Ross Scott

Machinima.com 640x480 WMV (50MB) Well here's the next Freeman's Mind episode as promised. This one is a little short, but my original cut was about 12 minutes, which makes it a potential problem with Youtube, so I cut it down to the next stopping off point. Half-Life purists will be upset with this episode, as I'm continuing to act under the assumption that Freeman can do a pull-up. Unfortunately the release was a little wonky for this one, so only the Youtube version is up, the streaming and download copies probably won't be up until tomorrow. I'll get the episode page up soon. Again, I plan to pick up the pace on this, so you can expect another one sometime this month too. I plan to make this the priority for now, but my secondary goal is to release the pilot episode I talked about next. I'll reveal what it is once it gets closer to completion, so it won't be a total surprise. INTERVIEW: Also since I'm having to bunch news together, I've been invited to appear on an audio show called Podcast 17. Each week they talk about everything related to Half-Life or the Source engine, focusing on mods in particular. I originally postponed these guys because I was working on the Civil Protection episode and didn't want fans to think I was just screwing around talking to people. After I released it, they had to postpone me because of scheduling, but now it looks like it's on again. Anyway, I'll be appearing on the show live on Sunday, July 19th. It will be broadcasted at 10am (GMT -05:00) Eastern Time. They'll also release an mp3 of the broadcast the following Monday or Tuesday, I forget. Here are some links: Live broadcast link (on Sunday) Podcast 17 homepage I really don't know what they'll be asking me, but it will probably be tamer than something like The Howard Stern Show. EDIT: Looks like there was a limit on the live streams that no one knew about. Try this link instead if you still want the live feed: http://www.justin.tv/henley

I have some updates and minor news for people. First off, I screwed up the credits for this video. I forgot to mention the Quake 3 music I use for the title theme, though that's mentioned in every other episode, so it's not a huge deal. What is a big deal to me though, is I got the name wrong for one of the models I used. I was looking at the readme.txt file that came with the custom model I downloaded and going by the credits listed in that, which was "Silverlan." Turns out that's not really the guy who made that model, he just did some entity work on it that I didn't even use when making the episode. The real author is "SideEffect." I'll update the episode page to reflect this. My apologies to him, I usually try my best to give everyone credit for their work. Speaking of the episode, this one has a few Easter Eggs in it that you may have missed: -Did you spot the G-man appearance? -I found the billboard ad entertaining -(at least one user noticed this already) Pay close attention to the path of the black car. This was an accident I noticed very late in the production that I decided to keep, but minimize the impact of. There will be more subtitles coming out this week, it's a slow process for me as I've had about 90 different people contact me regarding them and I still haven't replied to everyone. Thanks for your patience in all this. I've been informed that several download links to both series are missing. I'm not sure why they've gone down, but I've contacted Machinima.com about this and hopefully they'll get them back up soon. I hope to implement mirrors for the videos sometime in the future as well. Finally, I'm continuing work on Freeman's Mind, so just hang tight. EDIT: I screwed up somebody else's name in the credits (Vecima) who did mapwork in this episode I wasn't even aware of. Due to multiple credits errors, I've replaced the download links with the updated version of the credits and will be adding annotations to Youtube later to reflect this. This is what happens when I don't get enough sleep.

Machinima.com streaming (sound now in sync!) 800x448 WMV (77MB) 1280x720 WMV (188MB) Well here's the new episode finally. This episode is meant to be a "normal" episode for the series, something I'm not sure I've even done before. You should understand I'm always about 10-12 episodes ahead of where the series is actually at in my mind. After the last episode, I felt like I really owed you guys a normal episode, so you didn't have any misgivings as to where I was going with the series. I plan for there to be some variety in the episodes, but if you ever wonder what direction I'm taking the series in the future, just come back and look at this one. It's meant to be an anchor point in terms of style and tone for the series. While I plan to make some episodes that are scary, have a lot of action, more surreal, require a longer attention span, have a much more involved story, etc., the series will eventually come back to episodes similar to this one. It's not my most impressive idea or even original one (I steal a bit from my own material as far as plot), I think it's one people will like who are a fan of the series. I'm very pleased with how it came out, though it still kind of sickens me how long it took to make. Animation is really a black hole in terms of time when it comes to these videos. Also just to clarify, I have not been working on this nonstop since the last episode, if I had, it probably would have come out sometime last year. On that note, Freeman's Mind is next, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure Episode 12 comes out next week.

