Ross Scott

Expect another experimental video later this month with two more in the works (but no set release dates).

 

 

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I may be a little late on that afterall, but it's not far behind.

 

Ok, I found a download for Die Hohlenwelt-Saga

You should post this in the follow-up episode thread instead.

Hey. I'm one of the devs contracted by Night Dive to work on Strife: Veteran Edition, and also one of the two guys who did the reverse engineering work it's based on from Chocolate Strife. Wanted to say I loved Ross's original review of the game, which I found during SVE development and that it was an influence on several things we tweaked and added, like automap objective markers and making a way to get out of some of the dead end situations. Was happy to see the re-release get acknowledged in this latest video. Being huge fans of the game, we put our hearts into the remake and tried to give it things that would be a great incentive to grab it even if you had previously "acquired" the game, in whatever manner For a game that old, you know it's going to have entered that phase. Of course I cannot speak on sales or expected profits, as Night Dive Studios handles all that; I was just a contractor I think it has proven to be one of their most successful titles though.

Wow, thanks for the comment! I hope I got the crediting right on reverse engineering it. I knew there was a lot of porting work done later on, but the Vavoom guy was the very first person I knew of who did it (I was desperately hoping for a Strife port many years back since I wanted mouse aiming) and shared his work afterwards.

 

Going back and playing it, I honestly can't put my finger on what exactly I like so much about it. I mean the voice acting is a definite part of it, and the plot is interesting, but something about that game really feels like its own world, compared to a lot of other games which feel more staged.

 

Also I actually had an original copy of the game, you don't get the video intro in the abandonware copy!

I think something that's ignored a lot in this kind of debate is how market-focused the corporate mindset is. It's easy to assume that the business model behind this is Take the Money and Run, but it’s frustratingly more complicated than that. From the way the corporations and merchants see it, a game being online-only means it has a clear, inherent possibility of being shut down. A possibility that is presumably obvious to the consumer. So, legally, it can be inferred that any customer willing to buy an online-only game is making a conscious decision to buy said game with full understanding of the risks involved. A few people on this thread mentioned making laws about this, and I can guarantee that the legal argument used to continue the practice would be similar to the one I just stated.

 

People assume these games have no reason to die, but why? There's no divine law stating that a game, by definition, must have some form of permanence. Nor is it considered illegal to sell people a product that will eventually be discontinued by the company. Logically, there's no reason it *has* to be done that way, but it works, people still buy it regardless and while its very lazy its not actually anything that's illegal or even approaches an illegal act. They sell it at the full price of a regular game. So what? This is a free market, unfortunately. We don't use a system where governments and civil populations are allowed to micromanage the price of any random commodity. Nor, for that matter, outlaw certain commodities just because they aren't a "good deal".

Somebody can probably put this into better words than I can, but my mentality is this issue transcends "inherent risk" or not a "good deal", because it's active destruction of culture. It illicits a shock reaction out of me, similar to what I would feel if I saw somebody burning an original painting. Left unrestrained, the free market can operate in a largely socipathic nature. This isn't something as obvious as a public safety issue where it's apparent to everyone that the practice needs to be banned, thus we have no protections against it. It's folly to assume that consumers are well informed about this. I've seen videos of people breaking down in tears over Star Wars Galaxies being shut down. People like that clearly are not prepared at all for a game being shut down. Or hell, from Battleforge:

 

"I enjoyed this game for 3 years, but if I knew they would close this game after 4 I wouldn't have invested a single second in it"

 

Gamers (as a whole) are some of the most easily deceived consumers out there unfortunately, ranking a little better than illicit drug users. If they weren't, we wouldn't have encroachments of microtransactions on a full-priced game, literally selling a game ending as DLC, or killing games. I think any study will show the VAST majority of gamers do not WANT these anti-consumer practices, they're just tolerated because consumers are either ignorant, or are so interested in the unique entertainment that they buy them in SPITE of the practices. Again, someone else can probably state this better than I can, but I see these practices as setting the worst precedent imagineable for the art / entertainment world. It says that it's mandated to simply destroy culture by design, which I can't see as anything other than dystopian. Like you said, there's no legal ground to basis this one (except maybe predatory practices), but I'm simply unable to see this practice as acceptable. Venting with this video is about all I can do

 

 

I suspect this Game Dungeon is going to get a lot more views than most of the others. At least in relative terms.

