Ross Scott

October videochat with fans. At new location. I ramble a bit at first, but then get to the point. Halloween videos coming soon! Freeman's Mind should be coming November! Videos! This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

Here's the first Halloween Game Dungeon! I'm starting this far later than I intended, but expect more Halloween coming this month! This is the first video recorded at my new location and I haven't gotten the audio ironed out completely yet, but was able to make it better with filtering. The website is still partially completed, but hopefully this posts. This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

No, we're safe, that was a different episode.

I'm 10 kinds of busy at the moment (hope to have working refrigerator soon to put in perspective). I'll just say everything (downloadable files, past articles, etc.) will come back, it just may not happen all at once. daniel: I do remember some animated avatars being distracting, I may have to stick with static ones. Luis: The website is going to get an awesome promotion + video later on, but not now, this is all going to roll out gradually. The promotion will be related to a feature I have planned later that I think a bunch of people are going to like and may permanently increase traffic.

Dead Game News again! This was an episode I was undecided if I was going to make it or not, since it wasn’t too critical, but finally ended up making it. This one rounds out the previous one more than anything else and doesn’t have anything groundbreaking in it, but had some topics I wanted to expand upon. Anyway, I have a lot of videos planned for October, but I am moving in a matter of days, so I may not be able to respond to anything for a while. Additionally, the website is getting updated very soon, so you may be locked out before too long, but it shouldn’t last more than a week. If I have any updates on twitter, I’ll post them if the site is still down Comments disabled here this time since the site may start transitioning very soon (you can still post on Youtube). Note from 2018-10-25: This post has been restored, along with enabling comments. This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Here's the September videochat with fans. There's not a lot of changes since last time, most of the video is just me rambling, but I had a lot of good questions this time. This should hopefully be the LAST video at this location, as moving is still my top priority AND there are apartments I can rent now. After I move, focus will be on a spree of Freeman's Mind videos + maybe some Halloween ones. COMMENTS

Lots of comments! I was super busy when I made this, so I didn't have a chance to respond: I may address this in a future DGN video. The easiest answer I can think of would be to just keep a 1.0 version of the game with private servers on ice, release that + as much relevant source code as you can. Yes, it won't be AS good as the updated central server experience, but then you're at least left with SOMETHING at the end. Right now, you get absolutely nothing. I feel like this is a debate between whether you should get a baloney sandwich or a 3 course meal when the reality is you're starving in the desert. First, I'm not actually trying to get legislation passed. Not because I'm against it, but because I think that would be basically impossible for someone in my position. My plan is to enforce laws that are already on the books in countries where this practice counter to it, it's just no one is paying attention. Second, I'm actually with you on the "find out how making games not die can appear more profitable to non-devs." I'm acting under the assumption that's impossible. Afterall, preserving a game would require at least SOME effort as opposed to NO effort, so you lose every time. The analogy I make is it's like somebody on the street running a rigged cup game so people lose every time. He said he would be happy to run it legitimately if he could make more money doing that. Well, since he's committing fraud, that's not really possible. The only real option left is to call the cops on him. That's the mentality I'm taking here. Thanks, I'll have to mention that in a future video. I intend to reach out to them once I have something more concrete set up. I have to move first!

This wasn't the worst, those would be ones with time pressure. I hated delaying it, but at least I had that as an option. Long episodes do get harder though. And yeah, the forum post is made automatically, but then I need to manually change the post to link to it. That's something that should be fixed on the new website. You probably did catch it in a 30 second window or so. I wasn't aware of that. It really depends on the writing I think. If a videogame is only focused on the spy / combat element, I wouldn't be too interested. There's this whole weird world in Aeon Flux and the ideas they're meddling with that's the fascinating part. That's the same as the movie based one? I guess if they got the tone right I should check it out.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Here's the latest Game Dungeon! I ended up having a lot of delays on this one, so many I didn't report them all because I thought people would think I was making them up. I can say most of the issues related to that will be resolved once I move, which I'm hoping to take steps on towards the end of the month. On that note, between moving and working on the movie, there may be a longer than usual delay on the next video. That said, I think this one is solid "Game Dungeon" material and is closer to what I strive for in this show, although maybe not this long. In other news, I hope to respond to more emails and the site may go down and come back up later this month! COMMENTS

