Ross Scott

I believe that EA is not really all that evil most of the time. They are just that perfect mixture of incompetence and stupidity that makes them seem malicious when they are actually just idiots.

I too agree not blaming anything on malice that can be interpreted as incompetence (I think Westwood and Bullfrog both fell under this category). However, I also think it's clear that the people who do make controversial decisions at EA don't care at ALL about gaming, just profit margins. So in essence you have incompetence combined with people who don't care about the consequences of their actions other than any immediate financial ramifications.

 

I might be overinterpreting the concept, but politics necessarily gets involved in such an exposition one way or another because of the inherent conflict present in demonstrating the virtues and shortcomings of old and obscure games as games to be played as opposed to merely nostalgic artifacts of yonder like many among the older generation of gamers relate to old games, or as ridiculous oddities like many people reviewing old games portray them to be.

Well I'm mostly focusing on low-res games right now, because I don't have enough faith in my system to do real-time recording at higher resolutions. I think the main thing I need is a SSD for that, once I have one I plan to expand into later games as well. You're absolutely right though in that I view these games as something to be played (or avoided) rather than a nostalgia trip. The underlying theme about RGD is I really have to have something to say in order to cover a game, rather than cover it for its own sake. If a game seems unremarkable in every way AND I can't think of any tangential topic to tie in with it, I doubt I would cover it.

Although what they did can mostly be chalked up to incompetence, I'm pretty sure that wasn't it at all. I'm pretty sure they intentionally sunk their own ambitious, highly-anticipated game because they were afraid it would make the gaming public smarter if they made it as well as they could.

I think it's more about the people making business decisions wanting what they perceive to be as safe bets as possible. So once a game's mechanics get too complicated or get too tricky for everyone to understand, it may make them nervous, thinking the game will be more of a great niche status. Most of what EA and many other large game companies do is consistent with them caring much more about short term profits, above everything else, especially game quality.

 

Here's a big list of EA being a bit evil starting from 1994 up till early this year.

Most of this list seems consistent with being short sighted assholes in the name of trying to turn more money as fast as possible, even if it comes at cost to the game, developers, etc. I unfortunately have difficulty calling most of this evil, just a horrible precedent for the industry. Whether any of that is evil or not would be dependent on more specifics, like if they intentionally lied to the development teams as to their intentions, created false hopes, broke promises, etc. I don't have access to that information, so I would say it's entirely possible they've been run by greedy assholes who don't realize what they're doing.

 

It was the DOS version though, with the glorious bleepy music that you briefly show.

That's actually the only version I played prior to review.

 

Blip.tv link

 

 

I was hoping to have more time in between this episode and the last one, but there was some time sensitive information in this one. I thought it would be a fun idea to make a birthday episode, but "fun" ended up turning into spending all day Wednesday and Thursday on this, along with doing an all nighter continuing from last night to work, making this the busiest birthday I've ever had. Regardless, I'm pretty happy with how this one came out. It's actually sort of a dual review; the first half of the video I'm reviewing Zany Golf, the second half I'm reviewing Electronic Arts. Feel free to guess which one I give a better rating.

 

This game easily has the most haunting music out of all the games I've covered so far, I still can't get the "fans" stage music out of my head. Watch this one if you dare.

 

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It looks like somebody may have beaten you to it on the translations, he PM'd me on Youtube, I've included a link to his translation in the YT description. You may want to doublecheck what he put up however.

 

EDIT:

 

Well it's definitely progress, but I'm noticing several grammatical errors, I'll replace it once a higher quality translation is done.

I've started working on the Spanish to English translation of the manual, here's a link to the doc:

Awesome, I may wait on reading it until it's completed though.

 

I'm a native speaker and was thinking about doing the whole thing myself but I'll tackle the doc tomorrow. (:

I should have thought to ask you, it slipped my mind. My guess is there will be a translation before too long. My guess is the manual will only SORT OF explain what's happening in the game, but I'm still interested in it.

