Ross Scott

Ross, you were complaining about the steering being all wonky.

 

Did you not notice how fast the clock was ticking in-game? Or that every car accelerated 0-140 in like two seconds?

 

The game is running at nearly 5x speed - that's the problem. If you found a way to slow it down (where's your Turbo button?!) the steering would be fine and you wouldn't be constantly flying off the road!

Everybody keeps saying this like they think they know what they're talking about. It sucks at every speed, just in different ways. I only sped the clock up to make the video more watchable. I plan on bringing this up in a follow-up video later on, (including some words from Lazy Game Reviews!).

4th of july special episode.. for some reason reminds me bizarre movie-game i played based on movie "the independence day" (i believe game is of same name- its about when aliens attack earth, then some weird stuff happens and for no apparent reason all huge motherships explode)

Well I'll give you a hint. I'm not saying it will never happen, but I have ZERO games based on movies planned for Game Dungeon. Besides, I wouldn't mind a break from aliens after Helious.

That's the same take I got. Though I wasn't expecting that response, its something I was glad to capture. It's difficult as I know as an interviewer there are parts of the story I will never know due to NDAs, contracts, etc. Ultimately, I think hearing in Ross' voice the anger coming back, it really puts in perspective how the business can work. I'd go more into that, but that would be a way longer discussion.

Well guys I can say right now I'm really holding back from how I actually feel about it emotionally. It's not even anger so much as survival impulse, like "oh my god, I have to do something or I'm screwed." feeling which isn't exactly the same as anger. Plus Machinima is a collective entity that pulls in different directions, it's not like it's one person you can attribute things to, so it made things very frustrating. While I'm glad to be able to warn other people of my experiences with the company, in general I prefer to just not think about them at all most of the time. This may sound stupid, but I think of the experience more like a torturer I had to deal with. I'm not equivocating it to actual torture, but I'm glad I escaped and don't want to go back to it.

I think I know what the next one is, but I'm keeping mum for now.

Were you right?

 

 

I originally meant to have this episode a few days after the last one, but that didn't come close to happening. While this is another arcade-ish game, there's definitely more than meets the eye with this one. While I still hope to cover some more recent games at some point, once you watch this episode, you'll see why this game was high up on my list to cover. Also I found out while in production that apparently Men In Black 3 also make a reference to Andy Warhol being connected to aliens. I had not seen the movie at the time I made my comment, so it's just a coincidence. In all fairness, thinking Andy Warhol has something to do with aliens is hardly a new idea. Next episode coming on July 4th if all goes well!

 

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Hey everyone, I have another interview I did not long ago that recently went up here:

 

Interview link

 

It was for the podcast "My So Called 8 Bit Life" where he covers various topics related to videogames or whatever else he wants. Some of the questions have been in other interviews I've done, though there was some more about my background that I haven't been asked before. There was also some stuff related to Machinima.com, but it's nothing that's not in my "Escape From Machinima" posts. I also screwed up the audio for this since Skype was secretly adding a 20dB boost to my recording volume without my realizing it until after the interview was over, so my apologies about that. I try to avoid this sort of thing at all costs in the videos, but I apparently met my match with Skype.

 

As for the videos, the next Game Dungeon should be out in a couple days at the most, then I have another one planned not long after that. Freeman's Mind won't be returning until next month however.

 

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Yeah this is great, actually Simcity 2000 is one I'm hoping I can get some MIDI experts on board with doing a conversion for.

here's the "Strike" tune, the one played while

.

Those rhythms put me in a mood, couldn't help it. Hope someone enjoys (not going to be everyone's cup of tea, sorry).

 

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This is badass. While I admit I liked the saw waves of the original, I seriously can't find a problem with your version, it nails the tone they were going for in the original. I eventually plan to do a follow-up episode to the games covered so far, I'll definitely include your mix when I do, you nailed it.

 

 

Here's the next game dungeon! This is the oldest game covered on the show so far, going back to 1984. I still intend to cover some more modern games, they're just not on the top of my list. Due to its age, you may not want to watch this episode in full screen unless you sit a good distance from the screen, the resolution is low enough that it's a bit overwhelming up close.

 

I'm glad I didn't announce when this episode was going to go up, since I honestly thought I was going to have it done last weekend with another one coming up now. That totally did not happen. Unfortunately the next episode is going to be delayed further as I'm going to be gone from the 12th to the 15th on spy business. This means I won't have replies to anything until Monday at the earliest. I hope to type up replies to many, MANY emails during that time however and send them once I get back.