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » UPDATE: I'm an idiot, the problem WAS one of the cables, I somehow tricked myself into thinking I tested multiple ones when I didn't. Have bought a new one and am resuming recording. Feel free to continue sending any advice regarding "micro pops" I can get sometimes, not sure if the source is natural or not, though that's far less critical an issue. - - - This is a quick update / post for advice. Last night I noticed two recording sessions I made for the next Game Dungeon episode ended up being severely flawed to the point I had to throw them out. What would happen would be my voice would be recording normally, then would suddenly cut out to drastically reduced volume. It has since stayed highly erratic. People have sometimes complained of crackling in the live video chats with fans, it's possible that was a prelude to this. You can listen to a sample I recorded here: Sample of recording screw-up Feel free to email me with any suggestions if you're knowledgeable with this sort of thing. I'm really stumped as to what the problem is. THINGS I'VE TRIED SO FAR: -Swapping different microphones -Swapping different XLR cables -Trying microphone that doesn't need phantom power -Changing USB ports for my DAC -Uninstalled / updated DAC drivers -Trying different audio editors (Audition / Audacity) POSSIBLY USEFUL INFORMATION: -I am using a Focusrite Scarlett Solo DAC for my audio. I've owned it for about a year and a half. -I've had a lot of "ghosts in the machine" with my USB ports on this motherboard in the past. It got so bad using external hard drives was simply unreliable (would reliably cause file copy errors) unless I plugged them into a different port. Whenever I plugged in a device like the webcam, I would often have to plug the device back into an old port for it to work again. It got so bad I bought a PCI-E USB 3.0 add on card, which solved the problem completely. Since I wasn't experiencing any problems with my DAC, I left it plugged in to the motherboard. Since then, I've switched to the add-on card, but the problem persists. -My motherboard is an Asus P8P67. -In the past I used a Xonar DX soundcard. It had great sound, but would periodically give me severe driver problems to the point that I felt like it was unusable for the long term. I haven't used it since I had the DAC -I have not experienced any audio playback problems at any point in time, just recording. -I am absolutely willing to buy new hardware if necessary, but I don't want to waste my money if I have good equipment and made a bad diagnosis. CURRENT PLANS: -If I can find the right cables, I plan to use an old pre-amp and redirect everything using motherboard audio. If that works, the sound won't be quite as good, but will hopefully be good enough to finish the next episode. If that doesn't work, I'm completely out of ideas -This has delayed the next episode by at least a day. If I get it solved today, then I'm predicting Wednesday for its release. If not, then everything is in limbo until this gets fixed. -In the event motherboard audio works, I don't want to do that as a long-term solution (I can hear the difference between dedicated soundcard / DAC audio v. motherboard audio). I'm certainly open to suggestions. ADHD version: Ross is having for real audio problems. Will finish next Game Dungeon as soon as he gets a temporary fix. COMMENTS

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Here's the latest chat with fans. I'm still working to move out of here, but that likely won't happen until the end of the month. Besides the Game Dungeon episode I'm finishing up, there won't be much in the way of videos this month since I'm going to focus mostly on the movie. Also, it's possible the website may go down at some point this month (in fact, I hope it does so it can be updated), to use the new codebase. All it means is things will be locked down temporarily, we shouldn't lose any data. I'll have more details on that later. COMMENTS

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » New Dead Games News episode! I realize only a minority of fans watch this, but this is the one gaming issue I just can't ignore, so I'm trying to keep the torch lit on this until I can take some actual action against it. This episode is in the new format, where I only cover a couple topics, but go much more into depth on them. There's currently been multiple events going on that don't seem very significant now, but I think are a sign of things to come. I'm noticing that I'm taking a "future history" approach on these videos. Life is complicated when you're a time traveler. Next video should be Game Dungeon, I think it's the sort of game that regular viewers expect from that show. COMMENTS

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. 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. 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.