Civil Protection

FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 23

2009-11-27T18:22:00.002-05:00

Hey, for the people who still know about this site, something's happened to the Accursed Farms website. The timing is pretty awful too since the next Freeman's Mind episode just came out too. I've contacted everyone connected with the site, hopefully this will get resolved soon. In the meantime, here's the link to the new episode:

Youtube

NEW EPISODE + RSS

2009-07-27T23:24:00.001-04:00

A new Freeman's Mind episode is up + RSS has been added to the new site, so now you guys have less of an excuse to keep coming here. Here some links:

new episode

RSS stuff

New Website

2009-06-30T20:33:00.006-04:00

Civil Protection and Freeman's Mind have moved! Go to www.accursedfarms.com from now on for news on the episodes.

To RSS people:
Until we get RSS working on the new site, I'll make new posts here when new episodes are released as a way of notifying you.

Episode update and rant

2009-06-24T18:53:00.002-04:00

Next episode details:
Well even though the poll seems to be changing now, within the first couple days most people voted for me to finish Civil Protection first, so that's what I've been doing. In breaking my usual trend, I'm releasing a few details about the next episode. They're not a lot, but for an episode that's only a few minutes long, I can't reveal too much without spoiling things. I'm probably going to call this next episode "Morning Patrol". It'll be about average length, take place in City 17, and you'll get to see a little bit more of the HL2 world in it. It's definitely not one of my more spectacular episode ideas, but I think it's the most well-rounded one I've produced so far. Here's a preview shot of it:

If you're a fan of other CP episodes, I think it's very likely you'll enjoy this next one. While I'm extremely happy with how it's coming out, I don't want people to think it's going to be most magnificent episode that's ever been produced. It has been a long time since the last episode, but I've been working on many other things besides Civil Protection.

Rant:
I get a fair chunk of hate mail from people who are angry at me for not producing episodes faster. Most of these people don't seem to possess any sense of perspective or logic, but for those that do, I'd like to elaborate a little more on this. The biggest barrier to me producing more episodes of Civil Protection is animation time. While sometimes I don't mind, much of the time I HATE animating. While I have been getting some help, that's been a mixed bag. Pretty much everyone who assists with animation right now prefers to work or only has time to work on one aspect of production. While this has undeniably increased the quality of the episodes being produced in areas, it's questionable how much time savings there have been. This is to say nothing of people who for different reasons, have had to abandon work on episodes. The past episode and the one I'm currently working on were both written in such a way to make it easy for additional animators to help out. In both cases, multiple people bailed and I ended up filling in a lot of the gaps for animation. I never would have started this particular episode idea next if I had known that was going to happen.

Believe it or not, I get more frustrated than anyone else that I can't produce episodes faster. I'm overflowing with ideas and am totally confident I haven't gotten to the best ones yet. I sincerely wish I could afford to hire someone to help me animate in the Source engine. I would LOVE to unload almost all aspects of animating the episodes to someone else or other people; though I haven't come across anyone who can animate in the programs Face Poser and Hammer and has the same time and drive to devote to it. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to either, I hate that aspect of it myself.

For fans of Freeman's Mind:
I promise the production rate will pick up a lot as soon as the next CP episode is done. Some of you may recall I promised an increase in episode production late last year and that actually did happen. They have still been relatively few and far between because Freeman's Mind hasn't been my main focus. However since far more people have become interested in it than I would have anticipated, I plan to make that my new priority soon. In addition to devoting more time towards it, I'm planning to move soon to where I can record at any time without disturbing people. Right now I can only record during certain windows of time without disturbing my neighbors, which limits how fast I can produce episodes. I know many of you may not believe me, but I can promise the production rate is going to become much, much faster than for FM than ever before.

Good news and bad news

2009-06-19T13:22:00.001-04:00

EDIT:

Well thanks to reader advice I was able to solve the problem. I was an idiot and wasn't using static props. In my defense, static props tend to behave much less reliably for me, plus the model has to support them in the first place, something many do not. I got lucky in this case in that the model I was using did support being a static prop. Anyway, I'm a little undecided what to do now since I was ready to switch gears. I'm putting up a new poll, I'll go with whatever the masses decide on this.

ORIGINAL POST:

Well it looks like my tradition of discovering a completely new bug in every episode continues. Right now I've run into a bug that's preventing me from completing a scene (read below for details). I have some ideas as to how to fix it, but it's probably going to take the help of someone else helping with modelling and it's hard to say how long that will take. The good news for you is that since I can only do so much more on the episode from my end until this is fixed, I'll go ahead and start working on the next Freeman's Mind episode while this bug gets looked into. I still have every intention of completing this CP episode, but I hate making you guys wait on more material. If all I had to do was writing, I could produce a new episode every day of FM and CP.

To those familiar with the Source engine:

The bug I'm running into is "Reliable Snapshot Overflow" that crashes the map and occurs whenever I try to record a demo. I know what's causing it in my case. It has to do with me having a ton of small dynamic props in a small area. I could fix this problem by deleting the props, but I unfortunately need them for this scene. Right now my best theory on how to fix this is to merge many of small individual models into one larger one, so the game sees less props to process. This is probably going to be a pain to do for our modeller. If any of you know more about this than I do, feel free to post possible solutions here. If you discover one before we do and notify me, I'll put your name down in the credits of the next episode as a technical advisor.

June update + Antialiasing glitch

2009-06-05T08:41:00.002-04:00

Well I've been getting some requests for updates. I haven't posted more because the situation is still the same; I'm still busy on the next CP episode and the website is still in development. I know It might seem like I'm not doing anything, but I've actually been making a lot of progress; it's just an inherently slow process to produce episodes at the quality level I strive for in Civil Protection. Each episode is much more than just recording and editing, it's more like a minature mod for the game.

On that note, I've been getting pressure on all sides to produce more episodes of Freeman's Mind. I'm still not producing any more until I finish the current CP episode, but after that, I may alter my plans to make it first priority and have them come up at a much more rapid rate. Many of you have said you prefer it over Civil Protection. I think you're only saying that because you don't know everything I have envisioned for the series. My imagination far exceeds my production capacity. On that same note however, I'm not even attempting the "jaw dropping" episodes in the near future because of how much more work they would entail. So due to the time involved with making those, I'll probably focus on easier projects, like FM. In the meantime, I'll continue blazing away on the next episode.

The next part of this post only applies to 3D graphics geeks, so you can skip it if you're just here for the videos. The glitch I'm listing below will NOT hold up production on the next episode.

- - - - - - - - -

I've run into a minor nuisance in production that simply hasn't gone away. I'm a sucker for antialiasing; I think it cleans up the look of a 3D scene immensely. However I've gone through multiple generations of graphics cards and keep running into the same glitch when I enable antialiasing. For lack of a better term, I'm calling it "shimmering". This glitch seems to be especially noticeable in the Source engine in certain situations. It's similar to looking at a road in the distance on a hot day, giving the illusion of a puddle. It causes lines or gaps or something to be rendered that should not be there. It only happens for me for surfaces in the distance with antialiasing enabled. It's best seen in motion, but it's noticeable in screenshots. I recommend downloading "On A Rail" if you want to see it in action. Here is an example where it occurs from that video:

That's not just a reflection from the lights, this glitch occurs in 100% dark tunnels. While I'm on a Geforce 8800 right now, this has happened to me on multiple cards in the past and I've witnessed it happening on a friend's computer with a Radeon 4850. The ONLY solution I've found to this is to either turn off antialiasing completely or to render the scene using supersampling entirely; no multisampling whatsoever. This is not an ideal solution as supersampling is immensely slower and requires too much memory to hit the same quality levels as other antialiasing methods. If ANYONE knows what's causing this or can demonstrate a solution, please contact me at rosswscott@gmail.com or post here.

Feel free to test this for yourself! If you have a copy of Half-Life 2, a good spot to test this is on the first canal level (d1_canals_01) looking back at the dark train tunnel you see once you get outside. Here's an example of the effect for that level:

If this problem doesn't affect you, great, but I'm trying to find out WHY. Ask people who know a lot about 3D graphics. Ask ATI. Ask Nvidia. Ask on tech forums, it'll be a favor to me. Again, this glitch won't hold up production of any episodes, it's just a personal quest of mine to find out how to fix it and I'm hoping someone out there knows more about it than I do.

EDIT:
Viewer Carl Johnson (not the one from Grand Theft Auto) has made me aware that disabling AA and AF through the driver control panel, then setting the AA settings in-game will prevent this problem on ATI cards. Unfortunately I tried this and it didn't seem to have the same effect for me (since I'm currently on an Nvidia one), but that's encouraging to know this is fixable.

May updates

2009-05-19T10:18:00.001-04:00

Hey people, I wanted to let you know progress is still underway on the next CP episode. It's turning out well, but as usual, seemingly simple things are becoming much more complicated than they should be. I still haven't run into any show-stopping bugs, there's just a lot of little elements to take care of in this episode to make it feel more complete. I'd post screenshots or clips from it so far, but I really hate having things spoiled for me personally, so I try to do the same for the viewers.

The new website has been very close to launchable for a while now, but I want to have the look of some of the pages altered to be as easy as possible to navigate, plus the guy coding it has had a lot of behind the scenes revisions to make. Right now it's sort of a race between us as to which will happen first, the new website launching, or the next CP episode being released.

