Ross Scott

This may sound like a direct contradiction, but since I made the last post I've fallen sick with something relatively substantial, my guess is some sort of flu. While the next FM episode is mostly done, I'm too weak and congested to finish the voice acting on it right now. I feel like a zombie. Not the fast kind that run around screaming, but the Romero kind that moan and run into walls. This is kind of ironic since the entire time I was in LA I rode the bus and didn't get sick once since my immunity system is usually pretty good. This makes me think east coast viruses are more hardcore, but all I have is this anecdotal evidence. My apologies about having to go back on what I said about the estimated release time, but I can't change reality. If my energy comes back before my voice, I'll get back to work on The Tunnel. I'll finish the next FM episode as soon I'm able. If you're having trouble imagining what this virus feels like and want a better idea, try headbutting a smooth (to avoid lacerations) concrete wall. If it doesn't feel so bad, you're not doing it hard enough. UPDATE: I'm better and I've finished the voicework for the next FM episode. I plan to finish the editing later today, so given the Machinima.com pipeline it should appear before too long. UPDATE 2: I submitted the completed video days ago. I thought it would be up by now, but I never really know how long it takes Machinima.com to post it. I've started working on Episode 26 in the meantime.

Hey, I'm just letting people know that I'm working on the next FM episode and hope to get the voicework done in the next day or two. Since there's always lagtime on when the video actually comes out, you can probably expect it out sometime next week. The good news is that this will be one of the longer episodes. - - - - - Also I have a geeky request to anyone that's interested (only read this if you're a graphics freak): I love the use of antialiasing in 3D games and have been experimenting with different modes of it for a long time. I've been using a supersampling mode on my Nvidia card for a while on the videos because I've found it yields the best visual results on the Source engine. ATI's new batch of cards support supersampling natively and I'm curious how it compares. Every review I've seen of it seems ignorant of the capacity to already have supersampling in newer Nvidia cards. So here's my request: If you own a Radeon 5000 series card and a copy of Half-Life 2 and are interested in coordinating some screenshots with me, go ahead and send me an email. I'd like to do my own comparison test. To everyone else: don't worry, this isn't holding up production. It's just an experiment I want to try.

Download 672x384 WMV (67MB) Well here's the next episode of Freeman's Mind. I tried my best, but the bug of demo recording omitting blood decals and bodies is still present, so I guess just use your imagination. While time estimates aren't my strong point, you can expect more FM episodes for this month. This has been by no means the longest time in between episodes, though I received more complaints about not having a new episode up than ever before. For those of you who were patient, thanks. For those of you that weren't, when I produce more videos this year than I have for any other year in the past, remember it's because I had time to get resituated, do research, etc. Maybe some of you will understand the concept of cause and effect. Maybe. Things are more or less the same otherwise, though the bug I was having with Source may have been fixed by coder Alexander Morton, I still need to verify this. If so, this is very good news. EDIT: I've been getting these questions a lot, so here are some more answers: Q. Will you be selling a DVD of the episodes? A. No. I can't do that legally since it's a mess as far as intellectual property goes. At some point I hope to get higher quality versions of the episodes up for download however. Q. Did you change the codec for more recent episodes? A. No, but I changed the encoder. The fade-in for the new introduction caused problems with my old encoding method and produced artifacts every time. I'm surprised it's causing problems for some people. I use Media Player Classic to watch them if that's any help.