Hello... This is Mike Southworth, the web developer responsible for coding the web site (and owner of LD Computech listed in the sidebar). I wanted to thank everyone for the positive comments to Ross's initial launch post concerning the site, and provide some additional details about the site. It is my intention to provide any site related news updates myself, independent of Ross's video updates, in order to allow him to focus on creating video episodes rather than answering web site related questions. Please add any of your site related comments to this or any future site update posting. First, the site has been coded entirely from scratch, utilizing PHP, JavaScript, and AJAX. With the exception of some YouTube and other small snippets, the site contains all original code and no 'off the shelf' material. It was created according to the plan that it would be updated regularly to add new features according to a schedule, and any major changes would be separated into specific versions to keep it organized. I have noted a great number of comments about RSS, even to the extent of users inserting code as user comments related to it. Realize that RSS was not 'omitted' from the initial site version because it was 'rejected' or we don't know how to code it. Actually RSS has always been on the feature list, however due to the amount of code required to launch the site was moved to a future version. RSS is comming soon, however it must be pointed out that there are at least as many administration pages as the public pages you can see as regular users, and there are a great deal of additions to be completed to these first. It is much more important to complete every function required for Ross to more easily enter videos, posts, screen shots, and other material than it is to enable RSS, so please be patient. Bearing this in mind, please feel free to provide any feedback or suggestions either by site comment or email to Ross's address listed in the sidebar. EDIT BY ROSS SCOTT: Sorry everyone that the commenting system was broken all this morning, I guess that doesn't bode well for Mike's first post. Andrew Theis, the host of the site, was able to fix it for us, so it should be working again now. EDIT BY MIKE SOUTHWORTH: Sorry that we were not able to record comments. Unfortunately we are using a manual version control process and that one file was not uploaded as it's correct working version. The file is now syncronized and working properly. Please email Ross if you see a problem like this and we will fix it immediately.

Hey people, here's what's going on: The new CP episode is completely done except for adding some sound effects and volume balancing; however this can be pretty involved. For this episode I've unloaded almost all the sound effects work to someone else (Otto Beumelburg) and a few of the sound effects he's provided are better than what I could have come up with myself. So it's a time savings for me personally and I think our combined work is improving the audio quality of the episode. Between this and the delay in uploading new episodes, it may be a couple more days before the episode is done, but I think it will be out sometime this week. At this point I've done all I can do on my end, so once I get caught up on sleep and maybe reply to the 30 or so emails I've gotten lately, I'll go ahead and start on the next Freeman's Mind episode and keep them coming. I realize it's been a while since the last FM episode, but I promise to make up for it soon. Also I could use one or two more English subtitle transcribers for Civil Protection especially. (international people: just hold tight, I still need to reply to a bunch of emails) I've gotten some offers already, but several people have either not replied back or may have become too busy to continue working on the rest of the episodes. If you're interested in helping out with this and have a proper understanding of spelling and grammar, go ahead and contact me. EDIT: I've gotten many emails of people offering to transcribe, thanks. I'm trying to respond to all of you and we should have all the remaining English subtitles up before too much longer.

Civil Protection and Freeman's Mind have moved! Go to www.accursedfarms.com from now on for news on the episodes. To RSS people: Until we get RSS working on the new site, I'll make new posts here when new episodes are released as a way of notifying you.