 

Finally, if you didn't get your fill of pigeons and classy music playing watching this video, be sure to check out my old short,

.

 

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Used DosBOX, used NoClipping and Level warp to get to the Oracle:

Damn, I guess I remembered it completely wrong then. I'll mention that when I do a large follow-up episode later (I plan to do one after I cover 10 episodes).

Anarchy? There are several functioning nations (most are city-states), including the NCR, a fully industrialized republic controlling all of California, plus parts of Baja California, Oregon, and Nevada, and the Legion, a feudalistic barbarian horde that controls most of Arizona and Utah. The NCR produces it's own food and other goods, as do many towns (not all of them are self-sustaining, though). What are you referring to with this comment? The east coast? The entire west coast? The Mojave? The world in general?

I still think it ranges from anarchy to developing nations at best. All the power in the Fallout world feels fragile and has many exceptions beyond its influence. This isn't really the sign of a developed society. I say anarchy because in real anarchy, you DO have pockets of organization with different idealogies, because anarchy in itself is a temporary state. Like in Fallout 1. The ghouls are a giant cult, there are large groups of wandering bandits, you have small farming villages, you have small closed-knit communities like Junktown, you have a small theocracy with the brotherhood of steel, you have merchants doing whatever in the hub. Everybody is doing their own thing, that's anarchy. In later games, some larger groups emerging, but they're warring and their hold isn't secure at all, nobody has obvious overall control, that may not be anarchy, but it's not really society either. It's more like warring tribes with more technology. As for the water thing, in addition to no almost no area in any of the games looking like it has remotely enough food and water to last for more than a few weeks, in Fallout 3 they say the water is radioactive and plant life basically can't grow, yet somehow this has lasted hundreds of years without everyone dead. To me that's just lazy writing.

 

Anyway, I don't really want to go further into a Fallout debate, but I'll say that Fallout feels squarely post apocalyptic, rather than dystopian. Strife to me feels dystopian. Post apocalyptic to me is Fallout, The Road, Road Warrior, Book of Eli, Walking Dead. Civilization has collapsed and hasn't really rebuilt yet. Dystopian is 1984, Brave New World, Soylent Green, Equilibrium, Hunger Games. Established society exists, but has clear oppression and / or very hollow or twisted values along with it.

I played the original up through that point, you can BARELY make out the pixels of SOMETHING that is there looking up, it wasn't obvious to me what it was at all.

 

First, at that point of the game you are not supposed to know what exactly it is;

 

Second, even when using the original's limited vertical look (as seen here:

), you can clearly see it in detail.

That guy is using an engine port, the colors for his map screen aren't the original's.

 

EDIT: On his episode 1, he says he's using Zdoom. I mean it's possible my memory's completely off, but I remember TRYING to see what was there in the original, and I couldn't beyond just the very bottom pixels. Keep in mind, the port isn't necessarily 100% accurate to original Strife, just really damn close.

When you said that there so few games that had a mixture of primitive and future tech, were you including the Fallout series?

No, I consider Fallout a little different. Fallout is a state of anarchy, not a stabilized feudal societal. Also, I am overthinking this, but I always thought of Fallout as a totally implausible scenario even with mutants and robots, etc. (except maybe the first) because everything is so dry it's just not sustainable for anything more than a short period of time. Food production just doesn't work for that in the long term. I mean hell, everyone living in the southwest is only doing that because diverting water flow from the colorado river. You need SOME pockets of real agrarian development in order for people to live out in the desert.

 

A nitpick: That Thing that floats over the Oracle that you said we are not supposed to see in the original 1996 game because it will spoil some things? You CAN see it in the original game,

I played the original up through that point, you can BARELY make out the pixels of SOMETHING that is there looking up, it wasn't obvious to me what it was at all.

Well, I guess I should fire up GZDoom and give this a go!

Jesus, Ross, now I HAVE to play this game

As a warning, I did spoil some of the locations and best lines in the game, but you have some big suprises in the story that I didn't mention.

 

A quick check says CarnEvil is your longest video by a nose

I guess I repressed the memories, I was working around the clock to get that one done in time.

 

Just wondering, how are you going to handle that promise to finish Half-Life before the end of the year? Don't push yourself into a corner!

I'll just drop RGD for a while and do nothing but FM later on if it gets too close.

 

 

Well I totally screwed up my estimates as to how long this episode was going to take. I ended up needing about 250% the time I thought I would. In my defense though, this is actually the longest video I've made to date, clocking in a little over 30 minutes, so you may want to watch it in chunks. I tried to edit it down to just the stuff I wanted to say, but there was a lot of it. Besides Strife, I also cover some of Doom, MIDI music, FPS design and control in general, so there's a lot in here. In any event, if you like the other Game Dungeon episodes, you should like this one too. I think the pacing on it is pretty good, despite the length.

