Ross Scott

I'm learning for the new website, I won't be able to host the files anymore

Whoa, that seems like a HUGE downgrade. I'm not sure if fixing any and all disadvantages of the current website (which I fail to see, but that's just me) are worth losing such a crucial function.

I was only informed of this a couple days ago. I'm not happy about it either, however the new site does have definite advantages. What I may do is see if people want to volunteer for mirrors and have multiple links for some of the larger files.

 

 

Hey Ross, would you be willing to upload the direct files of all your videos?

 

You know how paranoid you are about downloading a software patch that screws your system? I'm half paranoid about videos being taken down, half just a sort of digital pack-rat. If I find a series I enjoy, I download the videos from the youtube channel and store them in folders. I even edit some of them, like combining all your two parters into one video for easy viewing.

 

I'd love to have clean versions of everything you've done.

Bottom line is make it easy for me and I don't have much of a problem with it. I think for a while I wasn't in a rush, since I was having copies of the videos uploaded on Youtube, then that Russian site laid a copyright claim on me using copies of my own videos, but that's hopefully died down some.

 

 

On that note: wet road aliasing. It's interesting that dry roads don't flicker in the distance, but wet roads do. Perhaps they forgot to implement mipmap filtering on that layer?

This is extremely common in many games that have some sort of reflection effect via the shaders. I recorded the game with MSAA since I don't think it supported anything higher than that. That does nothing for shader aliasing and alpha textures. It's something that's bothered me ever since DirectX 9 honestly. I'm glad we're slowly moving towards higher res displays so that all this stuff isn't as in your face.

I'm learning for the new website, I won't be able to host the files anymore, so I'm scrambling to find a backup for that. It could be Mega wasn't a good choice, let me know where and I can upload it somewhere else.

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Due to popular demand, I'm releasing a couple more clips related to the last Game Dungeon episode. The first is for an extra-high quality copy (the same version I uploaded to Youtube) of the episode. Due to this episode having lots of fast motion and high details, it compressed very poorly compared to pretty much every other episode. To put it in perspective, I used even higher quality compression settings than this on A New Beginning, and that was 1/20th the size this one was. So for people who are frustrated by the compression, here's a downloadable version that has minimal artifacting:

 

Ross's Game Dungeon: The Crew (x264 9.44GB MKV)

 

This is meant for personal viewing only. Please do not upload copies of this to Youtube or other streaming networks. However, as with all my videos, Fair Use purposes (reviews, parodies, derivative works, etc.) are of course fine.

 

The other request I received was for the green screen footage of my driving segment in the video. These were not made under ideal conditions. I had time pressure and had to record this in my currently evacuated room. You'll see some shadowing that isn't helpful, but people can monkey with it if they want. I've included 3 takes of the shot.

 

Green screen driving video (x264 44MB MP4)

 

Unlike the Game Dungeon episode itself, you can use this clip for anything you want, no restrictions. I'm not necessarily saying you SHOULD, but I don't have a problem with it being used for whatever.

 

COMMENTS

The release of less compressed version of this video! How about the 10GB or 5GB version Ross?

I guess I'll just release the 10GB version, I can see the compression on parts in the 5GB copy. Even the 10GB probably has some minor loss, but I'm sure it's night and day compared to Youtube. I may host it elsewhere since things are going to be changing soon on the site. I'll release it and the green screen segment people wanted in a couple days and have a post here.

If you're getting significant visual artifacts at 1080p above 3gb/hr you need to check your settings, or get a different encoder. It shouldn't be giving noticeable artifacts (outside of pausing and doing frame comparisons) at that rate.

I think you're speaking very generally, but I'm fine with sending a sample if you want to test it yourself. You have to understand, this is about as demanding as it gets for video compression. It's constant motion with lots of details, especially from things like grass and leaves. Due to them being hard pixels, this compresses more poorly than normal film. I'd have to be encoding static before it got worse than this. I used HIGHER video quality settings than this (RF 17) for A New Beginning, and due to its largely static content, that entire episode, with audio, was a little over 500MB. Filesize from quality based encoding varies WILDLY depending on the content.

 

As for my compression techniques, they're very standardized. I'm using Handbrake x264 compression with the "high" preset.

 

Another thing to consider is Youtube itself wasn't handling this video well at all. I've seen similar cases of other videos from The Crew.