Wow, wasn't aware he watched any of my videos.

Physics is typically server-side, otherwise every player would see a different state of the world. Some games which don't care much about physical state (like CS: GO) have client-side physics, but games like Garry's Mod where the physical location of items is shared with every player, the physics is serverside. Animation is usually client-side when it comes to actually performing the blending and IK and actually manipulating the skeleton, but the animation state machines are usually server-side (if a player is crouching, walking, or running, every other player should know about it). Of course, many other components are often at least partially serverside. Usually games will have their own networking systems instead of using TCP (usually UDP with some added features), since TCP is built for a web browser and so doesn't care much about latency. These networking systems are obviously partially serverside, and can often be middleware.

Really? I thought the physics would typically be client-side since

1. That can vastly reduce the load on the server

2. Most of the time physics are effects that don't effect the actual gameplay (clippable ragdolls, particle effects, etc.). So if your explosion looks a little different to you than others, that typically doesn't matter.

 

Most of the at-risk online games are MMOs, where physics don't get too heavy except for effects. In something like World of Warcraft, you don't even have ragdoll physics, and instead a stock animation would be played when an enemy dies. I think the most the server would do is verify the location of the body. Some non-typical MMO games that come to mind for online only are Planetside 2, World of Tanks, Path of Exile, Diablo 3. For something like Planetside, I'd be surprised if the physics are done server-side. If you throw a grenade that bounces, does the client calculate that, then the server verifies the path? I found this thread, and they seem to think that it's clientside. Path of Exile has been famous for "desync" which makes me think that could be a client-side thing, though I could be wronng.

 

My guess is SOME physics are done on the server, but I would think not the bulk of it.

I do agree that it gives a headstart to modders. However, I've found many other modders I've worked with are rather... cynical, and it actually backfires. People would rather be given nothing than be given half of what they wanted, surprisingly enough. I've worked on a Total War mod, and whenever a new modding tool was announced people would immediately point out limitations in the system and get very angry - to the extent that they'd be happier when left without any sort of developer support at all!

Well, you are assuming they would want to use the same exact middleware. While it IS more faithful to the original, sometimes it's simpler or even better to replace the module with something else.

Let's say that the developers wanted to use Havok as their physics engine. By removing it and releasing the source code, the modders might be want to be unfaithful and use another physics engine, which may be a hypothetical free iteration of Havok, or another physics engine which might be open source. Now, this is stepping into mod territory from total preservation territory, but if that's the only way of keeping at least some aspect of the game alive, I'm fine with it.

Heck, if there's a community for that game after some time went by, they might even improve upon it with some tinkering and state-of-the-art software. That's opening a previously unmodifiable game up for total modding, and that's a pretty big stride.

Well I admit middleware can be an issue I overlooked, but I doubt stuff like Havok or RAD game tools, I'm talking about JUST getting server emulation functional again, which I would think would cut down on the amount of source that needs to be released (and middleware in use). I mean things like physics and animations are typically handled client-side. Also true preservation would be impossible for some of these games anyway. I guess I agree that this isn't as cut and dried as it could be (that's what followup episodes are for), however, we're still doing NOTHING v. releasing SOME code, SOME documents. We seem to be on the same page anyway that some sort of law regarding this would cut through a lot of the where this becomes a liability of the company bringing in money rather than the people paying for it. Again, my reasoning revolves around the game dying being unacceptable and works its way out from there. Any scenario that leads to a commercial game still being killed intentionally I see as one that needs to be changed.

So, Ross, what are your thoughts on a game that has a built-in expiration date as a selling point?

This was literally my first thought:

 

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You can't just legally rip the Havok physics engine machine code out of Source and use it in your own games... and on that matter, you can't legally rip some AI middleware out of the server software and push it into the client.

