Ross Scott

640x480 WMV (47MB) Well I've been extremely busy, but I would have felt bad not getting SOMETHING out for Halloween. This isn't really Halloween themed, but this section takes place in one of the creepier parts of Half-Life. I'll be the first to admit this one has a few shortcomings. It's not really anything new for the FM series, but I'm still having some problems pacing everything because I'll record the footage ahead of time before I know everything I'm going to say. So there are some sections where Freeman is a little rapid-fire with his commentary. This can be kind of neat in the sense that it makes him appear more manic, but I still want to avoid it. I spend less time trying to perfect FM than I would with CP as it's just commentary on top of game footage. Also I apologize but this episode has a little bit of volume clipping. I tried my best to clean it up, but I may have to look into getting a better mic as mine's pretty cheap. My main goal with the series is to keep moving forward with it so I can get more episodes out as I have a lot of ground to cover. Unfortunately production will still be stalled for a little bit longer, but I'll make an annnouncement as soon as I'm done with Noesis, then I'll really move into full gear on this stuff. The current release rate of Freeman's Mind is NOT representative of how long it takes to make an episode, I've just been too busy to make more. So it may take a little while, but the pace WILL improve. In other news I'm getting closer to finishing the design of the website, but the coder helping me has gotten pneumonia and has been too sick to work on it lately, so lets hope he doesn't die on me.

Hey people, here are the updates I was talking about. First and foremost, I have to finish the second Noesis guide so I can free up more time to work on machinima. I'm getting close, but it might be another week or two, but after that there will be a big jump in production. Here's what you can expect coming: Freeman's Mind - I can get these out much faster than CP and I really need to step up the pace if I'm going to get through all of the Half-Life series. I'm hoping to have another one out by the end of the month, then a lot more out after that, but I'm not setting any deadlines since that's already backfired on me before. Civil Protection shorts - I may release some CP episodes that are very short in nature. I'm not sure whether I want to count these as actual episodes or not, but I'd like to be able to release more of CP without it taking forever. Depending on how much time volunteers have to work on it, this could also come out this month, but I'm making no promises. 15+ minute episode - this will be the scary episode, called "The Tunnel". It's already been partially produced, but it still has a ways to go. This will likely be the next big episode to come out. I was originally hoping to release this by Halloween, but that's not going to happen now because of everything else I have to do. I'm hoping it can be done by sometime in November. 20+ minute episode - this one is also partially produced, it will be called "Open Forum" (as in the Greek kind, not an internet one). It will mainly focused on dialogue and will introduce several new characters. It will also require a lot of facial expressions, which I'm leaving to someone better at that than myself. So when this one comes out depends on how busy everyone is, but I haven't forgotten about it. New website - work has resumed on this again, it might come out this month, but it depends on whether the person helping me will have time to finish the coding and if I have time to make a new logo for it. I also have a ton of other ideas of things I'd like to do, but that's what's going to be coming in the semi-near future. For everyone frustrated with the pace of things so far, I feel the same way.

