Ross Scott

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.

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.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » 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

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 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. 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.

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.

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. 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.