Welcome to the new website! If nothing crashes, this is where all future news on Civil Protection and Freeman's Mind will appear from now on. There's a few things here I'd like to go over: SUBTITLES: While this page is still a little bare, this will be updated in time as several people are working on transcribing or translating episodes. I plan to support as many subtitles for the series as I'm able. EXTRAS: There is nothing here yet because I've been focusing on getting the next episode finished, but eventually this section will contain scripts, alternate shots, outtakes, some unused music, and anything else extra related to the series. COMMENTS: There will be a delay from when your comments appear due to how the site is set up. I plan to change this so people can register and make comments without needing moderation, but in the meantime bear with us if they're slow to appear. RSS: I'm sorry to say this site does not have RSS functionality yet. I'm aware many of you use this on the old blogspot site and it is something that was planned for this site, however I've been told it will take a long time to code in this future, so I didn't want to delay the launch on account of this. I'm sorry if this is a step down for you compared to the blogspot site, but it won't always be this way. I DO hope to implement this in the future and it will be one of the top priorities for changes to the site. Finally, the vast majority of the website was created by Mike Southworth and some assistance from Jerry Bramst

Next episode details: Well even though the poll seems to be changing now, within the first couple days most people voted for me to finish Civil Protection first, so that's what I've been doing. In breaking my usual trend, I'm releasing a few details about the next episode. They're not a lot, but for an episode that's only a few minutes long, I can't reveal too much without spoiling things. I'm probably going to call this next episode "Morning Patrol". It'll be about average length, take place in City 17, and you'll get to see a little bit more of the HL2 world in it. It's definitely not one of my more spectacular episode ideas, but I think it's the most well-rounded one I've produced so far. Here's a preview shot of it: If you're a fan of other CP episodes, I think it's very likely you'll enjoy this next one. While I'm extremely happy with how it's coming out, I don't want people to think it's going to be most magnificent episode that's ever been produced. It has been a long time since the last episode, but I've been working on many other things besides Civil Protection. Rant: I get a fair chunk of hate mail from people who are angry at me for not producing episodes faster. Most of these people don't seem to possess any sense of perspective or logic, but for those that do, I'd like to elaborate a little more on this. The biggest barrier to me producing more episodes of Civil Protection is animation time. While sometimes I don't mind, much of the time I HATE animating. While I have been getting some help, that's been a mixed bag. Pretty much everyone who assists with animation right now prefers to work or only has time to work on one aspect of production. While this has undeniably increased the quality of the episodes being produced in areas, it's questionable how much time savings there have been. This is to say nothing of people who for different reasons, have had to abandon work on episodes. The past episode and the one I'm currently working on were both written in such a way to make it easy for additional animators to help out. In both cases, multiple people bailed and I ended up filling in a lot of the gaps for animation. I never would have started this particular episode idea next if I had known that was going to happen. Believe it or not, I get more frustrated than anyone else that I can't produce episodes faster. I'm overflowing with ideas and am totally confident I haven't gotten to the best ones yet. I sincerely wish I could afford to hire someone to help me animate in the Source engine. I would LOVE to unload almost all aspects of animating the episodes to someone else or other people; though I haven't come across anyone who can animate in the programs Face Poser and Hammer and has the same time and drive to devote to it. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to either, I hate that aspect of it myself. For fans of Freeman's Mind: I promise the production rate will pick up a lot as soon as the next CP episode is done. Some of you may recall I promised an increase in episode production late last year and that actually did happen. They have still been relatively few and far between because Freeman's Mind hasn't been my main focus. However since far more people have become interested in it than I would have anticipated, I plan to make that my new priority soon. In addition to devoting more time towards it, I'm planning to move soon to where I can record at any time without disturbing people. Right now I can only record during certain windows of time without disturbing my neighbors, which limits how fast I can produce episodes. I know many of you may not believe me, but I can promise the production rate is going to become much, much faster than for FM than ever before.

