Ross Scott

I guess I should have mentioned it in the video (I did in another one), but I hate turn-based combat. It's a huge obstacle for me, to the point where as soon as I read that a game has it, I keep on looking. I'm sure it's a good game, just not for me. Does season 1 end on a cliffhanger?

If that happens I'll becoming interested in it again. I know that they were never able to fully de-yellow Deus Ex Human Revolution. Yeah well, what can I say, some of these games are less fictional than others. I'm generally not big on movie games (I'll talk about that more on Game Dungeon) since I kind of know what's going to happen already. Maybe I'll play Alien Isolation eventually, but seeing as how there's maybe a dozen first person horror games coming out with original themes, it's really nowhere near the top of the list. As for GTA, I've played 3 - San Andreas and just got sort of GTA'd out, not sure why. With driving games, the environments are almost everything with me, so I'd be very tolerant of its other flaws, though knowing they've designed a game to die is really a slap in the face. I really hate this trend, we're going to have a generation where a big chunk of major titles are literally unplayable due to short sighted decisions of management.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » Here's another video that I thought would be something quick to get out, but ended up ballooning into a project that took as much time as a full length Game Dungeon. In any event, I'm pretty happy with how this came out. This easily has some of the most variety of my videos; you can almost think of it as 25 tiny bite-sized Game Dungeon episodes. This is a "top video" list, but I tried to keep it interesting throughout. I would say more, but I kind of covered all the biggest points I wanted to in the video itself. While I normally like to avoid dated videos, I felt this one was a little different since I cover so many games even if someone looks at it years from now, there's plenty of good games listed here some might not know about, so it should still have good information for anyone who stumbles upon it. I also feel like this video kind of "exonerates" me from having to talk about new games in the future, since you couldn't ask for more new game coverage from me than this. If you watch this, you'll know about as much as I do. Also this was my first attempt at using a green screen. It's about as good as I can hope for given my equipment and setup. I actually ended up lowering the resolution of the background a little bit to closer match the picture quality of my camera. I'm still experimenting, but if I have to make another video where I'm standing in front of the camera talking about something, I'll definitely want to do more game backgrounds like this to make it a little more interesting visually. Anyway, I'm keeping busy, you can expect another video out this month! - - - ADHD version: See the new games Ross wants to play the most! COMMENTS

Believe it or not that WAS the next game I was going to cover, but I decided we're entering spring now, I want to save that for winter, so I'm doing something else.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here » More Game Dungeon! This is another video that took WAY longer to make than I wanted it to. Believe it or not, I was originally hoping to have this video done by late January, so that should give you an idea of how far behind I am on things. The little details in this one had a way of just taking forever to complete, day after day. This is another game I knew I absolutely wanted to cover for the Game Dungeon. I was hoping to have more a "crowd pleaser" following the Freeman's Mind traffic and rather than picking a super obscure game, this is one I'm sure plenty of people are familiar with. I'm hoping to have two more videos out this month, but I doubt they'll be as involved as this one, though I'll try and keep everything entertaining to watch. In the meantime, there are still openings for more pixel art help if anyone is interested. EDIT: I meant to add that in addition to pixel artists, I'd also be interested in normal artists (or vector art) for more "awards" art for future episodes. I may be pickier about the art style for that however. COMMENTS

I think it's going to be Friday, this episode just keeps dragging on in terms of editing. EDIT: Hell, could even be Saturday, but it's getting quite close, depends on how much sleep I want to lose. EDIT 2: It'll definitely be Saturday, have to finish a lot of 2D graphics, the credits, and volume balancing, which always takes forever.

