The Bo Schitt Blog

New Projects!

2011-12-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

All right, now that enough interesting stuff has come together, I can now make a new blog post with updates!

Don't worry, the GMod Idiot Box will continue, but first I wanted to do another story project, much like Update Day: A TF2 Story. This project that me and Gami Cross are finishing up a script on, will tell the story of just how it's even possible for the Idiot Box to continue after what happened at the beginning of episode 10. It's sure to be a funny one, I'm just finishing the script and making sure all the resources are in place first, since I know exactly what I need before filming.

Finally, everyone's favorite metrocop, #1, will be getting his very own Tumblr account soon, allowing people to ask him questions, which will be responded to with still images and even some short videos which will go up as unlisted and only accessible through the Tumblr page. It should be a lot of fun, it just needs to finish being designed first and it'll be ready to go. It's undetermined if updates will go up on specific days of the week or not, but it's likely they will, considering there's a chance the volume of questions will become a bit overwhelming if they're left open every day. We'll see how that goes!

Alrighty, that's all I got for you. The Tumblr link will be posted on the YouTube bulletin feed and the Twitter page when the design is finished. Peace out!

Das Bo Schitt, a brony?

2011-10-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

So at the release of episode 10, it took the use of three sound effects in the episode to spark the big rumor, is Das Bo Schitt a "BRONY?" Now, for those of you who don't know, a "brony" is defined from the internet as someone who is a fan of the new TV show, "My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic". The show strangely exploded well beyond its key demographic of little girls, to males ages 20 and beyond, even getting so much as Stephen Colbert involved as one. So, that said, am I a brony? Let me take this time to annoyingly beat around the bush and ask a question of my own; is that REALLY the definition of a brony?

It's becoming more evident that the term "brony" is a lot like one of those broad, convoluted labels up there with gamers and furries, all of which sound like weird social classes. These types of labels lump together all participants into one generalized label and still don't clearly distinguish the very casual from the very extreme. It just takes playing video games for entertainment to immediately be given the gamer label nowadays, even if it's only for 2 hours every other day. That label is shared even with those who deteriorate in front of World of Warcraft for 20 hours a day and crap in a sock if it meant they didn't have to get up to use the restroom. That's what the brony term sounds like; a loosely generalized label that will get tiring having to specify to the many that don't make it past first glance, or those don't even want to if it means they have an easy target to giggle at.

That being said, if you're asking me if I've watched and enjoyed the show, the answer would be yes. Whenever hype surrounds a TV show, movie or video game to a heavy degree, I'm often up for taking part and gaining personal perspective, and this particular show even had the backing of some of my closest friends. Now I'm a fan of great characters and subtlety, and this show has both, regardless of it's very ham handed title and target audience that understandably repels people at the first glance. I can safely say I understand the appeal of the show beyond it's target audience, as we adults can still appreciate natural feel, good characters and above all, good humor.

HOWEVER, getting back to the mention of those generalized labels, I'm choosing to reject the "brony" label just the same as I choose to reject the "gamer" label. I think the show is good, but I'm not here to make a heavy handed social movement. I'm not jumping into MLP groups, going on recruiting runs, saying people are stupid for not liking the show or racking my brain wondering if a particular person also likes the show. You can keep the label, I just think the show is good.

It's weird that I feel I have to explain my stance on this, yet even though I'm looking to take the middle ground, it's inevitable people are going to lump me with the brony label anyway. They do it all the time to ease their filing systems, fabricate an easy target and/or add another name to represent a case in their favor. All the headaches could have been avoided if both the bronies and the non-fans could just agree to disagree, but the overzealous fans make the non-fans want to retaliate and vice versa, which brings us to this "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" sort of mentality.

Well, my answer was already given, so at this point, I'm just dragging on. In closing, it's a fun show with good characters and that is what makes it effective in delivering its lessons to its key demographic as well as going beyond it. Just don't expect me to go joining your Steam groups and definitely don't expect me to speak as some recruiter. Remember, furries are catching the brutal rep they have because of the high volume of overzealous ones, so let's not repeat history.