EDIT: Well thanks to reader advice I was able to solve the problem. I was an idiot and wasn't using static props. In my defense, static props tend to behave much less reliably for me, plus the model has to support them in the first place, something many do not. I got lucky in this case in that the model I was using did support being a static prop. Anyway, I'm a little undecided what to do now since I was ready to switch gears. I'm putting up a new poll, I'll go with whatever the masses decide on this. ORIGINAL POST: Well it looks like my tradition of discovering a completely new bug in every episode continues. Right now I've run into a bug that's preventing me from completing a scene (read below for details). I have some ideas as to how to fix it, but it's probably going to take the help of someone else helping with modelling and it's hard to say how long that will take. The good news for you is that since I can only do so much more on the episode from my end until this is fixed, I'll go ahead and start working on the next Freeman's Mind episode while this bug gets looked into. I still have every intention of completing this CP episode, but I hate making you guys wait on more material. If all I had to do was writing, I could produce a new episode every day of FM and CP. To those familiar with the Source engine: The bug I'm running into is "Reliable Snapshot Overflow" that crashes the map and occurs whenever I try to record a demo. I know what's causing it in my case. It has to do with me having a ton of small dynamic props in a small area. I could fix this problem by deleting the props, but I unfortunately need them for this scene. Right now my best theory on how to fix this is to merge many of small individual models into one larger one, so the game sees less props to process. This is probably going to be a pain to do for our modeller. If any of you know more about this than I do, feel free to post possible solutions here. If you discover one before we do and notify me, I'll put your name down in the credits of the next episode as a technical advisor.

Well I've been getting some requests for updates. I haven't posted more because the situation is still the same; I'm still busy on the next CP episode and the website is still in development. I know It might seem like I'm not doing anything, but I've actually been making a lot of progress; it's just an inherently slow process to produce episodes at the quality level I strive for in Civil Protection. Each episode is much more than just recording and editing, it's more like a minature mod for the game. On that note, I've been getting pressure on all sides to produce more episodes of Freeman's Mind. I'm still not producing any more until I finish the current CP episode, but after that, I may alter my plans to make it first priority and have them come up at a much more rapid rate. Many of you have said you prefer it over Civil Protection. I think you're only saying that because you don't know everything I have envisioned for the series. My imagination far exceeds my production capacity. On that same note however, I'm not even attempting the "jaw dropping" episodes in the near future because of how much more work they would entail. So due to the time involved with making those, I'll probably focus on easier projects, like FM. In the meantime, I'll continue blazing away on the next episode. The next part of this post only applies to 3D graphics geeks, so you can skip it if you're just here for the videos. The glitch I'm listing below will NOT hold up production on the next episode. - - - - - - - - - I've run into a minor nuisance in production that simply hasn't gone away. I'm a sucker for antialiasing; I think it cleans up the look of a 3D scene immensely. However I've gone through multiple generations of graphics cards and keep running into the same glitch when I enable antialiasing. For lack of a better term, I'm calling it "shimmering". This glitch seems to be especially noticeable in the Source engine in certain situations. It's similar to looking at a road in the distance on a hot day, giving the illusion of a puddle. It causes lines or gaps or something to be rendered that should not be there. It only happens for me for surfaces in the distance with antialiasing enabled. It's best seen in motion, but it's noticeable in screenshots. I recommend downloading "On A Rail" if you want to see it in action. Here is an example where it occurs from that video: That's not just a reflection from the lights, this glitch occurs in 100% dark tunnels. While I'm on a Geforce 8800 right now, this has happened to me on multiple cards in the past and I've witnessed it happening on a friend's computer with a Radeon 4850. The ONLY solution I've found to this is to either turn off antialiasing completely or to render the scene using supersampling entirely; no multisampling whatsoever. This is not an ideal solution as supersampling is immensely slower and requires too much memory to hit the same quality levels as other antialiasing methods. If ANYONE knows what's causing this or can demonstrate a solution, please contact me at [email protected] or post here. Feel free to test this for yourself! If you have a copy of Half-Life 2, a good spot to test this is on the first canal level (d1_canals_01) looking back at the dark train tunnel you see once you get outside. Here's an example of the effect for that level: If this problem doesn't affect you, great, but I'm trying to find out WHY. Ask people who know a lot about 3D graphics. Ask ATI. Ask Nvidia. Ask on tech forums, it'll be a favor to me. Again, this glitch won't hold up production of any episodes, it's just a personal quest of mine to find out how to fix it and I'm hoping someone out there knows more about it than I do. EDIT: Viewer Carl Johnson (not the one from Grand Theft Auto) has made me aware that disabling AA and AF through the driver control panel, then setting the AA settings in-game will prevent this problem on ATI cards. Unfortunately I tried this and it didn't seem to have the same effect for me (since I'm currently on an Nvidia one), but that's encouraging to know this is fixable.

