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.

This is going to be a long post because it’s a bit of a rant. If you want a quick update, the next Civil Protection episode is still a couple weeks off, so my new estimate is for mid-May. This is why I don’t like giving time estimates, they’re almost always wrong. I’ll resume work on Freeman’s Mind as soon as the animation and filming is done for the next CP episode.

Now my rant. I have bad news in that despite my best efforts to fight this policy, I can no longer use game soundtracks in any videos unless they’re from games by Valve. Every episode of Civil Protection and a few of Freeman’s Mind have been using music from other games. Even the theme song to Civil Protection is from Quake 3 Arena, so that’s out as well. This frustrates me for multiple reasons. One of the reasons is that to some extent I try to pick more obscure tracks people are less likely to have heard. For the most part, the music on most of my videos is NOT high-risk material for a copyright violation. I’ve included music from obscure games, very old games, games where the original developing company is now dead and the rights weren’t bought by anyone, games where at one point the soundtrack was released for free online by the game company itself, etc. Apparently none of this matters. Due mainly to Youtube’s paranoia about any DMCA violation, the rules have changed for submitting videos are much stricter regarding any music use. Any loophole I find (and have found) is basically irrelevant because it won’t change this policy any. Yes, I could theoretically not release through Youtube or Machinima.com, but that’s not really practical if I want to maintain a fanbase. Despite whatever you may think, views through Machinima.com and Youtube are ENORMOUS compared to any other distribution method for the medium. Rooster Teeth may be the only exception to this, but they have a contract with Microsoft and were one of the first groups on the scene.

Now you may wonder why this is such a big deal for me. The biggest reason is that I am a soundtrack FREAK. Probably half the music I have doesn’t even have words. Having listened to many, many soundtracks over the years, this makes it much easier for me to pick out the kind of music I’m looking for in a scene. In fact, many ideas I’ve had for videos come from listening to soundtrack music and trying to envision what sort of situation would fit that the best, then working a script around that. Also since I have listened to so much soundtrack music, I enjoy being able to share selections many people may not be familiar with. In the case of dead game companies and old, obscure games, I almost looked at including picks as a way or resurrecting some interest. While there are still many other things to fix and add with the website first, in the future I may even try to exploit the current fanbase and add a side section for people interested in old or obscure game soundtracks like myself. For those who don’t care about any of this, don’t worry, this is a low priority for me next to making more videos.

Another point some people may think is that it’s not unreasonable to ask me not to use other people’s composition work. I suppose not, but I have some gripes about the current legal system regarding this. The last thing I want to do is upset any of the composers who have created so much great music. If I ever received a request from composers not to use their music, I would never fight that. All the music I’ve used is with the intention of showcasing it because I think it’s great or ideal for the situation I want to use with it. I’ve credited the music I use in the videos I’ve created because I want people to know where it’s from and who did it. What I don’t like is that much of this music is likely doomed to obscurity due to complications with copyright law. I’ve written fan mails to several game music composers in the past. Everyone I contacted seemed flattered I enjoyed their music and was happy for people to listen to it. I think the situation for the vast majority of the music I was planning to use in future episodes was that the composers would be happy for me to use it, the game companies that aren’t dead would probably either not care or else would like the additional exposure on an old product, but there’s no legal precedent for any of this, so I can’t use it. I think very, very few game companies would be willing to respond to an inquiry about music use, let alone give an official ruling on it. Many composers I simply can’t track down any contact information for (Chuck Barth, I want the soundtrack to Rama!), so a lot of music is tied up legally when the reality is it’s unlikely anyone actually cares about it anymore (besides me). As much as I love lots of game soundtrack music and want to share it with others, it’s becoming apparent to me this is a losing battle.

Now there is some good news to all this. First, Craig Kesicke is an excellent composer who’s offered to continue making music for the videos I work on. He has a very wide range of styles, which is necessary, given my music tastes. Based on what he’s done for me so far (a lot of it’s unreleased), I anticipate him becoming the lead composer for future videos here. The second piece of good news is that for the one soundtrack I really, REALLY wanted to use for the next CP episode, I was able to contact the composer and got direct permission to use in the upcoming video. So with the kind of help I’m getting with the audio, it should end up very close to the mood I’m looking for.

As for the next CP episode, it’s still underway. Animation is going slowly and I’ve run into new bugs with the Source engine I’ve never seen before. Fortunately these new ones I’ve been able to work around and production is continuing. I realize this is going slowly, but no one wants to finish this episode more than myself. I’ll make an announcement when it’s closer to being finished.