I think we're having a communication problem. You're literally describing the exact opposite scenario I was condoning: I was saying rip out the middleware (as in remove it from what you do distribute), then pass on the source code that your company did write for tinkerers of the dying game. Even then, it would be for noncommercial use only.

 

Ah, yeah we may be having a communication issue. My thoughts were a bit mixed up when I said that - here's what I meant:

 

Let's assume you are a modder trying to bring the game back to life, and the game's developers have given you the code (but without any of the middleware). If you wished to, you could theoretically rip the middleware machine code out of the server executable and plug it into the game, which would allow the game to work (with a bit of patching up), but importantly you wouldn't need to code a replacement for the middleware itself. However, such a practise is illegal if you wish to actually share the modified executable with other players - which means that creating a modified version of the game that is standalone is actually very difficult, even with the source code to non-middleware-related parts.

 

I was talking about the programmer's options when trying to revive the game's standpoint when given only source to the game without middleware, not the company's options for releasing the source.

I could be completely off base here, but I recall mods in the past where they would say "you need to download and install X,Y,Z THEN run the mod script in order for the mod to work". The idea being that their mod depended on 3rd party tools or middleware that they couldn't legally distribute, but they streamlined it as much as possible if you were willing to get the external software yourself. Could programmers take a similar approach if they were given the code to a game (and knew it used specific middleware) where the developers can't give them everything, but programmers could take the additional steps to acquire the middleware on their own?

 

EDIT:

Another thing is it's very unlikely the exact same code would be suitable at all. Scaling down your game for thousands of people meant to run on a server farm to dozens on a single server might require a rewrite of all kinds of things, but I would think the more information the fans have access to, the more of a headstart they can get trying to replicate similar functionality.

You can't just legally rip the Havok physics engine machine code out of Source and use it in your own games... and on that matter, you can't legally rip some AI middleware out of the server software and push it into the client.

[/quote[ I think we're having a communication problem. You're literally describing the exact opposite scenario I was condoning: I was saying rip out the middleware (as in remove it from what you do distribute), then pass on the source code that your company did write for tinkerers of the dying game. Even then, it would be for noncommercial use only.

 

It's mostly down to how anal the middleware companies want to be, but if they wanted to, they could effectively make the game's source worthless. They could even try and argue that their API is their legal property and can't be shared - so then what can the game developer so? Redact all the lines which actually communicate with the middleware? That's hardly practical, and the end code would be practically unreadable.

I'm still not certain how common a scenario this would be to release server source code, but you may have a point in that would be a dead scenario. But then that makes the necessity for some sort of law all the more relevant.

 

I keep thinking back to the Xbox One releases where Major Nelson chided Angry Joe saying that removing the online only requirement was impossible, then lo and behold that's what happened once it became apparent it was going to be a suicide move. Companies can adapt and make things happen if they have an incentive to. Right now they have no tangible incentive, that's why a law or completely different climate is needed. Whatever we're doing now is not only not working, it's encouraging this behavior.

Can i get a list of the music tracks you added into this video?

They're all either from the Battleforge or NFS World soundtrack. Metalforge was the end credits track, not included in the official soundtrack, but part of a free download EA had.

 

NFS World OST:

 

I am constantly enthralled in how passionate you get about these things. Yeah, corporate decisions are the worst. I work at McDonalds so I'm reminded of that constantly. This companies bringing in billions worldwide daily, yet we can't fix our ice machine because it's not in the budget. Once minimum wage went up, hours get cut. Any dip in profit, no matter how miniscule, results in drastic budget cuts for everyone. No one is safe from this, even gamers.

America's 2nd biggest employer! I actually cut a lot out of this episode because it was getting way too bitter.

 

Where did you get the time machine? (No, really how did you play the game?)

That's a story in itself, I'll probably save it for a follow-up later on.

