Ross Scott

I would like to know too. Being able to talk about something in terms of "only" $200 does not describe my current situation right now. This basically how I'm treating it. Half-Life (and about 98% of FPSs in general) only allows for so much in realism. I'm just acting under the assumption, that even with body armor, a few shots are going to DROP you, and I'm not really focusing on whether they're dead or how injured they are. The game has only 2 states for enemies: 100% combat ready or dead. You have to use your imagination and for me, emptying most of a clip into a person and still watching them run around kills the "realism" for me more than seeing them go down after a couple shots.

No, that's irrelevant, because there was a poll asking people "WILL YOU COME TO THIS MEETUP?" with the location and date already announced and the ratio of people who said "yes" then didn't show up was extremely small. So I think Giant Napkin has a legitimate point on that front. That said, if it was actually in the Steam store, who knows what would happen. I'm still having difficulty keeping up with the emails. The more time I spend on social media, the less time I'm making videos. Maybe I could appoint someone to handle social network / marketing stuff and they could help with more updates.

Blip.tv link (download will be up later) Alternate Title: Of Bees and Bullets Here's the next episode of Freeman's Mind. I think people will like this one, there's usually a correlation of how much people like the episode v. having a high bodycount, and this one might be the highest one yet. - - - HD QUALITY BY THE NUMBERS: I get the question from time to time as to why I don't film Freeman's Mind in HD resolution. The short answer is it takes up too much time and space. Due to how the Source engine is set up, adding motion blur adds an incredible amount of space processing time, and this episode was a reminder of that. Most of the episode is all in the same level load, which means I can't really break it up without glitches occurring. To give you an idea of the filesizes I was looking at, here are some statistics on this episode: -Time for recording 10 minutes 37 seconds of footage to hard drive at 180fps: 1 hour 6 minutes -Time to process 114,714 individual files into a more usable state: 50 minutes -Time to do motion blur processing: 1 hour 47 minutes Total processing time: 3 hours 43 minutes -Filesize before motion blur processing: 130.2GB -Filesize after motion blur processing 21.7GB Minimum amount of space required to process episode: 260.4GB Now I could just get rid of motion blur processing, but I love the effect and thinks it make some things look more real, even for Half-Life. Unfortunately this means using the Source engine to export the footage (my computer can't reliably record this real-time) means processing time and filesizes will get a lot larger if I increase the resolution: 720p = multiply every number above by 2.26 1080p = multiple every number above by 5.09 So until it starts raining hard drives or SSDs, I'll be sticking with 480p for Freeman's Mind for now. - - - LIGHT / DARK You've probably noticed that the footage can be a bit dark sometimes in the episodes, that's because that's how how the Source engine exports it and I'm reluctant to change too much because making a dark scene bright can make a bright seen look washed out. This time however, it's some of the worst I've ever seen it. Here's a comparison below: Before: After: Turning up the brightness in-game has no effect on how bright the footage is when it exports. I think I was able to do a decent job tweaking it this time, but my method wasn't reliable and I'm hardly an expert. If someone with editing experience wants to look at the original footage sometime and make suggestions as to what sorts of universal tweaks I can do in Adobe Premiere to correct this (as opposed to changing it scene by scene), go ahead and let me know. That's it for now, don't forget about the Dota 2 voice pack! LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

I created the outside map by heavily modifying a HL2 level. "Nicadeamas" created all the other maps in the episode. These maps aren't optimized at all and aren't meant to be playable. There's really not much to them besides what you see in the videos. There are multiple maps for every scene, almost none of it is all-connected. I think I asked him before if he cared if they were released, I don't know if I got an answer, I would have to check. Even if he said okay, they are not in a release state AT ALL, somebody would have to come in afterwards and clean it up. The maps also mix content from multiple mods for the objects.

"Longer than I think" implies that I think there's a date Valve will eventually respond to this. I have no such expectations. I just wanted to try my best to make it visible. I have no idea. It will have to get in the store first anyway. Well the thing is, within the game context, I actually wanted things a bit more neutral. When you do over 600 lines, consistency from line to line is important. Otherwise it will be a combination of super energetic clashing right back to a neutral line for when another tower is under attack with a standard announcement. I think it will sound more fitting actually in the game, with people playing it. The trailer was more to show off some highlights, but still give an idea of what the pack will be like. In other words, I didn't "cheat" and make the lines specifically for the trailer, creating a false impression. I took lines like you'll hear them in the game and strung together different situations (granted, a couple of the responses were "idle" ones though). Every line you hear in the trailer is in pack and you'll hear it in the game, given long enough gameplay. Valve works in mysterious ways man. On one hand, someone will have to review and process my pack manually, and that takes time. On the other hand, this is a company worth billions, so you'd THINK someone could do that, but again, they work in mysterious ways. There's nothing sacred about 10k views, I just picked it as a big round number that I thought I might be able to hit. I'll be releasing the next FM episode as soon as it's done (the next one is another long one).

I'm assuming $10, I don't set the price on this, Valve does.

No idea, I'm not even sure lots of votes are any guarantee it will get published, but I figure maybe I can get their attention then.

Yeah you can thank Xenowar for about half of the gameplay shots there, he provided the demos for me. He's in the credits, but since it's a minute and a half trailer, I made the credits pretty brief.