I plan to have followups to all the game dungeon videos so far. I don't have any hard plans, but I'm thinking maybe April for the first round. Ha ha, yeah wow, to quote Freeman: "I'm not at that stage in my life yet" Later, I'd rather get a few more videos out first. Not a bad guess at all, though it feels closer to this

This is just a quick update letting people know I'm alive and busy. I was SWARMED with emails after the last video, so if you haven't heard anything from me yet, there are still a bunch I need to go through. I'm behind on forum posts and Youtube messages also. If I could replicate myself, I could get a lot more done. We would function well as a team. There are a lot of promising help offers regarding the movie, progress is being made on it, just slowly. Lately I've been prioritizing the next Game Dungeon episode. I was hoping to get it out before the end of the month, but I don't know how realistic that is now. I think it's going to be between 30-40 minutes total, this one has an awful lot worth talking about. After I'm done with that, expect at least one experimental video to come up and another game dungeon afterwards. If I'm lucky there will be multiple "experiment" videos for March, but I'll just have to see what I can do. Also while I have received a few offers, there is still room for more pixel-art artists for future videos for anyone interested (though I'll want to see an example of your work). ADHD version: Ross is doing things. COMMENTS

I already have a pre-amp capable of Phantom Power. It's an "Audiobuddy". It gives me a very clean signal, although it is WAY too sensitive with volume control in my opinion. I've done a lot with virtualdub and avisynth before, though I'm unfamiliar how to stream that straight out of Premiere. Even being able to stream from lagarith to handbrake might be acceptable. I might eventually switch to Vegas, but for now I'm at least familiar with all of Premiere's bugs and can work around it. Well this is clearly the work of a madman as he's willfully choosing to disable antialiasing. Regardless, I would argue there's a big difference between a 10 minute film and a full length movie. The closest thing I've done to it has been The Tunnel, but the movie is going to be much more work than that was (though hopefully more productive since I won't have to wrestle with Source).

Well if I need to shout, my current mic is still pretty good, but for things like game dungeon and other videos, me having to shout is rarer, whereas it's practically a given for Freeman's Mind. While there won't be as many roles in the script, given my viewer demographics, female parts will likely have far less competition. I know man, but I have to pick something and in my mind, the movie will blow away everything else I've done, including CP and FM. This isn't just some experiment, if the movie goes the way I'll hope, I won't be able to top it, I'll just be able to hit similar quality levels onwards. Besides, I'm cool with people who leave for a long time and check back way later just to see if there's anything new. It's sort of turning into a career by accident, and ironically feels more dependable than my previous stuff like computer repair work or any number of hell jobs I've had in the past. As for the future, I have two main goals: Sustain myself and make the movie. After the movie is done, if I get enough support, maybe I could make more awesome movies / series. As for "retirement" the only thing I could absolutely see myself retiring from is animation. I'm going to go all-out on the movie because it's some of my best material, but it's a very real possibility I'd never want to animate again after it's done. Out of all the things I do to make the videos (acting, writing, editing, etc.), I like direction the most, so that's what I'd rather gravitate towards in the long term, but I'll just keep doing something regardless. I don't really see myself stopping to do creative stuff, I just would eventually want more free time down the line. Honestly, I'm going to keep this pretty tight. I'll make some sort of trailer once it starts getting close, but you shouldn't expect more and more details as time goes on. If you want a little more details, I'll give some safe ones: The environment is going to mostly "low fantasy" and not based on any specific universe. It might not hurt to think of this as sort of a "side story" in something like the Tolkein world. The characters and plot are going to have much more significance than the environment itself. I plan to have lots of comedy, but I want it to come from lots of funny situations rather than any tongue in cheek stuff. Also believe or not, the movie is inspired by a small game mod, but it hardly writes itself, I'm taking a game concept I thought was kind of amazing and turning into an adventure / actual story in itself. Well, I'm not Simon Templeman.

