the first step, we can test that as well.) Right now I think saying it makes a big difference with SSAA is like saying wide tent makes a big different with narrow tent; it doesn't, it's a completely separate mode. I'm quite familiar with Adaptive AA, I used it in some of the earlier CP episodes even. It was a badly needed mode when it came out back in 2005. You'd think it would be the best of all worlds, but unfortunately it doesn't do anything for shader aliasing or deferred rendering, which are increasingly common in some games now. Dude, I understand how it works, but game-to-game image quality, benchmark differences versus video memory and chipset manufacturers, and flat out game COMPATIBILITY are all big unknowns to me. The help file isn't even completely accurate. If everything worked perfectly, SSAA would always give better image quality, but as it stands, bugs exist. Try running HL2 Episode 2 with SSAA v. MSAA and see how much blurrier it is. In those cases, the quality is inferior, it's a real tossup between Nvidia, ATI (AMD) and the games being run.
  17. Ross Scott
    Well that's a lot of games to cover, I'll look over all screenshots / benchmarks you're willing to send however. I'll be surprised if Dead Space 2 in particular works, the original one was notorious for not working with ANY AA modes. The ONLY method that works on that at this time is ATI's MLAA mode, which is a post-processing technique rather than "real" AA (still better than nothing though). As for box, wide tent, etc. I THINK by enabling SSAA, that will override all those modes, so it won't matter. The trick is to find games or areas in games where "normal" AA modes like the ones you mentioned still don't smooth all the jagged edges due to shaders or whatever. For instance, HL2 isn't a great game for that, since regular AA modes clean up so much of the image as it is. Anything based on Unreal 3 is particularly good for finding shader aliasing however. I'd say run your settings at 4x for comparison (I never notice huge differences beyond 4x), pick a filtering mode you want, maybe put anisotropic filtering to 16x. Finally, my guess is SSAA performance is equally punitive on both cards, but the big question I've never had answered is how big a difference the amount of video memory makes. Take the 2GB Geforce 460 for example. In 99% of applications that most people run, the extra 1GB of memory makes NO difference in performance. But for something like supersampling, it MIGHT, I don't know; I've never seen a comparison or know just how much video memory a card can really use for SSAA. The very nature of supersampling suggests that it could use a LOT of memory. Also for some games apparently the SSAA image quality on Nvidia cards can be blurrier, but I've barely seen ANY information on the topic to make an informed opinion on it.
  18. Ross Scott
    Not yet. I'm going to have a BIG subtitle announcement as soon as I get things transitioned over to the new host. Right now things still aren't completely stable. Ross
  19. Ross Scott
    I'll consider that one game SSAA doesn't work on for Radeon cards for now then ( I can try and take a screenshot on my Geforce sometime later). Definitely give the Unreal 3 engine games a shot however. EDIT: I forgot to mention that I think the Radeon's SSAA only works in DirectX 9 mode. I don't know if Fallout 3 is DirectX 10 or not, but if so, forcing it 9 might get it working.
  20. Ross Scott
    Hmm, well thanks for the screenshots, but I'm not sure it's working in Fallout 3 for you. SSAA gets rid of basically ALL jagged edges, but I'm not seeing much of a difference between that and regular MSAA from your shot. Look at the bar sticking out from ground next to the chair on the right. It's jagged in both AA shots. If you want to be certain it's working, you might try turning off in-game AA, but keep it enabled from the control panel and see if it still works. If it doesn't, it means that for whatever reason it's not working in Fallout 3 for you. Benchmarks are another quick test. If the framerate is about the same between both AA modes, it means it's not working. Even on the best hardware SSAA causes a big framerate drop. You may have better luck with bulletstorm however. Here's an example of what to expect for SSAA mode (though hopefully not this blurry in most games): http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI1MzU4OTM1NVlDbXBla3ZKZm5fNl8xMF9sLnBuZw==
  21. Ross Scott
    Srake: I generally don't touch MMOs or any game with a subscription fee. While I appreciate the idea of an enormous RPG world to do things in, it feels hollow to me without some sort of cohesive story to it. You don't really "beat" WoW, Everquest, Guild Wars, etc. thedude190: Give me a break, there are way more complicated RTSs out there. That's one of the reason I haven't been able to get too far into Homeworld. As for micromanagement, I definitely disagree. Considering the scale you're dealing with, the micromanagement is great. Your units will fire while moving, attack on their own, you can give them coordinated attack orders, you can tell unit buildings to "loop" so can forget about them. I've found the micromanagement on that game more forgiving than most RTSs I've played. The only thing I thought it needed there was an "autofix" for the engineer units. Axeldeath: I played Gothic before I played Morrowind and later Oblivion, which maybe spoiled me. It's difficult to put my finger on it, but the whole world felt kind of hollow. They use the same few voice actors for everyone, no one sounded especially emotive or like your presence there really made much of a difference, cities felt kind of deserted, there were too many copy-paste areas, I didn't get a distinct feel for characters or places. I think the game didn't really engage me on any intellectual level and the art direction didn't feel interesting enough for me to get into. Fallout 3 was better, but it started feeling hollow the longer I played it for similar reasons. In general their games to me feel like sandbox games with 1000 small quests you can take rather than a cohesive storyline and RPG experience. Their games are technical marvels though, an immense amount of work has gone into these.