 

That being said, I thought I'd chime in since I'm not seeing many counterpoints - I don't see any reason to characterize this practice as malevolent. Corporations routinely pull the plug on products or services, and it's not because they're supervillains who thrive on depriving people of happiness. It's because whatever they're discontinuing is no longer profitable. It's sad and unfortunate for affected consumers, but there's no logical reason why the plug shouldn't get pulled at that point. Many of the arguments I've seen follow the pattern of "company X should burn money maintaining a deprecated service so that I can have fun" - that line of thinking is self-centered. I would be outraged if Vanilla Coke were discontinued, but I'm not entitled to Vanilla Coke. I'd have no grounds to demand that they restore it, and I certainly couldn't call for legal or political action with any seriousness.

 

I liked your list of a publisher's 4 options when a game is no longer maintainable. I'm in favor of #2 ("Patch the game so that people can play it on private servers"); I think you had a good argument for why it's financially workable and saves stress to all parties. As a software developer for a company who is fiercely protective of IP, I nearly did a spit take at #3 ("Release the relevant source code for non-commercial use") - but Quake & Doom eventually got there, so who knows.

 

As for #4 - and this is really my point - I think a much more accurate characterization than "Go f*** yourself" would something like "Not my problem". It's cold, but it's not evil.

Hell, this one gets me worked up. First off, I want to be 100% clear on one point: I am in no way advocating that the company give up their IP in this situation. I think that would be a little ridiculous. Just because a game flops doesn't mean you can't try again later or sell it off and they shouldn't have to yield that. I was ONLY talking about the dead TITLE itself.

 

If you saw the previous video, I mentioned that I wasn't sure if this one counted as evil or not. I think if you're not a gamer and simply don't play games, it's hard to argue this is evil, since there is zero harm being done to you. If you like games however, it's basically the worst thing you can do to a gamer.

 

As for your argument, I feel you WOULD have a point if the game hadn't been designed to die from the get-go. I don't think companies should have to run a server forever, nor do I feel like they need to support a game forever. Those take resources. However, when your game is DESIGNED this way, knowing this is the end-game for it, then it becomes a deliberate act that is harmful to gamers. This stuff isn't an accident is the point. It's like if I'm driving a bus full of passengers and I KNOW I'm going to fall asleep at some point during the trip because I'm tired. Going ahead with it anyway would be criminal negligence at best. Now obviously that's an extreme example, but doing this with the intent that it will die I see as a form of malice for gamers. "Not my problem" only applies when you didn't actually CREATE the problem, let alone profited off it.

 

Again, releasing the source is sort of a contingency plan if everything else has gone wrong, and again, I'm NOT advocating relinquishing the IP. Hell, Valve released most of the relevant source code to Half-Life 2 on release, and their IP is still pretty damn strong. The BEST scenario is to have a failsafe option built into design. So if the server dies, you're ready and release the patch. The second best is to have enough resources to give a server patch and withdraw support, but keep selling the game. The source code release is if EVERYTHING fucked up. You didn't plan for it, you don't have the resources to make a patch, so here you go, here's the best we can do under the circumstances to save the game and make good to paying customers.

 

Like I said in the video, I'm the extremist. I feel NO game should be intentionally killed. NONE. So if a company plans for it, great. If they don't, they can still do things. But at some point, a line has to be drawn somewhere to not kill the damn game.

 

Many (if not most!) games utilize many middlewares to handle certain aspects of the game - for example, physics engines, sound engines and animation engines. Although it's perfectly legal to release the game code, usually it's not legal to release the middleware's source if you even have it in the first place - and without these middlewares, the game source is essentially neutered and useless.

Well I did say RELEVANT source. The idea here is if devs are actively going to kill a game that people paid for a game, they need to try and throw people a bone. I think it's unethical to create media with some artistic merit to it that's designed to die otherwise. So yeah, maybe you can't mod the game to have raining elephants, but they can't even be bothered to release enough code to get a private emulator up from the ashes, even though the game was in development for years and they took money from people this entire time? The bottom line is this is an absolutely preventable situation that no developer or gamer wants and if it was ENFORCED, companies would find a way to make solutions happen or they wouldn't do it in the first place.

So does Ross ever see these posts or respond to them? If I offer to model and 3D print the carnevil coin, I wan to be sure my effort isn't going to be wasted. E-mail me if you want it, Ross.

