Ross Scott

Hey everyone, here are the results of the videochat for anyone who wanted to take a look at it: There was lots of rambling, but I went over a lot of things and answered a bunch of different questions. For those that don't want to watch all this, I don't blame you, probably the biggest news in this was that due to such fantastic support from the fundraiser, I plan on continuing Freeman's Mind out of respect for the viewers. Having my back the way people have this past month has made such a difference in my life that I feel like I owe it to the audience. The downside however, is I don't want to let this push aside the movie, so I won't even begin on it until after I've made significant progress on the technical end of things for the movie, specifically establishing my animation systems and having rigged character models. Even after that, progress will be slow, but hey, more Freeman's Mind in the future! This video is completely unedited and while I'm making this first one totally visible on the Youtube channel, for future ones, I thought I might post them unlisted, so that regular viewers aren't spammed by them each month. They'll still be easily accessible from the site here however. Let me know if people have suggestions for when the next monthly chat should be, I'm leaning towards December 6th, but I don't know what time yet.

I have some information on the soon-to-be monthly video chats with everyone. For the time being, I'll be starting the first chat on twitch.tv here: twitch.tv/rossbroadcast I plan to have the first broadcast at 4pm EST on Saturday, November 14th. My plan is to give some basic updates as to what's going on, then I'll answer questions or discuss topics people are interested in. I'm expecting this to be a bit chaotic (I'll have moderators, but probably not enough), but I'll just respond to good questions / comments as I read them and address what I can. Since this is on twitch, I'll also have a game running in a window, but it will probably just be one of my old game demos running so that I don't have to be distracted while I'm talking. Since it's inevitable not everyone will be able to show up, no worries. I'll put the stream on Youtube afterwards, plus I'll try and cycle the time or day for the next time so that more people can show up. Anyway, I hope to start doing this once a month as a way to stay in touch with everyone. In the meantime, I hope to be working some more on the movie this week and catching up on the massive number of emails.

Welcome to the 11th hour grand Halloween episode! I have to say, doing this episode in the timeframe I had really tore a chunk out of me. This came really close to not getting made in time and I've been working just about nonstop since the last episode. This is definitely a very Halloween episode, I doubt I'll have anything this much in the spirit of it next year. My brain is a bit fried at the moment as I've been awake for a significant amount of time. It may be a while before the next Game Dungeon, I haven't had anything close to a free day in at least 2 months. While I think the push I did these past couple months has really changed my life forever due to how much you've helped. Thanks again to everyone who has helped with that, I feel like you guys have my back more than Youtube ever did. Unfortunately, this pace I pushed on myself really isn't sustainable and I'm going to need some real time to recover. I still need to figure out what I'm doing next, but I plan to make the video chats the next priority (and reply to people) once I've recovered some. Have a Happy Halloween!

Here are my winning picks from the screenshot contest, followed by my favorite runner-ups. Congrats to Zac Moore, Bob Builder, and Jax Kenobi, who will receive a copy of Uncanny Valley. I picked ones that I felt stood out well enough by themselves without needing a lot of context and I leaned towards ones that suggested there was some deeper story going on. WINNNERS: Zac Moore: This has exactly the sort of subtlety to it that I like and that maybe something more sinister is going on in this neighborhood Bob Builder: I was somehow envisoning some sort of psychopath whose business with the cow still wasn't done. People sent me a lot of ragdoll glitches, but I'm not sure any came close to the body horror that this one is. Jax Kenobi: Great pic that raises lots of questions. RUNNNER-UPS: Shark Tooth Bubs: I'm really envisioning a crazy homeless person who has no qualms about stabbing you for trying to steal his brain. Ville "jipostus" Lahtinen: There's some dark stuff going on in this town. Calvin Rieta: Veni, vidi, vici. LambdaPyro: I may be biased on this one, but the timing seems to perfect, like the scientist never saw it coming, nor should he have expected that to begin with. z z: It's a little corny, but I enjoyed it. Presence: I actually didn't realize the significance when I first saw the screenshot and thought it looked interesting on its own. Finding out later that this is default gameplay gives a little more boost.