The Gmod Idiot Box: Final Verdict

2011-10-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

With the release of the 10th episode of the Gmod Idiot Box, I noticed still quite a few people thinking that was the last episode. That was partially my fault for not updating the blog in several months from the topic of me being on the fence about quitting it or not and partially theirs for not reading the video description in that episode, but we've heard that song and dance before, right? Anyway, I figured I would take this moment to completely clarify that the 10th episode will not be the last episode. When will it inevitably end? I'm simply back to not having a clear answer to that.

As difficult as the episodes get to make as opposed to structured (sort of) story projects like Computer Quest and Update Day, it's still everyone's clearly favorite series and despite the HORRID number of technical disasters that followed with this recent episode, I can't deny that they're still fun to make. If I ended the series, there will always be those silly ideas that come to mind long after it was ended, and they'll pile up to a point where I'll want them on screen, but they can't ALL have their own full length project dedicated to them. Most of those ideas wouldn't stand up on their own for an 8 minute period, but collaborating 5 second to one minute skits into those 8 minutes would and always has allowed me to get away with a lot. Plus, like I said in the last post, nobody wants to see a 5 second joke in their sub box, but an 8 minute collaboration video feels almost like an event, both from my side and apparently the viewer's side as well.

I also wanted to touch on the disappointed comments received about the length of the video. Earlier I put it to a vote on what the length of the video should be and the majority voted for 30 minutes. At first, this was the plan in mind since that was originally going to be the last episode, but after consideration, I changed my mind and decided to continue the series. Now some would argue that it could have at least been 30 minutes as part of a milestone for the series making it to 10 episodes, but there's two reasons I still wouldn't do that. For one, the technical problems I faced had already made the project take forever and people's frustrations were understandably through the roof, and those who were patient, were losing interest, so rather than continue to take another eternity to make it to 30 minutes, I released what I had. Second, even if the technical issues weren't a problem, I have a strange habit of trying to outdo myself each milestone. You'll no doubt notice this with the subscriber milestone videos and their increased length. Once the channel made it to 200,000 subscribers, the 8 minute length of that video made people forget that Computer Quest was another milestone special. Imagine if I tried to top 30 minutes if I were to hit episode 20? That's something I don't think I'd be prepared to do, especially with a series that already takes such effort to make 10 minutes in the first place. So yeah, sorry for those who were disappointed in the false advertising. Normally I take into account every poll I put up because it's a great way to find out what the audience wants, but in this case, I had to make one exception. I will certainly try not to do that again, because I want every poll to matter.

All right, that does it for this update! Tune in next time when I touch on the sudden rumor as to whether or not Das Bo Schitt is an infamous BRONY!

Idiot Box conflictions

2011-06-28T10:23:00.001-07:00

So I mentioned in the Twitter announcement video that I was feeling rather conflicted with the GMod Idiot Box series as of late and of course, I didn't want to add several more minutes to a short announcement video explaining them, so the blog was the perfect place to do it. Without any further intro needed on that, let's get into it.

One big reason I've been conflicted about the series, is that it takes a hell of a long time and effort to make a skit based video, moreso than a lot of people would realize. The GMod Idiot Box, for the most part, is a mashup of improv with no writing or much planning. All I have to go on is a large list of ideas I have a good feeling about, and many of them have required custom made content from my resource guys. Again, with a lot of the series being improv, I can only inform my resource people of what I need from them at the last minute, which means many skits wind up being on hold until I get that custom content from them. It's not like Computer Quest or Update Day, where I had everything laid out and I could inform my resource guys what I needed before the video has even started production.

A smaller issue with the skit based series is trying to keep it at a varied tone. There have been previous episode where there were too many long skits in them, making a 10 minute episode seem shorter than it should have been and ever since then, I've been trying to vary the skit length and themes to balance it out. Trust me when I say, that's not easy. There have been times when I had a lot of fantastic TF2 skit ideas or a lot of skits that involved longer length to them, but knew I couldn't put too many TF2 skits back to back and had to have short burst chuckles in between the longer buildup skits. It's a weight that tends to put too much concern in a video series I started out just planning to have fun with, and a lot of skits turn out being unused as a result.

Earlier I mentioned it takes a long time to make these episodes, which I hoped to remedy by stepping outside the "box" mentality and releasing each individual skit as it's own video. This would allow me to bring forth much more frequent updates and they would be easier to make. However, there's always pros and cons to long videos and making shorts. Though the Idiot Box takes a LOT longer to make, each episode is a lot more watchable than individual shorts for two reasons. The first being, some skits may not be as funny, but then others will be, and repeat watches are still possible on that one video, where as an individual skit as it's own video may not be as funny at all, and repeat watching is less likely. The other reason is because, I can fit some short "jab" skits in that range from only 1 - 5 seconds long in between skits that are fun to do. I highly doubt a subscriber would appreciate seeing a 2 second video in their sub box, complete with infamous YouTube cutoff.

