Ross Scott

I think we're having a communication problem. You're literally describing the exact opposite scenario I was condoning: I was saying rip out the middleware (as in remove it from what you do distribute), then pass on the source code that your company did write for tinkerers of the dying game. Even then, it would be for noncommercial use only. Ah, yeah we may be having a communication issue. My thoughts were a bit mixed up when I said that - here's what I meant: Let's assume you are a modder trying to bring the game back to life, and the game's developers have given you the code (but without any of the middleware). If you wished to, you could theoretically rip the middleware machine code out of the server executable and plug it into the game, which would allow the game to work (with a bit of patching up), but importantly you wouldn't need to code a replacement for the middleware itself. However, such a practise is illegal if you wish to actually share the modified executable with other players - which means that creating a modified version of the game that is standalone is actually very difficult, even with the source code to non-middleware-related parts. I was talking about the programmer's options when trying to revive the game's standpoint when given only source to the game without middleware, not the company's options for releasing the source. I could be completely off base here, but I recall mods in the past where they would say "you need to download and install X,Y,Z THEN run the mod script in order for the mod to work". The idea being that their mod depended on 3rd party tools or middleware that they couldn't legally distribute, but they streamlined it as much as possible if you were willing to get the external software yourself. Could programmers take a similar approach if they were given the code to a game (and knew it used specific middleware) where the developers can't give them everything, but programmers could take the additional steps to acquire the middleware on their own? EDIT: Another thing is it's very unlikely the exact same code would be suitable at all. Scaling down your game for thousands of people meant to run on a server farm to dozens on a single server might require a rewrite of all kinds of things, but I would think the more information the fans have access to, the more of a headstart they can get trying to replicate similar functionality.

[/quote[ I think we're having a communication problem. You're literally describing the exact opposite scenario I was condoning: I was saying rip out the middleware (as in remove it from what you do distribute), then pass on the source code that your company did write for tinkerers of the dying game. Even then, it would be for noncommercial use only. I'm still not certain how common a scenario this would be to release server source code, but you may have a point in that would be a dead scenario. But then that makes the necessity for some sort of law all the more relevant. I keep thinking back to the Xbox One releases where Major Nelson chided Angry Joe saying that removing the online only requirement was impossible, then lo and behold that's what happened once it became apparent it was going to be a suicide move. Companies can adapt and make things happen if they have an incentive to. Right now they have no tangible incentive, that's why a law or completely different climate is needed. Whatever we're doing now is not only not working, it's encouraging this behavior.

They're all either from the Battleforge or NFS World soundtrack. Metalforge was the end credits track, not included in the official soundtrack, but part of a free download EA had. NFS World OST: America's 2nd biggest employer! I actually cut a lot out of this episode because it was getting way too bitter. That's a story in itself, I'll probably save it for a follow-up later on. Hell, this one gets me worked up. First off, I want to be 100% clear on one point: I am in no way advocating that the company give up their IP in this situation. I think that would be a little ridiculous. Just because a game flops doesn't mean you can't try again later or sell it off and they shouldn't have to yield that. I was ONLY talking about the dead TITLE itself. If you saw the previous video, I mentioned that I wasn't sure if this one counted as evil or not. I think if you're not a gamer and simply don't play games, it's hard to argue this is evil, since there is zero harm being done to you. If you like games however, it's basically the worst thing you can do to a gamer. As for your argument, I feel you WOULD have a point if the game hadn't been designed to die from the get-go. I don't think companies should have to run a server forever, nor do I feel like they need to support a game forever. Those take resources. However, when your game is DESIGNED this way, knowing this is the end-game for it, then it becomes a deliberate act that is harmful to gamers. This stuff isn't an accident is the point. It's like if I'm driving a bus full of passengers and I KNOW I'm going to fall asleep at some point during the trip because I'm tired. Going ahead with it anyway would be criminal negligence at best. Now obviously that's an extreme example, but doing this with the intent that it will die I see as a form of malice for gamers. "Not my problem" only applies when you didn't actually CREATE the problem, let alone profited off it. Again, releasing the source is sort of a contingency plan if everything else has gone wrong, and again, I'm NOT advocating relinquishing the IP. Hell, Valve released most of the relevant source code to Half-Life 2 on release, and their IP is still pretty damn strong. The BEST scenario is to have a failsafe option built into design. So if the server dies, you're ready and release the patch. The second best is to have enough resources to give a server patch and withdraw support, but keep selling the game. The source code release is if EVERYTHING fucked up. You didn't plan for it, you don't have the resources to make a patch, so here you go, here's the best we can do under the circumstances to save the game and make good to paying customers. Like I said in the video, I'm the extremist. I feel NO game should be intentionally killed. NONE. So if a company plans for it, great. If they don't, they can still do things. But at some point, a line has to be drawn somewhere to not kill the damn game. Well I did say RELEVANT source. The idea here is if devs are actively going to kill a game that people paid for a game, they need to try and throw people a bone. I think it's unethical to create media with some artistic merit to it that's designed to die otherwise. So yeah, maybe you can't mod the game to have raining elephants, but they can't even be bothered to release enough code to get a private emulator up from the ashes, even though the game was in development for years and they took money from people this entire time? The bottom line is this is an absolutely preventable situation that no developer or gamer wants and if it was ENFORCED, companies would find a way to make solutions happen or they wouldn't do it in the first place.