Normally I don't make posts related to news events, but since I literally think this is the most important topic in gaming now (plus about a dozen people have emailed me about this), I'm making an exception on this. Many people have reported now that the Library of Congress now allows cracking single-player games to be legal. This may sound cynical of me, but I feel like too many people are viewing this as something worthy of dancing in the streets and solving the problems of dead games. In my opinion, this barely solves anything. From an article I read on the matter, the following is stated: "The LoC placed some important limitations on this new legal right, though. For one, gamers can't legally work to restore online gameplay in titles that required a defunct central server to coordinate such play." This makes this new legal status almost worthless in my eyes for a few reasons: 1. While there were some exceptions, cracks to single player games (like at gamecopyworld.com) and abandonware games have more or less been operating out in the open. While giving these cracks legal status is definitely a positive thing by itself, I think it comes at a cost (below): 2. This does nothing to help games like Battleforge. In a sense, this is worse than nothing, because it reinforces that the practice of keeping online-only games is illegal. 3. While this legal status might be more important for places like museums, for the average person that actually wants to play the game, the legality is relatively inconsequential. People have been making cracks for decades and working on MMO server emulators for years without much regard to their legal status. While this sometimes leads to some legal conflict, I'm not aware of any server emulators for DEAD games that have been shut down completely due to the law. Besides, this new ruling says getting dead online-only games working is still illegal anyway. 4. This really does nothing to address the source of the problem, which I feel is that companies shouldn't be allowed to operate commercially if they're killing games with no end-of-life plan for them whatsoever. While I'm sure there's a better annd less hyperbolic analogy than this, what comes to mind reading this is something like "Good news! It's now illegal to whip your slaves UNLESS they've tried to run away!" rather than trying to limit slavery itself. I'm of course not trying to equate killing games with something as serious as slavery (I'm tired while typing this, it was the first analogy that came to mind), rather my point is that it's still completely backwards where we're focusing our attention on this. The Library of Congress is treating people who want to play dead games LESS like criminals instead of addressing how harmful this practice is to culture to begin with. Anyway, sorry to burst people's bubbles with this, I just thought I should make a post on this before I got 20 more emails on the topic. - - - ADHD version: Ross says the ruling by the Library of Congress of being able to restore games isn't that big a deal and doesn't help save the most at-risk games at all.

Subtitles: English More Game Dungeon! This is an episode I didn't have planned at all until a couple weeks ago, but it fits in with having spookier games for October, so I decided to throw it in. I wasn't even sure this game was going to be proper Game Dungeon material, but after playing through it, it certainly seemed to fit the bill. I actually cut out a chunk of this episode since I felt like it was going on a little long considering the length of the game. The part I omitted was about me asking questions of the developer directly concerning the timer. It wasn't anything especially fascinating, so I'll probably include it when I eventually do a follow-up episode. In the meantime, I'll be working around the clock to have the Halloween episode out ASAP, there's still a lot left to do. This unfortunately means I'm going to have to neglect many messages and emails, but I'll try and make it up in November. = = = SCREENSHOT CONTEST = = = This is very short notice, but the developers gave me 3 extra copies of the game, so I'm having a small screenshot contest if you want to try and win a free copy! Here are the rules: -Post or submit a screenshot (up to a maximum of 3) from any game. -You can either post your entry in the forum thread to this episode here, or email it to me (rosswscott (at) gmail.com). If you email it, I highly prefer a link instead to an attachment. -Only one copy of the game can be won per person. -The deadline is roughly midnight of Oct. 29th PST. I will announce the winners the next day on the 30th. You can try and submit something late, but you risk not making it. -I'll pick the winners by whichever screenshots I like best. So whoever has the most interesting or funny ones will likely win a copy of the game.

Subtitles: English Go to hell, everybody! This is a game I almost covered last year, but I think it fits especially well after Construction Bob. Some may be disappointed that this is just a casual game, but not only are the next episodes this month going to be more substantial games, but I think this might have one of my favorite endings for the Game Dungeon so far. I don't have much more to say other than that I'll be busy working on the next two episode to get done by Halloween. On that note, I have received a TON of emails and I'll try my best to respond to everyone, but you may have to wait until November for a lot of them just so I can get the videos done in time. More stuff coming!