Well I’ve hit yet another delay because I’m running into some serious bugs with the Source SDK (the software used to make these episodes). I was originally intending to have episode 3 out about now since it’s all but done, but I ran into a MAJOR bug that’s preventing me from doing so. Until I find a fix or workaround, episode 3 is indefinitely on hold. I’ll be finishing up episode 2 in the meantime since the bug won’t affect any content in that episode (I had an entirely DIFFERENT bug for that episode, which I found a workaround for). Anyway, this is a showstopping bug for now, and will impact which scripts I’ll use in the future if it doesn’t get resolved. For people who know something about the Source SDK, check out my post on it here. For everyone else, it’s boring technical crap.

Good news: I’m getting pretty close to done on the next episode + I found out about another contest it would qualify for

Bad news: The contest has an exclusiveness rule which means that I can’t publish the episode until after the contest is over, which would be at the start of March.

I’m kind of torn here, because I really want to show you guys the next episode, since it’s going to be awesome in comparison to the first. However, I’d also like to enter this contest; the last one proved to be a really good move on my part. I’ll probably enter the contest, even though I feel like you guys are getting robbed by it. Time is a resource for me, but once I finish Episode 2, I’ll do my damndest to try and get episode 3 out before they allow me to release Episode 2 (The order on these doesn’t really matter anyway). In the meantime here’s a link to the contest. Feel free to let them know how you feel about this exclusiveness rule.


Also, if you have experience using Faceposer, I might be interested in someone reliable who would want to help with the animations (this will help the episodes come out faster). I can’t pay you anything, since I don’t have any money, but your name would be in the credits, in big blocky letters.

Some good stuff going on with Civil Protection. After I started making the first episode, I found out about a contest for machinima making going on, so I worked to finish it in time before the deadline. It was hosted by Machinimasia, an institution devoted to this type of media. They’re located in Singapore and since the focus of this was to spread machinima awareness in Asia, it was pretty cool of them to accept entries from other continents as well. The results got posted a little while ago and it turns out that I not only won for best student category, but also BEST OF SHOW. I guess this means I’ll start getting death threats from other machinima makers now, but they don’t know where I live. They could do an IP trace, but that should only get them the general region of the ISP. Anyway, this trophy looks neat:





The bad news is that I’ve fallen behind on episode 2 for several reasons. One of the biggest was my getting sick over Thanksgiving break but also with my exams/graduation coming up. I’m still working on it though and will get it out as soon as I can, I just have less time to devote to it right now.