He'll read it, but it may take some time. Or you can just PM him or email him, or PM HLprincess eho is far more active than Ross, she'll deliver the message.

For the record, I MAY miss posts in here, I can get overwhelmed. Email is the best way to make sure I'll see what you have to say (though the responses can be very slow sometimes).

Hey Ross, thanks for the video!

 

You said you wanted to know what people think about the idea of a video going into bad practices on the part of gaming companies - I know I would find it very interesting, if it was done well. It would have to be very carefully documented and avoid unfounded accusations and such like the plague. But done well and with care, I would pay for it, even I hadn't already decided to support your Patreon. I want to have fun when playing games and I don't want big companies fucking it up by making the production a hell for their workers.

No it wouldn't. I would say up front that everything I'm reporting is heresay and unverified (unless someone didn't want to be anonymous). So this wouldn't be verified fact, just testimonials that are very probable to be true.

 

So you dont think the mismanagement of multiple companies that were a division of Activision isnt evil?

EA has mismanaged a lot of companies too, I think it's a dead heat competition between them and Activision. I would argue this stuff is bad, but not evil because (for the most part), their INTENTION wasn't to screw everyone involved. It's just really gross incompetence.

 

If it's Abandonware, (the game is not being supported by the company that owns the rights to the game) it isn't piracy. (this also is in the law)

I'm calling bullshit man. In the eyes of the law, that IS still piracy and technically illegal (unless you have a source stating otherwise). However, that won't be ENFORCED by anyone except maybe some sort of copyright troll company.

 

So, game like Battlefield 2 (not being sold or supported anywhere sides amazon anymore, its still in steam but not sold) is abandonware in eyes of law?

In the eyes of the law (USA at least), "abandonware" doesn't exist. Piracy isn't acceptable under any scenario.

 

Re: soundtracks, this guy has recently released an updated version of his Strife soundtrack cover. IMO it's pretty good. He also did some other games such as DOOM.

Awesome, I wasn't familiar with him. I checked out his Youtube channel, some of his tracks nail the tone, others seem to be not so great, so it's definitely a mix. his Teen Agent Prison mix is great.

The games that EA killed that I am still upset about are the Battlefront games. They just shut the servers down, and now the new one is online only, I guess that they don't want me to play the new one. I talk to people I know about this and they say "those games are old" well tell that to all of the people playing Quake 3.

Yeah this crap is scary. My guess is they'll probably regret it later on, but who knows, maybe it's this weird dystopian shift.

 

NfS uses those tint filters is less out of trying to achieve the mood and more out of because actually doing the proper lighting manually would take them a lot longer.

I don't know, a lot of the evening and night scenes looked decent to me. I think it was literally just an issue of using the wrong colors.

 

Ross, what do you think about the cancellation of Silent Hills and the removal of P.T.?

Nobody likes cancellations, but those can happen for all kinds of reasons. As for PT, I don't like seeing any game die, however this is one reason I'm kind of anti-console nowadays. It's not that I don't think people shouldn't have the functionality and convenience of a console, they should, it's that I don't think companies should be in that sort of position where they can kill games at a the press of a button. With old consoles that would never happen, new consoles you have stuff like P.T. I'm generally against anything that allows companies to kill games.

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Subtitles: English

 

Here's a new episode that's been a while in the making! I actually started on this as soon as I finished the last episode, so I'm behind on seeing what all the responses to that one were. I was working pretty hard to get this episode up today for reasons you'll find out. This is easily my most "dramatic" episode so far, but it's not a trend I plan on continuing. This episode actually contains more that I edited out of it than any other episode since while writing and recording, I noticed the tone of it kept veering in a direction I didn't want, but I'm pretty happy with how it finally turned out. In any event, I'm sure this one will spark some interesting discussion!

 

Expect another experimental video later this month with two more in the works (but no set release dates).

 

EDIT:

I may be late on the other video I was planning for this month, but it's not far behind.