 

Game reccomendation about Napoleon- Napoleon: Total war.

Well actually meant the opposite, NOT counting the Napoleon games. Napoleon was a large stabilizing force in France and his reign was pretty much after the French Revolution. I was thinking more of the Reign of Terror, where they were killing nobility left and right.

Hi,forgive my English if there are any mistakes, im from russia(yup u have a fun there>_

im writing considering the length of your videos) y, u asked previously about it, and gotten really reassured by some funs about that everyone loves to hear u talking for half an hour/ but really? its the funs that even registered hear, and 99% of your auditory is 2 lazy to do that and watch the half an hour video as well. no really current internet ppl rarely watch something for more than 5-10 minutes tops. and y there are been studies about that. u can see that as well if u visit any popular site! y they do hour-two hour video about something then cut it! so pls try do a quality stuff! not quantity of it!

This one was kind of a special exception since Eternam really stands out for me, the next ones will be shorter. Besides, just looking at popularity, none of this show is close to Freeman's Mind, so it's more of an experiment anyway.

 

Blip.tv link

 

 

Well believe it or not, I was hoping to have this video done mid-Sunday instead of right before Christmas. I'm afraid this video isn't really related to Christmas, it's just a coincidence with the timing. This episode turned out especially long, but that's because there was a lot I wanted to cover about this game. This game is damn unique, I haven't seen anything like it since. While it has enough problems with it that I wouldn't actually recommend it to anyone, if you've ever been disappointed how formulaic many games can get, this is the clear other end of the spectrum and is more memorable for me than the vast majority of other games I've played. I knew when I started RGD I'd definitely want to cover this game. The Voyager satellite has a plate with engravings on it to give a representation of humanity to potential alien life. I think if we gave a copy of Eternam to aliens, they would learn everything they need to know about humanity.

 

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Your blip TV link is pointing to Ep. 51

Ugh, I was out all day running errands, thanks for notifying me though, it's fixed now.

 

I registered just to say: the audio additions in this episode really clicked with me. I actually had a big grin on my face when Freeman slipped on the railing over the water. The water dripping effect, ears ringing, and of course the elevator music also sounded good. Kudos.

Otto's additional sound effects when Freeman was getting wedged against the gear is one of the few parts I was still able to laugh at in editing. Most of the time I burn out my ability to tell what's funny anymore the more I work with it. As for the elevator music, I was happy with an excuse to use another game soundtrack.

 

Blip.tv link

 

 

(download will be up later)

 

Here's the latest Freeman's Mind. I think this episode may set the record for the number of times Freeman has gone in and out of the water. There were sections of this level I didn't even remember, but I've actually only played through Half-Life twice before, and it was many years ago. From this point on, all I really remember up until Xen are swimming near a nuclear reactor, revolving teleporters, more scientists, and the teleportation chamber. I guess if you haven't played the game that's a bit of a spoiler, but I think the secret on that may be out by now.

 

I don't know if I'll get to another Freeman's Mind this month or not, but I have at least two more Game Dungeon episodes planned, so more videos are coming!

 

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Yeah, I would like to apologize to all of you who missed out on the episode today / yesterday.

I'll probably be out of work for a while this month, but rest assured the final track has been sent back and

you'll enjoy the awesome video soon. There's only a couple hours of Tuesday left in Poland time, I believe.

No, it will be a couple days, because I wasn't ready because I didn't know when Otto was going to reply, so I had to reschedule with TGWTG. The thing is, it's not delays that screw me, it's the communication blackouts that do when I'm expecting something. When that happens, I don't know whether to expect the next item in a day or 3 weeks. That's also why I CAN usually guarantee RGD, since I can handle all the editing on that myself.

BUT Ross made a totally new system especially for me

I resurrected an old system that was missing a power supply, Magda's making it sound like I'm spending big, we're still living quite frugally.

