Ross Scott

Hey people, there will be a surprise video later today! I actually got a sort of confirmation from Machinima.com that it will be up around 5pm their time in Los Angeles (GMT +/- whatever). So be on the lookout for it then. In other news, I've moved to Poland. I guess that's kind of weird since I don't speak Polish, but you know how it is. Poland is neat, it has buses and stuff. Trusty web guy Dave Donaldson will make a news post for me when the video goes up, since I may be asleep by then, what with me being in Poland and all.

Hey, this is Jexius. Tomorrow I'll be switching the password system. This will mean that the forums and site will be more stable and will probably fix most of the CPU usage and downtime issues we've been having. It will, however, mean that you will ALL need to reset your passwords. Please make sure that the email linked to your forum account matches your current email. This will be important for when we make the change.

Well my move was successful and I think my internet is stable again. I have several things to discuss, so I'll list them haphazardly: THE TUNNEL: The downloadable copy is now up, though the Youtube copy one came out pretty well this time. At least with this version you won't have to watch it split up. Here are some links: STREAMING: DOWNLOAD: 1280x720 WMV (344MB) Also this may have been mentioned already, but at the end of the video, Craig isn't actually talking in Bulgarian, but in some Hungarian phrases he knew. THE FORUMS: While it does seem stable, I've been told by the host for the site and the people who developed the forums that there are some problems still occurring where it will really spike in terms of CPU usage for the server. I'm honestly clueless when it comes to this. If you're familiar with PHP and might be able to lend some assistance looking over the code or have ideas as to what's happening, please email me and I'll try and direct you to the right people working on it. I was originally planning to launch the subtitles section by now, but that may not be a good idea until the current problems with it get resolved. MORE VOICE ACTOR POSITIONS: I've had a lot of roles filled, but I have two left. One person had to bail, the other I never got enough applications for: 1. American Black Male, age from mid 20s to early 40s - Same role mentioned on the site earlier, just looking for some with a general African-American accent. 2. Female With Eastern European Accent, age 20s to 30s - If you're a woman and can talk in an Eastern European accent, you have a good chance of getting the part. Both roles will require some shouting. If you think you can do either of these roles convincingly, email me at [email protected]. Finally, I haven't had a chance to read all the comments yet, but I plan to reply to them, get more involved in the forum, and *slowly* start responding more to my enormous backlog of emails.