I've been reviewing some of the subtitles submitted to me and while I appreciate the effort of people who have submitted, some of the timing or spelling/grammar has been so erratic that it almost creates more work to correct it than it does to create them from scratch. If you're interested in contributing subtitles to Civil Protection or Freeman's Mind, please contact me at rosswscott@gmail.com. Also this is just for English copies at the moment. While I plan to fully support subtitles in other languages, I want to get the English copies done first so translators have the best source material to work from. Be sure to contact me before making them, just so no one ends up duplicating the work.

Also I've posted the answer before and I plan to have it be on the FAQ of the new website, but since I keep getting these questions over and over again, I'd like to make a post about this. Many people have asked will I continue Freeman's Mind to completion, through Half-Life 2, and switch to the Black Mesa mod. The answer to all of these questions is maybe. If people decide they get tired of the format, I don't want to promise I'll continue something that no one wants, but for the time being I can't see a reason to stop it.

EDIT:

I think I now have enough offers to transcribe subtitles, thanks to everyone who's shown interest. I'll make another post when I'm ready for subtitles in other languages.

It's come to my attention that some of the downloadable copies of the Freeman's Mind episodes are disappearing. I've notified the host, so hopefully this will be resolved before too long.

FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 11

2009-05-04T10:37:00.005-04:00

Youtube

640x480 WMV (90MB)

Well here's the proof some of you were waiting for that I didn't kill off Freeman permanently. This is the longest episode so far, I normally would have made it shorter, but I figured you guys might get sick of seeing the same elevator shaft 3 episodes in a row.

Unfortunately for some, the gap between 11 and 12 is going to be longer than usual because I really want go get back to Civil Protection. The latest episode is well underway, though it's gotten more ambitious than I originally intended from a technical perspective. So far there haven't been any show-stopping bugs like I've gotten a lot in the past. Once I'm done with that, I want to get at least get a good chunk of work done on the new pilot episode before I do another FM episode, so it may be a few weeks before you see another one. The upside to this is that things are starting to come together more on the animation end of things for CP, so you may start seeing a lot more shorter episodes of that in the forseeable future.

April update

2009-04-22T23:21:00.005-04:00

Since I'm getting comments daily on the topic, here's what's going on with the videos. I've finished all the dialogue for Episode 11 and it's going to be the longest FM episode so far. I'm now letting Otto Beumelburg handle the rest of the audio work on it. He adds most of the extra sound effects to FM and I'm hoping he'll take over the volume balancing on it. That sounds like a simple task, but it takes a while to do properly and it's important because if it's done wrong you won't be able to make out what's being said over all the regular sounds. I'm letting him take as much time as he needs to, plus there's a delay from when the video's done to when it's uploaded and available, so it will be a little while before it's up, hopefully sometime next week, but we'll see.

In the meantime, I'll be working on the next CP episode and plan to be relentless at it. I tend to go back and forth between wanting to make something more original and wanting to simply get a video out. Since I've been making more of the FM episodes lately, I'm really anxious to get back to work on CP. Once the next CP episode is done, I'll make the pilot episode for the surprise series I mentioned earlier, though that shouldn't be as difficult as most CP episodes.

EDIT:

The new FM episode will be out soon. Also I don't know why it's showing so many comments deleted. The only posts I've been deleting lately are duplicates. I think they might be being deleted by the person who orginally posted them.

SECOND GUIDE OUT!

2009-04-16T13:07:00.004-04:00

Well this is kind of late in announcing, but here it is anyway. The second and final guide from me is now out! This one is called

Source Machinima Cinematography.

The other guide, Choreography, focused almost exclusively on animation. This guide covers pretty much everything else involved with making a machinima film in the Source engine. If you want to know exactly how I process everything after I have it animated, this covers all the steps. It covers recording methods, camerawork, audio/video editing, and even some bits on getting ideas and writing scripts. In my opinion, the most valuable parts of this guide are being able to create custom camerawork (which includes slow motion), recording without any dropped frames, and my secret recipe for motion blur. And like the other guide, I didn't set the price on this, but I did try to make sure it was as thorough as possible.

And for everyone waiting on FM, CP, and the pilot episode, I'm working on them; asking daily about it really has no impact on the production time.

Ugh

2009-04-12T13:38:00.004-04:00

Well in working on it, it looks like the commenting system has been completely broken, so I'm taking the site back down again. It looks like the site isn't quite functional enough for launching afterall, so I'll put it on hold again while the people coding try to work it out. Really I've been trying to get this going ever since last summer, but as you can see it's been one problem after another. I'll make an announcement here once it's a little more mature.

And yes I saw all the comments and emails about wanting an RSS system, I wasn't aware anyone even used that. I've never really intended for the homepage to be a daily news kind of deal, just something you can check every few weeks or so. Basically I'd rather focus on making more videos than giving constant updates. My primary goal with the site is to make it easy to get to the videos and to support some extra stuff. However since there's such a demand for it, I'll ask the people coding to try and implement that in the new version.

Site up (again)

2009-04-11T17:14:00.003-04:00

Hey, the new site should be functional now. I'm going to wait and make sure it doesn't choke like last time before I basically turn this blogspot page into a redirecting one. I'll still keep all old entries and comments, but if all goes well, all future news and videos will be at http://accursedfarms.com.

False Launch

2009-04-09T11:41:00.004-04:00

Well I was hoping to get the site up today, and started to, but as soon as I made it public everything froze on the host's computer and the guy running it has no explanation for it. I now have a backup plan, but it probably won't go up again until sometime tomorrow (if nothing goes wrong again).

EDIT: I have no idea when this thing is going to go up, I'm not coding, so a lot of this stuff is out of my hands.

April 2nd

2009-04-02T00:05:00.001-04:00

Well for those of you who didn't figure it out yet, yesterday was a joke for April Fool's Day. Everything I wrote was bogus. The series is not over, Episode 11 is in progress. While I do think people could get tired of the format, I'm never going to run out of things to say, though some episodes will be better than others. I also have no incentive to have a road trip across the USA. I have enough scars from bicycle accidents as it is without needing to add to the collection with a motorcycle.

I think more of you figured out the joke than last year, it was basically the same trick. Since the fanbase is larger, there were a lot more comments this time. Like before, I put all comments mentioning April Fool's or the date on hold, but they're all posted now if you want to look through them. Also like before, I saw some suggestions that I was making up some of the comments. I'm not, these are all you guys. The only comments I made were in my name and were discussing the motorcycle trip.

Right now my plans are to finish Episode 11 of FM and the website, then focus soley on the next CP episode without having to divide up my attention on different projects.

FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 10.5

2009-04-01T03:09:00.004-04:00

Youtube

640x480 WMV (17MB)

I changed my mind, I'm not doing any more Freeman's Mind; it's over. I've realized there's no way I'll be able to think up enough material to get through the rest of the game. Enjoy the last episode; it's kind of short, hence the half mark.

EDIT:
I think I'm going to buy a motorcycle and ride across the United States.

FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 10

2009-03-29T06:12:00.004-04:00

Youtube

640x480 74MB WMV

Well here's the latest episode of FM, the next one won't be too far behind. This episode will probably upset the Half-Life purists out there. I use some cheats because in my vision of Half-Life, I see Gordon as capable of doing a pull-up.

And yes, I know I said the previous episode would be the last one before the new website, but I was wrong. I thought things were going well, but all development pretty much stopped after I made that statement, and I can't do the coding on my own. The good news I now have new help on it and progress has resumed on the site (again). I'm pretty serious about getting the site up, which is why I put the new URL in the credits. It will be called "Accursed Farms", and will be the future homepage for all the videos. Nothing is changing production-wise, it will just be easier for me to manage the videos with the new site and will offer more features than the blogspot address. Right now it's unfinished, so you'll only get a front page, but I think it will be up pretty soon. I'm not giving any time estimates since everything seems to go to hell every time I do that. I'll announce as soon as the new site is up.

EDIT:
I'm not sure why the latest episode is darker, I thought it was my imagination when editing. I think it might be a mistake I made in the recording. Unfortunately the footage is already done on the next episode, so it will be darker too, but I'll try and make sure the future ones look alright.

Subtitles

2009-03-25T10:24:00.002-04:00

I'm working on the next FM episodes and I'll have them as soon as I can, although in the meantime I want to get some feedback on subtitles. Subtitles are going to be a big section of the new website, so I'm trying to standardize what method will be used. I have two options right now. One will have subtitles color-coded to the speaker. I thought this might make it easier for people to distinguish who is talking, since Mike and Dave use identical models for the characters. The other option I've heard of is to make the subtitles all the same color, but use a hyphen to distinguish when two characters are talking in the same time frame. Below are snapshots of each method:

Color coded:

Hyphenated

Let me know what you think in the comments and I may put up a poll. I'm especially interested in international viewers who will benefit from future translations. If you don't care about the subtitles, then just ignore this. Thanks everyone.

EDIT:
Alright, due to feedback from translators and viewers, I've made my decision. My plans are to make plain white outlined text using hyphenated versions for the hard-encoded Youtube copies, and make both hyphenated and color-coded subtitle files (for ones that get done this way) available for download.

quick FM update

2009-03-16T09:01:00.000-04:00

I've found a workaround for the barnacle problem I've been having. For those that care, if you go into noclip mode then clip through a wall while looking at them, it seems to fix the problem for the remainder of the demo. This does add an extra step and may make transitions between load zones even less smooth, but it does seem to be a solution for now.

I'm going to try and get two more Freeman's Mind episodes out this month to make up for the delay on the last one. Since there's lagtime between when I'm done and when it actually gets uploaded, I can't promise anything, but that's my goal.

FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 9

2009-03-04T20:16:00.002-05:00

Youtube

640x480 WMV (87MB)

Well here's the latest FM episode after a lot of delays. This one has several bugs that I basically just ignored. There are missing bloodstains, the barnacle problem is back, and one of the signs wasn't glowing like it's supposed to. One viewer has told me it's not even possible to finish HL Source without cheating because of a bug, I guess I'll find out.

This is going to be the LAST video release before the new website, we're getting really close now, I hope to have something semi-functional in about a week on that front. After that focus will be on the next CP episode, but I may do another FM first just to make up for the delay on this one.

February updates

2009-02-10T05:30:00.001-05:00

Well judging from the comments, people really want an update, so here's what happeneing. Steady progress is being made on the next Civil Protection episode, but there's still a ways to go. I'll get started on a new Freeman's Mind episode soon to try and make up for the delay. I lost a couple days to doing some additional contact work, but that's done now, so I'll back to work on everything else. Progress on the website is going very well and I think it will be done quite soon. My plans are to get it up before the next video is released. Finally, some initial work has been started on a "pilot episode" for something new I want to try. Without spoiling anything, it will be in the Source engine, but will not be Half-Life related. You'll definitely see the next CP and FM episodes out before this however.

FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 8

2009-01-16T20:00:00.004-05:00

Youtube

640x480 WMV (87MB)

Well here's the latest episode of Freeman's Mind. I got lucky with this one and demo recording worked without the barnacles going crazy. This is good because I was able to swap out some lines for the scientist at the end, something that wouldn't have been practical with just raw video recording. The barnacle problem is NOT SOLVED however, I simply got lucky with this map. My offer of getting in the credits for anyone who can solve the problem is ongoing. Also, the cattle prod story mentioned in this episode is not even an exaggeration, I knew someone who used to do that.

I plan to go back and focus on the next CP episode for now, but if the rest of production ends up taking a long time, I'll get another FM episode out to tide you over. Hopefully the new website will be finished before either one is done!

New year updates

2009-01-08T19:29:00.002-05:00

I know people who come here like updates, so here's a post on what's happening. Unfortunately I'm behind in pretty much all areas, probably because I'm focusing on several different things. I've gotten some additional help with the new website, which I think is helping things move along faster.

The next CP episode is growing more elaborate than I originally intended, which is adding to the production time, but I think it's going to make the episode that much better. Unlike the last one, which was meant to be different, I think this next one will have something for anybody who's a fan of the series. Once it's done, then work will resume on "The Tunnel".

Finally while I'd prefer to focus on CP, I know a lot of you like Freeman's Mind, so I'll do my best to have another episode of that out sometime next week (assuming I don't run into more problems).

EDIT:
Freeman's Mind is looking closer to Friday or this weekend because all the shouting retakes wears my voice down some and there are only certain times I can record. The good news is it will be a longer episode.

FREEMAN'S MIND: EPISODE 7

2008-12-21T17:44:00.007-05:00

Youtube

640x480 WMV (44MB)

Well here's the next episode of Freeman's Mind. There's no motion blur in this one due to problems mentioned in the last post. Due to the recording method, it's a little twitchier, but hopefully shouldn't be too disorienting.

This is going to be the lastr video release for this year, but I will be working on getting new stuff for January over the winter break. Right now I'm going to be focusing more on the new CP episode and the website. Sorry I didn't make anything Christmas-related this year, but I'm still kind of catching up on everything. Things are starting to fall into place though, it's my hope to produce more videos in 2009 than all my existing ones combined

bugs again

2008-12-15T23:13:00.003-05:00

A lot of you know that bugs in the source engine are nothing new when it comes to my videos, but I honestly wasn't expecting them to affect Freeman's Mind. Lo and behold, Half-Life Source has a bug where if you're recording a demo, it causes the tongues on almost all barnacle models to shrink up, even though in-game they're still hanging down, just invisible (try it yourself). This interrupts my usual production method, so I've contemplated the alternatives:

1. Ignore it (which isn't a great option since there are a lot of them in the game)

2. Use fraps to record footage instead (not a good option for me since I always get SOME stuttering this way)

3. Record the game in Half-Life original (not a bad option, but the effects won't be quite as nice, plus recording will be more of a pain)

4. Export the footage in-game without using demos (best option, but no more motion blur)

So what this comes down to is demo recording in Half Life Source is bugged, so I won't be able to rely on it for all the episodes. So if you're wondering why there's no more motion blur in the next episode, this is it. Also as a standing offer, if anyone can FIX this problem with barnacles and demo recording, I'll add your name to the credits of every future episode of Freeman's Mind that has barnacles in it, which will probably be a lot.

FREEMAN'S MIND - EPISODE 6

2008-12-09T13:30:00.004-05:00

Youtube

640 x 480 WMV (62MB)

Well here's the latest episode of Freeman's Mind. I'm happier with the pacing on this one and it doesn't feel quite as crammed as the last one. This one has a little more language, but Freeman has to put up with more in this episode too. As long as people are interested in it, I hope to keep doing a lot more of these. I plan to have another one out sometime this month, then a new Civil Protection episode either at the end of the month or else early January.

Updates

2008-11-28T11:24:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I posted anything, so I wanted to let you know what's going on right now. As of now I have unofficially finished the Noesis guides. I'm still kind of in shock over the whole thing. They may still contact me about any needed revisions though, so I might get an email like:

"Ross... we need you to redo the camerawork section. You were supposed to cover camera motion, but these are bomb instructions..."

and I'll have to adjust it accordingly. For now though, I've done everything on my end. Anyway, what this means is that I'm going to start producing much more machinima now. Right now I plan to be focusing on Civil Protection more, but I'll be working on Freeman's Mind whenever I have to wait on getting material back from other people, so I'll be working on something either way. For the next CP, I'm actually thinking of postponing the scary episode just a little bit. After the last episode, I want to get more of a "normal" episode out first, so there's not any confusion about what direction the series is headed. It will be a shorter one, but I think everyone will like it. After that, I promise the next CP episode will be the long scary one.

Finally, things aren't going well for the new website. I've sent him a couple emails, but I haven't heard back from the guy helping me with the code since October. I'll give him a little bit longer, but I may need some more help with this if he's completely MIA since I don't know html myself.

EDIT: I've just heard back from the website guy. Turns out he was in the hospital for 3 weeks, so I guess that's a pretty good excuse. I was actually just joking earlier when I implied he might die, but it looks like that wasn't too far from the truth. If he does die I'll have to dedicate the next episode to him I guess. I dunno.

FREEMAN'S MIND - EPISODE 5

2008-10-30T19:54:00.003-04:00

Youtube

640x480 WMV (47MB)

Well I've been extremely busy, but I would have felt bad not getting SOMETHING out for Halloween. This isn't really Halloween themed, but this section takes place in one of the creepier parts of Half-Life. I'll be the first to admit this one has a few shortcomings. It's not really anything new for the FM series, but I'm still having some problems pacing everything because I'll record the footage ahead of time before I know everything I'm going to say. So there are some sections where Freeman is a little rapid-fire with his commentary. This can be kind of neat in the sense that it makes him appear more manic, but I still want to avoid it. I spend less time trying to perfect FM than I would with CP as it's just commentary on top of game footage. Also I apologize but this episode has a little bit of volume clipping. I tried my best to clean it up, but I may have to look into getting a better mic as mine's pretty cheap.

My main goal with the series is to keep moving forward with it so I can get more episodes out as I have a lot of ground to cover. Unfortunately production will still be stalled for a little bit longer, but I'll make an annnouncement as soon as I'm done with Noesis, then I'll really move into full gear on this stuff. The current release rate of Freeman's Mind is NOT representative of how long it takes to make an episode, I've just been too busy to make more. So it may take a little while, but the pace WILL improve.

In other news I'm getting closer to finishing the design of the website, but the coder helping me has gotten pneumonia and has been too sick to work on it lately, so lets hope he doesn't die on me.

updates

2008-10-07T20:59:00.000-04:00

Hey people, here are the updates I was talking about. First and foremost, I have to finish the second Noesis guide so I can free up more time to work on machinima. I'm getting close, but it might be another week or two, but after that there will be a big jump in production. Here's what you can expect coming:

Freeman's Mind - I can get these out much faster than CP and I really need to step up the pace if I'm going to get through all of the Half-Life series. I'm hoping to have another one out by the end of the month, then a lot more out after that, but I'm not setting any deadlines since that's already backfired on me before.

Civil Protection shorts - I may release some CP episodes that are very short in nature. I'm not sure whether I want to count these as actual episodes or not, but I'd like to be able to release more of CP without it taking forever. Depending on how much time volunteers have to work on it, this could also come out this month, but I'm making no promises.

15+ minute episode - this will be the scary episode, called "The Tunnel". It's already been partially produced, but it still has a ways to go. This will likely be the next big episode to come out. I was originally hoping to release this by Halloween, but that's not going to happen now because of everything else I have to do. I'm hoping it can be done by sometime in November.

20+ minute episode - this one is also partially produced, it will be called "Open Forum" (as in the Greek kind, not an internet one). It will mainly focused on dialogue and will introduce several new characters. It will also require a lot of facial expressions, which I'm leaving to someone better at that than myself. So when this one comes out depends on how busy everyone is, but I haven't forgotten about it.