I have several small updates and I know some of you get restless: -I've started the next Freeman's Mind episode and plan to be done in a couple days. I can't promise when it will be released since I never know how long Machinima.com's release pipeline takes, but I can't imagine it will be any later than next week. -I've uploaded the missing download links Machinima.com deleted for FM episodes 1,3,7, and 11. Sorry this took so long. -Multiple volunteers are now helping me take over managing the subtitles. Right now they're mostly responding to emails that are months old. If you've contacted me about making subtitles for the show before, you can hopefully expect a reply back sometime in the near future. I don't want to accept new subtitle offers just yet, because they have a lot to sort through, but I think we'll be able to resume full subtitle production soon. -I've run into a new bug that's holding up production on "The Tunnel." I still want to do some more research on this, but this one is pretty bad and potentially affects all future work in the Source engine. If we can't solve it, I'll make an official post on it, complete with all the details and files so hopefully someone else can. For those curious, it's related to NPCs jerking around erratically during demo playback. -I'm surprised with how many people are interested in donating. I think I may reconsider my stance on this, but only once I get more videos made and more goodies on the website rolled out. While I like money as much as the next person, I plan to continue making videos regardless of user contributions. -Contrary to how people may have read my last post, my life is not hell, far from it. I'm happy I'm going to be able to make progress working on some of my more ambitious ideas this year. It IS busy however. I wasn't trying to garner sympathy in the last post, I just wanted to give a bit of a defense as to why more hasn't been produced lately. EDIT: The next episode is done, though I don't know when it's going up, your guess is as good as mine. I've started on the next one too, so just hold on.

Hey people, I thought I'd give a minor update since several of you seem restless from the comments. Many of you can't wait for another Freeman's Mind episode it seems. The biggest reason I haven't been working on it is because I haven't had a place to record. At the moment I'm just staying with family. At Machinima.com, I could come into the office in the middle of the night and record it then. Right now everything's in flux. I noticed some comments claiming the reason I haven't released anything lately is because I have a life. That's incorrect. A lot of what I've been up to is hunting for a place to live where I can make noise for recording that I can also afford. You can complain all you want more Freeman's Mind hasn't been coming out, but the series isn't exactly known for Freeman talking in a hushed tone, so I'm not going to make new ones unless I can do them properly. The good news is I just yesterday found a place, though I still need to take care of things like internet hookup, phone service, etc., but I should be getting back on track on soon. Once I'm set up in my new place, my plans are to make a new FM episode as soon as possible, then continue work on The Tunnel, then see where things go from there. In the meantime, I'm still trying to keep on top of many other things. The website needs work. A new system for managing subtitles is still being established. Machinima.com has deleted more episode download links at random, which I need to put back up. I'm way behind on responding to emails. My files are a mess and very disorganized from working on two different computers for The Tunnel. I still have a ton of animation work to do for The Tunnel. There are some minor map fixes needed for The Tunnel. I'm trying to find time to research new animation techniques and technology that may help things go faster in the future. I need furniture. I'm probably going to need a car again. My headphones are falling apart. At the moment I have no health insurance. I'll probably die alone. My motherboard chipset fan is making this buzzing sound that makes me want to take an axe to it. The pilot surprise episode is completely on hold at the moment. I'm facing new issues regarding my use of game soundtracks. I'm running into new problems with the Source engine. I'm also busy with stuff that I'm keeping under wraps for various reasons, but I think you'll be pleased with in the long-term. I know it's easy to think that I'm just slacking off and not working on anything, but the best way I can describe things is that I'm retooling everything so that I can start becoming a mini machinima factory. I personally believe I'm going to produce more videos for 2010 than I have for any other year. If you don't believe me, feel free to count up the most I've produced in a year so far and give me hell if I don't meet that goal by 2011. In the meantime, chill. HL2 Episode 3 is late. Black Mesa mod is late. The Crossing is on hold. They Hunger: Lost Souls hasn't updated in a year. SiN Episodes died. Many projects associated with the Source engine have a tendency to take for-frigging-ever or die. I'm trying, people.