The reason I haven't used twitter is I already check the forums somewhat and email, and youtube comments to a lower extent. There's already more than I can keep track of, so adding on top of that isn't really a priority. That and the vast majority of my news posts are just announcing the videos, so the format of twitter doesn't really jump out at me. I could check with Shroud of the Avatar, but my guess is companies will be much more willing to share assets AFTER production, sharing them beforehand just opens yourself up to a potential liability / leaks that they wouldn't have much incentive to do. As for volunteers, I'd be fine with more people assisting, but honestly about 80% of people who offer to help I never hear from again once I ask them to do something small first. The flake out ratio can be so high that I have to weigh the pros and cons of getting help v. doing it myself much of the time. I basically want to avoid situations where what I'm talking about will appeal to a small minority of people and I'm essentially just abusing my ability to have a sort of soapbox. Polaris Snocross was pretty close to what I'm after. You can check the post of that for what I decided to leave out of it. You can always send me a demo. I actually have someone in mind who contacted me after the Strife video that really nailed the kind of mood I was after, but this project is going to be big enough to support multiple composers for sure. I am going to be somewhat merciless on what music I include however as that has a huge impact on the atmosphere. The dictionary says either is valid. I had a thought about that before, but my main concern is I'd rather avoid having to reject work that someone worked really hard on, but wasn't to my taste. Besides, Gorilla Gong is growing as a better avenue for that sort of thing, though the view boost is still small for now. The biggest thing I think I'd like to do is make some of the episodes more thematic somehow, though that can drain a lot more time and only add a little bit to the production sometimes. I like how Angry Joe will sometimes have skits that tie in with the particular video game, but besides having limited production means, that's the sort of thing that could take up the time of 2 or more "normal" game dungeon episodes.

All questions answered (sort of)! In addition to my first Youtube video appearance, this is an update for just about everything I have planned for 2015 and beyond. I was hoping to have this video out about 2 weeks ago, but all the little things ended up taking me a lot longer than I planned. While I tried to add some humor, this video is largely informative more than anything else. I cover so much in this video, I ended up providing bookmark links so you can jump straight to different topics (they're in the Youtube description). Anyway, I'm making no promises, but I hope to have multiple videos out for next month. I'd say more, but really this video covers just about everything (for now). ADHD version: See what Ross looks like! Ross is making more videos. LINK TO COMMENTS

I should have the update on everything in a few days, I finally have the equipment to film it, but there's bunch to go over and some basic editing to do also.

I wish Kevin Costner would spy on me sometimes. Like in Mr. Brooks?

Not really, I think the majority of his kills are justifiable homicides in self defense. I would argue almost all are, but if you wanted to give the soldiers the complete benefit of the doubt, you would have to count every kill where a soldier has fired his weapon at him FIRST as justifiable homicide and everything else as a murder. There are iffier situations where the soldier laid a trap, but you're not sure which one. (like the pipe explosion trap). EDIT: You could go farther and argue every soldier point his gun AT Freeman could count, given his circumstances thus far.

While I added a lot of flavor, like egomania and paranoia, my thoughts on Half-Life, Xen, etc. mostly mirror what I thought when I first played it. I feel like so many people look backwards through a lens on what Half-Life with the benefit of lots of extra information. I haven't read much additional lore, I haven't read "raising the bar", I'm going by JUST what the game gives me, and it's not all that much. How does Freeman know he's really saving the world? The scientists have been wrong before. Can he even get back? The ending is just bizarre, abrupt, anti-climactic, not some victory moment aside from killing a large creature. Evem Randomguy said before that he didn't fully understand what was going on the first time he played. That's exactly what I wanted to stick with. Well he refers to government property, implying that he already has knowlege. Besides the vibe he gives off, "g-man" is a term way older than Half-Life. There just wasn't enough time, I definitely would have said more, but I had to cherry pick what I wanted to say most given my time gaps. I had this thought from the beginning, believe it or not. I realized someone paranoid with some psychopathic tendencies might actually be able to survive that situation better than a well adjusted person. My answer to the HL2 question is complicated, that's partly why I'm saving it for the video. It's not really a yes / no thing for me, more like a combination lock.

This falls squarely under the category of "this isn't a problem until it becomes a problem" for me. So if you want to host a twitch streaming event on twitch TV, that fine. If it becomes so successful you have it on a non-stop loop, my traffic falls on the Youtube channel 50% and you start getting hundreds of thousands viewers, then it's not so fine. That's not a very likely scenario, so I'd say for now don't worry about it.