New website - work has resumed on this again, it might come out this month, but it depends on whether the person helping me will have time to finish the coding and if I have time to make a new logo for it.

I also have a ton of other ideas of things I'd like to do, but that's what's going to be coming in the semi-near future. For everyone frustrated with the pace of things so far, I feel the same way.

NEW EPISODE: OIL'S WELL

2008-10-02T17:33:00.007-04:00

Youtube

Medium quality (800x452) 70MB WMV

High quality (1280x720) 211MB WMV

Well the new episode is finally out, it took about 1-2 weeks longer than it should have for a lot of different reasons and has been the most problematic release so far for several other reasons. This episode contains an enormous amount of custom content I hunted down on the internet, as you'll see in the credits. So thanks to everyone who let me use their maps, models, and textures. The tone of this episode is a little different than the others as it was intended for an environmental contest that ended up getting postponed, but I'm releasing it anyway. It's a little fact-heavy as a result, most of the humor is towards the end. My primary reason for making this though was an excuse to use a one-liner I'd had in my mind for a while (the "hybrid car" one). And for those wondering, I took the corny title from the old computer game by the same name.

You should by no means assume anything said in Civil Protection or Freeman's Mind necessarily reflects my own beliefs, however this is one case where they do. The theme of this episode is how we're in big trouble once we run out of oil. The research I did on the topic suggest that things are going to get pretty ugly in the future. One expert interviewed by National Geographic says that the world oil supply is plateauing right now and we have about 6-8 years before it will start to decline and this guy was right on the money about when the U.S. was going to be be unable to rely on domestic oil back in the 70's. Besides what Mike mentions in the video (I won't spoil it), I think our only realistic solution is figuring out how to get cellulosic ethanol production to work on a mass scale (this isn't the same kind made from corn, sugar, and other crops). I'm not really a miltia type, but the more I read about the situation, the more it makes me want to live in a cabin out in the woods with guns and a bunch of canned goods. That would be a good place to be if society starts to fall apart. It'll be at least 10-20 years before things really get bad though.

If you hate this episode and think it's being too preachy, don't worry, this is probably the first and last episode of CP with any sort of "message". I'd rather focus on making funny, strange, or exciting videos anyway. Finally, check back in a few days and I'll have an update about what you can expect in the future with regards to CP and FM.

EDIT: I forgot ANOTHER person in the credits! Oh well, his nickname is "JakeyB" and he did the port of "The Postal Dude" model I used as a cameo in this episode.

quick post

2008-10-01T19:47:00.006-04:00

Well after a 16-hour long editing session, the final video is done. I still need to do the final render, encoding, upload it, make a graphic for it, and distribute it. Since my computer isn't the fastest and this is at HD resolution, this is going to take hours and I'm too exhausted to finish it right now. Sorry I didn't make it by when I said I would, but I'll have it up by midday tomorrow.

EDIT: I'm trying to upload the video right now, but my internet has cut out 5 times now. I'm hoping it will hold up at least long enough to get it up.

FIRST GUIDE OUT!

2008-09-17T15:40:00.005-04:00

Breaking news here! The first tutorial is now out! I literally just found this out, I haven't even seen the finished product myself yet! Here's a link to it here:

Machinima Choreography Guide

Being a real cheapass myself, I admit the price seems little high. I didn't set it, plus this is a VERY comprehensive guide. I wrote the whole thing targetted for people with NO experience with the Source SDK. An incredible number of hours went into this, so for all that do buy this, you have my thanks. You can read more about it on the page, but here's what this guide will cover:

-Setting up your scene
-Character movement
-Character animations
-Lip syncing
-Beginning usage of Hammer (enough to get you started with machinima)

To sum it up, this is the technical end of machinima-making in Source. If you want to know how I've done a lot of the more elaborate animations in Civil Protection, this tells you how. This guide definitely teaches you everything I knew when I created "Friday" , and more beyond that.

However this guide does NOT teach things like camerawork, demo recording, audio/video editing, motion blur, all the other things related to making a video. That will be covered in the NEXT guide, which I'm still scrambling to get done. Also since creation on this began before HL2: Episode 2 existed, this is all done using HL2: Episode 1. However, easily 90% of what's taught here is applicable to any Source engine game.

EDIT: I'm trying my best to get the episode out on Tuesday, though it's possible the audio processing might add another day.

quick update

2008-09-03T06:45:00.001-04:00

Well I've gotten some good responses about the coder position, so I think we'll be seeing some progress in the future. Problem #2 is still going to be a little bit daunting however, so if you think you can help with that, please contact me.

Progress is going well on the next episode. This one won't have much action (don't worry, that won't be a new trend), though it should be more of a treat visually. This one will involve a lot of different maps, many of which I'm taking from existing custom-made maps online and will be crediting the various authors. Right now the ETA on this is under 3 weeks. It would be sooner, but I'm still juggling the last half of Noesis with this. As always, once that's over, then things are really going to start moving.

NEW POSITION OPENING: CODER

2008-08-16T17:31:00.006-04:00

It's becoming apparent while working on this episode that someone who can add code to HL2 could make things go a lot easier, so we're now looking for a programmer familiar with the Source engine. Before you jump at this, let me give you a rundown of the things we're looking to be able to do:

1. Add new weapons: Provided we have the models and animations (for the weapon and character), I want to be able to add new weapons to the HL2 world. So if we wanted to be able to give Dave an AK-47 from the game Counter-Strike Source, we would need your help on making this possible. This would include stuff like making sure things like firing animations are played, ejecting brass, adding muzzle flash, etc. All the animations, graphics, and models will be provided for you, but you would have to make them work together as an actual weapon.

2. Have NPCs fire weapons on command: Right now the only way we can make an NPC fire a weapon is through AI use, which is unpredictable. This can be a good thing, but other times I want tighter control over when they fire. I want to be able to tell an NPC exactly when to fire his gun and when not to, or to empty his entire clip without pausing, reload, then keep on firing. I'd prefer doing this via some sort of input command in Hammer, but a hotkey I could press in-game would be adequate as well.

3. Create new NPC's out of other character models: Right now getting a model from another Source game to behave like an NPC can be a real annoyance. Generic_actor entities are unreliable and swapping out models for other npc's only works for some situations. If we had all the animations already available, we'd like to be able to have the model behave like a regular NPC for most situations. Right now this becomes a hack that doesn't always work. I don't anticipate any exotic needs here. Mainly just walking, running, and firing a weapon. If they could behave like an npc_citizen, but simply use a different a model, this might be all we'd need.

If you think you can help us with this, please email me at rscott31@radford.edu. Some of these functions won't be needed until later episodes, but others we could get you started working immediately for the next episode. As always, this will be volunteer work, but you would get your name in the credits.

EDIT: I originally listed particle effects, but it looks like that won't be the issue I thought it was. The other functions are still desired however.

update

2008-08-15T00:21:00.000-04:00

Well I arrived at my new destination, but I may move again as I'm going to need a place where I can be sufficiently loud to do recordings. One of the animators helping us is going to be quite busy too, so I'm afraid that means we're going to postpone the 20+ minute long episode again (yeah, I know).

The good news is that I'm going a little batty from not working on anything more creative, so I've decided to start a shorter Civil Protection episode that will be easier to animate. With everyone helping on it, it should be out sometime mid to late September. After that, I'm going to do everything in my power to finish the original episode I meant to release for Halloween 2007 I ended up postponing; except now it will be in time (hopefully) for Halloween 2008. This one is already partially completed, but there's still a lot to do on it. It will be at least 15 minutes and I hope will be the scariest episode of CP yet.

For everyone waiting on Freeman's Mind, it's still going to be kind of sparse until I finish the Noesis tutorial, then you can expect a big increase in its frequency. Thanks again for everybody's patience, we're going to be producing some good stuff over the next couple months.

Moving

2008-07-25T17:29:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody; well as I mentioned before I'm going to be moving, except it's going to be quite soon now. Starting Monday I'm going to be driving over 1000 miles to seek my fame and fortune, or at least to get into a situation which will allow me more time to make videos. I'm really hoping my car won't break down by the side of the road and I get killed by raiders, but we'll just see what happens. Assuming I make it to my destination, my internet access will be kind of sketchy for a little bit until I get everything straightened out.

The first part of the Noesis tutorial is done on my end, I'm told it will be coming out soon. I was hoping to have them both done at about the same time, but it looks like there may be a couple weeks delay. This one coming out will definitely be the more technical one. It's going to cover how to animate with the Source SDK, the other guide is going to cover everything else I do in machinima EXCEPT that. I'll give more details about them once they get closer to release.

My new mantra is going to be "August". August is when I plan to finish the Noesis guide by, and will consequentially be when I really start getting back to work on CP again. I'm excited about this since it's been on hold forever and now I've got more good people helping than ever before. I'm not making promises at this point, but it is my goal to be producing at LEAST two videos a month once the tutorial is done. Most of these will just be Freeman's Mind, but it's my goal to get all the groundwork done on the CP episodes, let other people take over the animation/mapping work in different areas, then while they're working on it, I should have time for FM.

Finally the new website is making progress, but the person helping me with the code is going to be moving too and won't be available to work on it again until mid-August. If I'm lucky, we should have the website up in late August, but it could take as long as September depending on how everything goes.