Download 640x480 WMV (11MB) Well here's the surprise video I mentioned, I hope I didn't hype it up too much. This is the first non-machinima video I've released. I filmed this back in 2003, but never got around to editing it, so it's been sitting on my hard drive for years. Since I didn't have a place to record the past couple weeks and didn't have a lot of time due to moving, this was the only thing I could think of that I could get out relatively quickly. There are a few video artifacts because I waited longer than I should have before transferring the video from tape, but it's still watchable. I'm embarrassed to say I've forgotten the names of the actors in this, if anyone recognizes them today, let me know, I'll remember their names once I hear them again. Also due to various reasons I ended up doing the narration for this myself. I'm sure someone else could have done a better job, but the time restraints were tighter than normal. I'd still like to thank everyone who did send me a sample reel, my apologies that I ended up not using you for the voiceover, I can be a picky bastard sometimes. As for the video itself, if there's any confusion, I didn't make a real show about this, it's just a fake teaser commercial. After uploading this to Youtube, it looks like I'm not the first with this concept, though when I wrote this I was not aware of any other pigeon hunter videos. And yes, we did end up killing a pigeon in the making of this, but it was by accident. The original script didn't call for killing pigeons, however, one of the actors ended up stepping on one of the pigeons by accident and broke its neck, so I decided to use that for an extra shot where he held it up as a game trophy. In other news, I'll be looking for a new place to live soon, but I plan to focus on finishing The Tunnel. Regardless of how far I get, I'll probably make another Freeman's Mind for January just because I get the feeling viewers will be ready to lynch me if I don't. I plan to have many more FM episodes this year, but I'll be alternating between them and some of my more ambitious projects.

Well I successfully drove from California to Virginia. Driving in a straight line for days gave me plenty of opportunity to go insane, but here I am. I have a new problem on my hands however. I

I'm going to be leaving soon and heading back to Virginia, which will be quite a drive. I'll be driving through a lot of desert, you may want to watch the movie "The Hills Have Eyes" to get an idea of what it should be like. Besides getting ready, I've been catching up on a lot of things the past couple weeks, though you probably won't see the results of it until at least January. I'll be away for about a week travelling, but I'll get back to work on the videos as soon as I'm done. I'm going to try and get another video out before Christmas as it's mostly edited. This will be a surprise one and won't be very long, but I think there's a good chance you'll like it. You won't see any new machinima videos until at least January, though I've got a lot of things brewing, I anticipate releasing more videos for 2010 than I did this year. - - - In other news, the subtitle situation is still a mess and I've come to the realization that the scope of it is too big for me to handle and work on other things. I have hundreds of emails related to subtitles, most of which I haven't replied to yet, and I'm unsure how to deal with it all. My latest idea is to see if anyone would be interested in assisting me with organizing and processing the subtitles. I would lay out the guidelines for him or her, and you could email that person instead of me to help get them processed. I would still approve all the English ones myself, as I'm the final authority as to what words are being said, but for all other languages, there's no reason someone else couldn't help me with this. I would probably hand off the emails I've gotten so far to that person and let them follow up and organize everything. I realize this might seem kind of impersonal for the people who have contacted me, but I feel like it's the only way I'll make any progress. This is my fault for not realizing just how much time this was going to take. I'd rather hand the job off to someone else who will do a better job than abandon the goal entirely. If you are interested in being a "subtitle manager," please email me. My requirements are that you have good communication and English skills, have a lot of time to devote to this, be familiar with Subtitle Workshop or similar software, have your computer able to read non-English characters, and be more organized than I am. Since I'm going to be gone soon, don't expect any reply from me until at least a week or so. I can't afford to pay you, but you would get your name on the site here. Also, it's probably worth writing a paragraph or two just so I can confirm your grammar and spelling are above that of the average internet user.