Youtube Medium quality (800x452) 70MB WMV High quality (1280x720) 211MB WMV Well the new episode is finally out, it took about 1-2 weeks longer than it should have for a lot of different reasons and has been the most problematic release so far for several other reasons. This episode contains an enormous amount of custom content I hunted down on the internet, as you'll see in the credits. So thanks to everyone who let me use their maps, models, and textures. The tone of this episode is a little different than the others as it was intended for an environmental contest that ended up getting postponed, but I'm releasing it anyway. It's a little fact-heavy as a result, most of the humor is towards the end. My primary reason for making this though was an excuse to use a one-liner I'd had in my mind for a while (the "hybrid car" one). And for those wondering, I took the corny title from the old computer game by the same name. You should by no means assume anything said in Civil Protection or Freeman's Mind necessarily reflects my own beliefs, however this is one case where they do. The theme of this episode is how we're in big trouble once we run out of oil. The research I did on the topic suggest that things are going to get pretty ugly in the future. One expert interviewed by National Geographic says that the world oil supply is plateauing right now and we have about 6-8 years before it will start to decline and this guy was right on the money about when the U.S. was going to be be unable to rely on domestic oil back in the 70's. Besides what Mike mentions in the video (I won't spoil it), I think our only realistic solution is figuring out how to get cellulosic ethanol production to work on a mass scale (this isn't the same kind made from corn, sugar, and other crops). I'm not really a miltia type, but the more I read about the situation, the more it makes me want to live in a cabin out in the woods with guns and a bunch of canned goods. That would be a good place to be if society starts to fall apart. It'll be at least 10-20 years before things really get bad though. If you hate this episode and think it's being too preachy, don't worry, this is probably the first and last episode of CP with any sort of "message". I'd rather focus on making funny, strange, or exciting videos anyway. Finally, check back in a few days and I'll have an update about what you can expect in the future with regards to CP and FM. EDIT: I forgot ANOTHER person in the credits! Oh well, his nickname is "JakeyB" and he did the port of "The Postal Dude" model I used as a cameo in this episode.

Well after a 16-hour long editing session, the final video is done. I still need to do the final render, encoding, upload it, make a graphic for it, and distribute it. Since my computer isn't the fastest and this is at HD resolution, this is going to take hours and I'm too exhausted to finish it right now. Sorry I didn't make it by when I said I would, but I'll have it up by midday tomorrow. EDIT: I'm trying to upload the video right now, but my internet has cut out 5 times now. I'm hoping it will hold up at least long enough to get it up.

Breaking news here! The first tutorial is now out! I literally just found this out, I haven't even seen the finished product myself yet! Here's a link to it here: Machinima Choreography Guide Being a real cheapass myself, I admit the price seems little high. I didn't set it, plus this is a VERY comprehensive guide. I wrote the whole thing targetted for people with NO experience with the Source SDK. An incredible number of hours went into this, so for all that do buy this, you have my thanks. You can read more about it on the page, but here's what this guide will cover: -Setting up your scene -Character movement -Character animations -Lip syncing -Beginning usage of Hammer (enough to get you started with machinima) To sum it up, this is the technical end of machinima-making in Source. If you want to know how I've done a lot of the more elaborate animations in Civil Protection, this tells you how. This guide definitely teaches you everything I knew when I created "Friday" , and more beyond that. However this guide does NOT teach things like camerawork, demo recording, audio/video editing, motion blur, all the other things related to making a video. That will be covered in the NEXT guide, which I'm still scrambling to get done. Also since creation on this began before HL2: Episode 2 existed, this is all done using HL2: Episode 1. However, easily 90% of what's taught here is applicable to any Source engine game. EDIT: I'm trying my best to get the episode out on Tuesday, though it's possible the audio processing might add another day.

Well I've gotten some good responses about the coder position, so I think we'll be seeing some progress in the future. Problem #2 is still going to be a little bit daunting however, so if you think you can help with that, please contact me. Progress is going well on the next episode. This one won't have much action (don't worry, that won't be a new trend), though it should be more of a treat visually. This one will involve a lot of different maps, many of which I'm taking from existing custom-made maps online and will be crediting the various authors. Right now the ETA on this is under 3 weeks. It would be sooner, but I'm still juggling the last half of Noesis with this. As always, once that's over, then things are really going to start moving.

