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).

Hey everyone, I’m reporting that the filming for “The Tunnel” is now completely done. I still have some editing to do, but that should be pretty minor time-wise compared to the death march the rest of this episode has felt like. There’s still a lot of soundwork to be done, but the majority of that is being done by other people, which finally gives me a breather to work on something else. I’m very happy with how the episode is turning out and I think it’s going to be the best one yet atmosphere-wise.

I was going to have a couple new Freeman’s Mind episodes this month, but I found out on the 11th that the last day to submit videos to Machinima.com was the 13th, so unfortunately I can’t publish anything during this time. The earliest I can submit a new video is January 3rd, so it’s my intent to have at least one Freeman’s Mind episode completed before then. I’ll go ahead and expand the progress chart for the Freeman’s Mind episodes as well so you can monitor that if you’re curious. I plan to get started on episode 30 in the next day or two. It looks like I’m going to be eating my words about 2010 being more videos than ever, I really underestimated just how much work “The Tunnel” really was, I’ll talk more about that after the episode is out.

For non-video stuff, my main focus is replying to my very large backlog of emails, getting more subtitles up (I still need to review a lot of them), and hopefully getting a forum up and running at some point in the near future.

More videos are coming!

EDIT:

I’d like people’s feedback about what topic categories they would like to see for the future forum. For example, one possibility is something like this:

-Civil Protection
-Freeman’s Mind
-Other Videos
-Gaming in general
-Source Engine information

Or maybe CP, FM, and everything else should just be under one category of “Accursed Farms Videos.” It doesn’t have to be necessarily related to the videos, gaming, or machinima, just has enough interest that people coming here would want to discuss the topic. Feel free to list your suggestions in the comments, or you can email directly.