 

EDIT:

I've uploaded 30 seconds of the forest driving (one of the more demanding sections) losslessly compressed using the UT video codec here (3.5GB download):

 

http://accursedfarms.com/temp/crew_forest_lossless.avi

 

The audio has been removed, so it's just the video portion. By all means tell me what compression settings I should try. Using the "high" preset at RF quality 20, that comes to about 226MB. I can still tell there's compression by looking at it (not analyzing it frame by frame, just watching it), but not distractingly so.

 

I just think it's kinda fucked up in a way, sheesh it's just some random internet forum, I never knew people could get that low over a game.

 

I was by no means trying to gaslight anyone.

Alright, my apologies. FWIW I actually agree with you in that it seems a large portion of my fanbase seems less critical. I try my best not to take that for granted. People are free to challenge any of my claims, but I don't like having my statements misrepresented either if you follow the difference. In other words, I don't like being attacked for what I never said.

 

The release of less compressed version of this video! How about the 10GB or 5GB version Ross?

I guess I'll just release the 10GB version, I can see the compression on parts in the 5GB copy. Even the 10GB probably has some minor loss, but I'm sure it's night and day compared to Youtube. I may host it elsewhere since things are going to be changing soon on the site. I'll release it and the green screen segment people wanted in a couple days and have a post here.

This is gaslighting. At best, you're being hypocritical and strawmanning me without meaning to.

 

gaslighting = putting words in your mouth?

 

sorry i never really heard of the term, i never really understood what "straw manning" ment either

Akamia has it right, though I would clarify that gaslighting is specifically saying something that was known to happen didn't happen, or vice-versa. It's trying to enforce the notion that the reality you know happened never happened. So if you think you went to the store last week and I say that you never went to the store even though you did, that's gaslighting. It gets its name from the movie Gaslight, where a character doing this is the main plot of the movie.

 

Straw man is also as he said. If you argue something, and I restate it as something similar, but not the same, then argue against that, that's a straw man argument. It gets the name from being like a scarecrow, rather than argue against the original, you argue against the imitation, as though it were made out of straw. Saying I think Human Revolution is a bad game because it has a different clothing, anime influences, and has different politics than mine is pretty much a textbook definition of it. Those were never my arguments, it was more complex than that, but they're being represented as though that was my stance.

I can't remember if I said this, but it wasn't hella in itself that was the problem, it was the way she was using it. At least in my experience, people weren't using hella as an adjective, it was used as an adverb:

 

Adverb:

That is hella stupid.

That is hella big.

 

Adjective:

You've got hella cash.

Look at my hella gun.

 

It sounds incredibly awkward to me as an adjective, which is how she initially used it.

The original Deus Ex was all about conspiracy the[/size]ories about the corporate elite controlling society from the shadows being true—i.e it flattered your politics. Human Revolution was about discrimination, and that was not to your taste, so you weren’t interested; you picked apart the idea of augmentation as a basis for discrimination, but you felt little need to pick apart the conspiracy theories in the original. So using the idea of augmented people being discriminated against as a signpost for discrimination in our society is no good because it’s not realistic; but using conspiracy theories as a signpost for the problematic concentration of power around the wealthy in our society is A-OK, even if those conspiracy theories are unrealistic.

Look, I don't know if you're doing it on purpose, but the reality is what you're doing is gaslighting. We're not going to have a productive conversation from that.

 

You say "I felt little need to pick apart the conspiracy theories from the original." Is that what you call me quoting Eisenhower, giving figures on the military industrial complex, large media conglomerate merging, analyzing the shift in terrorism coverage, and how new institutions were formed and constitutional rights were altered after. If that's not picking things apart enough, I think you'll have to look elsewhere for more serious coverage of a videogame.

 

The original had MANY themes, conspiracy theories being one of them. I outright dismissed some things as "fun game stuff" when talking about the stories, not meant to be taken very seriously and said as much in the video. Things like the greys, augmentation, giant mechs, exploding men in black, etc. For the most part, the game didn't take those elements very seriously either. I'd say the game took themes like terrorism, poverty, disease, role of government power, etc. more seriously and I tried to touch on some of those also. I WAS critical of things like the police tactics, as I was in Human Revolution also.

