Ross Scott

"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!

I'm still busy with a lot of stuff, but a new interview has gone up if you're interested. This one is for the "Max and Teddy in the Morning at Night - Sometimes" show that broadcasts on a college radio station out of Cleveland. This interview almost didn't happen, since they had a technical problem and didn't confirm they could hear me before broadcasting live, so the first 10 minutes of this is them trying to troubleshoot their equipment while I listened helplessly. The first half of this are questions I've gotten a lot in other interviews, the bottom half has ones I haven't gotten before. Link to show page Direct link to mp3 of the interview Try to find the spot in the interview where their supervisor walked in and started talking to them also while broadcasting live!

The legal issue has more or less resolved. I got the rights back to my videos and thus no longer have to press legal action against Machinima for numerous contract violations they committed. I might go into more details on this later, for now I'm just glad to not have to deal with them anymore.

I may have to research it more to see how it affects previous predictions I've read, but the article you link is predicting 11 million barrels production a day by 2020. The USA currently consumes about 19 million barrels a day right now. I find it kind of weird that we would export when we're still consuming more than we're producing, but it could lower foreign dependence. Based on our record so far, I really don't have much in substantial energy savings until we're past a tipping point, I see consumption globally just rising until then. Once it falls due to demand outstripping supply, and KEEPS falling (this happened once already , that's when I think you'll see global shockwaves. The thing is for new discoveries like this in the USA, there are more old oil fields going dry and shutting down. Our rate of new oil discovery peaked back in the 60s. Shale oil will buy us time for sure, but I'm not sure how much it really affects the timeline for peak oil itself.