  22. Ross Scott
    I've been a junkie about antialiasing ever since the feature first emerged in videocards. I love how it cleans up the image and try to enable it in every 3D thing I do. A lot of more modern games however either don't support antialiasing at ALL or else have really spotty coverage so you have what's called "shader aliasing", where some edges look perfectly clean, but others with special light shader effects look pixellated and ignore AA settings. In these cases, sometimes supersampling antialiasing (SSAA) is the only way to clean up an image, even if it takes a massive performance hit. Both AMD and Nvidia offer different SSAA settings, but I've only seen a minimal amount written on the topic and poor documentation on it in general. I'd like to get more information on which cards are more compatible, look better, and run faster for SSAA. Some cards make be more compatible, but cause blurring, others may take a massive speed hit, who knows. If you have a Geforce 400 / 500 series card, or a Radeon 5000 / 6000 series card, you can help out. You can do this in one of the following ways: Method 1: Find an area in a game you have where "normal" multisampling or MSAA/SSAA combo AA doesn't work well and you can still see a CLEAR "stairstep" look to some edges. Most games based off the Unreal 3 engine are like this. Take a screenshot of that, then enable pure SSAA and take another screenshot, to show the difference. Please don't post stand-alone screenshots here if you don't have anything to compare them to. Method 2: Make a benchmark of one of your games in the following modes: A. No AA being used B. "normal" 4x AA being used C. 4x4 SSAA being used Be sure to state what videocard you have along with how much memory it has (the rest of your specs isn't super important, since I'm interested in the difference between the modes, not overall performance). Be sure to keep other detail settings the same for each benchmark. Also a warning that 4x4 SSAA can be EXTREMELY slow. You may change your mind about how fast your computer is once you try this out. If the game is suddenly massively slower, don't worry, that means it's working. Method 3: List any games you have where antialiasing simply will NOT work for you. Or list games where SSAA works, but it causes the image to be very blurry (Half-Life 2 Episode 2 is an example of this). The more information I get, the better. It will probably influence the next videocard I buy. Thanks in advance to anyone who contributes information. - - - HOW TO ENABLE SUPERSAMPLING For Nvidia users: Download the program "Nvidia Inspector" then change the following settings for the game: If you see any settings related to "rotated grid" definitely mention them here. I currently have a Geforce 9800 GTX, so I may not have as many options as you. For ATI/AMD users: Go to the Catalyst Control center under AA, and find a slider towards the bottom: Change it to "Super-Sample AA." I recommend doing it in 4x mode instead of 8x since then tends to hit a good balance between picture fidelity and too much blurring. Also to the best of my knowledge, ATI's SSAA only works in DirectX 9 mode or lower (not 10 or 11).
  23. Ross Scott
    I'd love to. They are putting advertisements at the end of their videos now, about some stupid World Of Warcraft Live Stream. Really annoy's the heck out of me. Heck, why not? That almost happened to "The Tunnel" thank god I got lucky and it was posted in between times they were doing. Imagine having those hard-encoded onto the video forever.
  24. Ross Scott
    Well that's what Craig told me, I guess he doesn't know what he's talking about.
  25. Ross Scott
    Oh I have no problem with that. You're the one of the few who did it right then. And it's not the fact that it didn't make much of an impact. It's the fact that both of those petitions had a very large percentage of the people who signed them also buying and playing the games as soon as they came out. You couldn't ask for a better example of hypocrisy.
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