(ADHD Version at the bottom) ---------------------------------------- Hey people, I've got another update which you may or may not care about, but it will affect production for a little while. Some of you probably saw this coming, but I've recently made the decision to leave Machinima.com as an employee. I'll still be working with Machinima, but on a different view-based contract, which will pay substantially less, but I won't have the same kind of deadlines I've had lately. The reason for me leaving is pretty simple. I was getting less done on the stuff I wanted to work on, and I found it much more stressful than working independently. I was working 7 days a week for months, (about 70-80 hours a week in October, 50-60 hours a week in November) and I was either just barely making deadlines, or falling behind on all fronts. Also it led to me having basically no free time, and I had to neglect everything else; exercise, basic household maintenance, recreation, time to research new technology for future episodes, etc. What's worse is that I felt like some of the projects might be at risk. "The Tunnel" trailer was a perfect example of this because it was rushed out the door without sound effects or the right music, simply because I needed more time. Working indepedently, there would be less Freeman's Mind episodes out now, but I think the entire episode of The Tunnel would have been completed before Halloween. As it stands now, it probably won't be until at least January (I may have a different surprise video for December though). I felt like my only choices when producing content was to either lower the quality standards dramatically so I wouldn't have to spend as much time on it, or else to put in more hours to try and keep up. I obviously went with the latter option and it still wasn't enough in most cases. I think pretty much all of this came from a misunderstanding about how much work some of the episodes required and my goals v. Machinima's. I got along with everyone at the company and don't think there was ever any negative intent. They never asked me to work those long hours, it was just the only way I was able to try and meet the deadlines. I think the whole situation was simply Machinima being used to producing content faster than what I'm able to keep up with, plus I've never been terribly good at time estimates. I've noticed in past comments, that some people seem to demonize the company, but you should remember that I accepted this job with some idea of what it would entail, plus I was doing all this on a salary, so it was their money being spent producing content. While I took that very seriously, it's also the main reason I'm leaving, so I can afford to spend extra time on the videos if I have to. Some of you may think I'm insane leaving, and maybe I am, but it's simply a matter of values. My new income will likely put me slightly above the official poverty level, so I may have to find some part-time work to balance things out. While I absolutely care about having enough money to support myself, my main motivation with the videos is making something I'm satisfied with. Some videos that I make I really don't mind cutting corners on (Freeman's Mind falls into this category). Others, primarily ones that haven't even been produced yet, I care about extremely and wouldn't want to rush or sacrifice anything that wasn't absolutely necessary. Although I want to clarify that statement a bit since it's misleading. I do feel some aspects of a good production shouldn't be rushed, like writing, editing, voice acting etc., my view on that will likely never change. However, working with the Source engine can be horrendously inefficient for some aspects of production and I'm constantly on the lookout for better ways of doing things. So while I do like to take my time, I also feel some things could be done faster and I sympathize completely with the frustration some of you feel with how long it takes for some of the videos to come out. On that note, things are likely to be delayed until 2010 because I'll probably be moving back to Virginia and try to find a cheap house to rent where I can make a lot of noise, so I can record any time I need to. I have a lot of things I've been wanting to research technology-wise and I'm pretty confident there will be an increase in videos for the next year. For Freeman's Mind, while there will be a lull period, I can see myself doing another "marathon month" at some point in the future and promise to make many more episodes. I may alternate between that and other projects. For people who don't care about my other projects and just want more Freeman's Mind episodes, that's fine, but realize that if I were to sacrifice anything, FM would be first in line; so just be glad I'm alternating and not killing off anything. In the meantime, I'll be trying to catch up on a million things (I'm months behind on the subtitles), and continuing work on Civil Protection. EDIT: I decided this post must be pretty wordy for some of the Youtube people, so here's the ADHD version!

Download 672x384 WMV (55MB) Well sorry about the website being down for those who came here earlier. I still don't know what happened, which is bad, because it means it might happen again. I believe it's related to the company hosting the site. I haven't heard back from the person in charge of that yet, hopefully the site will hold before another screwup. In the meantime, here's what I wrote before that happened: This episode is another 100% backtracking one, though if I remember correctly, this area is one of the biggest backtracking sessions in the whole game. It's also on the short side, but only because I like to pick good jumping off spots. A lot will happen in the one after this and I'll make that one as long as it needs to be. This episode is also a little bit coarser than most of the others, but my reasoning was Freeman is dealing with a lot of combat and having his goals frustrated, so his agitation level increases accordingly. On that note however, if you like this episode I think there's a good chance you'll like the mystery series I still plan to make, but haven't finished the pilot episode to. There's also some glaring bugs in this episode which I didn't have time to attempt to fix. Many of the decals are missing, particularly the blood ones by the security guard you saw earlier. This is a shortcoming of demo recording in the game and it seems to happen randomly. If I had more time I could rerecord until it didn't happen, but alas, you get this instead. Speaking of time, this is going to be the last FM episode for quite a while, probably at least another month, but probably not more than 2. Hopefully the surge this month gave you some to tide you over. The short answer as to why is because I'll be resuming work on Civil Protection since NOTHING has gotten done on it since I started on the trailer. The long answer I'll explain in another post a day or two from now.