FREEMAN'S MIND - EPISODE 4

2008-07-16T14:59:00.007-04:00

Youtube Version

640x480 WMV download link (66MB)

EDIT: Download link now fixed

Well I'm still very busy with the Noesis tutorial, but I made enough time to get another Freeman's Mind episode done. This will be the last video I make before I finish the tutorial. I realize things have been pretty slow, but once the tutorial's done you can expect a BIG increase in the frequency of video releases. Speaking of which there's going to be so much covered in the tutorial it's actually mushrooming into 2 different guides. One will cover nothing but Faceposer and Hammer, the other will go over everything else (writing, sound editing, camerawork, etc.).

Also I was interviewed a month or so ago for an online magazine article. I've been informed it's been published and you can check it out here. I thought it was a little odd that he seemed to focus most of his article on my stuff, but he mentions some other good machinimas in there as well. Notably "The Monad" by Sam Goldwater (which is the best machinima drama I've seen) and "Hey Shipwreck!" by Patrick Hrabe, of which I really enjoy his series.

Finally I haven't forgotten about the website, subtitles, or Civil Protection itself, I just have a big juggling act going on with all the work I have to do. Good things are coming.

updates

2008-06-23T01:30:00.001-04:00

I know some people are anxious to get updates, so here's what's happening: Work's still being done, but I've gotten through what I consider the hardest part of the tutorial. There's still plenty more to keep me busy though. In the meantime progress has been made on the new website. I've been designing it and someone else has been helping to code it for me. Here's a preview of what the CP episodes page might look like, I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along so far:

For the subtitles, here's my current plan: I've received several subtitles in various languages and I do plan to post them up on the new site. However, I think it will be easier for everyone involved in translating if I can get the English subtitles up first. The advantage to this is that I'll know that the English you're working from is correct, and also the subtitles can be color-coded so that they correspond to the right speaker. This will also make things easier for the people doing the subtitles as they'll have pre-existing timing tags to work off of. So I want to concentrate on getting the English subtitles finalized, then we'll move on to getting the ones to other languages up. Right now I only have the English subtitles for CP episodes 1 - 3. If someone sent me others, I've probably lost them, I apologize, I've been disorganized with email. So if you wish to create English subtitles for Civil Protection episodes 4,5, and the special, or any episodes of Freeman's Mind, please contact me at rscott31@radford.edu. I do have the scripts for the Civil Protection episodes, but have no scripts for Freeman's Mind as I only used loose notes to create them. If you wish to transcribe those, that would also be welcome. I can verify any of the lines being said.

There won't be any new Civil Protection episodes until after the tutorial is made, but the 20+ minute long one is still in production and it's the one I plan to release next. I'm not making any promises, but I may try and get the next episode of Freeman's Mind out before then as those are less time consuming to produce.

EDIT: A volunteer submitted the English subtitles for CP episodes 4 and 5, so I'll be sure to put those up with the rest once the new site's up.

CP SPECIAL: WHAT IS MACHINIMA?

2008-06-06T18:31:00.007-04:00

Youtube version

High quality streaming version &
1280 x 720 WMV download link (60MB)

Well this was done a little while ago and while it's normally my policy to never withhold a video release, this episode is a little different. This is a mini-episode that was done at the request of Machinima.com putting together a collaborative video asking several directors "What Is Machinima?".

EDIT: The high quality version is up now and contains additional dialogue.

OTHER NEWS:

Also, it looks like a growing number of people are becoming frustrated with how long it's taking for me to release videos. Believe me in that I share that frustration. A big part of the problem is that with this tutorial combined with other oddjobs, I've been spending most of my time working on stuff to make income so I can do things like eat and pay bills. I ask that you hold out a little more patience, once this tutorial is done, I promise I'm going to start putting out machinima faster than ever.

In order to make more time to work on episodes, I'm planning to move soon near a friend where I'll have relatively low housing costs. I'm very frugal, so once I'm there, I think I'll be able to survive on part-time work somewhere (hopefully as a videostore clerk or something). That should afford me more time to make videos, plus I'm going to be getting more help on animation for CP, which is the slowest part of its production. In addition to this, I'm getting help setting up a new website which will serve as a central hub for all videos, especially CP. I'm still trying to find the best/cheapest host for this that can accommodate any forseeable bandwidth needs. It will contain a cleaner interface, more information, more updates, subtitles, extras, and just be better all-round. I still need to figure out what will be a good hosting option for the bandwidth load I'm anticipating however.

Right now I'm still too busy with the tutorial to work on any more episodes, I'm sorry. For the record, I am NOT taking the stance of "I don't owe you anything." If no one liked my movies, I wouldn't make them. The fact that there are so many fans makes me want to make new episodes more than ever. Also I am confident that the best episodes are still yet to come. Thanks for hanging in there.

NEW VIDEO: GALAXY GULP

2008-05-10T08:38:00.008-04:00

Well Noesis has given me the go-ahead to release the supplemental video to go with the tutorial, so here it is:

low quality (Youtube)

medium quality (86MB WMV)

It's a short comedy about a gas station in space with a variety of characters. The goal here was to create something funny using a whole range of the custom models Noesis already had available. Since they ranged from a skeleton and a dwarf to a robot and alien I tried to come up with an environment weird enough so that they wouldn't all seem out of place. I think it worked, I almost look at this as a video casserole. Anyway, I hope you like it, and when the tutorial is done you'll hopefully be able to learn how we made this.

We're still planning one or two more promotional videos for the tutorial, though this is the main one. Meanwhile I'll still be working on the tutorial itself, so for better or worse, everything else is going to be on hold until then.
tened out.

Status report

2008-04-17T19:24:00.001-04:00

Hey everybody, nothing new to release yet, but here's the lowdown on what's been happening:

TUTORIAL GUIDE:
A big reason there haven’t been any Civil Protection releases lately is because I’ve been contracted by Noesis Interactive to make a supplemental machinima video for a tutorial they’re making. It’s a short comedy that will be released as a promotion when the guide is closer to done. The guide itself will be on using the Source engine to create machinima the way I do. As it turns out, I’ll be creating most of the tutorial as well. It will be a video tutorial with me writing and narrating it. It’s my hope that when the guide is done, anyone interested in creating their own machinima will be able to with it. I’ll make an update here when it’s done.

MINI-EPISODE:
I was contacted recently by Machinima.com to make a short video for them that will be part of a collaboration video they're making. It won't be very long, but it will have Mike and Dave and it should be pretty enjoyable.

BIG EPISODE:
Work is still in progress on what will be the longest CP episode so far. Unfortunately progress is slow due to all the other stuff I'm dealing with, but I haven't given up on it.

POSITION OPENINGS:
1. I'm still in dire need of someone (or two) who is proficient at the program "Face Poser" for the Source SDK. Your main purpose would be animating Mike and Dave within the game. You don't have to be an expert, but you do have to be patient and reliable. Some knowledge of Hammer is also a plus.

2. Alternately, I need someone (or two) to work on the head-bobbing animations you see when Mike and Dave talk. Honestly, this is a pain to do and very repetitive. You need a lot of patience in order to do this, if you have obsessive-compulsive disorder you might be perfect. You do NOT need to already know how to use Face Poser for this position; I have made a tutorial that teaches how to do this. You probably will have to redo some of your work at first, but it is not difficult to learn.

As always, this is volunteer work. If you're interested in helping out, please email me at rscott31@radford.edu.

April Fool Fallout

2008-04-02T01:28:00.002-04:00

Wow, judging by yesterday's comments this was a winner for April Fool's. I tried to make something strange enough that people would realize it was a joke, but I think some people regard me as insane anyway, so who knows what I'm thinking. Since a few of you got pretty confused, here's a quick FAQ for you:

Q: Is Civil Protection cancelled?
A: No. Production is underway on what's going to be the longest episode so far.

Q: Will you continue making the Halo videos?
A: No. Trying to get 3 people online at the same time reminded me why I work in single player to film.

Q: Did you delete my comments?
A: No, but I held back the ones saying it was April Fool's Day to see how many people fell for it. All the comments are back up now.

Q: Did you stage fake comments?
A: No. Those are all by you internet people.

Also if you missed it, for April Fool's Day last year, I took down the site entirely and put this up instead:

Link

Speaking of the website, I’m leaning towards relocating the homepage for a couple reasons. The main one is that I’m making videos aside from just Civil Protection (though that will still be my main focus), so a different name might make more sense. Another is that I want to add extras like subtitles, alternate shots, etc., so more flexibility would be nice. Finally, everyone who’s helped me try to edit the website seems to hate using blogspot. I don’t have any definite plans yet, but I’m looking into different options.

I'll make another post when I have something to update, but right now everything's still in production.

New Series

2008-04-01T01:29:00.003-04:00

Due to an overwhelming number of requests and the amount of production time involved, I’ve decided to discontinue Civil Protection and will be filming exclusively in Halo from now on. To kick things off, we’ve a made a pilot episode for a currently unnamed new series, so be sure to check it out:

Youtube version:

High quality version

Portrait

2008-03-19T09:26:00.002-04:00

I was able to get access to a webcam recently, and thought some of you might find this comparison interesting. I've seen some comments for Freeman's Mind saying how my voice doesn't sound like how they think Freeman's should, well at I at least look the part:

It's not exact, but Freeman has about 2 years on me, plus he's fictional. Anyway, work is progressing on the next Civil Protection episode and I'm hoping to have another Freeman's Mind episode before the end of the month.

EDIT: I don't think I'll have a new FM episode out by March afterall, but only because I'm working on the next CP episode.