 

In Human Revolution, it basically just had ONE theme, transhumanism, with discrimination being a part of that. I didn't think the premise was very believable, so I was critical of it because the game itself was treating it seriously. Even if I was suspending my disbelief however, I found the human behavior unbelievable also, so I found it failing on both levels. Hacking for example, was more of a fun game element, which neither the game nor I took very seriously, thus I wasn't critical of it. The clothing is an example where by itself, would simply be a fun game element, but in a prequel, it was a clear divergence from the source material thematically. I only took apart the theme of augmentation because the game itself took it so seriously. It's not the theme of discrimination I have a problem with, it's handling it poorly as a sole theme in an already established franchise that was known for a more multi-dimensional look at the world.

 

The basis of your argument so far is attributing things to me that I didn't do when I did do them, or that I did do when I didn't do them. Again, I'm not saying you're doing this intentionally, but you're basically characterizing me as someone else in your mind, then arguing that. That's not an honest way of conducting a conversation, I don't really see the point of continuing this if that's your approach.

 

1. I was pointing out that you said you were shocked that the game received almost no coverage or hype— I simply explained why you really shouldn’t be surprised.

2. I never said there wasn’t a niche for this sort of game, just that you shouldn’t really be surprised it’s small. Euro Truck Simulator sold 300k; Need for Speed: Most Wanted sold 16 million.

3. I didn’t say that that wasn’t the target demographic, just that you really shouldn’t be surprised it isn’t very big.

And again, we have sort of a less direct form of gaslighting.

 

First off, Euro Truck Simulator 2 sold 4.5 million copies. I would not call that "extremely niche", and it undermines your other points, but it's clear you thought I was talking about the original at 300k copies, so fine, let's go with that. Your original statements say:

 

"Surely, you must realize that almost no one plays driving games to aimlessly drive through the environments, no matter how nice they are."

"For most people (at least the ones this game was aimed at) if they wanted to go on a road trip they would just go on one."

 

but then you go and say:

 

"I didn’t say that that wasn’t the target demographic, just that you really shouldn’t be surprised it isn’t very big."

 

You JUST SAID the people that this game was aimed at are people who don't care about driving around aimlessly in the environment, then you reply and say you DIDN'T say that people who care about the environment aren't the target demographic. Well logically, they CAN'T be the target demographic if they're not being aimed at, in your words. Except, now you're saying the exact opposite, and claiming you didn't say anything to the contrary, except you did.

 

This is gaslighting. At best, you're being hypocritical and strawmanning me without meaning to. At worst, you're just trolling. Either way, this isn't how you conduct an honest conversation, so I'm not going further with it. I'll never convince you the sky is blue if you see it as green and are claiming I said it's red.

Hey Ross. When are you going to upload uncompressed version if this video? Is it before June 14 or still going to be a while?

 

I created an account here just to ask this, because I though It would be more likely for you to see it here.

Well, an "uncompressed" version would be about 533GB, so never, but I know what you mean.

 

Really my main hold up is I don't know what filesize I should be aiming for. The copy I uploaded to Youtube was a little under 10GB. I normally don't compress the videos more than that, but that might be a bit big for people to want to grab.

 

In handbrake, I did some tests, for those that are curious:

 

RF level 24: 5.38GB

RF level 26: 3.87GB

RF level 28: 2.71GB

RF level 30: 1.85GB

 

I still have the losslessly compressed version on my drive at around 200GB, but I don't want to hang onto it forever. I guess some feedback on what quality level v. size it is people are looking for would be helpful.

So Ross, I just thought I’d put this out there. When you were trashing Human Revolution, I pointed out that most if not all of your criticism was based on extremely subjective criteria, like “I don’t like exaggerated clothing styles, so it’s bad” or “This reminds me of anime which I don’t like, so it’s bad” or “This game’s politics don’t sufficiently align with mine, so it’s bad.” And here, I think you’ve indulged in an even more subjective view.

 

Surely, you must realize that almost no one plays driving games to aimlessly drive through the environments, no matter how nice they are. The environment in a racing game is like the condiments on food—if the only thing a restaurant has going for it is a huge selection of good condiments, but the food is just mediocre, of course the restaurant is only going to be perceived as a mediocre, because people go to restaurants for food not condiments. So you can’t really be surprised that this game was dismissed as mediocre—the only reason you have any interest in it it’s because of your extremely niche taste for going on Sunday drives in video game worlds. For most people (at least the ones this game was aimed at) if they wanted to go on a road trip they would just go on one.