 

Seeing as how my time estimates were as bad as usual, I'm giving no estimate on the next episode other than I'll get to it as soon as I can. I plan on making a few more Game Dungeon episodes, then I'll be returning to Freeman's Mind. If you're coming only for Freeman's Mind, maybe check back in a month? Also I'm going to do everything I can to get completely caught up on email sometime this month, I'm still woefully behind on that.

 

More stuff coming!

 

EDIT: I'm wrong, CarnEvil was longer than this, but not a lot.

 

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Long videos such as Game Dungeons take quite a bit of time for me to subtitle.

I think the ONLY episode I was in a rush to get subtitled was FM27. There's really no rush at all from me, don't worry about it.

Easily the best episode yet. Accurate high too... (according to many of my friends that have had a LOT of experience)

I actually haven't done any drugs, though I have known many stoners. I was basing this on morphine being a depressant and sometimes creating a euphoria feeling, but not necessarily impeding higher brain functioning. I have had weed incidentally before when I was fixing a friend's computer at the same time he was hotboxing the room with it with his friends. I actually hated the experience, it made me much more aggressive. I could FEEL myself become dumber and found it very frustrating. I remember thinking that if I never knew what it was like to feel smarter than this, it might not be so bad, but as it was, I found it horrible.

I'm fine with either. Game Dungeon is great, too.

 

I like the fact that you didn't make Freeman stupid high like most people do. Like how drunk people are portrayed as really retarded in movies or TV. He's still intelligent and notices things, he's just kind of loopy.

I figure Freeman has experience.

 

 

(Downloadable copy will be up later)

 

Subtitles: English

 

More Freeman's Mind! I'm mostly happy with how this episode turned out, it's a longer one, Freeman covers a lot of ground in this one. This one also has a particularly good jumping off point I wanted to get to. On that note, some of you will be disappointed, but I'm taking a break from FM for a little while as I want to catch up on Game Dungeon. I've already started on it and hope to have it out in about a week, possibly sooner. More coming after that!

 

EDIT: Could be a little longer than a week for the next game dungeon, it's going to be a long one.

 

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*Carmageddon- reincarnation (one of my childhood favourite games)

I love how they're getting the original actors back for Max Damage and Die Anna, they still look pretty good.

I may make an official post on this later, but I wanted to give everyone here the first shot at this. Since we've made the migration to the new site code, we can better support additional reviewers for Gorilla Gong now. What this means is essentially any good machinima video (or some non-machinima, more on that below) you find, you could submit to the site, do a short write-up on, then you would be credited with having selected it. We want to get as much good machinima on the site as possible. Alternately, while this isn't as big a priority to us, if you're familiar with lots of non-machinima gaming content (live-action, particularly entertaining let's plays, or reviews, etc.) we can also add that to our "Banana Pit" section, although that won't be appearing on the front page. Our focus is still machinima first and foremost. Here are the requirements for being a reviewer:

 

-Have good video taste (this is subjective, but we still want to try to keep standards up)

-Ability to follow simple directions when submitting a video

-Ability to write up a couple sentences (or longer if you want) on any video you submit, particularly what it's about and why you chose it.

-Be okay with the fact that I'm essentially boycotting any content that has the Machinima.com watermark on it (we don't block the videos/creators themselves, just the branding)

-Send me links of at least 5 of machinimas you like so we can get an idea of your tastes. To lower bias, try to send me ones that I have NOT put up on GG myself.

 

We're looking for videos that have some quality to them. These don't have to be the best videos you've ever seen, but they should have some appeal to watch for one reason or another. This reviewer offer extends to anyone who is a fan of machinima and wants to see the format grow. If you're interested, go ahead and email me at [email protected]

Yeah I mentioned it in another thread, but I'm definitely looking forward to Unity, the teaser trailer suggests they'll represent the French Revolution well. The setting alone has the potential to be so badass.

Well a dictatorship has its advantages. Basically, not acting civil can get people banned. I'm not going to purge anyone based on their opinions, but if people can't act like adults, I get enough of that elsewhere on the internet.

Now stop feeling guilty 'bout all the money you raised. We know you'll make us some cool shit. Excited about the Game Dungeon!