Freeman's Mind Episode 3

2008-03-10T21:00:00.002-04:00

Youtube version

640x480 WMV version

Well I've finished the project I was working on so now I'm back to work on Civil Protection. I know I said the next release was going to be a CP episode, but there's still a lot I need to do and I hate going so long without releasing anything, so here's the longest and my new favorite episode of Freeman's Mind so far. This one has a little more language in it for those of you that care about that sort of thing. Since the game Half-Life has unavoidable mature content, the episodes for Freeman's Mind will be around a PG-13 to R rating, while Civil Protection will be around a PG to PG-13 rating. I make no promises however.

For those of you still waiting for more CP, thanks for your patience. Multiple episodes are in production along with a cameo appearance in an upcoming Half-Life 2 mod. Believe it or not I want to get the episodes out just as much as some of you want to see them. Just because you don't see frequent updates here doesn't mean I'm not working on it. I'm kind of bad at time estimation, but I will be trying to get at least one more video out this month, so I guess check back at the end of the month.

Current Plans

2008-02-12T15:32:00.000-05:00

Well I’m still not done with this project that’s been keeping me so busy, but I’m getting close. Since some people are wanting updates, here’s what I plan to work on or look into once I’m done with the current job I’m working on:

Unfinished Episodes: There are currently 2 episodes that are partially completed that I want to go back and finish before making too many new ones. I have plenty of good ideas for new episodes, I just don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

Simultaneous Production: One of the animators in a previous episode has gone and founded his own machinima group, who has expressed an interest in helping to produce CP episodes. Since I’m already working with some good people on other episodes, I’m going to try and manage two projects at the same time, letting his group handle most of the production. This is an experiment, but it may lead to good things.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: I’ve been wanting to play this game since it uses the same engine as Half-Life 2. I’m going to see how much material it has for me to work with and if things look good, I may start a fantasy oriented series within it. If I do, it will also be comedy and will still have Mike and Dave, but maybe as guards in a more medieval setting.

Freeman’s Mind: While the writing is more difficult and the format is less interesting than my other ideas, it has the shortest production time of anything else I do, so I plan to continue it interspersed with other projects.

New Website Design / Subtitles: People are still working on this, hopefully it will be done before too long. Thanks to all the volunteers translating and your patience with this.

Other Game Engines: I use the Half-Life 2 engine primarily because it has better animation tools included with it than a lot of other games. If I have time I’d like to research other options. If anyone has experience doing animation in other games and thinks an engine in particular would be good to work with, please email me with more information. If you’re at this site, you’ve probably seen what I can do with the Source engine, so it would have to be roughly comparable to that.

That’s it for now, It might take about a month before I have anything to release again, but once things get going, I’d say to expect more machinima from me than ever before.

update / need help again

2008-01-11T13:48:00.000-05:00

Well due mainly to a bunch of requests I've gotten to continue Freeman's Mind, I guess I will continue it afterall. While I understand it's not everybody, it seems a good chunk of people like it more than I would have expected. I still plan to continue on Civil Protection and focus on that primarily, but this will be nice to release in between the times it's taking so long to get a CP episode out. Unfortunately I'm not working on either right now, I have other work I have to take care of first, but plant to get back to the series soon.

In the meantime, I could still use help on the webpage for any of you that are familiar with blogspot. I had one guy helping me who vanished, and another guy is helping me now, saying an additional person would be good too. So if you know all about html/blogspot, send me an email at rscott31@radford.edu. Also while I was planning to do it myself, I won't have a lot of time to work on the graphics for the site (buttons, banner, etc.) If you do graphic design and want to help work on the layout of the new webpage, email me too. I may want to see samples of your work however. That's all for now, I'll put another post up when I've resumed working on the series again.

Freeman's Mind Episode 2

2007-12-27T21:03:00.000-05:00

Well here's the second and possibly last episode of Freeman's Mind. Despite the majority of people liking it, I don't like having to make everything a monologue and then time it to the footage. It's going to be a while because I have a lot of other work to do, but the next video I plan to release will be another Civil Protection episode. I hope to have the website updated and subtitles up before that however. Oh and for those who wonder about the term Freeman uses in this video, it's "quantum chromodynamic gauge invariant Lagrangian"

Low Quality version (Youtube)

High Quality version (83MB WMV)

Gone for a week or so

2007-12-14T02:29:00.000-05:00

I'm letting everybody know I'm going to be gone over the next week doing family/job stuff, so there won't be any progress here at all. However, once I get back I plan to add a lot of new stuff and get back to work on CP, however this next month is going to be very busy for me with various jobs I have. When I do get back next weekend, here's some stuff I plan to add as soon as I get things set up:

-New website design
-Scripts to the episodes
-Subtitles galore, I plan to have downloadable ones along with a new Youtube channel I'll set up to watch them in as many languages as volunteers will translate to. I'm hoping to doublecheck the English ones and colorcode them.
-Alternate shots of the action sequences for episodes 4 and 5
-Freeman's Mind: Episode 2 (it's close to done)

So I guess check back in a week and a half or so and they'll be some new stuff up here. Also I have no idea when it will be finished, but I plan to go back and work on the two unfinished episodes of CP that have been brewing, so the series isn't dead or anything. Also, these two new episodes will be long ones containing new characters. I estimate episodes 6 and 7 together will be longer than 1 - 5 combined.

Plans

2007-12-07T23:09:00.001-05:00

Well it seems the majority of people want to see more of Freeman's Mind, so I'll at least make another episode. What I'll probably end up doing is alternating between this and Civil Protection. I like CP because I consider it more original and have more freedom, but like FM because it's faster. After I get the next episode out, I'm afraid there will be a sizeable downtime because of jobs I have to work on this month especially. I plan to pick things up after that however.

EDIT:
I've received several offers on an audio editor and html person, so thanks to everyone who applied.

Appendum

2007-12-05T16:14:00.001-05:00

Well the response to Freeman's Mind so far is much more positive than what I was expecting. I've put up a poll to get some idea of what people think, so go ahead and vote on it. Oh, and that's a true story about the squirrel by the way, except instead of MIT it was at Virginia Tech back in the 70's.

Freeman's Mind

2007-12-04T11:34:00.000-05:00

Youtube version

640x480 WMV (82MB)

Well this is the pilot episode of my side series I'm experimenting with. It isn't Civil Protection, but it's in a similar vein of humor. Basically the premise is that in the Half-Life series, the protagonist Gordon Freeman is entirely silent the whole time. So what this series aims to do is fill in the silence with his thoughts. I tried to make this as entertaining as I could, but the format is very different, so I'd like to hear feedback on this.

This was an experiment, and I think it may have some shortcomings. The format of this added many constraints on what I was able to accomplish with the writing, and may have made the humor suffer somewhat as a result. It made me realize just how much more freedom I had with Civil Protection. Unless I get waves of support to do this along with CP, I’m probably going to discontinue this. But feel free to check it out anyway.

emergence

2007-11-21T19:47:00.001-05:00

Well my system is finally back up and functional, so I'll resume work on the different series and hopefully get something to you soon. In the meantime, to give you some idea of how complex CP is behind the scenes, I'm posting some screenshots of one of the maps and scene files from the last episode within the SDK. Click on the thumbnails to check them out:

Also I'm trying to update the website to look better and have links for subtitles and stuff, but so far blogspot seems to be creating issues for the people helping me. Nobody was available when I made this post either, so it took me about 45 minutes to figure out how to post all those thumbnails neatly since I don't know html. I guess that's kind of like trying to get directions to the U.S. Embassy building in a foreign country where you don't speak the language.

Crash

2007-11-16T18:45:00.000-05:00

Hey everybody, I have kind of a setback as my system hard drive went bad, so that's put my computer in a crippled state for a little while until a new one that I ordered comes in and I have enough space to get everything functional again. I haven't lost any data, it will just mean a delay. Also, while I plan to continue Civil Protection, I have been getting discouraged by the extremely long production times, so as an experiment I'm going to start a different series simultaneously. I'm not going into details yet, but this idea for a show would be MUCH faster to produce, to the point where I could have releases on a weekly basis even. This would give you guys something to tide you over while I work on CP, which seems to take a lot of time no matter what. I hope to release a "pilot episode" of my new series idea in a week or two and let you be the judge whether you think I should continue it or not. So check back in a week or two and there should hopefully be some new stuff here.

NEW EPISODE: HALLOWEEN SAFETY

2007-11-02T21:44:00.000-04:00

DOWNLOAD:

Streaming Video (Youtube)

High Quality WMV Download (30MB)

Alright here's the alternate Halloween episode out good and late, but oh well. To reiterate, this is NOT the one I was working on for a month and a half, this is a last minute one I tried to get out by Halloween, but didn't happen. This is the shortest episode so far, but I tried to pack a lot into it, hope you like it. I'll try and get some subtitles or extras up here before too long.

Also as you may notice from the intro, I've kind of joined forces with Machinima.com since they've been helping me out with hosting, relaying files between team members, and the idea of expanding the publicity a lot since I'm not so hot at that part. Since one of my goals for the series is to use this as portfolio material so I can get a job better than flipping burgers, an association with a company is the sort of thing that would help. I apologize in advance for the video ads, they said they're working on that.

Finally, if you act on any of Dave's suggestions in this video, you're an impressionable idiot. If you blow your arm off and try to sue me, the joke will be on you since I don't have any money.

