Hey, an update on the videocard situation:

My cooler came in, only for me to discover that my old videocard was already fried, it started giving me graphics corruption right after POST. The good news is viewer Collin Campbell has sent me an 8400 GS to tide me over. This card has all the same graphics capabilities of my old card, it’s just way, way slower. However, I’m able to keep working with this card, and I’ve been doing so. I won’t be doing any gaming with a card like this, but that’s probably just as well since I’m so far behind. I’ve also had offers for donating more midrange cards from viewers John Stokes and Joshua Nicholson which I’ll be happy to accept. I’ve been wanting to build a secondary system for a while in case my main one gets hosed like this, so the old cards will go into that once I upgrade. I probably will buy a new card at some point, but I want to wait until I’ve finished all the animation work for the next Civil Protection episode as an extra incentive.

On that topic, progress is moving steadily, but very slow. I feel bad too because this one isn’t going to be the most impressive visually, you’ll probably watch it and wonder why it took so long to make. This once again, comes down to the Source engine. If you saw a scene where the metrocops walk down a tunnel, stop, look around, then keep walking, making turns all the while, how long do you think that would take? Maybe 30 minutes right? No. With the long trial-and-error testing process and the downright mystical bugs I have to fight, it takes days. And this is when I already have the map files, custom animations, and models that I already need. Some scenes move more quickly than others, others are more visually impressive for the time involved, but a lot of what’s done is very simple visually, with it being a nightmare behind the scenes.

I’m absolutely going to finish this episode, though I may make another sacrificial FM episode in the meantime to tide people over. Once I finish this episode however, I think this is the last big CP episode I’ll do under the Source engine. I have ideas for much simpler ones after this, plus I have no plans to discontinue the series, but it’s possible down the line I may try and port the content over to a more animation-friendly engine down the line. Although this is probably good news for the majority of you, since I can just keep making Freeman’s Mind episodes after this until the technology or resources catches up for me to work on something more ambitious.

Hey people, some bad news. My videocard (Geforce 8800 GTS) is pretty consistently overheating. I tried to borrow a cheap one so I could keep working (Radeon X300 SE), but then THAT keeps overheating as well (to be fair that one doesn’t even have a fan, just a heatsink). Even though my case air flow is pretty good and I have an air conditioner running keeping the room in the mid 70s, this is definitely a heat problem. Besides video artifacts and system freezing in 3d applications, the heatsink on the Geforce has been getting so hot it can burn me.

I plan to order a custom cooler for the card since I don’t have a lot of extra cash to be blowing on a new videocard, but what this means is for the time being I can’t work on much of anything video-related because I risk the computer freezing up in 3D applications. So this means no animation work on Civil Protection, and no in-game footage for Freeman’s Mind. I’ll try and catch up on replying to emails and managing subtitles in the meantime.

EDIT:

Many people are offering to donate me money. That would be great, but I’m not doing that at this time for two reasons:

1. Having some sort of donate button requires modifications to the site, I don’t know web programming and right now the person helping me modify the site has been very busy to get everything underway (there’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff that needs fixing). I plan to follow up some emails from people who have contacted me about website before to hopefully get some stuff underway.

2. If you guys are donating, I want to have a little more to show for it. Basically get a bunch of minor improvements here working. Being able to browse old posts, a better commenting system, more subtitles, putting scripts up, alternate shots, having episodes available in more formats besides WMV, maybe director’s commentary stuff, etc.

Youtube

Download 672x384 WMV (86MB)

Well after a short period of me being completely unaware the video had already been posted, here’s the next episode of Freeman’s Mind. Again, this is just kind of a stopgap material to tide you guys over while I keep working on Civil Protection. This is exactly the sort of situation Freeman’s Mind was created for in the first place. It’s sort of a mutation that’s it’s become as popular as it has. Once I finish the next CP episode, I promise to make a large batch of FM episodes to make up for all the time I’ve been spending on CP.

This episode did take more audio editing than usual. Audio editor Otto Beumelburg sent me a screenshot of all the volume balancing work he did for the episode. I thought that was interesting, so I’m posting that below. While I originally did everything myself, nowadays he does about 95% or more of volume mixing and extra sound effects for the series. I’ve been pretty happy with his work and it definitely saves me some time.

At some point I hope to make a giant chart illustrating all the steps that go into Freeman’s Mind and Civil Protection, but that can wait until I finish the next episode. I’ll start on FM 29 as soon as I’m done with the animation work for CP. I’m still behind on replying to emails, getting more subtitles up, and getting revisions done to the website, but I haven’t forgotten about any of that.

Personal Notes:

It’s likely I may be moving again in a couple weeks to a location with even cheaper rent, so that may disrupt things for a little bit. I’m also starting to relate to Freeman in that sense that I’m growing increasingly paranoid about the peak oil crisis that I believe is coming (see Civil Protection: Oil’s Well for more info on that). Even though I’ve previously considered people like this a little crazy, I’m leaning towards joining some survivalist community for when everything goes to hell. I probably won’t get to it for at least another year and even then, I’ll keep making more videos as long as civilization exists. Nobody really knows what will happen, but based on information I’ve been reading, I think we’ll start seeing big trouble around 2015. I think a zombie apocalypse would be easier to prepare for than what I think is actually coming. Enjoy!

This is again for the people who get upset about not enough updates. The next Freeman’s Mind episode is fully voiced, but it’s going to take longer than usual as far as the audio editing. I won’t be working on most of that, so I’ll be going back to Civil Protection in the meantime. I promise to release the next FM episode as soon as it’s done, though it’s looking that may be next week afterall. On the plus side, it’s one of the longer episodes, around 10 minutes.

Well I know you guys like updates, so here’s what’s happening:

Progress is continuing steadily on The Tunnel, but it’s going slowly. To give you an idea of why things take so long, I did animation work on two scenes I though I was going to be able to complete in one night. The actual time ended up coming out to seven days. These weren’t especially complicated or complex scenes either, it’s just the nature of animating in the Source engine. The Source engine is such a convoluted means of animating scenes. Every little detail requires about 12 steps to complete. I’m often animating the scenes blind, meaning I don’t know what will happen until I compile a map. It involves crossover work between two programs where you can only make rough guesses on the timing and how everything interact, leading to a LOT of trial and error to get things to look right, and this is when everything is functioning smoothly with no bugs, which frequently doesn’t happen. The whole experience leaves me kind of bitter and I hope that at some point I can find a more efficient method of animating in the future, either on Source or something else. Most other engines I’m familiar with either don’t have good animation tools at all, or else suffer from a different set of problems and/or limitations.

I’m absolutely going to continue The Tunnel to completion, however I realize this is taking significantly longer than I hoped and there’s literally nothing I can do to speed it up. This is nothing new to the series, but since the fanbase is much larger than it used to be, I realize it’s frustrating more people than ever before, not just myself. On that note, I’m going back on what I said and will produce one more Freeman’s Mind episode, then go back to working on The Tunnel. I’ll try and make it a longer one, hopefully this will tide some of you over since Civil Protection is taking so long. I am giving no more time estimates for The Tunnel; I can’t, there’s too many variables. Freeman’s Mind is a much simpler affair however, I think I can safely say it will be done by next week.