Ross Scott

I knew there was something else bugging me about this explanation. Okay, fine, let's say the Xen islands are orbiting a black hole. That still does nothing to explain the gravity. Because look at it, satellites and space junk orbit the Earth, the moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the sun. The moon and Earth only have GRAVITY because of their density. All the space junk has no measurable gravity because it's not dense enough. That's the situation the Xen island cloud is in. The islands are so comparatively small, they would have no measurable gravity.

While the canon premise is that Xen is a different dimension so who gives a damn, I like the think that the Xen islands are orbiting a massive black hole which has high enough gravity to maintain a breathable atmosphere (Both the Xen aliens and Freeman lack any kind of breathing apparatus, and are both seen breathing both in Xen and on Earth). This black hole, though, is an extraordinarily large distance away from the Xen islands though and that, coupled with the gasses seen in the environment, mask its presence. There's also the Interloper introduction level, which as I remember is just a jumping puzzle leading to a red spiky teleporter and a pitch black skybox. Maybe this is nearer to the black hole (But somehow doesn't affect gravity because video games)? Again, though, different dimension/universe so don't expect normality. I thought about mentioning a black hole possibility, but now physicists are debating if they even exist or not. While I have Half-Life taking place around 2000 so it wouldn't be a be a problem chronologically, the entire frigging internet would jump in to correct me, so I decided to leave that alone.

(Downloadable copy will be up later) Here's an episode I know many people have been waiting for. I tried my best to add some "realism" in how someone might react for this situation v. what the game forces you to do. More episodes are coming, I've pretty much been doing NOTHING but Freeman's Mind for the past few weeks to the point where it affected my dreams somewhat. If you like screaming, you'll probably like this episode. And the next one. And the next one. On another note, if anyone finds any especially insane Black Friday videos this year, feel free to send them my way. I admit I enjoy watching people trying to almost murder each other over a waffle iron. LINK TO COMMENTS

Yeah, I can't sell DVDs of Freeman's Mind, I'm sorry. I plan to get the download links of all the episodes updated at some point, you can download all of them for free except the most recent ones. I've been prioritizing getting more videos out, but I'll try to make time for it sometime December.

I think you'll like the next episodes, there's a lot more screaming in them than most.

ga_forest Hell yeah I am. You can either make a declaration here, or else send a paypal amount to donate address, and add a note "this is betting against the deadline" or something like that. If I don't make it before the end of the year, I'll pay you back double.

(Downloadable copy will be up later) Subtitles: English Here's an episode you maybe weren't expecting. I didn't even decide to make this until last month. In the Half-Life series, Freeman never really gets anything resembling a "good" ending. My favorite ending of the series actually is for Blue Shift, where you just get in an SUV with other scientists, and get the hell out of Black Mesa, presumably to drive off and go have beers and hot wings. So here's the ending Freeman SHOULD have received, in my eyes. I know there are many concerns about my being able to make my promised deadline of finishing the series, don't worry about it. While there was a big delay between this episode in the last one, that's primarily because my audio editor disappeared for 3 weeks with no notice. This happens sometimes. Thankfully, "General Cornwaffle" helped step up to take his place (for now). I've been working non-stop the entire time on the rest of the episodes, I currently hope to finish the voicework for Episode 64 sometime tomorrow. As much as I wanted to make a vague post suggesting this was the ACTUAL end of the series, I don't think I can do that now without raising a lot of ire in light of how long this one took to come out. If parts of this episode have the FOV too zoomed in, my apologies, but there was no easy way around it. Part of this was filmed in Counter-strike, and it's frigging impossible to change the FOV for that game, even with cheats enabled, go figure. Also, my voice may sound slightly odd in this one, this was the first episode I recorded after making my move and I think I may have gone a little overkill trying to reduce the echo, which made the acoustics a tad different. Future episodes should resemble what you've heard the past ~15 episodes or so more closely. Assuming there are no more screw-ups, expect the next episode quite soon! LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

I think this section of the sentence caused a minor explosion of pleasure in minds of a lot of people . Or was it an implosion caused by anticipation? I should clarify I didn't do all 3 in one day. I've been working nonstop ever since my move pretty much.