2007-10-31T23:03:00.001-04:00

Well, I kept running into too many bugs and I've gotten very little sleep over the past several days, so I'm not going to try and go for a last minute save with this, it's just going to be late. I'm very happy with how some of the footage is coming out and since this has a darker sense of humor, it's my personal favorite so far. The irony is that I'm finding this very discouraging because of the insane amount of time required to make these. While I'm overflowing with ideas, I'm not sure how realistic it's going to be for me to keep making these. The next episode will definitely come out though, all the really difficult parts are done, I just need a little more time to put it all together. Sorry for the delays in all this.

Bugs

2007-10-30T19:25:00.000-04:00

I know this isn't what people want to hear, but it looks like things are going to take longer than I hoped. My original estimates were assuming I wouldn't run into bugs from hell with the SDK. So silly me, now I'm behind again. I'm still working solid on it, but whether or not it will come tonight is much more iffier.

Change of Plans

2007-10-28T22:13:00.000-04:00

Well things have kind of melted down on the technical and communication fronts for the episode I had in mind, so the bad news is that it will not be out for Halloween. The good news is that I came up with an alternate idea that can be produced much faster and should still be very entertaining. It will be much shorter than the other idea (which was looking at over 15 minutes) and won't be scary like the other one, but it will still be Halloween themed, and best of all, out very soon. Right now I'm shooting to have this thing out by sometime late tomorrow. After that, we'll go back to finishing the other episodes, whenever we can.

EDIT: The release date is looking more like sometime Tuesday, this is getting close to done.

changes coming

2007-10-11T09:47:00.000-04:00

Hey, letting everybody know that changes are coming soon to the website. In addition to coming up with something that looks nicer, I'm going to try and make separate sections to download the movies, extra media related to the series, and an international section where I'll host subtitles and versions of the episodes in different languages. We're all still hard at work on the Halloween episode, but it's looking really good so far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed to get it out before Halloween and will be doing everything I can to try and make that happen.

status report

2007-09-22T23:24:00.001-04:00

This is to let everyone know there has been a change of plans. I've been working with different people to try and produce episode 5, however this one is going to be very long, definitely over 20 minutes total. We're making a lot of progress, but Halloween is coming up and I really want to have the Halloween episode done before that. So what's going to happen is I'm postponing development on episode 5 and will be concentrating on episode 6 instead, so there will be hopefully be a nice scary episode of CP in time for Halloween. Sorry to keep everybody waiting. While progress is still a little slow, I think once I can get in a groove with the people I'm working with these will start coming out faster. As soon is Episode 6 is finished, we'll go back and finish 5 then release that as soon as it's done.

Forums up

2007-08-15T11:52:00.000-04:00

I had a great response for needing help setting up the forums, so now one is up! I originally didn't think there would be enough traffic for the series to warrant having a forum, but since the last episode is up to some 80+ comments, maybe it's not a bad idea afterall. Anyway, check it out here:

http://civilprotection.freeforums.org/

Also, be sure to check out the FAQ I made for the series. I get asked some of the same questions over and over, so maybe your answers are in there.

quick update

2007-08-09T11:31:00.000-04:00

Just to let everyone know, episode 5 is now under production, though I could still use some more people. Faceposer animators are still wanted, plus I could use a texture artist. One contacted me, but has been silent for weeks since. Progress is going to be a little slow at first since this will be the first episode with something resembling a team, plus I'm working out some issues with getting more custom content. The upside is that once things get going, this and future episodes should come out faster.

EDIT: I've gotten about 5 requests for setting up forums plus a couple people have made some already. Bear with me while I pick one and help set it up.

Civil Protection wants YOU!

2007-07-24T10:48:00.001-04:00

Well I've done some researching and for the time being I think my best option for producing episodes faster is simply to get as many people involved in CP as I can. Thus, I want to advertise different positions I'm looking for help with here. This is an ongoing offer, however your odds of getting in on the action increase the sooner you apply. I hope to recruit more people than I need, with the idea being that if someone bails from the episode or goes MIA on us, then someone else can step in to fill his or her place. Some people I need for as soon as episode 5, other people I'll need for episodes farther down the line. So, I may want your help, but it could be a little while before I'll be able to work you in. Finally, this is unpaid volunteer work. I don't make any money from this, so the only thing I can offer you in return is your name in big blocky letters in the credits. So, here are the positions I'm looking for; positions marked with an asterix I especially would like help with and I consider crucial to episodes coming out faster and me not getting burned out doing this:

*Animators (in Faceposer) - I'm looking for all kinds here. I need a lot of help with simple stuff like bobbing the heads of CP characters to match the audio, but I'd also love to have people essentially be in charge of animating the different scenes. You could have a decent amount of freedom here, in being able to decide what gestures get used where, using body language to help emphasize dialogue or scenes, etc. I'm still learning about it, but I hope be able to get you metrocop models with a LOT more gestures available than what you've seen in previous episodes. Also while not every episode will need it, this includes people who know how to do lipsyncing and are willing to manually go over the lines to make sure they look natural and don't blindly rely on the computer to generate the phonemes.

Animators (In Hammer) - Some scenes simply need to be done via scripted sequences or throught map entities and AI. This will focus on how to have characters interact via Hammer. A lot of this will deal with NPC's moving around. So if an NPC is pacing back and forth or jumping over a gap, I'll need your help to help make that happen. While this does focus on Hammer, you'll need a basic understanding of Faceposer in terms of using scene triggers or working out the timing with different animations. Also this can deal with complex tricks that need to be invented in order to make some scenes happen (like Dave jumping into the water from Ep. 4). You'll probably have a lot of freedom here in how scenes get accomplished, but this could also be one of the most challenging positions as I've found that a lot of creative methods need to be thought up in production.

Animators (other) - This is by no means a required position, but if you have experience in XSI or some other 3D application that you think can get imported into the Source engine, then I'd love to be able to have more animations than what comes with the game. The downside is that I have almost no experience here, so you'll be kind of on your own for this.

Mappers (design) - Update: No further mappers needed at this time, I've already has some amazing responses here.

Mappers (effects) - This probably overlaps with other positions, but I want people who are good at the dynamic end of mapping. So if I need an explosion, I want someone who can can have chunks of concrete come out of a wall, have smoke rise up, see flames, etc.

Modellers - I doubt there will be a whole lot of work I need in this area, but I'll probably have need of some custom props for some episodes. However if you want to work on something ambitious, particularly creatures, I can be sure to work something in. Like the 3D app animators however, you will be on your own for this, I have almost no experience working in 3D modelling software.

Sound design - Update: No further sound people needed at this time

Source gurus - If you know tons of things about the Source engine, odds are I have questions for you as to how to accomplish a given scene or effect or just weird stuff I'm trying to make happen with the engine.

Texture artists - I probably won't have a whole lot of work in this area, but the need will definitely arise for having custom textures.

Video effects editing - Update:no further editors needed at this time

Voice actors - Before you get your hopes up, I've already had a ton of offers to be a voice actor. What I'm looking for right now are people who can come close to faking the voices of Half-Life 2 characters; specifically the G-man, Dr. Breen, and possibly Eli. I'm afraid Barney and Kleiner have been filled at this point.

Those are the positions I'm looking for help with in the series now. This should basically be treated like you're developing a game mod, except the difference is we'll actually be able to finish what we're doing and the scale won't be as large. If you're interested in helping out, please email me at rscott31@radford.edu. I will be requiring that you can show me some sample of previous work related to the position. Do NOT send me attachments, I have limited space on my email account, use megaupload or some other external link instead. Remember that I'm just some dude making comedy episodes, you're not applying for a real job. While I want to keep the quality level as high as previous episodes, I'm not going to be ruthless about this. I'm only going to hold people to standards as high as what I've already met in existing episodes. To everyone else who's reading this, now you know why it takes me so long to make these episodes.

EPISODE 4: ON A RAIL

2007-06-24T21:05:00.000-04:00

After numerous delays, here is Episode 4 at last. This one is clearly a step above the previous ones in terms of production quality and I hope everyone enjoys it. This episode has nice motion blur, mobile camera shots, scenic backgrounds, and more action than the previous 3 combined. This was originally meant to be Episode 5, but since the numbering is arbitrary anyway, it may as well be 4. I've switched the video hosting to filefront since I wouldn't have enough space for this on my student account. As always, there's the Youtube versions, but for this episode especially, it's worth getting the high quality copies.

If you missed my previous post, I was griping about how much time this took for things that I think could be expediated. For that reason, I'm putting the series on hold until I find a faster way of producing these. I'm not going to be aimless; I do have some ideas, they'll just take me time to research. I'll make another post here once I've started up again. Until then, don't wonder when the next episode is coming out because it's on hold for now. And finally, to engage in some shameless hint dropping, I DO have work right now, but it will not be steady, so the future is uncertain, though the same could be said for everyone.

High Quality version (92MB)

Youtube version (streaming)

Prelude

2007-06-17T16:19:00.000-04:00

Well I was originally planning to wait until I released the next episode before I made another entry, but I keep getting requests for one despite answering questions in the comments (I don't have a forum). First off, Episode 4 is getting close to done, I plan to have it out in less than a week. It's an obvious step up production-wise from the others and so far I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking.

That said, working on this episode turned into somewhat of a negative experience for me. It feels like I'm wasting so much time setting up the scene, animating mundane things, and constantly working around the bugs and shortcomings of the Source engine. While I did have some help on this one, I didn't see the workload savings I was hoping for. This episode will span multiple maps and I invested at least a month in simply creating one of the maps. What it boiled down to mainly was that most people weren't able to spare the same kind of psychotic time devotion to this that I was, or that communication wasn't very good in that I would have to explain things in such detail or correct existing work that it would be faster to do it myself. Ultimately I think it's a safe estimate that I ended up doing about 95% of the work on this episode.