I just wanted to let people know I was originally planning on releasing the next Freeman's Mind today, the dialogue is done, but I'm still waiting on getting an audio track back, so I'll just keep working on the next video instead, which will be another Game Dungeon episode. If I finish it before I get the next FM audio track, I may release it out of order than I originally planned. Either way, I can safely say to expect at least 3 videos this month, maybe an additional one if I'm lucky. As a warning though, I don't have any Christmas videos planned, I wasn't really ready for one, but hopefully I can have something like that next year. Also it looks like signing up on the forums has been broken for a little bit, we're working to get that fixed ASAP. Anyway, more stuff coming!

 

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I don't recommend AMD GPUs or other hardware because their QC has issues,

You say "other hardware", do you have any evidence that AMD CPUs are less stable than Intel's (their 5ghz monster non withstanding, that strikes even me as nuts)? And I don't mean anecdotal evidence, but some statistical report where many samples were tested? Assuming fans are running properly and there's no overclocking, CPUs are usually the last thing to go on a system. I worked on a lot of systems when I had a job as a technician and cases where the CPU was actually at fault (from either manufacturer) were incredibly rare. As for GPUs, I had read the Origin report that AMD GPUs failed about 3% more than Nvidia ones and they had driver issues. I haven't used their drivers in a long time however, so my information on that may be outdated.

 

and as a result it makes is far easier to do anti-aliasing on Nvidia

Could you clarify / provide some benchmarks to this? Like an example where no AA in a game between competing cards is comparable, but then the same game Nvidia pulls ahead with AA on? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I hadn't heard this before. Also, what kind of AA, MSAA, SGSSAA, or shader-based? If you're saying MLAA v. FXAA, that's kind of moot point since AMD can run FXAA as well via injector.

Hey, I guess this is late, just some general advice:

 

-You'll see the most performance the more powerful the videocard is. This should be your first concern if you want maximum gaming performance out of your system.

-As long as the CPU isn't bottom rung (nothing you listed in the links I saw is), it's probably fine

-if possible, you may not want to cut corners on your power supply, since that can be one of the biggest things that determine stability of the system

 

The Cyberpower link didn't load for me I'm afraid.

As promised, here's the rest of the race courses. Renders and maps done in Blender. Order is: course 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and finally main menu. As you probably notice, the maps repeat infinitely, which is why you can endlessly drive straight on that highway on course 3.

Wow, this is amazing, I never thought I'd see those mapped out. I definitely suspected that they looped endlessly as tiles. I am very surprised that the main menu had a full map as well, it looks like an entire additional level that essentially got wasted. Thanks a bunch for doing this, I have some questions however:

 

1. The maps seem to only contain the terrain data, was it possible to extract the information for 3D objects and sprite placements or is that much more difficult?

 

2. Since I made the video, someone was kind enough to send me a copy of the Cape Cod expansion for the game. If I sent that to you, would it be difficult to map out that data as well?

 

3. The translation to blender + the lighting settings make the colors much less vibrant than the original game. Is it possible to get them closer to the original settings or is that too much of a pain? For faces that are dithered, it seems like the solution would be to just average the two colors they're using. The reason I ask is the contrast between the roads and some of the terrain is a little low. I'm thinking once this is polished a little more, it would be good to submit this to vgmaps.com either in your name, or under my account, giving you credit of course.

 

4. While I'm afraid I don't know blender, would you be interested in releasing the model files for this? I'm thinking it might even be possible someone might be interested in porting this to another engine as a map for it, like Source or UDK or something.

 

All in all, thanks a bunch, it seems like I'll have to make a follow-up video to this later on.