 

 

LINK TO COMMENTS

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I meant to have this out a few days ago, but it went up the same day as the last video. This is a recent video interview I had with the Youtube channel Valve News Network. The guy running it (Tyler McVicker) isn't actually a representative of Valve, but he covers a lot of news related to it. He asked me an array of questions that aren't typically covered in others, including many from fans of his channel. I haven't had a chance to look at what it was edited down to since I've been very busy on the next video, but feel free to check it out:

 

Part 1:

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Part 2:

O3CkESYDR4A

 

LINK TO COMMENTS

Have you considered setting up a patreon account?

Yeah, I plan to after I get a couple more videos out. That's another video to make in itself though, so one step at a time.

 

 

Here's the first followup episode to Ross's Game Dungeon! I knew this would take a lot of work, and it did. This definitely is towards the top in the amount of editing time involved, but I'm relatively happy with how it came out and it hopefully puts a lot of burning questions and comments to rest.

 

I was originally hoping to get this episode out a week ago, since it kind of leads into a major one coming up soon. You can expect the next Game Dungeon in less than a week assuming nothing catastrophic happens. After that I'll be trying to get some new experimental videos out for a while and hopefully get into enough of a groove to get more work done on the movie.

I don't know where to put this exactly, so I'm posting it here.

 

I think that the rule enforcement here is really, really lax. Now it may be because I've been to forums where rule enforcement is quite strict in comparison, but I've seen people here who should have been banned or at least kicked for some of the things that they've said, past and present, including myself. I think we need more rigid enforcement of the site rather than catering to almost anyone with an opinion, no matter how ridiculous.

 

Anyone agree, disagree, and why?

I haven't been involved with the forums nearly as much as I would prefer to, so it's possible I've missed things. I admit though, I very rarely look at the FFA section however. Feel free to cite concrete examples of posts you think warrant kicking or a ban. I'm sure someone can think of an example, but if somebody is being civil and isn't obviously trolling, I can't think of many opinions that would warrant banning. Again, list everything you can think of. I'm not some enlightened deity that has a master plan with everything. I'm more like a captain steering a ship with a monkey wrench because the wheel fell off and keep running back between the helm and down below to alternate between steering and repairing a hull breach.

 

I'm also fine with adding more moderators if people think there are good candidates, though I tend to prefer people with a more even temperament for that role.

This is another "I'm still doing things" update since I know it's been a little while since the last video. I'm simultaneously working on three different videos. One is another experimental one (which will probably be next), the others are Game Dungeon episodes. The next Game Dungeon will be the first follow-up episode, then I have another one planned for mid-July that's been a long time in the making.

 

Besides that I'm hoping to get two more experimental shows off the ground, one of which will almost certainly be next month. Being busy with the videos is most of what I'm up to nowadays, you can pretty much assume that whenever there are long gaps of silence from me.

Hey, I plan on doing a follow-up episode soon. For people working on extracting the data, let me know how to credit you, otherwise, I'll just use your username in the video.

Hey, I think I might be able to offer some help if you further detail the system you currently use and the major flaws you encounter using it. I could aid in increasing its efficacy, at least as an attempt to pacify you until you find a more complex tool that suits you.

 

If you already have a detailed idea of what kind of software you would use, however, I could try to drum something up using your design. Just the logistics behind it should suffice (Like having a search bar you could enter tags into to search your library for songs that you manually attached the searched tags to).

The system I'm trying to use is to use custom genre tags once I identify a theme I want to cluster the music together on. The biggest problem I'm having is deciding what themes to have. I don't want TOO many, but my ideal goal is to be able to select a custom genre and just hit random play and all the music will more or less match once I've sorted it.

Hmm would the emperor has a text to speech device be considered machinima or animation?

I hadn't seen it before. I think I'd have to count it as animation, but we could definitely add that to the "banana pit" section, it's for stuff that doesn't technically qualify like that.

 

I know I would love to do write ups and reviews for machinima videos but I havent seen any in quite a while besides the ones that are being made by Jon CJG and DasBoSchitt, I do think there are alot of others out there that are still making them, I know personally my top 5 machinimas at this moment are:

5. One Life Remaining Episode 1 by Jon CJG

4. Phil Day 1 by Black Light Productions

3. Judgemental Episode 3 by RunningGunStudios

2. Grifball PSA by Roosterteeth

1. Stranger in Need by Ross (I cant help it, Ross made some badass shit with Freemans Mind, Civil Protection, the Game Dungeon etc etc, but he is one of my faves of all time)

I'll look over your entries a little later and try and send you a reply, it might be a lot easier to help out than you think.