Hey, for the people who still know about this site, something's happened to the Accursed Farms website. The timing is pretty awful too since the next Freeman's Mind episode just came out too. I've contacted everyone connected with the site, hopefully this will get resolved soon. In the meantime, here's the link to the new episode:

Download 672x384 WMV (98MB) Here's the next episode. Sorry about the delay on this one, I have very limited control over how things get released on Machinima's channel. This episode is pretty typical of the series. I think my voice acting could have been better, but there ended up being a lot of time pressure on this one. I'm also running into a new bug that I'm basically just ignoring. When there's a level transition, the demo recording function for Half Life Source completely ignores all ragdolls that weren't spawned with the level. So if there are any bodies left there previously, they're gone later on. I doubt there's any solution to this, so oh well. I should be done with another episode for Thursday. I believe it will go up then, but I'm hesitant to promise since it's beyond my control after a point. It will be a shorter one, but the length is dictated mostly by the best areas to have a jumping off point in the game so it doesn't feel too abrupt. Also I am far behind on email and plan to respond to most of them, but I may adopt a new policy of not responding to questions that you can find with 5-10 minutes of research as I've been getting a lot of these lately. I can appreciate if you have a specific question about something I did in the Source engine with a Civil Protection episode because I sometimes employ a lot of tricks there, or information that is very difficult to find; but dozens of emails asking me things like how to enable cheat codes in Half-Life I just can't see myself responding to, sorry guys. Nothing I do in Freeman's Mind is terribly exotic, it's just some config file editing. I'm not editing maps, running mods, or changing any code. It's just cheat codes and hotkeys. I should be your LAST resort for finding information, not the first. I'm not trying to be unfriendly, but I think everyone, myself especially, would prefer I just make more videos rather than play tech support to the world. EDIT: Well guys, I had Episode 23 finished and submitted first thing this morning, but it's not up yet, so oh well. It's anyone's guess when it will go online.

Download 672x384 WMV (66MB) Surprise, here's yet another episode. This one's more action-oriented and plays like some of the earlier ones, so I think fans of the series will like this one more. I wasted pretty much an entire night trying to solve the WMV encoding problem that plagued the last episode, but was finally able to crack it, so hopefully this means no more video/audio anomalies in the future. This wasn't made during the gap between the last one. I started working on this one on Saturday and it wasn't finished until yesterday. Believe it or not, I can't do much more than about 3 minutes a day on an episode, and that's under good circumstances and not counting additional sound editing. That may sound ludicrous, but it actually does take me that long, I've tried to do it faster before. It's not because I'm lazy, I just don't know how to move faster and still have the show come out as well. While it's loads faster than Civil Protection, it's basically a process of going through a clip, thinking of a line, recording said line many times as I'm not the greatest voice actor (this can range from 2 - 20+ takes, depending on the line and how important it is), editing through all said takes and arranging it in the episode. If I was a better voice actor and good at improvisation I could probably be done with the game by now. In this reality however, the next episode will probably be out sometime late Monday. In other news, I still want to catch up on subtitles, website improvements, extras, emails, and many other things, but for the moment I'm just focusing on getting the videos out. EDIT: I'm probably going to have to add this to the FAQ. Several of you were asking why the episode was up on Youtube before it was up on here. The answer is I never know when the video is going to be up on Youtube. I have to check it, same as you. It's someone else's job to upload it and they're usually pretty busy to be able to answer my inquests all the time. In this case I was taking a nap when it went up since I've been working night hours so it's quiet enough for me to me record (my old spot got converted to someone else's office). Since I'm in a different room this is also why there's more of an echo in recent episodes. EDIT 2: Well I finished episode 22, but I don't have control over when it gets released. The original schedule was Monday, but things got pretty close to the wire on this one. I guess it's Tuesday now?