Finally, you guessed it ... audience pressure. It becomes pretty tiresome being asked daily when the next episode will be, both on YouTube or when I'm just playing a game. Many are patient about it's release, but others have gotten pretty mean spirited about it as well, which takes a lot of the fun out of making the episodes, which, again, I set out to have in the first place when making these.

When I thought about ending the series, aside from making individual shorts for more frequent updates, I thought about starting a sort of multi-part murder mystery sort of series, not only because I'm a sucker for a good murder mystery, but I hoped to possibly encourage other GMod Machinima makers to try their hand at something that was more thought provoking than random craziness. This of course, would take more effort than ever before and though it may not be happening in the near future, I'd certainly like to take a shot at it once I get good at 3D animation and texture work. However, to abandon the staple series that formed the very audience I'm writing this blog post to now, in order to dramatically shift the tone of my content sounds more and more like a dick move. Hell, some people are fortunate enough to even HAVE an audience on YouTube, so it feels stupid to suddenly turn your back on it. The continuation of the GMod Idiot Box series is still one to think about, but I thought the explanation had to be made on why I'm thinking about such a thing to begin with.

Duke Nukem Forever verdict

2011-06-03T08:38:00.001-07:00

So I just got done playing the demo of Duke Nukem Forever. For those of you who don't know, the demo is only available for the Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club members who got their code through various 2K Games packages, mine in particular coming from Borderlands. So how was the game? All I could say after finishing the demo was, "WHAT - THE - FUCK - HAPPENED?!"

Regular readers of the blog remember my rant on Halo being a huge contributing factor to the downfall of the first-person shooter genre with it's regenerating health and two weapon inventory system. I was playing FPS games back in the 90s when you could carry a retardedly large arsenal of weapons at a time and had to keep your health in check with medkits and varying strategies. While Valve works on Half-Life 2: Episode 3, I continue to miss those days, so it came as no surprise that I was really looking forward to Duke Nukem Forever, which seemed to have it's gameplay mindset still pretty set in the good ol' 90s. I remember having high hopes of being able to press the "9" key to pull the biggest weapon I've found out of my bottomless pocket to dispatch that one enemy that knocked most of my medkit shoes off. Now I've played the demo and I can safely say I should have stuck with the cynical mindset I've had for today's shooters to avoid being this disappointed. It's a good thing game demos can both hype you up AND prepare you for the worst.

Health regeneration and two weapon inventory reared their disgusting two heads once again, dashing all hopes I had of re-living the days when shooters didn't suck ass. I could have forgiven it a little if the gameplay was at least satisfying to play, but sadly, no, not even that was given to me. Every event of the demo felt weak, the animations lacked serious polish and to top it all off, the graphics felt dated, but that's to be expected for a 13 year development time.

It's times likes this that I realize, when I'm not looking forward to a single game release for the rest of 2011, something has either gone terribly wrong with the gaming industry, or I'm already a bitter old bastard that's hard to please. Maybe that's why so many people dream of getting into game design, not because they just want to be more involved with video games because they play them so much, but to prevent this unacceptable downfall of quality standards and games that aren't fun to play, but follow formula of previous titles that sold well. Of course, now I'm just leaving on a more bitter note than before.

In summary, Duke Nukem Forever appears to have suffered at the hands of the Halo plague just like all the rest of the FPS games in this day and age. After 13 years in development, I'm ashamed to say the wait may not have been worth it. I know I'm basing this off the demo, but the game comes out in just a couple weeks, so I don't expect much else is going to improve.

Collabs and technological advancements!