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Hey, here's a video I actually created several months ago, but was waiting until the site had some more updates before I released it. As some of you may know, I've been involved with the site Gorilla Gong for some time now. It's slowly been growing to what I think is arguably the best machinima site out there today. We have close to a 1000 decent machinimas, all tagged and organized, I don't think you'll find a site with more quality machinima anywhere else.

 

So this video is a general promotion to let more people know about it and hopefully get some more traffic to it. The videos you see in this trailer are by no means all our best ones, I tried to pick a variety of different machinima from different creators, but there is just a ton of good stuff on the site. One of our policies for the site is we don't accept just any machinima, but only the ones that we feel are pretty decent quality. So just about all the machinima on the site ranges from "not bad" to "amazing."

 

- - -

 

REVIEWERS WANTED

 

One of the goals with this promotional video is we're hoping to get more reviewers onboard with the site. This doesn't mean you have to give full formal reviews, but rather if you spot a good machinima, you can submit it to the site, write up a short description on it, and help us add to the collection. If you watch or have seen lots of machinima, we would like to get more people involved with the site. If you're interested, here are the requirements:

 

Go ahead and email me () with the following info:

 

1. A list of at least 5 of your favorite machinimas (specifically ones that I did NOT create to lower bias)

2. Give me a description of some of your tastes in machinima videos; if there are any specific genres you prefer, or like ones based on specific games, etc.

 

We basically want to get an idea of your tastes and writing style. If we think they're good, you can become involved with the site and start contributing to what machinima gets displayed on the site. There are some rules involved, but it's really not much more complicated than following directions when submitting a video and typing up a short description on it. This offer is open for anyone who is interested, feel free to spread the word. I'll try and respond to everyone as soon as I can, but it will likely take a few days at least.

 

- - -

 

Alternately, you're welcome to submit any suggestions for new machinima in our suggestion forum, or just email me directly if you don't want to bother with registering.

 

That's about it for now, I hope to have another video out before too long. In the meantime, you have plenty of other videos you can watch!

 

ADHD version: Go to Gorilla Gong for lots of machinima videos!

 

COMMENTS

now that breakout games are covered, what about one of those games that demanded you to crop picture to certain size without some object touching crop line. These were pretty common games as well and some of them were actually very challenging- i remember one space-themed where you could shoot enemies that was extremely hard. Also they are very obscure by modern standards- i havent heard there has been new such game in last 15 years at least.

I hope you get what type games i mean, because i doubt i can explain it better.

I think the only one I played was Qix. I don't think there's enough to say for a game dungeon, but I could maybe work that into another project I'm trying to get going later on.

Very nice... I'll see about putting the games up on a torrent, simply because that's a great way to archive it across multiple storage devices.

Just submit it to myabandonware or abandonia or someplace. It's small enough they would take it.

 

For posterity's sake, could you upload the screensaver somewhere?

It's included in the .zip

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Well this ended up taking far longer for a variety of reasons, however once you see the episode, you may understand some of why. Without spoiling much, I'll say that it's possible there will never be an episode quite like this one again. In addition to that, this episode also contains more music and voice actors than any other Game Dungeon to date. That definitely slowed things down, but I think it's worth it. At the very least, there's more than meets the eye with this breakout game.

 

Speaking of music, while I do NOT promise a fast reply, if you compose music that you think would fit future episodes, go and ahead and contact me at [email protected]. While I can use a variety, the kind I find myself needing the most is laidback, upbeat music that I can talk over. Alternately, if you're a soundtrack freak like me, feel free to give advice on how to organize soundtracks more intuitively / what system you use. I made a thread on this a while ago, but still haven't come up with an ideal system yet.

 

There will be at least one more video coming this month, possibly two.

 

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