Oh I don't feel GUILTY about the money, I was just concerned when I made it that it would alienate fans. Thankfully, it didn't. Hell I can put the money to use, I'd have to be loaded before I started feeling guilty about it, and even then, I would do something about it. Even with the donations, my income is below the median and average income for the USA, unless I was exploiting people, guilt doesn't enter into it.

 

And more Game Dungeon coming! A lot of it!

Sorry for the late reply, had a busy month or so.

 

I'm just waiting for the next civil war...

I'm not sure we would have a civil war so much as some sort of revolution. If it was a civil war, who would the sides be?

 

The problem is that all the legal channels are either mostly or totally corrupted right now... When they're all too corrupt for a fix to go through legal channels, then there isn't any choice.

Yeah sadly, this is pretty much my conclusion. I think you could theoretically have some sort of peaceful separation on a small scale, but I think trying to remedy our biggest problems through legal channels is mostly impossible nowadays.

 

We only have one shot left, really. State governments are too weak for the most part to be worth buying, since the federal government technically has control over them. State governments have repeatedly managed to spit in the federal government's face, doing things like legalizing marijuana (a schedule-1 narcotic, which is ridiculous because it's harmless) for medicinal purposes in most and recreational use in two, including mine. These things were done despite corporate interest being against the legalization of marijuana. Our best chance for a peaceful resolution is a constitutional amendment, which can be passed if a 2/3rds majority of the state governments can agree on it. One state pushes for the amendment, they vote, and if they succeed they can remove corporate personhood, and put a limit on individual campaign donations (say, $100) so that the wealthy can't keep buying our politicians. We should also prevent congressmen from working outside of government after they've been in office so they can't be bribed with a lucrative job, and ban private political advertising. That way, congressmen don't have to sell out to be elected like they do now.

Big money infiltrates interests on local and state levels also when they see issues with the potential to threaten them, it just requires more work and money than concentrating on the federal level.

 

instead the fighting gets nowhere to solving the problem, even if a new government is installed. It all ends up being a facade.

Yeah honestly I see this as the most likely outcome in the event of a revolution. There's a REASON I find the French Revolution so interesting, they overthrew the ruling class without a clear plan or focus and it was just violence and anarchy until a dictator with a plan to solve problems stepped up (with military force).

 

But yeah, it's obsession with power and more wealth. What the hell? Can we convince them that the surplus money that they are hoarding has no real value because they're not going to use it anyway?

You know, I can't help but think of my struggle with Machinima.com and my video rights. I am convinced there was literally NOTHING I could say to them that would make them see the reason of what I was trying to do (and what they agreed to via contract). The ONLY thing that worked was threat of legal action against them. Some people simply don't respond to reason.

 

And in another 250 or less, the same problem crops right up. Animal Farm illustrates this perfectly. Is there really a point?

I've actually contemplated this dilemma a long time and came to the conclusion that in order to increase the odds of a society prospering in the long term, you would have to test for and identify sociopaths and prevent them from obtaining positions of power, or at least have extra, rigorous, morality training for them. The thing is, anyone can make horrible mistakes and cause a lot of damage. But any sane person with a conscience won't do it OVER and OVER and OVER again with zero remorse. Sociopaths without proper moral training are essentially saboteurs to any society.

 

Is the situation really that bad in the US?

Yes and no. The USA is nowhere near the state some of the revolutions other countries have had, but at the same time, our system is so thoroughly corrupt now, it can no longer be fixed. So it's like we're clearly driving over a cliff and we can no longer break or swerve away in time before we go over it.

 

Has everyone forgotten that education makes a lot of difference?

It does, but it's all interconnected. The same forces that have corrupted our government have also gutted our education as well. I'm convinced another cornerstone of a long lasting society would be to have education and culture that instills productive, moral, and sustainable values.

 

A lot of you guys seem to be ganging up on BTGBullseye, but I totally understand his perspective on the revolution part. I don't think his message is "violence will solve this" which is what people seem to be attacking him. To be clear, widespread violence is nothing to welcome at all, but the question to be asking is "What's the alternative?" We both feel the legal system can not remedy this, it's too far gone. I think massive cooperation among people to fix this is impossible, we're too divided and brainwashed as a nation. I personally think a radical solution might be possible with no bloodshed, but they're all shots in the dark and likely pipe dreams. This quote of his says it all guys:

Doing nothing will definitely make it worse, doing something might make it better or worse, but at least it has a CHANCE of making things better.

I think you guys view him as a warmonger and he probably views many of your opinions as pie-in-the-sky thinking. I think it's just a matter of a logical conclusion based on the assumed truths. Again, what would be the alternative to fix our society in its current state?