Enjoy the first Christmas episode of Ross’s Game Dungeon! If you’re like me and you get sick of overly-sentimental content around Christmas time, then I think you’ll like this episode. You’re not going to get lots of heart warming affirmations for this video, instead, you’re going to have some intense snowmobiling in a game loaded with enigmas.

Besides recording a racing game, it was a serious race for me to make this on top of finishing off Freeman’s Mind this month, but I wanted to make a Christmas episode and didn’t want to miss my chance two years in a row. At first I had massive problems getting it to run and almost considering doing a different game, but didn’t think I had time for my other candidates. Also despite being shorter than some other episodes, this one might have taken the most editing work so far. No worries though, I wouldn’t have made this if I didn’t think I could finish Freeman’s Mind in under a week. Even if the assistance I’m getting disappears and my computer catches on fire, I’ll still get it made. I’m not prepared for a meteor strike, but anything less and I should be alright.

I think I’m slowly getting better at cutting down Game Dungeon to just the best parts as there were several parts I left out of this one to try and make it more concise. Here are some extra notes you might want to check out after watching video.

Extra things I could have said, but didn’t :

-The game is actually capped at 29.1fps, this isn’t a standard framerate for anything.
-The menus default to 640x480 and can’t be changed.
-I considered having a slow motion snowmobile wreck set to “o come all ye faithful”
-I love the body language of the real life snowmobiler shown in the video. He gets off the sled like a cartoon character.
-This is a game that really would have benefitted from ragdoll physics.
-At one point I caught the computer teleporting ahead of me, but didn’t have it on video. I also spotted the computer teleporting outside the track briefly.
-An alternative theory to Point Defiance’s timeline is that Mobygames doesn’t have enough damn information and I got confused since they don’t even acknowledge the existence of my copy of the game. That still doesn’t explain the 6 year gap in between the song release.
-I may have been a little hard calling Point Defiance’s music generic. It’s good, just not mind blowing (though Precious Burden is particularly good).
-Point Defiance actually Photoshopped out their old band member in their promo photos. It wasn’t me!
-The files also had a “concept sled” model, but they would crash the game
-There was one additional track I didn’t show, but it was just an indoor stadium. It probably would have added about 3 hours to the total processing time.
-I had an idea for game developers. Make a knockoff of this game, but in addition to normal racers, have lots of Christmas or winter themed snowmobilers. I would add Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, an elf, Frosty the Snowman, Jack Frost, a reindeer, a moose, a polar bear, and the old “New Year’s Eve” man. I would make the graphics semi-believable for the full effect as opposed to going a cartoon route. It would also be awesome if Santa could do a biker kick.

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ADHD version: Snowmobiles!

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Hey everyone, I have TWO Christmas surprises coming! Here is the first one:

This is an “outtake” from the Christmas episode for Civil Protection. I meant to release this years ago, but hadn’t gotten to around it. While I’ve dealt with countless bugs with the Source engine, this is the only one that was actually entertaining to watch. I was so surprised by it at the time I recorded a quick videoclip of it here. What’s interesting is you can see Mike’s head still tracking the location of the cameraman. You might think this bug is the result of me doing something wrong or experimental, but no. I was giving it basic instructions and the engine just decided to do whatever the hell it wanted. While Civil Protection could return eventually, scenes like this are one of hundreds of reasons I’m abandoning the Source engine for future projects.

Anyway, I’m still working on the second part of the Christmas surprise. It should hopefully be out sometime later today!

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ADHD version: Outtake from Civil Protection! Another surprise coming later today!

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Youtube link

(Downloadable copy will be up later)

Subtitles: English

More Freeman’s Mind! This episode, like many others, is pretty much more of the same, except in an alien universe. This area of the game might be my favorite in terms of the color and lighting. As a bit of a spoiler (watch the video first if you don’t want to read it) I am disappointed the conveyor belt was unable to kill the controller. In one practice playthrough I got the barrel to shove it out of the room entirely. I’m not sure if the physics can kill it or not. I don’t have a lot else to say about this episode except I was quite satisfied with the explosion sound quality.

I’m currently behind on reading comments and VERY behind on giving proper replies to donators and general emails. The same goes for updating a lot of the website links + adding video downloads. My plan is to catch up on all that after the episodes are over. I have seen some comments of people who suspect the bet was a ruse and this is done already, I promise it is not. While I was able to push ahead on a lot on the voicework, I’m going to be extremely busy between now and when I finish FM. I’m quite confident I’ll make it, though I have some special stuff planned for the last episode, so it’s going to take longer. More videos coming!

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Youtube link

(Downloadable copy will be up later)

Freeman’s Mind returns! This episode was almost a break compared to some of the others, since the screaming ratio was much lower than the past few episodes of Xen. Because of that, I anticipate people may not like it as much, there’s usually a correlation between popularity of the episode v. how much screaming occurs. Also, some may be disappointed that this level does not play out quite the way it normally does. I don’t know why this is, but I tried recording it 3 times and it was the same each time. Normally one of the tentacle monsters emerges and there is a flier overhead, but it simply did not trigger for me. So for those that notice their absence, it’s nothing intentional on my part. Speaking of tentacle monsters, while practicing the level, I actually manage to blow up and kill one of the tentacles, which uprooted it out of the ground and caused it to flip upside down. I wish I had been recording a demo when it happened, as I absolutely would have put it into the video if I had. I have not been able to recreate the event however. More episodes are coming, though the only deadline I’m promising is still completion before the end of the year.

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Youtube link

(Downloadable copy will be up later)

More Freeman’s Mind! I originally thought this would be a faster episode, but while recording the demo, I discovered an area I never even knew existed, which I think was the intended way to finish this level. As many people know, you can simply jump in the pits as a shortcut, but that’s trickier to pull off. In terms of the atmosphere, I think this has some of the best level design in the game; I like the claustrophobic feel contrasted with the open area, all of which manages to make the level seem bigger than it is. There’s not too much else in the way of news. Right now for me every day is Freeman day. More episodes coming!

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