* * * EDIT * * *

I’ve been flooded with promising offers in all categories since I made this post. I think if I get anymore I’ll just get overwhelmed and will have to send a bunch of rejection emails to new people. I still need to review all the emails and reply to everyone. Thanks to everyone who contacted me about this or was planning to.

The exception is that I’m still accepting help for the forum integration. While I have received a couple hopeful emails, more input / offers in this area won’t hurt, especially since the forum still isn’t up.

* * * EDIT * * *

I was hoping to avoid making this post, but I feel like production is getting stalled some again and I need more help to get things done. Help is needed in multiple areas and I would appreciate anyone who might be able to give me a hand. Unfortunately my managerial skills are still lacking, so choosing who to pick for working on different tasks may be a bit haphazard, but I’ll try and reply to everyone who contacts me. Any work that gets used will receive due credit. If you’ve contacted me once offering help with any of these areas already, feel free to contact me again. Here are the sections I currently need help with:

SOUND EDITING:

I’m going a little crazy about trying to finish “The Tunnel” and right now the biggest area that still needs work is sound editing and effects. Right now if all the sound effects were completed, I think the episode could be completely finished in 24-48 hours. I’d really like to get this done in the next week if possible. Otto Beumelberg has been doing a fantastic job on the scenes so far, but as this episode is the longest one to date, I think it may be a bit overwhelming for one person (myself included). Nowadays usually just the dialogue is recorded in-game for Civil Protection, with everything else being added in editing. You would need to have experience doing volume balancing, position mixing, and providing different sound effects as needed (it won’t be anything too exotic). Some reverb mixing may also be needed, but the levels for the remaining scenes are relatively light. I will ask to listen to some prior example of your work to get an idea of your skill level. While speedy work would be great, I’ll be more concerned with how the final result sounds.

FORUM INTEGRATION:

I’m eager to launch the forums as soon as possible, but some of the people working on it have become busy and there’s still a big problem to solve before they do get launched. The basic problem is that I want to have news posts that are made in Wordpress to be duplicated as threads in the forum somehow. Ideally, they could be sorted into different cateories related on the topic. If you know of how to accomplish this, please let me know, I could use the help. I believe we’re going with phpBB for the forum, but I’ve heard BBpress can also be good. As long as you can achieve the functionality I’m after for the forum, I’m open-minded as to what software is used. Comment and user crossover information would be desireable, but not required.

VOICE ACTING:

Some of these won’t be required for a while, but I wanted to try and start auditioning people early in case it takes a while to find someone. These will probably all be one-time roles I’m afraid (for now), but they will get your name in the credits if they’re used. You don’t have to actually match these character descriptions (though it will help), just be capable of sounding like them. All roles are likely to require some degree of shouting. Having some means of voice chat is preferred, but not required. Here are the character descriptions:

1. Male, age anywhere from 30s to 60s. Sleazy sounding character, preferably with a stereotypical New Jersey accent. Should sound somewhat older, bossy, and aggressive. I’ll need this role sooner than the others.

2. Black male, age from later 20s to 40s. Just a typical black american accent. No stereotypes will be involved for this role, but the character model will be black, so the speaker should have a characteristic black voice. There are some inflection differences from you honkies.

3. Female, age 20s to 30s. Looking for a standard “Valley Girl” accent, not too young-sounding. Nothing too overdone, just having the obvious accent. Here’s a good example I found of it.

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If you can help me in any of these areas, please send me an email to [email protected]. I haven’t forgotten about everyone else’s emails either, but emails related to video production take priority with me over more casual ones. If you emailed me a couple months ago, there’s still a good chance I’m going to reply to you, I’m still far behind on that.

Here’s a bit of an update as to what’s going on with the forums. Work has been progressing on the forum, but we’ve run into some setbacks. The problem is trying to find a balance between the interface and features. My original plan when the site was relaunched was to eventually transition over to a forum with all the comments and entries carrying over. This is currently possible using the “Vanilla” web application which is compatible with Wordpress, however I can’t say I’m fond of the layout. It doesn’t follow the traditional forum layout and I find it a little confusing visually, like it’s a news feed page rather than a forum. Since the forums are something I plan to use as well, I want something my brain can process more easily.

The other main contender for the forums so far is phpBB. This has a layout I’m much more accustomed to, but I’ve been told it doesn’t have as many features and integration with all the current posts and user login information may not be possible. I’d really hate to ask people to create a new login AGAIN, so we’re still exploring the options. Ultimately it will come down to what I think will work the best for the long term.

To clarify some more, here are some screenshots I found of both forum layout styles:

Vanilla:

While Vanilla does have forum categories on the right side and posts on the left, I feel like it doesn’t make the most use of the screen space and it might not be immediately obvious that this is a forum and not just more news posts.

phpBB:

This has a much more familiar forum style, makes more use of horizontal space, I generally like this kind of layout for a forum.