It's becoming apparent while working on this episode that someone who can add code to HL2 could make things go a lot easier, so we're now looking for a programmer familiar with the Source engine. Before you jump at this, let me give you a rundown of the things we're looking to be able to do: 1. Add new weapons: Provided we have the models and animations (for the weapon and character), I want to be able to add new weapons to the HL2 world. So if we wanted to be able to give Dave an AK-47 from the game Counter-Strike Source, we would need your help on making this possible. This would include stuff like making sure things like firing animations are played, ejecting brass, adding muzzle flash, etc. All the animations, graphics, and models will be provided for you, but you would have to make them work together as an actual weapon. 2. Have NPCs fire weapons on command: Right now the only way we can make an NPC fire a weapon is through AI use, which is unpredictable. This can be a good thing, but other times I want tighter control over when they fire. I want to be able to tell an NPC exactly when to fire his gun and when not to, or to empty his entire clip without pausing, reload, then keep on firing. I'd prefer doing this via some sort of input command in Hammer, but a hotkey I could press in-game would be adequate as well. 3. Create new NPC's out of other character models: Right now getting a model from another Source game to behave like an NPC can be a real annoyance. Generic_actor entities are unreliable and swapping out models for other npc's only works for some situations. If we had all the animations already available, we'd like to be able to have the model behave like a regular NPC for most situations. Right now this becomes a hack that doesn't always work. I don't anticipate any exotic needs here. Mainly just walking, running, and firing a weapon. If they could behave like an npc_citizen, but simply use a different a model, this might be all we'd need. If you think you can help us with this, please email me at [email protected]. Some of these functions won't be needed until later episodes, but others we could get you started working immediately for the next episode. As always, this will be volunteer work, but you would get your name in the credits. EDIT: I originally listed particle effects, but it looks like that won't be the issue I thought it was. The other functions are still desired however.

Well I arrived at my new destination, but I may move again as I'm going to need a place where I can be sufficiently loud to do recordings. One of the animators helping us is going to be quite busy too, so I'm afraid that means we're going to postpone the 20+ minute long episode again (yeah, I know). The good news is that I'm going a little batty from not working on anything more creative, so I've decided to start a shorter Civil Protection episode that will be easier to animate. With everyone helping on it, it should be out sometime mid to late September. After that, I'm going to do everything in my power to finish the original episode I meant to release for Halloween 2007 I ended up postponing; except now it will be in time (hopefully) for Halloween 2008. This one is already partially completed, but there's still a lot to do on it. It will be at least 15 minutes and I hope will be the scariest episode of CP yet. For everyone waiting on Freeman's Mind, it's still going to be kind of sparse until I finish the Noesis tutorial, then you can expect a big increase in its frequency. Thanks again for everybody's patience, we're going to be producing some good stuff over the next couple months.

Here is the next Game Dungeon after a long hiatus! This turned into one of the more ambitious episodes I’ve done. I’m generally happy with how it came out, in fact, this one might be my favorite “non-weird game” episode. I think in the future I may have to scale down Game Dungeon a little bit one way or another, just so there’s more time for the movie. The one thing I don’t want to sacrifice is the writing, however, so that should remain consistent regardless. Writing is often the easiest part of making these videos actually. I cut some more material that was going to be in here, some of which I may use in a follow-up episode later on. Also, while I’m not in a situation to have play sessions with fans currently, at some point in the future, I’d be interested in trying a group road trip with fans in The Crew on PC. I figure at least some people have it since I announced when it was free back in 2016 on twitter. I can’t even imagine how the game would handle 100 or so people all in the same place. It could be it would just glitch out, but it would be interesting to try out. Anything can happen the way things are at the moment, but assuming things don’t change, I hope to have more videos this month. View full article

Here’s an update on the current drought of videos. The simple version is things haven’t stabilized, but I might be making progress maybe. I’m hoping to have some real videos in the near future, but it’s still going to be a rocky path for a while. View full article

All videos are on hold due to a domestic crisis I’m having! Playsessions and videochat sessions are all cancelled until further notice. I honestly don’t know when this is going to resolved, but I do intend to return once my living situation has stabilized. Sorry about this, I’m not happy about it either! View full article

Here’s my poorly timed videochat! My living situation is still unstable, but I have breathable air and can work on my computer. The audio quality was poorer this time due to me misplacing my usual mic for the chats. New Game Dungeon should be coming in a few hours! View full article