DaveD here posting this on behalf of Ross Scott: This is being displayed hopefully not-post-humously, but my access to internet will be infrequent for a little while, so I typed this in advance. "The Tunnel" is finally released! It feels like some sort of curse being lifted. I have a LOT to say about this episode, so I'll break it down into chunks: THE EPISODE: This is the longest video I've created, coming to 26 minutes total. It's split into two parts on Youtube, I didn't have time to do an encoding of the unsplit version before I left, but that will be put up on the site as soon as I have access to my computer and internet again. The full size of this episode is 120GB uncompressed, so I need to crunch that thing down. In some posts I've stated before that I have some top-level ideas that I think would blow people's minds. This still isn't one of them. I have always wanted to have some variety in the episodes for Civil Protection however, and this is an example of that. This isn't really like any of the previous episodes. I'll warn you that this isn't the funniest one either. I was trying for a balance to make it kind of creepy and develop more of a story versus having some comedy in it. There will be more of a comedy focus in future episodes of CP however. I think the biggest weaknesses in this episode are that it's a little slow to develop and I may have left too many unanswered questions. The episode was written years ago and if I were to do it again today I would have made some more changes. By the time I noticed some script weaknesses in it, I had come too far in production to just change everything. This is actually one episode I could see getting a direct sequel, but there's no way in hell that will happen under current production methods. Also, I noticed after the fact that there are some minor light glitches I might have been able to fix if I realized them sooner, so I recommend not watching this on a screen that's TOO bright. I might fix them before I release a copy of it on the site, I'll see. That's the closest thing I get to a "patch." As for the strengths, this is my first real attempt at trying to create something scary (in "Halloween Safety" the scare was more of a coincidence) and I hope it's succeeded a little bit. I also think this is the most atmospheric of the episodes. When I was working on the editing, it felt a little like Mike and Dave were getting sucked into another reality, I enjoyed that aspect of it. WHY DID THIS TAKE SO DAMN LONG : The length of time this episode has taken has been an embarrassment. To make matters worse, it took a long time for all the wrong reasons. This isn't the most spectacular looking episode and if it were filmed in reality, most of it could be shot very easily. If I had known how much work this deceptively-easier-looking episode would be, I never would have started it in the first place and would have worked on different ideas instead. It went on and on just because I wanted to finish the damn thing rather than throw all my work out. If you're wondering what the reasons for it dragging on, here's quick breakdown: -The Source Engine. This, far and away, trumps every other reason as to why the episode took as long as it did. This episode was filmed mostly in the Episode 2 version of the Source engine and I ran into far more bugs than I've ever faced before. If it wasn't for some coding help, this episode would have never even been finished. I'm not a programmer, so when I face a bug, I have to come up with some elaborate workaround to it with the SDK tools, or else it can put a halt to the whole production. I can forgive a company for bugs, it's inevitable. What makes me bitter though, is I swear Valve breaks as many things as they fix when they make an update. So the engine may receive some lighting update, and then an entity I was using to animate characters no longer functions at all. While I think it's great that tools are released for free, I have a real issue with how Valve will auto-update the SDK, which can often break important functionality of it, and then LEAVE IT broken. I'm sure they just see it as fiddling around, but from an end-user perspective it feels downright mean when it breaks all the work you've been involved with; like someone coming in and stomping on your sand castle. The bug list for this episode was staggering. For future episodes, unless I can solve major, major problems involved with engine for creating machinima, I'm going back to the Episode 1 engine. It really is that bad. -Work on other things. The episode has been dropped and resumed multiple times. I've created 4 other Civil Protection episodes since I first began working on it, started the Freeman's Mind series, launched the website twice, moved various times, etc. While technically it first started in 2007, it hasn't been worked on during that whole time. -People flaking out. I won't name names (except for Ryan McDonald), but at times getting some people to work on a simple task felt like pulling teeth. I see this more as my fault, since this is very common with volunteer help. If I had been more on top of things I could have gotten more "backup" people sooner. If I could afford to actually hire people, especially an animator, I would in a heartbeat. However, if I were to pay everyone what I could afford out of my own pocket, it would just be an insult ("Congratulations, here's your 45 cents!"). Don't get me wrong however. While I did all the work on the older episodes, this episode wouldn't have been possible without help from other people, some of which did an absolute fantastic job. -I kind of hate animating. As much as I love creating movies, I find the animation process to be misery a lot of the time. I hope that some day I won't have to do nearly as much animation work as I currently do. While I did receive some great help in areas , ultimately I think did the majority of the animation work on this episode. This is the last episode where I spend as much time as I do on animating. I'm really getting serious about exploring motion capture and you can expect it to be a cornerstone of future episodes or else I'll just work on something else. -I'm not a great manager. While I think I could be a competent manager by itself, I'm not when I'm also a director, animator, editor, and work on more than one series. With more people helping, most things are managed primarily by email, so keeping track of everything can be a bit daunting for me in addition to everything else. Having something like a better project communication / coordination system, or an actual producer or assistant director could help tremendously. In the future, I expect to address most of these problems and have a complete overhaul of the production process. THE MUSIC: Machinima.com has changed their policy on the use of game soundtracks multiple times. Music was very important to this episode for establishing mood and at one point I was told I wouldn't be able to use ANY game soundtracks. Since then, I managed to get lucky with one or two (and received direct permission from composer Zdeněk Houb), so I at least got to keep the original title theme to the series (for now anyway). Because use of soundtracks is still discouraged, a lot of music was composed for this episode and it really shows. I couldn't be much happier with how the music turned out. I gave the composers a lot of feedback to try and get the right mood I was after. Unfortunately, not everyone who composed music had material that made it into the episode; and I felt really bad having to throw out good music that simply wasn't the right mood I was after for a particular scene. To make up for this, over the next few weeks, I plan to have a "composer showcase" periodically for each person that contributed music to me for the episode, so you'll get to hear music from everyone who tried to help out, not just the people in the credits. THE FUTURE: The immediate future will be involved with me moving and getting a new place set up, but after that, my focus in the shorter-term will be with producing a LOT more Freeman's Mind episodes and with responding to the many, many emails I am woefully behind on. Months behind. I'll have a later post detailing my plans for future videos farther in the future. Hope people enjoy the episode, and if you don't, just remember I plan on making many different videos.