Congratulations on the Big Move, Ross - Poland is a terrific place to be, a fantastic culture going through an epic digital media boom

Yeah it's a mix, here's a quick breakdown from my perspective compared to living in Virginia:

 

Pros:

-Better quality food

-lower cost of living (especially food + utilities)

-better internet

-way better public transportation network

-no fear of having my life ruined financially if there's a medical emergency

-security / door sturdiness of apartments on average way better (I had my place broken into in USA, makes me paranoid about such things)

-Polish people more likely to protest against bullshit

-less bugs

-Polish people have more fireworks on New Year's Eve than Americans do on Independence Day

 

Cons:

-More air pollution

-tap water isn't good for drinking

-don't know many people

-kind of miss having more access to forest

-higher taxes (though this evens out with other things)

-incredible amounts of paperwork to deal with regularly

So Paypal has been converting my Euros to Dollars, so you can convert them back to Euros, minus their cut? Next time I'll just mail it. Anyway, welcome to Europe, if it's not to late already for that.

Actually they get converted to zlotys. And sure, I guess I should mention that anyone is welcome to visit me, I'm located in Gdańsk specifically.

 

Heh, Poland is indeed nice. I do reccommend visiting Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well. Sweden is also nice.

Well I burned through a lot of my resources getting here, that would be a longer term goal. Also I eventually want to go .

 

Hey everyone, here's an update you probably weren't expecting. I normally try not to have endorsements for other videos on this site unless it's something I'm involved in as requests for that can get out hand fast. Well I'm making an exception to this rule because my girlfriend has made some videos of her own and wanted me to promote them, so that mean it's pretty much federal law that I have to endorse them. So behold, Magda Conquers Black Mesa:

 

 

 

 

This is essentially "Freeman's Mind", except in the Black Mesa mod with her expressing her own thoughts. I've received several questions from people asking before if I plan to redo Freeman's Mind in the Black Mesa mod. I do not plan to, so this is as about as close as you're going to get from me, except it's not me. I had no involvement in the creation of this, this was entirely my girlfriend's initiative. All I did was show her how to do basic recording and editing.

 

I enjoyed the first episode, although my biggest criticism about her videos is her mouse movements are quite twitchy, so it may make you a bit motion sick watching it in full screen. Also I'd like to emphasize that while I am happy to give her free publicity on her videos and enjoy parts of them, I am playing Pontius Pilot and washing my hands of the matter regarding feedback on them. If you have compliments, criticisms, or requests for them, go ahead and post them here, or better yet, on her Youtube channel, but I'm not getting involved beyond this (admins will still ban anything that's not civil however). This is so I don't have to defend her videos against every potential criticism made on the internet. I would set my modem on fire before doing that.

 

Also it's worth mentioning that you may notice Magda has a non-American accent. This is because she is Polish. By extension, I have also been in Poland for a while now, although I was back in the USA during the summer last year when I had the meet-up. I originally made an announcement about this on April Fool's Day a while back to create some ambiguity however. Some people are still confused about that, so this is a good a time as any to set the record straight, I am actually in Poland. I fell for the attractive-intelligent-woman-throwing-herself-at-you trick. Even James Bond falls for that one. And really, I think the best April Fool's Day jokes are the ones that cause doubt not just on April Fool's Date, but even years afterwards.

 

Anyway, more work is being done on my videos as well, expect more this month!

 

P.S. Magda says subscribe to her channel!

 

 

 

ADHD version: Ross's girlfriend made some Freeman's Mind-esque videos! Ross is in Poland!

 

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Looks like we're finally getting near the end of the game.

Funny guy.

 

Blip.tv link

 

 

(download will be up later)

 

Well this took longer than I expected, mostly due to paperwork not related to the video, then me getting sick. I still am sick, so all videos are unfortunately on hold until I get better. Once I am better, I plan to keep coming out with more all through December. I don't have a lot else to say because I'm sick. It fills my thoughts mostly with "blaaaaaaaah" and want to roll on the floor like a dog.

 

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[email protected]

 

this is the email for support for modders. they can probably accomodate you. I used it a year ago maybe for a mod on portal 2 that i was trying to create and their response was quite prompt.

I'll probably try that next, this isn't really a mod the way CP stuff is (it's a ton of lines + a database file, nothing very technical), but it's the closest bet out of their categories.

 

I think the problem is that your pack has too many lines. Your workshop page says it has over 600 lines.