These aren’t necessarily the only two options for forum software. I also found an article which lists an absolute ton of forum plugin options, though I’m too web illiterate myself to know what’s best:

http://www.wpmods.com/which-forum-script-should-you-use-with-your-wordpress-powered-website

If anyone out there is knowledgeable about Wordpress and forum integration and is interested in helping, please contact Zachary Reidell ([email protected]), who put a lot of the current website together and has been doing almost all the work on this so far. I’ll of course give credit to anyone else who helps get the final forum launched.

Also, I may as well announce now that I’m planning on phasing out comments here once the forums are launched. There are multiple reasons for this. With the forums, discussions will be more targeted. So if you have a specific question or comment, you won’t have to just reply to the latest news entry. Another reason is I think it will lower the redundancy of comments if there’s a primary place to comment in the forums as opposed to the homepage AND the forums. Finally, I’m getting more comments on the homepage now than ever before. Within a few days it’s in the hundreds, and as I make more videos it’s possible it will increase. Thus having actual forums will make things more manageable for me in the long run. My goal is to have all the news posts (hopefully past ones all the way back to 2006) duplicated as threads in the forum so commentary can continue there.

In other news, my voice is now better and I’ll resume working on Freeman’s Mind sometime tomorrow.

EDIT:

After waking up coughing about 20 times this morning, my voice may not be as well as I thought. I can talk normally, but I don’t know about parts where I have to shout yet. Unfortunately Freeman tends to shout a lot. I’ll see how things go.

Youtube

Download 672x384 WMV (74MB)
 

Here’s Episode 31. I think the writing is a little better here than the last one, I was rusty having not done Freeman’s Mind for a while. Some of you may think I’ve been manipulating the enemy AI for this episode or the past two, but I haven’t. While it’s not the case in all episodes, the enemy behavior for the past few has been exactly how it played out in the game. The next episode I think will be more exciting.

Unfortunately I’m sick with something at the moment and it’s affected my throat, so there won’t be anything voice-related until it gets better. There’s no shortage of other things to work on however. “The Tunnel” is getting really close to done except primarily for sound effects, plus I still want to get the forums and more subtitles up, and respond to the many emails I’ve received. As soon as my throat gets better, I’ll resume recording and update the progress bar, though there’s a real chance you’ll see Civil Protection next before the next Freeman’s Mind episode.

Youtube

Download 672x384 WMV (81MB)
 
The lull of Freeman’s Mind is over, here is Episode 30, with more that are going to be coming all year. Thanks to everyone who emailed me, letting me know it got posted. I think this one is pretty average, though I tend to think that about all the FM episodes now. One interesting bit of information is that all the radio chatter in this episode is as it was heard in the game. Many audio embellishments are added to the episodes, but that wasn’t one of them.

For the near future, my attention is a bit divided between The Tunnel, Episode 31, and miscellaneous stuff like forums and subtitles. So if one area lags, it’s a safe bet I’m working on another. I plan to continue using the progress graphic to the right for future episodes so you’ll know where things stand. I’ll have more to say once “The Tunnel” is out.

EDIT:

I screwed up and forgot to normalize the final audio volume, so the Youtube version may be too quiet. The downloadable copy has been fixed however.

EDIT 2:

I uploaded Episode 31 to Machinima.com a few days ago, but as usual, I never know when it will go up.

While the progress bar to the right tells most of what’s going on, here’s a more verbal update for people. Right now “The Tunnel” is almost all done visually. I have some minor fixes to do in editing still along with the main credits, but there’s still a little ways to go on the audio. The sound work involved for this episode is quite extensive and I’m getting great help on it, it just needs a little more time. This has freed me up to work on Freeman’s Mind in the meantime. As of the time of this post, I’ve finished the footage and dialogue for Episode 30, though the episode still needs volume balancing and some extra effects. Since I’m getting help here as well, I’ll just go ahead and start on Episode 31 soon so I can keep things rolling.

I’m unfortunately still quite a bit behind on emails, I currently have about 230 left to reply to. If you’ve contacted me about subtitles, your emails are likely much more delayed than usual since I’m trying to get a new system in place for that. In short, I want to get the English ones up first, so all people making subtitles have a better copy to work from for translations in other languages. There are currently two people working on that for the remaining episodes. Once I get more up, I’ll unveil “phase 2” of plans for getting more subtitles up on the site in other languages.

For now I’m not going to rush anything, but I intend to work on Freeman’s Mind every day I’m able, so you’ll be seeing a surge in new episodes soon, even if there’s some lag time between when I finish voicing an episode and when it goes online. I’ll announce more on long-term plans after “The Tunnel” is out.

EDIT: Episode 30 is done and has been uploaded to Machinima.com. It will go up on their Youtube channel first, but I don’t know when. If anyone sees it go up and I haven’t made a post on it yet, feel free to email me and say so. Also for the OCD people, as a tip, they usually only upload between 9 - 5 (GMT -08:00).