The reason I don't update more frequently is because I don't want dozens of updates and no progress to show for it. I'm becoming very frustrated with the production rate since mine is horrific. Machinima is supposedly a time-saving medium, but so far I'm not seeing any of it. For these reasons, after I release Episode 4, I'm going to put the series on hold until I find a better way of producing these. I'm convinced there are better techniques out there, since I think most machinima makers don't seem to have the same kinds of problems I do, which makes me think I must be doing something wrong. I'm going to explore different options after I finish this and I will probably have to learn new software in order to do so. Right now, the process is simply too time consuming for me to keep it up for much longer the way it is. As it is, in making the first 3 episodes, it was essentially a solid burn where I just sacrificed my free time in order to make it happen. To put it in perspective, I'm an avid movie fan and I've only watched 2 movies since I stated making this in October. While that's not a hardship or anything, it does discourage me from wanting to make more of these episodes. I feel like most of the time I spend on these episodes is the result of not having the right tools or resources for what I'm trying to do, so this is what I'm going to focus on in the future otherwise the work/production ratio will be too much for me to want to continue doing this in the future. The best analogy I can make is that I feel like I'm trying to cut down a forest with a hatchet and I want a chainsaw.

Status update

2007-05-04T11:35:00.000-04:00

Well I've been getting a few requests for an update, so here's what's going on. I didn't make the contest deadline, I ran into too many delays. I'm still working every day on getting the next episode out, but it's just much more involving in terms of what I'm doing. Without spoiling anything, here was my original plan for the next two episodes:

-Episode 4: Should completely rock, I won't be able to top this one for a long time
-Episode 5: Still pretty damn cool (I think)

That's changed since then, since I've mainly been developing episode 5, so that will be the new episode 4. As for the original (confused yet?) episode 4 idea, I still plan to do it, but I'm thinking about postponing it, just because it's going to take forever and a day to animate. I have no shortage of episode ideas, so I may work on something I can produce a little faster first. On top of this, I've been approached by a couple people about different projects that sound promising (I won't reveal who, they're all hush-hush), so that may steal more of my time away.

On top of this, I'm going to be moving soon, which means I'll have to start job-hunting again so I can hopefully find something better than flipping burgers. So, I'm going to be pretty busy, but getting the next episode out is still my top priority outside of reality. I have NOT stopped working on it, and will finish it as soon as I can, even if that may be another couple weeks. If you really want these things to come out faster, try and harass somebody you know who really understands Source (the engine for Half-Life 2) so I can get some help with the animating. Again, thanks for watching!

News about CP

2007-04-02T02:58:00.000-04:00

Aloha, here a few minor updates. First off, the April Fool's Day thing went pretty well; I got multiple emails of people asking if the series was over. For those of you that missed it, you can check it out here.

Also Chris Fischer sent me the subtitles for Episode 3, but I'm getting too lazy/busy with other stuff to re-edit these, so I'm releasing them as is. They're not entirely accurate nor color-coded, but they are subtitles and mostly accurate. Here's the link:

Episode 3 subtitles

Also, for those of you emailing me about voice actors, I've already got several requests and I haven't gotten to my scripts that would need more voice actors yet, so I unfortunately don't need help there right now. The exception is if you can do a really good impression of characters from the game (specifically Barney, Kleiner, G-man, or Breen). Go ahead and contact me about voice acting then. I won't be making any episodes with them for a while, but I'd be interested in writing something in the future.

I am working on Episodes 4-5 simultaneously. Episode 5 will be done first, but unfortunately I'm submitting it to another contest, so I won't be allowed to release it until after it's over. I'll release Episode 4 as soon as I finish it, but that will be a while since it's pretty complicated animation-wise. What I WILL say is that BOTH these episodes are going to ROCK. Seriously, 1-3 will look completely tame compared to these. So expect a BIG jump in content for the next two.

EPISODE 3: SHADOW OF A DOUBT

2007-03-16T11:58:00.000-04:00

Here's the third episode that I originally intended to have done before the 2nd, but here it is anyway. I meant for this one to have slick motion blur, but I would have taken my computer an eternity to do it right, so I just shot it and released it as it is. WARNING: This episode is not suitable for all audiences, it contains singing. It's over with pretty quickly though, and I promise that this will be the first and last time Mike sings. As for Dave, well, I'll keep it to a bare minimum in the future. Unfortunately it's going to be a while before Episode 4 because I have something big planned for that, so imagine I'm dead or something so you won't expect it too soon. Enjoy!

Goodies

2007-03-13T10:17:00.000-04:00

Well the results came in on that contest I entered and Episode 2 lost to a bunch of frag videos, so bummer about that. As a way of thanking everybody who voted in it, I've released some alternate shots of my favorite scene from Episode 2 that you can download here:

Alternate take (do not download if you haven't watched Episode 2! It's a spoiler)

Also, one of the viewers, Chris Fischer sent me some subtitles he made for Episode 2. I've re-edited and color coded it like I did with Episode 1, so if you have hearing problems or simply can't understand what the hell Craig and I are saying with that helmet radio filter on you can grab the subtitles here:

Episode 1
Episode 2

EPISODE 2: ALIENS

2007-03-01T19:18:00.000-05:00

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.

bugs, delays, madness

2007-02-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

Well I've hit yet another delay because I'm running into some serious bugs with the Source SDK (the software used to make these episodes). I was originally intending to have episode 3 out about now since it's all but done, but I ran into a MAJOR bug that's preventing me from doing so. Until I find a fix or workaround, episode 3 is indefinitely on hold. I'll be finishing up episode 2 in the meantime since the bug won't affect any content in that episode (I had an entirely DIFFERENT bug for that episode, which I found a workaround for). Anyway, this is a showstopping bug for now, and will impact which scripts I'll use in the future if it doesn't get resolved. For people who know something about the Source SDK, check out my post on it here. For everyone else, it's boring technical crap.

Good/Bad News

2006-12-30T20:30:00.000-05:00

Good news: I'm getting pretty close to done on the next episode + I found out about another contest it would qualify for

Bad news: The contest has an exclusiveness rule which means that I can't publish the episode until after the contest is over, which would be at the start of March.

I'm kind of torn here, because I really want to show you guys the next episode, since it's going to be awesome in comparison to the first. However, I'd also like to enter this contest; the last one proved to be a really good move on my part. I'll probably enter the contest, even though I feel like you guys are getting robbed by it. Time is a resource for me, but once I finish Episode 2, I'll do my damndest to try and get episode 3 out before they allow me to release Episode 2 (The order on these doesn't really matter anyway). In the meantime here's a link to the contest. Feel free to let them know how you feel about this exclusiveness rule.

Also, if you have experience using Faceposer, I might be interested in someone reliable who would want to help with the animations (this will help the episodes come out faster). I can't pay you anything, since I don't have any money, but your name would be in the credits, in big blocky letters.

Word.

2006-12-11T11:08:00.000-05:00

Some good stuff going on with Civil Protection. After I started making the first episode, I found out about a contest for machinima making going on, so I worked to finish it in time before the deadline. It was hosted by Machinimasia, an institution devoted to this type of media. They're located in Singapore and since the focus of this was to spread machinima awareness in Asia, it was pretty cool of them to accept entries from other continents as well. The results got posted a little while ago and it turns out that I not only won for best student category, but also BEST OF SHOW. I guess this means I'll start getting death threats from other machinima makers now, but they don't know where I live. They could do an IP trace, but that should only get them the general region of the ISP. Anyway, this trophy looks neat:

The bad news is that I've fallen behind on episode 2 for several reasons. One of the biggest was my getting sick over Thanksgiving break but also with my exams/graduation coming up. I'm still working on it though and will get it out as soon as I can, I just have less time to devote to it right now.

Posting and stuff

2006-11-20T02:16:00.000-05:00

I finally figured out how to add a direct link to the movie off to the side on this page, so now I feel like I can do a second post. The response to the first episode has been overwhelmingly positive, which leads me to one conclusion: everyone likes ninjas. Unfortunately, the majority of the episodes of CP will not contain any ninja material. Because of this, I naturally expect the positive response to go down for the next episode. I plan to be working on it all this week, but who knows when I'll finish it. Judging only from the script size, it's about twice as long as the first, and contains much more dialogue. So this means that on top of having no ninjas, I'll be taxing attention spans as well; which is rather taboo for the internet. Anyway, for those of you still jonesing for a ninja fix, I recommend this site.

EPISODE 1: FRIDAY / CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD (33MB)

2006-11-03T02:05:00.000-05:00

This will be the webpage devoted to the Civil Protection video series. I've just finished the first episode which you can download from the link above. As for the series, it's inspired by the oppressive policing force within the game Half-Life 2. It's a comedy created using the game engine itself to animate everything. Right now I am the writer, animator, director, producer, cinematographor, editor... pretty much everything you see in the episode is my fault. This episode does contain some language and violence, but it's not much worse than a PG rating.

It was a real pain to learn the SDK and animate all this, so I won't be starting on another episode immediately. Not that you have any frame of reference, but the next one should go much more quickly since a lot of the time was spent on learning everything. Whenever I start on it again, that is. I need a break, I'm practically dreaming about those spooky metal helmets that the CP units wear. Anyway, feel free to contact me or post comments about whatever.