It has 603 (more will be added if it gets approved). They said 600 is a soft limit. I fulfilled all the mandatory lines and left out a lot of item-based optional ones to cut down the size. That can't be the issue.

Hey everyone, I'm still very sick, but at least now my head no longer feels like it's caught in a vice. The next Freeman's Mind episode is coming soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to make a news update on the status of the Freeman's Mind Announcer Pack for DOTA 2 as it just hit 10k votes on Steam. As promised, I've release a downloadable copy of the trailer for those of you interested in it (I'll have an episode page on the site made for it later). More importantly I wanted to give you an update on the status of the pack itself. Right now the pack is currently in limbo. A few weeks ago I received the following email from Valve:

 

"

Thank you for your Steam Workshop Contribution Freeman's Mind Announcer Pack.

 

Unfortunately, for various reasons, the developers of "Dota 2" had to flag it as "incompatible", so it cannot be used within "Dota 2".

 

You can learn more about what kinds of items are accepted and why certain items are marked as "incompatible" here: http://www.dota2.com/workshop/

 

The Steam Support Team

http://www.steampowered.com

"

 

Unfortunately they have not told me WHY it's incompatible. I can only assume it has partially due to the title containing the word "Freeman" as they may feel that hits too close to home with their intellectual property. If that's the case, I'll just rename the pack to something else, like "Ross Scott announcer pack." Really that should be the only issue as far as IP goes. A bit of a spoiler, but the pack does NOT contain lines like "this one time at Black Mesa I saw this" or "that looks like a vortigaunt", none of the lines themselves contain any direct references to Valve's IP. Instead, I wrote all the lines with the same sort of personality established in Freeman's Mind, so it's more like Freeman "After Hours" rather than being full of HL2 references.

 

It's also possible Valve has changed the rules for announcer pack submissions again in the time I submitted it to the time I received that email. It's also possible they don't like one line and it needs to be changed, or they just don't like the sound of my voice, the point is I have NO IDEA why it's being marked as incompatible. So while I could just try renaming the pack and resubmitting it, but my intuition tells me if I do that, I'll just receive an email identical to the one above a few months from now with no other explanation. I do think this is kind of lame of them to send an email like that, but then give no other explanation and no means to contact them.

 

Despite being told it's "incompatible" via email, the actual entry on Steam has NOT yet been marked as "incompatible" or "rejected", so that makes me think there is hope for this still seeing the light of day.

 

I do not know who I should contact about this. The email sent to me was from [email protected]. I've tried contacting their front desk email, but have received no reply. If anyone has information how to actually communicate with someone at Valve about what needs to be fixed, please let me know. Until then, I'm completely in the dark on this. I'll keep trying to figure out what the holdup is once I get better.

 

ADHD version: Ross is still sick. Valve is playing "guess what number I'm thinking of" with the DOTA 2 voice pack.

 

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I can check this later, but I could swear I saw screenshot for something like this on mobygames.com when I was researching a game from the 90s I played in a computer lab that had a similar theme. All I remember was that it had good graphics (so VGA), took place in a suburban area, and you were testing the salinity of the local stream.

 

I could maybe find out which game that looks like yours, but Mobygames.com has more or less ruined their navigation for me as it take FOREVER to load screenshots, so I can't really preview it. In the meantime Abandonia.com has a section for people trying to identify old games, you may want to post this there too.

Hey this is just some quick news:

 

I am sick as a DOG right now. I feel like Pinhead from Hellraiser. I guess it's some kind of flu. I forced myself to finish the dialogue to the next Freeman's Mind on Thursday however, right now I'm just waiting on getting the sound effects back, then I'll finish the video and put it up right afterwards. All other video production is halted until I get well again, I've been in agony the past couple days. Once I am better, I'll do another FM episode (after the next one) and RGD as planned, but I don't see it happening for November anymore though.

 

Also the forums are currently under siege by spam attacks. We're working to resolve it ASAP, but it may be a few days before it's sorted out.

 

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