Things are a mess at the moment, but I should probably give a news update. I was recently asked by Machinima.com to make a trailer for “The Tunnel” since it’s not going to come out before Halloween because of everything else I’ve been doing. I surely agreed, as this is going to be a long episode and I thought I could make a trailer without spoiling much. I ended up having very little notice on this however and ran into some bugs, so I did everything humanely possible to get this out in time (I worked about 32 hours between Monday and Tuesday night). Unfortunately this wasn’t fast enough and Machinima wanted it released TODAY, so this comes at a sizeable expense to the quality. I’ve never rushed anything out the door this fast and I can say right now this is not going to happen again. I compromised because I can live with a trailer being subpar, but I would never allow this for a full episode.

Anyway, it is available on Youtube now, but I don’t want to link to it, since the audiowork should be finished for it before too long and the final one should create a better impact. The version that’s out there now has no sound effects and consists only of Half-Life music that I arranged in about 10 minutes. The “good” one will have sound effects and hopefully some custom music composed for it. It will be available on Machinima.com and here when it is. I’ll make a new post when that’s done. I don’t want to discuss anything about the trailer until the good one is out, so I’m not answering any questions related to it or the episode right now, I’ll give the details on everything once it’s out (hopefully quite soon). I just wanted to give an update for people wondering what was happening. Watch it now if you really want to, though I recommend waiting a day or two for the better version.

Youtube

672x384 WMV (71MB)

Here’s the new Freeman’s Mind episode. This is the first one in widescreen format at it was requested by Machinima.com that I film it this way. I originally gave it a 4x3 aspect ratio to accommodate Youtube and since that changed on me, it’s not a big deal to switch over to a widescreen ratio. Ironically since all my Civil Protection videos are in widescreen, my early episodes were hard-encoded to be letterboxed in a 4x3 ratio for Youtube by Machinima.com. It feels like I can’t win sometimes.

Speaking of which, I’m afraid this episode comes at a cost. Between making three Freeman’s Mind episodes this month and other side projects I’ve had to work on, I really don’t think the next Civil Protection episode is going to come out before Halloween. If it was up to me, I would have put FM on hold and made sure the next episode of CP came out in time, but Machinima.com has its own priorities. This does disappoint me, but for what it’s worth, this won’t be strictly a Halloween episode, just a scary one. So while the timing would have been better for this month, it should still be enjoyable for November. Also to be clear, this rate of Freeman’s Mind is perfectly sustainable, it’s this and other things on top of Civil Protection which is causing the overload.

This delay is not due to lack of effort on my part. I’ve been working about 75 hours a week the past couple weeks where I was trying to get this done on time, but I can only create the episode so fast. I haven’t been doing much besides working, exercising, and sleeping. To put it in perspective, I’ve been told that Machinima.com has only done one show in-house that uses scripted animation like CP and for that they were funded, hired lots of outside help, had a team of 6 internal animators working overtime and even then just barely got it completed in time. I don’t have a paid team helping me, just volunteers the same as previous episodes (though I’m not discounting their efforts), so I still have to fill in every missing role that I can. Factor in that this will likely be the longest episode of CP so far and it’s becoming a pretty big strain on me. I’m going a little batty with these hours actually, but I’ll be happy once the episode is done.

Also I fixed most of the broken download links Machinima.com keeps deleting randomly, I’ll get more done when I get a chance.

 

Follow the thoughts of Dr. Gordon Freeman, a 27 year old physicist and neurotic individual. In this episode, Freeman manuevers around a giant monster, wanders deep in Black Mesa, and gets stuck.

Youtube

Machinima.com streaming

640x480 WMV (76MB)

Well here’s the latest episode, one of the most difficult episodes for me to produce to date, due to the recording situation. It looks like that’s getting resolved however, so hopefully the pace should pick up sooner on that. It’s anyone’s guess though as the computer they salvaged for me completely died on Thursday, but rumor has it there’s a laptop I can continue working on. Also I apologize in advance if the video looks a little choppy on Youtube. With the exception of FM14 and Morning Patrol, every single video I’ve submitted to Machinima.com has been uploaded at the incorrect framerate on Youtube. Maybe someday this will get fixed.

Progress continues on the next CP episode. I’m determined to release that before Halloween and will likely be working on weekends as well to make sure that happens.

EDIT:

I’ve been informed that the Youtube version is far darker than it should be, this does appear to be true. This is bad, since this is already a darker episode in terms of lighting. I don’t know why the brightness was reduced, but it wasn’t my fault this time. I recommend either watching the streaming version on Machinima.com or downloading the WMV version.

Well I’ve got some more news on several items:

FREEMAN’S MIND:

A new episode should be coming out before too long, but progress has been extremely slow. While I was told there would be audio recording accommodations before I accepted the job, they have been very sketchy. I had to record episode 15 sandwiched between 2 offices where other people are working and making noise, much of it carries through the walls, plus there’s a smaller echo in the room, and I’m next to a busy hard tile hallway that can pick up noise from halfway across the building. Recording at home is no longer an option, so as a result, I’ve had to work during off hours at the office in order to record. Even then, the cleaning crew makes a lot of noise, so I can’t reliably record anything until after about 9pm when things tend to remain quiet. Machinima has plans to relocate several of the offices soon, so I’m hoping the recording situation gets resolved.

CIVIL PROTECTION AND PILOT EPISODE:

I’m continuing to work on both of these and hope to have the next CP episode out sometime in October.

MISSING DOWNLOADS:

Several of the downloadable copies of the videos keep getting deleted at random from the Machinima servers. No one has been able to give me a clear answer as to why this keeps happening and from what I can tell, restoring these only to have them get deleted again is going to be a losing battle. The good news is, the host for this website (AMT Studios) says they have tons of bandwidth, so hosting new videos here shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve since restored the links for Freeman’s Mind episodes 5,6, and 8, and Civil Protection: Halloween Safety. I’ll replace more links as they become a problem or I get around to it.

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Also I’ve been trying to get this information added for almost 2 weeks, but I think the people working on the website are having problems with it, so I’m just going to post the information here until it’s officially part of the site:

SUBTITLES:

I’m no longer accepting new subtitles at this time. I plan to again at some point in the future, but I’m so far behind on updating the existing ones, piling on more is just going to overwhelm me. I still intend to support as many as I can, but I simply need to catch up on what people have already submitted first.

FAQ UPDATE:

I’ve been emailed these particular questions many times now, here are the answers for everyone:

Q. How do you do pullups in Freeman’s Mind?
A. I have cheats enabled and have “noclip” mode assigned to a hotkey.

Q. How do you put away your weapon in Freeman’s Mind?
A. Originally I was switching to another weapon covered with invisible textures, but since then, one viewer has informed me of the command “impulse 200”, which can put away the weapon.

Q. Can I have your permission to do a new series in the Freeman’s Mind format for another game?
A. You don’t need my permission to do this. I’m not the first person to come up with the idea of putting words in other character’s mouths. I don’t plan on doing another show in the