Thursday, March 01, 2007

EPISODE 2: ALIENS



Well at long last, here is Episode 2 of Civil Protection. This one is the most ambitious video project I've done yet, having more dialogue and action than Episode 1 and weighing in at 11 minutes. Also, this one deals a lot more with the world from Half-Life 2, but I tried to write this episode so that people who know nothing about the game can still follow it without any trouble. Since this one is fairly huge (100MB), I'm offering a low quality version of it as well, although you're going to miss out on some stuff if you watch that one as you won't get stereo sound, nor be able to tell what's happening in the background. The download links are up on the right.


29 comments:

Tom Edwards said...

Definitely better than episode 1, although it could have done with being a little shorter. :-)

Anonymous said...

This must have taken an insane amount of time to put together. And yes I agree. Better than the first. Also I spent several hours subtitling it. :p

Ross Scott said...

1st dude: Don't worry, this will be the longest episode for a long time, I wanted to lay down the plot of HL2 for people in this one.

2nd dude: Yes, this did take forever, I try not to think about it. Would you be interested in sharing the subtitle file? I already spent 3.5 hours subtitling the first episode:

http://www.radford.edu/~rscott31/CP01-Friday.sub

I could color-code it and you could give yourself credit for the subtitles inside the file itself (like they do for closed captioning in movies). My contact info is under my profile on the main page.

Katana said...

Some pretty nice things you did with face poser! Very good.

bllius said...

How did you do the voices btw? Record and then add effects?

Anonymous said...

My god this is the BEST machinima I have ever seen. Love the reference to close encounter.

Ross Scott said...

Thanks for the positive comments! And yeah, The voices are recorded then processed to try and approach that helmet radio sound. I don't make them sound like they do in-game however because that'd make it harder to understand and you can't convey as much vocal range then.

Unknown said...

How did you make this? what was everything you used? i wanna make these kinds of movies.

Anonymous said...

I noticed near the end that you can hear some music from Fallout in the background. Fallout fan maybe?

Ross Scott said...

Man the process is way too long for me to list here, email me if you want more details, but here's the really general overview of what I used:

Cooledit: To record/process voices and sound effects, and add in reverb and music

Virtualdub: To do basic video processing like cropping and for compression. (I may use this in the future for motion blur too).

SourceSDK: To animate everything you see on the screen

Premiere Pro: To do color correction (I still need to get better, but it has a LOT, believe me) and help sync shots and in general a better UI for editing than Virtualdub

- - - - -

Yeah, Fallout is great. While I normally hate turn-based fighting games, I got through Fallout because I love post-apocalyptic stuff and everything about the game was great, especially the Pipboy.

David said...

This is incredibly well done. Im fairly new to Machinima but from what ive seen this is one of the best series yet.

If you are willing to show me how to do whatever you need help will I would be more than happy to help.

Ross Scott said...

Thanks for the compliment! Unfortunately you may have JUST MISSED your chance to help me out with the animations since I just an offer from another guy who's keen on helping, so it wouldn't be fair to him since I talked to him first. This doesn't mean I won't be able to use your help in the future however, please contact me (info under my profile) if you want to discuss this further.

Unknown said...

Great work - camera angles and storytelling are excellent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that looks like you've built some entirely new animations (Dave leaving the dumpster) - if so, nice work.

Single best HL2 true-mechanima series.

All the best,

--Reverend Speed

Ross Scott said...

Yeah I wish. If I could create new animations you'd see a lot more stuff happening. The dumpster descent is one of Valve's animations, but I had to hack it up in order to get it to work right. I had to switch between a scripted sequence and a choreographed scene so Dave didn't go straight through the floor.

Unknown said...

In which case, I'm almost as impressed! Good cutaway! =)

--Rev

bllius said...

Nice sleight of hand then. If you ever get a chance to write up a 'how to' that'd be fantastic.

Anonymous said...

Great work! Also, just so you know, you've made front page at digg :)

You've got some great talent bud!

Anonymous said...

"Lets say we were ready for them. Then what? We call it the 10 hour war?"

LOL!!! That is funny. You are really creative!

Unknown said...

I love this episode, overall the whole series are well done, but this one is especially my favourite.

You have a great sense of humour. Keep making these, please!

Unknown said...

By the way, what was the song on the radio that they got?

Ross Scott said...

It's "Fat people, not good!", listed in the credits. I got it off mp3.com several years ago. Might be kind of hard to find now though.

Anonymous said...

Love your series ross!

Anonymous said...

just awesome how do you guys do that

Anonymous said...

Where did you get the recording of "Fat People Not Good"? That song is so...uniquely awesome! I NEED IT!!!

Ross Scott said...

sam: I got it from MP3.com several years ago. It's a pretty weird song. For whatever reason, I can't find it anywhere anymore, and since it was free to begin with, I'll just host it here. Here's a link:

http://www.radford.edu/~rscott31/fat_people__not_good_.mp3

Beskaryc Kyr'am said...

Where can i get the song "Fat People Not Good"

Anonymous said...

I so wish i could download Fat People Not Good so i can have it on my Ipod.

Ross Scott said...

Mike and Gethro:

http://www.radford.edu/~rscott31/fat_people__not_good_.mp3

Unknown said...

I think I actually love you for putting in Fallout 2 Music into this episode. Klamath right?

You rock, my friend.