This is an announcement that "The Tunnel" has been uploaded to Machinima.com. As usual, I never know when exactly the videos will post on Youtube. My guess is it will be sometime this week. When the video does post, I'll have lots to say about it, but in the meantime I wanted to hopefully adjust people's expectations to reality. I am quite pleased with how the episode came out and am very happy it's finally done. Since this episode has been mentioned for years now, I think it's inevitable some people will expect this to be the best video ever created. While I do have future ideas that I think will astound people and will be worth it no matter how long they take, this is just an above-average episode that took a long time for many different reasons. I'll go into more detail after the video's released. I think if you just expect a normal Civil Protection episode, you wouldn't be disappointed; but if you see this as the best work I can possibly do, then you might. I generally hate hype and like to let whatever I make stand for itself, but this one dragged on so long hype for it has been kind of inevitable. As for the episode itself, the total length will be about 26 minutes and it will be split up on Youtube as 2 parts. An unsplit version will be released on the website afterwards, but it may be delayed more than usual since I may be traveling when the episode goes up. In other news I unfortunately didn't get to finishing the other Freeman's Mind episode, but I will as soon as I move (and keep making more).

Sorry, I'm going to veto Psychonauts as being obscure enough for this section. It was a released on multiple platforms, had a Zero Punctuation review, has its own lengthy wikipedia entry, was one of Tim Schafer's more famous games, and is still for sale on Steam. I'm moving the thread to the gaming section.

I think one of my favorites is "No, your OTHER hand you idiot!"

I haven't heard of Eradicator, not sure it's something I would play, how was the music in it? Clive Barker's Undying I'm borderline on counting that as obscure. That one's definitely a milestone as far as scary games go. Machinimarium does NOT count, that was on the front page of Steam for a while, it's had plenty of publicity. If you had mentioned Samorost I would have let that slide. This section is more for games that really never had a spotlight or have completely faded from mainstream memory. Lord Sinister: Good job, I've never even heard of this one. The graphics look fine, but if it's weak on story, then I get less interested. You mentioned it had CD audio, was the music especially notable or was it just generic military shooter stuff? I never played the Myth games, but heard a lot about them back in the day.

It's definitely changed since I first started sending videos to them. I'm not sure what the hell they were thinking axing their own forums and all videos hosted on the site. Business is booming for them on Youtube, but now I don't know where new people creating their own machinima would submit content to. I guess I'm lucky enough to be a part of their network (I have at LEAST 4x more views through them than I would on my own), but I think it probably sucks for people just now starting to make machinima videos.

I agree that there's nothing any of us can really do about it, but information on the topic can help you make better decisions about your own life. I'm not sure if the recession can be attributed solely to the oil price hike, though it was probably a contributing factor. In the United States at least, we really did have a clown show going with the housing bubble that probably had more to do with that. I do think that the recession is the only reason that oil prices came back down after the 2008 hike however.

Ha, I haven't heard Bejeweled's music, I'm not much of a fan of casual games (though I don't care where good music comes from). Sands of Time has a great soundtrack, I thought the game was pretty solid too, though if you don't like jumping I can see where that wouldn't be a lot of fun for you.

I haven't gotten to Minecraft partly because usually I'm less drawn in on games without objectives or an end. With Minecraft people can spend a LOT of time building things and I know the more time I spent building something there, the more I would feel guilty for not building something else, like a new episode. I do like how it's wildly popular in spite of the older graphics standard. I'm a believer of a good game being a good game period, regardless of graphics. Oh I know Starcraft is the micromanagement benchmark for good players, but I figure I can handle the single player element. For multiplayer I'll try out Supreme Commander. I've played System Shock 2, I mentioned it as one of my favorites in the PC Gamer interview. It's also the reason Bioshock was a big disappoint for me, I though except for graphics, SS2 was superior in every way. I still need to play the original System Shock. Someone released a mouseaim mod for it, so now I don't have much excuse.