I'll add the downloadable videos once I've recuperated some. Regarding the torrents: I don't have a problem with people doing it, though I'd like to keep it more on an "enthusiast" level rather than advertise it everywhere. If people only find out about it from doing a torrent search or coming to the forums, that's fine. People watching the videos on Youtube still helps me out tremendously and while I want people to enjoy the videos, I want to strike a balance between giving people the best viewing experience v. not shooting myself in the foot.

Hey for the record: While I don't have a problem if you want to edit together the video and share it with friends or something, I'd appreciate people not weaving it together and posting it on Youtube, that siphons traffic away from me that I still depend on. I don't mean to be a jerk about it, but that sort of thing actually would create problems for me.

I have to get some more sleep, but here are some replies so far: Everyone will have their own opinion of course, but I can say with confidence I really think my best work is ahead of me. A lot of people are talking as if I'm retiring, but I hope to be making videos decades from now, it's a matter of figuring out what to focus on where. And I can't resist, for anyone getting too affected emotionally by the ending, I recommend checking out this link for testimony from someone who's been affected EVEN MORE than you (contains audio)! http://tiredgamer.ytmnd.com/ It's going to take time, but this is a problem I want to continually address. This is going to be a CORE THEME of the video for January. To be honest, what I showed isn't even the most consuming part, it's mostly doing many takes, editing it down one line at a time, then trying to position that within the timing slot for the game that eats up everything. Like if I have something funnny to say for 8 seconds, but it needs to be within 6, I have to rethink it and start over on that. Beats me, they haven't told me about anything. Most of that doesn't bother me, I do feel bad when people are frustrated when the videos aren't out faster, but something like Civil Protection would never exist if that was my only focus. The only comments that were bugging me were the ones trash talking about me not making it in time and breaking my promise, when it wasn't even the end of the year. Challenging people to bet against me and put their money where their mouth was took away ALL frustrations with that. Anyway, thanks again to everyone for the positive comments, and I plan to address almost everything brought up in this thread in the video later.

(Downloadable copy will be up later) Behold the final episode of Freeman's Mind! I think most people will agree it ends on a pretty strong note. This episode ended up being pretty grueling to get done due to all the finale content. I originally meant to have this a day early, but the number of fixes was so massive I'm coming in just under the wire here. This is my own fault, since I tried to squeeze in Game Dungeon episodes also. That's really the story of Freeman's Mind: it would have been done a long time ago if I hadn't been working on other things this whole time. Freeman's Mind is complete! The curse has been lifted! Now I can turn back into a human! On that note, sometime in January I plan to make a video appearance and try to answer all the biggest questions people have and lay out all the plans for Accursed Farms for 2015 and beyond. I'm having a video camera sent to me as a late Christmas present, so I'll start filming as soon as it arrives. My guess is it could be mid January before it arrives, so you may have to wait until then. I've found that video is far more effective at communicating to the entire fanbase than just posting information here (or in the credits, as you'll find out once you watch the episode). So if you want answers, you're just going to have to wait until sometime January, sorry. Right now I'm pretty burned out, I was neglecting just about everything in order to make the episodes in time, so I have a whole bunch I need to catch up on. After I've recovered a little bit and dealt with more urgent things, I'll start updating the website and replying to many emails and donators I've gotten lately. I seriously was putting off everything in order to make it to this point. If you're wondering what the "secret" was to getting so many videos out. It was simply, do NOTHING BUT Freeman's Mind for MONTHS. I saw a lot of comments about people feeling saddened that the series is finishing, but I plan on making tons more videos, just not necessarily Freeman's Mind in the near future. I don't really have some huge epiphany about the series, to me it's one project that just seemed to never end. I'm glad I did it, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff I'd like to do also. There will be many more videos coming for 2015! I just need to go into one of those medical tanks like Luke Skywalker for a while first. - - - ADHD version : Freeman's Mind is complete! Ross worked hard on it. Questions will be answered later! LINK TO COMMENTS