Jsor

One that just came out and wasn't in your runner up list. I'm actually not sure you know about this one since it kind of flew under the radar -- Ori and the Blind Forest. It's an astonishingly beautiful game with a great story, and it's probably one of the best Metroid-like platformers I've ever played.

The answer is zero. You should lose zero sleep.

Good news, Ross! There's an open source FrameServer plugin for newer Premiere! http://sourceforge.net/projects/advancedfs/?source=typ_redirect I used it and it's a little slower than the Vegas one, but it works!

Ya I was thinking about too, there's certain parts of the engine that seem to have a mind its own. From what I hear Skyrim's engine is just a retooled version of Fallout 3's engine, which is a retooled version of Oblivion's engine. If only they took the time to just make a better, more stable engine instead of recycling the old temperamental one. . . if only. Most modern engines still have some code from the Quake 1 engine. Total engine rebuilds are extremely rare (and expensive).

Unfortunately, there's no way to do this with Adobe Premiere, but if you want to avoid the giant intermediate file it's nice to use something called DebugMode FrameServe. It integrates with Sony Vegas, and the idea is that when you render to a FrameServe target, it will only write a very, very small .avi file (a couple kilobytes). I'm more familiar with MeGUI, but apparently with some effort you can integrate it with HandBrake too with some work. The only other step is a one-line Avisynth file: AviSource("myAvi.avi") Then you load that via Handbrake/MeGUI and it does encoding magic. The idea is, the frameserver will trick your rendering program to render only to the file as needed, and it will delete old data as it's read by the encoder. So it basically renders to and then encodes it to without any intermediate file. Unfortunately, like I said, this basically requires switching to Vegas or script-kiddy editing via AviSynth or dealing with Virtualdub's terrible interface. (Apparently it used to work under Premiere, but it broke, you can still give it a go if you want to try. It's just a plugin) Also, I wouldn't be too worried about recording in YV12. There is a slight quality drop, but it's not noticeable to most people. The only real reason you notice is because you saw the raw footage. Most ~~Youtube gamer celebrities~~ record in Lagarith YV12. I mean, if it drives you bonkers and need to do RGB then do what you gotta do, but it shouldn't be a problem.

Er, I'm aware of the origin of the term G-man. All I was saying is that the reason we, as a community, call him G-man is because that's what his files were called, not because that's his "canon name".

We should probably take Totally Serious Half-Life Story talk to another thread, but AFAIK, I think Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay are only considered by Valve to be semi or selectively canon. As in, they're considered non-canon except for anything explicitly mentioned in HL or HL2(+episodes). The reason we call him G-man is because that's what his file names were called.

Don't forget that Ross also has "pull-ups" and editing tricks he uses to speed up overly long and boring sections. Not to mention he increased his weapon damage.

I dunno, I was kind of hoping Otto had died in some dark ritual to imprint his spirit and haunt the sound files of Freeman's Mind and RGD forever. It would really lend that extra oomph to Ross' work.

Gordon wouldn't know this, but I believe they explain the Black Mesa teleporters in HL2. They say they "slingshot" you around Xen. I'm not sure why the subject wouldn't remember it, but it's possible that they sort of work like the Portal portals (which are just connections between arbitrary points) that spit you out in Xen for an incredibly short distance before you come out the other end. Depending on how and exactly where this slingshotting is done, it could explain the loss in momentum. Like, imagine four portals which we'll use | for. Black Mesa A ----> || > ---- Xen (momentum slows here) --- > || > (at rest) --- Black Mesa B It doesn't explain why the portals are one way or anything, but it's a fanwank.

I believe this time he'll review some old Germanic wood carvings.

Huh? Lots of old games have a ton of weird problems on newer machines. That's part of why gog.com exists, they do (sometimes only partially successful) magic to get the games running smoothly on newer systems.

What are you talking about? That green slime was CLEARLY hyperrealistic blood.

It's probably just because of extremely superficial similarities (Americana focused road-trip), but this game seriously feels like the creators of Sam and Max Hit the Road went on a massive bender.

I tried to play Helious 2, I wanted to see the end. I cannot stand this game for more than 10 minutes. You're a hero, Ross.

I'm more interested in how he'll handle the gonarch, because Jesus Christ.

I actually haven't done any drugs, though I have known many stoners. I was basing this on morphine being a depressant and sometimes creating a euphoria feeling, but not necessarily impeding higher brain functioning. I have had weed incidentally before when I was fixing a friend's computer at the same time he was hotboxing the room with it with his friends. I actually hated the experience, it made me much more aggressive. I could FEEL myself become dumber and found it very frustrating. I remember thinking that if I never knew what it was like to feel smarter than this, it might not be so bad, but as it was, I found it horrible. You have successfully described how I feel on alcohol. I never drink, partially because alcohol tastes like shit to me and partially because feeling drunk turns me into a monster for exactly this reason. I thought Freeman's demeanor made sense from the one time I've had opiates though (medication for surgery, nothing illegal, I only took one because I ended up not really needing it).