He'll read it, but it may take some time. Or you can just PM him or email him, or PM HLprincess eho is far more active than Ross, she'll deliver the message. For the record, I MAY miss posts in here, I can get overwhelmed. Email is the best way to make sure I'll see what you have to say (though the responses can be very slow sometimes).

No it wouldn't. I would say up front that everything I'm reporting is heresay and unverified (unless someone didn't want to be anonymous). So this wouldn't be verified fact, just testimonials that are very probable to be true. EA has mismanaged a lot of companies too, I think it's a dead heat competition between them and Activision. I would argue this stuff is bad, but not evil because (for the most part), their INTENTION wasn't to screw everyone involved. It's just really gross incompetence. I'm calling bullshit man. In the eyes of the law, that IS still piracy and technically illegal (unless you have a source stating otherwise). However, that won't be ENFORCED by anyone except maybe some sort of copyright troll company. In the eyes of the law (USA at least), "abandonware" doesn't exist. Piracy isn't acceptable under any scenario. Awesome, I wasn't familiar with him. I checked out his Youtube channel, some of his tracks nail the tone, others seem to be not so great, so it's definitely a mix. his Teen Agent Prison mix is great.

Yeah this crap is scary. My guess is they'll probably regret it later on, but who knows, maybe it's this weird dystopian shift. I don't know, a lot of the evening and night scenes looked decent to me. I think it was literally just an issue of using the wrong colors. Nobody likes cancellations, but those can happen for all kinds of reasons. As for PT, I don't like seeing any game die, however this is one reason I'm kind of anti-console nowadays. It's not that I don't think people shouldn't have the functionality and convenience of a console, they should, it's that I don't think companies should be in that sort of position where they can kill games at a the press of a button. With old consoles that would never happen, new consoles you have stuff like P.T. I'm generally against anything that allows companies to kill games.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Subtitles: English Here's a new episode that's been a while in the making! I actually started on this as soon as I finished the last episode, so I'm behind on seeing what all the responses to that one were. I was working pretty hard to get this episode up today for reasons you'll find out. This is easily my most "dramatic" episode so far, but it's not a trend I plan on continuing. This episode actually contains more that I edited out of it than any other episode since while writing and recording, I noticed the tone of it kept veering in a direction I didn't want, but I'm pretty happy with how it finally turned out. In any event, I'm sure this one will spark some interesting discussion! Expect another experimental video later this month with two more in the works (but no set release dates). EDIT: I may be late on the other video I was planning for this month, but it's not far behind. LINK TO COMMENTS

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » I meant to have this out a few days ago, but it went up the same day as the last video. This is a recent video interview I had with the Youtube channel Valve News Network. The guy running it (Tyler McVicker) isn't actually a representative of Valve, but he covers a lot of news related to it. He asked me an array of questions that aren't typically covered in others, including many from fans of his channel. I haven't had a chance to look at what it was edited down to since I've been very busy on the next video, but feel free to check it out: Part 1: aW67y9e1WLo Part 2: O3CkESYDR4A LINK TO COMMENTS

Yeah, I plan to after I get a couple more videos out. That's another video to make in itself though, so one step at a time.

Here's the first followup episode to Ross's Game Dungeon! I knew this would take a lot of work, and it did. This definitely is towards the top in the amount of editing time involved, but I'm relatively happy with how it came out and it hopefully puts a lot of burning questions and comments to rest. I was originally hoping to get this episode out a week ago, since it kind of leads into a major one coming up soon. You can expect the next Game Dungeon in less than a week assuming nothing catastrophic happens. After that I'll be trying to get some new experimental videos out for a while and hopefully get into enough of a groove to get more work done on the movie.