I think you're misinterpreting a lot of what I said about Human Revolution. I wasn't trying to lambast the clothing styles at all, I think they would be great in an original intellectual property that would be less restrained being held back by Deus Ex. In fact, I'm kind of curious about the Nier:Automata game since that looks wild and imaginative, the sort of thing that HR might be better suited for thematically.

 

As Scumcoder said, I was judging it as a prequel. I think that's completely fair, if not expected. If there was a new Doom game that didn't involve demons and was focused on conflict between factions in the Middle East, I wouldn't smile upon that kindly either. Not because it's necessarily a bad game, but because it's not Doom, but is calling itself that. In fact, I've noticed a lot, if not all of the people who disagree with me the most fervently on my Human Revolution video never played the original Deus Ex.

As for politics, I honestly don't remember bringing that up in the Human Revolution one. What I was relentless about was the unrelaistic human behavior and how the themes were far more narrow and contrived than the original's. That's not the same thing as disagreeing with the politics. What politics in Human Revolution did I disagree with?

 

As for The Crew, I almost addressed this in the video, but decided to chop it out. You can say that most people playing driving games aren't interested in the environment. I have a few responses to that:

 

1. I completely acknowledge different people like driving games for different reasons. Some people want Project Cars, some people want Outrun 2006, two totally different games appealing to different audiences. I happen to care about the environment of the game.

2. The sales figures of Euro Truck Simulator 2 would suggest otherwise that people don't care about the "exploration driving" kinds of games. It's literally sold more copies than The Crew.

3. Fine, let's say the target demographic is NOT people who care about exploring the environment. Then, why make it the second largest driving game in history if you don't want players to care about the environment?

 

The line I cut from the video was something like:

 

"This would be like rendering and recreating the entire city of Hong Kong in Street Fighter 2 just to show it as a background for Chun-Li's fighting stage"

I work for a large game company(mobile) , as a 3D artist, and if all the other game companies work in similar ways.. believe me, there are artists in the development teams wanting to make things look natural, with true to life colors and little or no color filters. The issue is that people who make the environments don't have the last word on the subject. If there is some higher level producer or lead who wants a color filter, there's not much we can do to oppose that. You might try to hold your ground, try to change their mind but in the end if they feel it looks "cooler" or more "dramatic" or "cinematic" with a color filter then.. that is it. The best win you can get sometimes is to lessen the intensity of some filters - it can be WAY worse, and if no one would try to oppose it during development, the games would be way more monochromatic..

Thanks for clearing that up, I was wondering how this stuff happened. It didn't occur to me that it's the producer calling the shots, they have a stupid idea in their head, so that's what's done. I think I read before some game executives are wannabe movie producers, so they'll bring over the same mentality, not understanding or caring that it's the same thing (I forget where I read that though). I may mention this in a followup episode.

 

Anyway, it's a reminder of how top-down large scale game development is. This is one of the reasons mid-level studios make a lot of my favorite games, you'll have people at every level who are invested in the game.

Some of you might appreciate this. I made this 10 years back. Here is a screenshot from Unreal Tournament 3 in beta:

 

 

Here is the edit I made of it to reflect the "new and improved" style:

 

RaTcHeT302: Great post. It's honestly epidemic. I could understand if it was an indie game trying to be more artsy, but these are behemoths with budgets of tens of millions of dollars. I'm still amazed the devs for Battlefield 3 said they would ban people fixing the color with the mod, like I mentioned in the Human Revolution episode.

 

As for the video quality, the copy I uploaded was very clear, so the problem is all on Youtube. I can look into providing a copy to download later on.

 

You can throw all the tech you want into a game, but if at the end of the day, smearing a color filter is the solution to all your issues, then you might as well just give up, why even bother have lighting, just make everything grey, who cares.

If you are noticing the lighting constantly, then it's probably bad lighting.

These are great quotes, I think I'll mention that latter one in a follow up episode later on if I remember.

 

Just a heads up, but you can mod out the brown filter from just about any modern game, along with a bunch of other gfx mods, by using ReShade (The Crew presets).

Yes and no. I used a reshade preset on the crew, it helped some things, but it never got to looking "good." Here's a few general issues I run into, depending on the game:

 

-I'm not sure I've ever seen a game where you can completely correct a full tint filter. It can accentuate the opposite color too much and drown out emphasis where the color should be there.

-I mentioned Burnout Paradise, that's one where you really can't fix things, because the color of the tint being used will change depending on what time of day it is. Check and mate.