Yeah, this one's on my "To Play" list actually. Another one in the same vein is "The Path" you might want to check out.

UPDATE: Editing is DONE, although rendering, encoding, and uploading is not. Even though it’s watchable on my computer at the moment, realistically it won’t be uploaded to Machinima.com until tomorrow. Okay, I THINK we're good with the forums now, hopefully this version won't implode like the last one did. The link for it is up at the top of the page. I'm quite happy with how this version is looking. It's based on phpBB and is almost all finished. There's a couple minor features not present yet, but it should be quite functional. Really most of what I said a few days ago is still valid, so I won't repeat it all here. Comments on the front page will be locked, but you can reply to all news posts now in the forum. Also I was mistaken, the posts from the last forum incarnation will NOT be preserved, sorry. There were only about half a dozen on there before it got shot down, and none of them were a cure for cancer or anything. Thanks for the forum go to "Jexius Something" for doing most of the work on this and to David Donaldson for helping out as well. I'll be leaving to move in a few days, but I promise I'll have “The Tunnel” finished sometime this weekend. I'll upload it, but I can't promise when it will go up on Youtube. I'll make another announcement when it is uploaded.

The different forum sections were based on viewer suggestions for what they wanted to discuss here. The "Valve Games" section is an example of this, that wasn't one that occurred to me. If there are other topics that enough people want to see that aren't here yet, go ahead and suggest them here.

I was wondering if anyone had played games where they really disliked or didn't enjoy the game, but thought it had a good soundtrack to it. Here are two I can think of off the top of my head: Sinking Island: The game's visuals and atmosphere are great, but the voice acting seemed a little off, plot was so-so, the puzzles felt kind of contrived and I gave up on it after I had to check a walkthrough, only to discover I had managed to do a combination of events that made it impossible for me to finish the game. Has some nice peaceful and mysterious music though. Apocalyptica: Has cool art design, but I found the gameplay tedious and navigation confusing. Has great music though. I haven't been able to extract the audio out of the encrypted files. Somebody released the audio recorded directly from the game, but he did a botched job and has some pops in the audio. I don't really want to play through this game to do one myself, would be nice to have a better quality version of the music.

I'm trying to convert some old game CDs I had to CD images. The problem is in addition to the game data, they contain redbook audio (CD music tracks) in addition to the data. There are lots of programs out that there will copy discs, but CD audio data doesn't have the same kind of headers on the data like computer information does, so there's a higher chance of copying with audio imperfections, like pops or skips. Normally something like Exact Audio Copy is the best method for copying audio, but I don't think it supports data copying like this. Does anyone know of good software for copying the disc AND having extra attention paid to the audio copying to ensure a good rip?

In the event that anyone reads this, here are the general rules for the forum: 1. Try not to be a jerk. Maybe I've been working on Civil Protection too long, but I'd prefer to see some civil discussion here. This is intentionally vague, like most constitutions. It's a nice blanket rule to catch anything not specified. 2. Don't insult people unless it's obviously a joke. While this is a rather radical concept for the internet, I don't see much good coming out personal insults towards anyone here. This doesn't mean you can't attack another person's concepts, statements, and arguments, but if you're reverting to outright insults, it really casts doubt on whatever point it is you're trying to make and is unlikely to contribute anything productive. 3. Don't make child pornography jokes or comments, directly or implied. For reasons I don't understand, some people on the internet talk about child pornography so much they need a damn abbreviation for it. This means every time I say “CP” as an abbreviation for “Civil Protection”, one of the core shows produced here, some creeps come out of the woodwork and start making child pornography jokes. I don't know what the hell is wrong with everyone, but I don't want to see that behavior here. Any use of “CP” here will be assumed to stand for “Civil Protection.” The End. 4. This kind of falls under #1, but don't say overtly racist or sexist things that would probably be classified in a court as hate speech. 5. For the soundtrack section specifically, don't post attachments of music files, find external links if you wish to do so.