I haven't been involved with the forums nearly as much as I would prefer to, so it's possible I've missed things. I admit though, I very rarely look at the FFA section however. Feel free to cite concrete examples of posts you think warrant kicking or a ban. I'm sure someone can think of an example, but if somebody is being civil and isn't obviously trolling, I can't think of many opinions that would warrant banning. Again, list everything you can think of. I'm not some enlightened deity that has a master plan with everything. I'm more like a captain steering a ship with a monkey wrench because the wheel fell off and keep running back between the helm and down below to alternate between steering and repairing a hull breach. I'm also fine with adding more moderators if people think there are good candidates, though I tend to prefer people with a more even temperament for that role.

This is another "I'm still doing things" update since I know it's been a little while since the last video. I'm simultaneously working on three different videos. One is another experimental one (which will probably be next), the others are Game Dungeon episodes. The next Game Dungeon will be the first follow-up episode, then I have another one planned for mid-July that's been a long time in the making. Besides that I'm hoping to get two more experimental shows off the ground, one of which will almost certainly be next month. Being busy with the videos is most of what I'm up to nowadays, you can pretty much assume that whenever there are long gaps of silence from me.

Hey, I plan on doing a follow-up episode soon. For people working on extracting the data, let me know how to credit you, otherwise, I'll just use your username in the video.

The system I'm trying to use is to use custom genre tags once I identify a theme I want to cluster the music together on. The biggest problem I'm having is deciding what themes to have. I don't want TOO many, but my ideal goal is to be able to select a custom genre and just hit random play and all the music will more or less match once I've sorted it.

I hadn't seen it before. I think I'd have to count it as animation, but we could definitely add that to the "banana pit" section, it's for stuff that doesn't technically qualify like that. I'll look over your entries a little later and try and send you a reply, it might be a lot easier to help out than you think.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Hey, here's a video I actually created several months ago, but was waiting until the site had some more updates before I released it. As some of you may know, I've been involved with the site Gorilla Gong for some time now. It's slowly been growing to what I think is arguably the best machinima site out there today. We have close to a 1000 decent machinimas, all tagged and organized, I don't think you'll find a site with more quality machinima anywhere else. So this video is a general promotion to let more people know about it and hopefully get some more traffic to it. The videos you see in this trailer are by no means all our best ones, I tried to pick a variety of different machinima from different creators, but there is just a ton of good stuff on the site. One of our policies for the site is we don't accept just any machinima, but only the ones that we feel are pretty decent quality. So just about all the machinima on the site ranges from "not bad" to "amazing." - - - REVIEWERS WANTED One of the goals with this promotional video is we're hoping to get more reviewers onboard with the site. This doesn't mean you have to give full formal reviews, but rather if you spot a good machinima, you can submit it to the site, write up a short description on it, and help us add to the collection. If you watch or have seen lots of machinima, we would like to get more people involved with the site. If you're interested, here are the requirements: Go ahead and email me () with the following info: 1. A list of at least 5 of your favorite machinimas (specifically ones that I did NOT create to lower bias) 2. Give me a description of some of your tastes in machinima videos; if there are any specific genres you prefer, or like ones based on specific games, etc. We basically want to get an idea of your tastes and writing style. If we think they're good, you can become involved with the site and start contributing to what machinima gets displayed on the site. There are some rules involved, but it's really not much more complicated than following directions when submitting a video and typing up a short description on it. This offer is open for anyone who is interested, feel free to spread the word. I'll try and respond to everyone as soon as I can, but it will likely take a few days at least. - - - Alternately, you're welcome to submit any suggestions for new machinima in our suggestion forum, or just email me directly if you don't want to bother with registering. That's about it for now, I hope to have another video out before too long. In the meantime, you have plenty of other videos you can watch! ADHD version: Go to Gorilla Gong for lots of machinima videos! COMMENTS

I think the only one I played was Qix. I don't think there's enough to say for a game dungeon, but I could maybe work that into another project I'm trying to get going later on.

Just submit it to myabandonware or abandonia or someplace. It's small enough they would take it. It's included in the .zip

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Well this ended up taking far longer for a variety of reasons, however once you see the episode, you may understand some of why. Without spoiling much, I'll say that it's possible there will never be an episode quite like this one again. In addition to that, this episode also contains more music and voice actors than any other Game Dungeon to date. That definitely slowed things down, but I think it's worth it. At the very least, there's more than meets the eye with this breakout game. Speaking of music, while I do NOT promise a fast reply, if you compose music that you think would fit future episodes, go and ahead and contact me at [email protected]. While I can use a variety, the kind I find myself needing the most is laidback, upbeat music that I can talk over. Alternately, if you're a soundtrack freak like me, feel free to give advice on how to organize soundtracks more intuitively / what system you use. I made a thread on this a while ago, but still haven't come up with an ideal system yet. There will be at least one more video coming this month, possibly two. COMMENTS