-The Crew also lowers the contrast on the image. This looks awful during the day, but if you correct it, then night driving is even worse.

-It's uncommon for me to find a profile that really fixes the situation. Unfortunately many people will overcompensate or just get too artsy themselves.

-It kind of requires you to be a lighting expert yourself, which I'm not.

 

Granted, it can improve many games, but I can't think of case where it just completely FIXED the problem.

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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.

 

COMMENTS

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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!

 

COMMENTS

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I have a sort of new video for you. Several months back, Tom White (from Weird Videogames) met composer Alexander Brandon at a convention and set up an interview with him to which I was invited to. We proceeded to ask him a bunch of questions, Tom was in possession of the footage and has finally edited it all together and put it up on his channel. The interview ended up being more technical than I anticipated, so it may not be for everyone, but some may find it interesting. For those that find it too dry, Tom also put together his own

that you might like more.

 

For those that don't know, Alexander Brandon is one of my favorite composers and has done fantastic work for games like Tyrian, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, along with lots of other music. He was a lot of fun to talk to and exudes this personality like there's no stopping him. Also since he was the audio director on Deus Ex: Invisible War, I got to ask him what happened with the music direction for that game (that part is towards the end). Also, when we interviewed him, he was currently available for composing music for game creators. I don't know his rates, but if you're working on a game, it's possible you could hire him to compose music for it. I think he mentioned his contact information in the video (also towards the end), but it's been several months since I did this, so I don't remember for certain.

 

All in all, he was a cool guy, his music is still great, and I think I would enjoy his unrestrained vision of the original Unreal.

 

COMMENTS

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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.

 

COMMENTS

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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!

 

COMMENTS

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Here's the special Earth Day episode of Game Dungeon! This is arriving MUCH later than I wanted it to, but managed to make it happen USA time in any event (I did not save the Earth European time for the most part). Trying to make this deadline took a lot out of me, but I sort of made it! In any event, the episode came out pretty well.

 

Next up will be Freeman's Mind, but no current estimates as far as when. More stuff coming!

 

COMMENTS

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Here is the much-delayed next Game Dungeon! I'm not happy with how long this one ended up taking to make, but I think this is a good baseline episode. Game Dungeon can stray into different territories, but this is more or less the standard I want to keep it at. It's not necessarily the best episode, but it's very Ross's Game Dungeon. Assuming I don't wreck all my time estimates again, another Game Dungeon and more Freeman's Mind should be coming this month!

 

COMMENTS

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Here's the April videochat. There's nothing too critical in here. The main news is I'm running behind on the next video, but am aiming to have it out sometime tomorrow!

 

COMMENTS

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Here's the next Freeman's Mind episode, at long last! I never meant for there to be this long a delay since the last one. Being sick accounted for a significant portion of it, I also lost a bunch of time related to legal paperwork I had to take care of (which is still ongoing), the rest I'm still not sure what happened. This one definitely had some more behind the scenes work on it than usual I originally thought about making this a shorter episode, but seeing as how it was so long since the last one, I decided to make it a longer one instead. Work will resume soon on the next one!

 

COMMENTS

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I'll be having a playsession of Zombie Panic: Source with fans on March 18th at 2PM EST. This one may have a rotation of many maps since I haven't seen the changes to 3.0 yet. Here's the server info (found in the browser):

 

Primary Server Name: AF Server ZP!S

Password: dragon

 

Overflow Server Name: AF Overflow ZP!S

Password: dragon

 

The next Freeman's Mind episode may come out today if I can figure out this damn bug.

 

COMMENTS

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Dead Game News returns! This is the new format I mentioned in the previous episode. While it's less fact-dense than before, I think overall people will find this much more watchable than the old format; much more effort was put into it writing and production-wise. This is another case where even if you know the news I'm reporting, I think you'll hear stuff from me on it that you won't hear elsewhere. Next video should be Freeman's Mind!

 

COMMENTS

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Here's the March videochat. No special announcements this time, just more videos coming! Expect a new one tomorrow, with the next Freeman's Mind following ASAP after that, though I can't exactly predict when. My plan is at least one Game Dungeon and FM2 episode in addition to that, work on a couple other videos and just videos, videos, videos for this month!

 

I was told there was some popping in the audio this time. I'm not sure if it's there in the recording, but if you have ideas on it, you're welcome to let me know. It was recorded using a USB DAC.

 

COMMENTS