Otto has disappeared, was waiting on sound editing help and recently got some from elsewhere. I'll have voicework done on the next 3 episodes by the end of today.

Ha, this is one of the most impressive monitors I've seen so far: http://www.maximumpc.com/acer_announces_availability_32-inch_b326hk_4k_ultra_hd_ips_display_1000 32" 4k IPS with a standard color gamut and 6ms response time. While 4k gaming isn't very realistic yet, damn, talk about future-proofing your monitor. Also no word on what its input lag is, but assuming it wasn't awful, wow, this has some impressive specs.

Well I may test Chrome then, again, flash video is the only area I've been less than thrilled with for Firefox. I could try and "benchmark" some Youtube videos between the two browsers to see if there would be any difference in dropped frames if I get some time later on (though people are welcome to try themselves also).

I checked, the last time I was trying to use it was in April of 2013. I tried a whole bunch to get it working, using alternatives like Chromium and nightly builds, but simply nothing would work. I can look into it, but what made me especially wary is that this didn't use to be an issue, it was a problem they introduced, then left unfixed for at least 6+ months, possibly a lot longer, I read some threads saying that it had been fixed and broken multiple times, kind of reminds me of Valve. Behavior like that from a developer makes me want to avoid them like the plague, but if they're actually treating alternative shells seriously and not something that can be broken every other release, I could maybe look into it again. One thing I will say is that Firefox has been EXTREMELY stable with me, I seriously can't remember it crashing whatsoever in the past 6 months, maybe longer. I don't know if Chrome has that kind of reputation now or not, but it's not something to be undervalued. My biggest complaint with browsing has mostly been flash video performance, but I don't know how much that plays into the browser so much as Adobe. After I did the Last Stand, I heard some reports of people saying older games were running slower than they used to on modern Flash, wouldn't surprise me.

Wow, you win, I've seen all the top ones you've mentioned, and none of the ones below it. And yeah the 80s were pretty awesome in terms of quality horror coming out, although I actually prefer the 50s version of The Fly, I think it's actually creepier than people might think for a movie of that era. The 80s remake didn't do so much for me, I guess it was too predictable, plus trying to make it a romance tragedy out of it rather than going more for the scares is what made me not like it as much.

Jesus! That's absolutely massive! I mean, I know it's uncompressed AVIs and all, but that's huge. What's the largest amount of raw files you've ever worked with? That might have been it actually. The Strife footage was pretty large, but my shots were more concise, with The Last Stand I had multiple sessions where I just recorded my game sessions and edited it down from that. The thing is, uncompressed RGB footage comes to about 10.42GB per minute of footage (at 30fps). It's absolutely massive and it can be a hassle to work with. This is kind of why I want to find lossless compression that editors can work with. It's also another reason I'm dreading the thought of 60fps for Game Dungeon, but hopefully I'll figure out something if the results end up looking better for that. As for my storage, I use an eSATA dock that I can just plug hard drives in like they're game cartridges. After I received the donation money, I bought two more 2TB drives just to be able to handle more of the load.

Doesn't quite solve the problem, but he definitely gives me some more stuff I can try for experiments, thanks.

I've only tried Vegas once or twice, I've been using Premiere since pretty much the second episode of Civil Protection. I just know it's a decent contender in video editing. Sure, I take gifts, though please don't send me a box of live bugs like your link or something equally awful. As for games, I seriously have had no time for any games besides what you see in the videos lately, so a lack of games to play is really not my problem right now. Well that's the size of the final clip, the reality is I was working with 2.5TB of raw files before editing it down. Yeah I intend to, but these zombies keep coming.

I actually don't like motion blur in many games when I'm actually playing (with racing ones being an exception), but for video watching, I definitely prefer it. And yeah, as others have suggested, I think you mean "subjectively." Again, we see motion blur in REALITY because of how our eyes process things. I'm trying to aim for what looks more real without causing motion sickness. Having a high framerate with no motion blur is good for a lot of games, though it also creates a sort of "hyper real" effect since you're looking at something that doesn't exist in the real world. It's too obvious which one is 30 v 60fps, I don't think that would have accomplished much. I do hear you in that 24fps is a little too low. When I make my movie, I was intending on aiming for 30fps. For me the "live actor" thing never really fades, though for wide panning shots / action sequences, I agree that there a lot of situations that can benefit from a high framerate.