Hey people, I wanted to let you know progress is still underway on the next CP episode. It's turning out well, but as usual, seemingly simple things are becoming much more complicated than they should be. I still haven't run into any show-stopping bugs, there's just a lot of little elements to take care of in this episode to make it feel more complete. I'd post screenshots or clips from it so far, but I really hate having things spoiled for me personally, so I try to do the same for the viewers. The new website has been very close to launchable for a while now, but I want to have the look of some of the pages altered to be as easy as possible to navigate, plus the guy coding it has had a lot of behind the scenes revisions to make. Right now it's sort of a race between us as to which will happen first, the new website launching, or the next CP episode being released. I've been reviewing some of the subtitles submitted to me and while I appreciate the effort of people who have submitted, some of the timing or spelling/grammar has been so erratic that it almost creates more work to correct it than it does to create them from scratch. If you're interested in contributing subtitles to Civil Protection or Freeman's Mind, please contact me at [email protected]. Also this is just for English copies at the moment. While I plan to fully support subtitles in other languages, I want to get the English copies done first so translators have the best source material to work from. Be sure to contact me before making them, just so no one ends up duplicating the work. Also I've posted the answer before and I plan to have it be on the FAQ of the new website, but since I keep getting these questions over and over again, I'd like to make a post about this. Many people have asked will I continue Freeman's Mind to completion, through Half-Life 2, and switch to the Black Mesa mod. The answer to all of these questions is maybe. If people decide they get tired of the format, I don't want to promise I'll continue something that no one wants, but for the time being I can't see a reason to stop it. EDIT: I think I now have enough offers to transcribe subtitles, thanks to everyone who's shown interest. I'll make another post when I'm ready for subtitles in other languages. It's come to my attention that some of the downloadable copies of the Freeman's Mind episodes are disappearing. I've notified the host, so hopefully this will be resolved before too long.

640x480 WMV (90MB) Well here's the proof some of you were waiting for that I didn't kill off Freeman permanently. This is the longest episode so far, I normally would have made it shorter, but I figured you guys might get sick of seeing the same elevator shaft 3 episodes in a row. Unfortunately for some, the gap between 11 and 12 is going to be longer than usual because I really want go get back to Civil Protection. The latest episode is well underway, though it's gotten more ambitious than I originally intended from a technical perspective. So far there haven't been any show-stopping bugs like I've gotten a lot in the past. Once I'm done with that, I want to get at least get a good chunk of work done on the new pilot episode before I do another FM episode, so it may be a few weeks before you see another one. The upside to this is that things are starting to come together more on the animation end of things for CP, so you may start seeing a lot more shorter episodes of that in the forseeable future.

Since I'm getting comments daily on the topic, here's what's going on with the videos. I've finished all the dialogue for Episode 11 and it's going to be the longest FM episode so far. I'm now letting Otto Beumelburg handle the rest of the audio work on it. He adds most of the extra sound effects to FM and I'm hoping he'll take over the volume balancing on it. That sounds like a simple task, but it takes a while to do properly and it's important because if it's done wrong you won't be able to make out what's being said over all the regular sounds. I'm letting him take as much time as he needs to, plus there's a delay from when the video's done to when it's uploaded and available, so it will be a little while before it's up, hopefully sometime next week, but we'll see. In the meantime, I'll be working on the next CP episode and plan to be relentless at it. I tend to go back and forth between wanting to make something more original and wanting to simply get a video out. Since I've been making more of the FM episodes lately, I'm really anxious to get back to work on CP. Once the next CP episode is done, I'll make the pilot episode for the surprise series I mentioned earlier, though that shouldn't be as difficult as most CP episodes. EDIT: The new FM episode will be out soon. Also I don't know why it's showing so many comments deleted. The only posts I've been deleting lately are duplicates. I think they might be being deleted by the person who orginally posted them.