After my stumbling launch from last week, I finally have a trailer to go with the announcer pack I've submitted to Valve for DOTA 2. Check it out here! For everyone who voted for this without seeing the trailer, thanks. For everyone else, GO VOTE FOR IT ON STEAM RIGHT NOW. Here's the link below: VOTE RIGHT NOW OMG 1920x1080 x264 MKV (101MB) Download Don't just vote yourself, try to get friends, relatives, pets, to vote for this pack. I want to see Jacksonian democracy in action here. I'm tempted to hold the next Freeman's Mind episode hostage until this gets at least 10k votes on Steam (I won't though). For everyone who wants more information than just the preview trailer, here are some highlights: -Normal lines for every standard situation in the game -MANY alternate lines for most events in the game (attacking, destroying, denying enemy towers / barracks, etc.) -Database configured so that you won't be spammed with the same alternate lines every game, it's spaced out a lot so it will likely take many games to hear them all. What this pack does NOT have (yet): -Lines for specific items bought -Lines for specific heroes selected -Even more alternate lines I would have added many more lines, but Valve put the cap for submission at 600 lines, so that's what I sent. If I can actually get this in the Steam store, I'll support it as long as people are interested. I'm also willing to change or add things based on player feedback, so it can keep growing even after it's released. You know what separates me from other announcers out there? I'M DESPERATE. ADHD version: CLICK ON THE LINK AND VOTE FOR THIS ON STEAM! LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

The person helping on After Effects isn't coming through. I'm going to have to do a simpler version of the titles myself (I don't know AE). I should have the trailer out sometime today, but it's going to be several hours before I do.

The trailer is done except for some custom titles I'm waiting on from someone helping in After Effects. After I have those, I'll put it up.

Yeah, unfortunately this is stalling Episode 49 some. Since there wasn't clear documentation on the procedure for this, I put this up prematurely, so now I'm scrambling to get a trailer together. I'm not half-assing this though, I want to make sure it's decent. I'm TRYING to get the trailer done by Friday (I was going for Thursday, but that's looking unrealistic), but these things can have unexpected delays. I'll make a new post on the site once the trailer is up.

Could you tell me how to do that then? These are the options I saw when submitting: I also checked "Ability", but that doesn't seem to be what I want. Also I know I must sound illiterate by this point, but I can't find the option to change the tags for the item on Steam.

That's exactly what I'm going to do, I need more time though. I have an idea for a trailer I think everyone will like. Speaking of which, if any of you are frequent DOTA players and could provide me with demos of games with times where certain events happen (I'll be making a list of stuff I'm looking for), go ahead and email me about it. You don't have to be an especially good player, just have been in a game where there was a lot of good action.

Thanks a bunch man, I think I figured it out based on what you said. I'm not seeing a voting option, but there is a thumbs up option. Is that what people were referring to?

I don't know what the hell is going on. I tried setting all the settings for my profile to full public temporarily, but that message still came up, which means people can't vote. If anyone has ideas how to fix this, let me know. Ugh, you can see how much sleep I've been getting. At least that's fixed now.

Oh okay, I was planning on making an official trailer for it, but haven't done that yet. There's nothing Valve needs to look at prior to that step?

Best I can tell. I really don't use Steam community stuff that much, so I'm not 100%. Really all there is to the link is the thumbnail and description, so you're not missing anything. The actual files go directly to Valve. The link is there mostly just as proof this is in the works. Also if somebody does know more about Steam Workshop, they can feel free to post advice.

The announcer pack for DOTA 2 that I mentioned earlier has been submitted! It contains over 600 lines, has lots of situational humor, and the highest recording quality I've produced to date. Here is proof of it: Link to DOTA submission I have NO IDEA what the next step is! I guess Valve will look it over and decide if it's acceptable or not, then I'll get further instructions from there. It wouldn't surprise me if they make me change the name from "Freeman's Mind Announcer Pack", but that shouldn't affect the lines. Anyway, now that this is submitted, I'll be getting back to the videos and other things. More news coming this month! EDIT: I've been informed that this will need to be voted up a bunch for Valve to look at it. I don't expect people to do that without knowing more about it, but I'll make a proper media campaign for this later. Feel free to vote on it for now, but I'll have a lot more details later. LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

You're absolutely right about natural gas, it's probably our only hope for some sort of transition fuel on the scale we need it. The problem is the massive costs associated with transitioning over to it. We probably won't be serious about it until after peak oil, in which case it's too late to prevent major economic shockwaves that will hit.

Well this should have happened a long time ago, but the story of my life seems to be "better late than never." Here is the re-released version of Stranger In Need, the first and probably last video I'll do in Source Filmmaker. The original version of this video was just barely done in time for a deadline and I had to cut a few corners on it that I wanted to spend a little bit longer fixing. This version has the main fixes I wanted to have the first time around. It mainly consists of slightly improved animations, adding a few effects I meant to have the first time, a more polished sound mix, etc. This the closest thing I get to a "patch" for my videos. I promise I didn't go George Lucas on this though, all the changes are very subtle, you may not even notice the difference. Blip.tv Download (110MB H.264 MKV) - - - I was hoping to have more news for August, but it's looking like that's not going to happen. That just means there's more news and videos coming for September though!