I haven't made a decision on Game Dungeon yet, I'll just have to see. Another 2-3 blur frames IS 300-360fps and that's there too. As for no blur required at 60, you kind of have to question what we're aiming for then. It would be smooth motion, but real life has motion blur, so it would become less real and more smooth, if that makes sense. In gaming, I would agree. In movies, it really depends. Moving to high framerates makes things seem more real, but the "cinematic effect" people talk about really isn't bullshit. For instance, for The Hobbit, at 24fps, I thought "that's Gandalf telling a story, this is interesting" at 48fps "that's Ian McKellen wearing a robe putting on a performance for the camera." You lose that "larger than life" aspect to some cinema if the framerate is very high. It stops feeling like a movie and starts feeling more like watching actors perform live. Even for my own movie, I doubt I'll make it at higher than 30fps, but who knows. That's not an issue for Game Dungeon however, for there my main concern will just be making sure things don't feel nauseating. I'll look into it later, I plan for my next game to cover to be a 3D game actually where 60fps should be an option. As for Chrome, I hear you, I actually can't run Chrome with my custom UI because it's REQUIRED to hook into explorer.exe. If you don't have that running as your shell, Chrome won't work. Kind of insane since Google tries to be platform-independent and that's strictly a Windows UI thing, all I can figure is they're using it to track how you use your own computer.

I've just recently managed to move and have internet, but I'm still getting my room set up for recording, so it may be another day or two before work resumes on Freeman's Mind, but I plan to get on it ASAP. In the meantime, I've received a bunch of messages asking whether I'll be moving Freeman's Mind and Ross's Game Dungeon to 60fps now that Youtube supports it. The short answer is no for Freeman's Mind and I don't know yet for Game Dungeon. While doubling my framerate adds more time to making the videos and things more of a hassle all-round, I'm not trying to fight progress if the end results are truly better. I did some tests with 60fps and motion blur however and you can see the results yourself: 1. 180fps downsampled to 30fps (this is how Freeman's Mind appears normally) 1280x720 MKV 30fps (7MB) 2. 360fps downsampled to 60fps (same technique as before, but with a higher framerate) 1280x720 MKV 60fps (8MB) 3. 180fps downsampled to 60fps (experimental mode using the same data as the original, but to a higher framerate) 1280x720 MKV 60fps (8MB) I recommend watching all these videos in FULL SCREEN mode. While people will have different opinions on this, my take on 60fps is that it looks very cool in some situations, and is vomit-inducing in others. I'm someone who gets carsick easily, and the part where Freeman is spinning in this short test triggered a bit of nausea for me watching it at 60fps. It doesn't help that Valve's demo recording isn't perfect and sometimes adds some twitchiness to the motion that wasn't in the original gameplay. 60fps only amplifies that effect. It's for these reasons that I don't think moving Freeman's Mind to 60fps would be a good idea, since Freeman isn't known for having calm and controlled camera angles. It would make some sections look cooler, but would also make other sections look worse. As for Game Dungeon, I haven't decided yet and will have to do more experiments later. I think racing games might show the most benefit from running at 60fps, but anything involving twitchy camera motion I think could be a bad idea. Also, it could be the motion blur amplifies the nausea effect and games without it may look fine at 60fps. I think 60fps has potential, but for passive viewing, more care is needed with the camerawork in order for it to look good. For the record, this doesn't mean I think GAMES don't benefit from having 60fps or more, don't believe any company that tells you that 30fps is better for gaming than 60fps unless it's a special-case situation (like cutscenes). I have never played a GAME that felt worse at 60fps than at 30fps; but just like how I can get carsick riding in a car, I never get sick if I'm the one driving. It's the same thing for games, you're the one in control. With video watching, it's not always a pleasing effect, and depends a lot on how the camerawork is being handled. Sorry if this disappoints anyone, but I have to go with what I think creates the best impact. - - - ADHD version: Ross is not moving Freeman's Mind to 60fps because it will make too many people barf. He did experiments and used science to determine this. COMMENTS

This gets you the yellow screen bug you saw in the video. This game seriously fights you from going full screen.