On your ongoing view count/ad revenue problems. Have you considered using Subabble? I think you meet all the criteria (though obviously there's no guarantee you'll get accepted). It allows you to have people give you what amounts to paid subscriptions, but the exact amount is optional and nobody is forced to pay. You're still allowed to get ad revenue on top of Subabble income. The videos would still be hosted on Youtube/Blip, so there's no major changeups in your workflow. The only downside is that you have to offer "perks" that people can redeem after they've given you enough money. They tend to be things like signed posters and stuff like that, but they can also be things like early access to videos or access to a "subscriber night" of some multiplayer game or whatever else. You'd be responsible for fulfilling those requests in a timely manner blah blah blah, I don't know if that would add too much to your workload.

I really don't get what the hell is going on with Youtube. Even the frontend is going weird, and I'm not griping about the interface. Now when I hit the back button on my browser while a video is playing, the video's audio keeps playing. And this is on Chrome, which you'd think would be BFFs with Youtube. (Yeah, yeah, Google is a big company, the product teams are different and we can't expect them to be perfectly coordinated, whatever). I've also been getting really spotty performance, where sometimes videos just don't want to buffer for a day or so. Just random videos, it's not consistent, it has nothing to do with the channel the video is on, the length, or anything else. Other videos on the site will be fine while others fail to load. Sometimes I wonder if they have this giant team of paid engineers hired to work on Youtube and so they just make them do what is effectively busywork to justify the salary. That doesn't mean I know Youtube was perfect in 2008 or whatever and didn't need any changes, I'm sure there were plenty of backend problems none of us were aware of. I just seriously wonder if a lot of the more recent problems are stemming from "idle hands are the devil's playthings" type phenomena. Anyway, I voted for more Game Dungeon. It's a really great series, even if I don't always agree with Ross' rant in each episode, it at least gives something to think about. I love Freeman's Mind, and I want to see it finished (and, hell, I even would like Freeman's Mind 2 for HL2), but I really like seeing what Ross thinks about various obscure old games. I also like the format so much more than a lot of other video game shows, which tend to be overly obsessed with ragging on old bad games. It gets a bit samey. I find the Game Dungeon's focus on analysis and fair breakdown of the pros and cons of the games to be really refreshing.

I really like this series, I'd like to see it become more regular (especially since I imagine they're easier to do than your normal stuff). If you want another good semi-obscure old adventure game there's Lighthouse: The Dark Being. It's not the same brand of weirdness as Eternam, but it's certainly something. It's an old Sierra game and kind of Myst-like. First person, with other characters and interactive doodads in 3D. (Though prerendered screens, not much exploration). One interesting thing about it is that while you can die, some of the situations in the game let you fail or do stupid shit, and it merely means you have to find a different way to accomplish the task. You can get a key item stolen from you and have to find a way to retrieve it when you encounter the thief in a later part of the game, for instance. Not sure how much there is to go off on tangents about, though. Overall the setting of the game is pretty weird. The story itself is fairly straightforward, but the history of the world that they hint at is rather interesting. I can see why it never became as big as, say, Myst, but it is good enough (and by a big enough company) that I'm not sure why it's as obscure as it is.

You could try getting a contract with Channel Awesome, maybe. Unfortunately, from what I understand if you're not one of their top names you can have difficulty getting hits because of the way they choose whose content gets promotion and when it's posted on the site (doesn't help that their site is kind of bad). That said, you already have somewhat of a name and a popular series, so it could work out.

That's easy to remedy, but I've never heard that before. I've seen lots of software developers release everything for free, but accept donations as well. Could you link to where this is speficially stated legally or via Paypal policy or something? Actually,i THINK its illegal to ASK for donations FROM MINORS without OFFERING ANY KIND OF REWARD.But still thats really easy to remedy It turns out I was a little mistaken, the actual rule (which I have no authoritative cite for, mostly just random Paypal forum threads and Yahoo Answers) seems to be "The use of the word donation is iffy at best, if you use the word donations you MUST inform the contributors that they may not claim it as tax deductible, and the recipient must pay income tax on the donation." So nevermind.

I doubt anybody will actually come after you for it unless this site makes you super rich, but be careful, "donations" pages can get legally iffy, since if you're not a non-profit business you technically can only sell things and not accept donations. That's why most sites have donation bonuses, not to provide an incentive, but to be able to say "they're not REALLY donations, they're buying access to the premium member's exclusive video (or whatever)."