2011-05-25T18:20:00.001-07:00

So while not a lot has been happening with my life right now, it's given me some time to work on the 10th episode of the GMod Idiot Box. Inhibiting factors however, are often thanks to all these constant, CONSTANT updates to the Source based games ever since Portal 2's release and the "Hatless Update" for TF2, which in turn keep breaking GMod over and over. It's to be expected at this point, but man it doesn't get any less frustrating. The progress report so far is that the episode is 4 minutes in, however this is nothing compared to the target time I'm shooting for. I'm planning to either make this episode 15 or 30 minutes long and the reason I think 30 is because YouTube apparently is allowing my account to upload videos longer than 15 minutes now and it sounded like a golden opportunity to avoid uploading a two-part episode. The decision I believe should rest on the fans though, as I don't think I have the perspective necessary to know if the GMod Idiot Box can withstand the test of time when it comes to 30 minutes. With that in mind, I'm going to leave that decision up to the fans with a poll on the right, because after all, I haven't had one in a good long while.

Now, what's the part about collaboration and technological advancements, you ask? Well, for the collaboration part, I got in touch with Ross Scott of Freeman's Mind and Civil Protection, and there may be a chance that I'll be collaborating with him regularly to take a lot of the pressure off the production of Civil Protection. I've always been a fan of that series the most, so this is an exciting opportunity for me and hopefully Civil Protection will start seeing faster production. When it comes to his writing however, don't worry, I'm not even going to be touching that unless he actually asks for any input. This is merely just me, helping make the series less stressful to produce hopefully.

This is what brings me into the "technological advancements" update I mentioned. I'm planning to move to Oregon with a friend of mine hopefully very soon and he has access to motion capture technology, as well as a wide open, well lit room to perform in. Not only is this going to benefit Ross Scott's Civil Protection series, as animating is a massive pain in the ass for him, but it'll also benefit my series of videos as well. Don't get me wrong though, the comedic, cartoony movements of manipulating ragdolls with the physgun and contraptions will always steal the show and be pretty primary to physical humor, but anywhere else where complicated movement is necessary, that's where I can put the motion capture to very good use.

So that's it for this rather interesting update! Don't forget to place your deciding vote on the length of the 10th Gmod Idiot Box episode and I'll see you guys next time!

Back to work soon

2010-09-26T05:21:00.000-07:00

So as much as I hoped to get that holiday video rolling, then released on Christmas it seems about half way into Update Day: A TF2 Story, the external hard drive I've been using to store all my Fraps captures on has begun acting up and is probably on death's door. See, for a good long while, I haven't been recording my Fraps captures on my main drive because recording Fraps to the same drive that GMod is running in makes Fraps mighty angry with you. So I instead have been recording all the captures on this external drive up until the TF2 story when it started chugging pretty badly. Long story short, I needed a new HDD specifically for the use of Fraps and thankfully, I have one now, it's just a matter of mounting it into my case and getting started again.

Now comes a dilemma. I notice that we're up to about 186,400 subscribers at the moment and will be hitting the 200,000 milestone video time as I have mentioned before. The last one I was late on and I'd like to be on time with this one, however I'm planning on going pretty balls to the wall on effort with the 10th idiot box episode. I get the feeling that in between that production, I'm going to be halting progress entirely on it so I can start the milestone video. That didn't used to be a problem back then, but this time, I'm going to be presenting a little surprise people have often gotten on my ass about. I wanted to present this on the very next video I did and making GIB 10 before the next milestone wouldn't make sense for ... reasons I cannot disclose yet! That in mind, I've decided to start production on the milestone video now and release it when it's done. Yeah, sure, it'll probably be released early and I know that seems arrogant to do, but ... TOUGH, I SAY!

Anyway, as soon as I can get this HDD mounted into my case, I'll get started on the milestone as soon as I get the time. It will reveal the surprise that hopefully will make GIB 10 all the more "special" when it comes out, among other things. Peace out!

"Make fun of Krystal!"

2010-08-19T01:41:00.000-07:00

Lately, a certain request has been showing up in my inbox more and more. It's a request that I pondered a bit, but only because it was brought up by others, not myself. The request has been, "Make fun of Krystal!" I found this request quite strange at first. I asked, "What? Why would I make fun of Krystal? She's hot!" I then realized that they were not speaking of Krystal Forscutt, but a blue furry from some Star Fox game I never played. Way to un-intentionally make me feel like a tool, you guys! Nah, I'm just screwing with you.

To recap, this suggestion mostly came about in reference to The Tale of Dirty Renamon, where I portrayed a furry kid's show character as a substance abusing criminal who shouted profanity, stole cars and assaulted people, later getting pulverized several times. I maimed Renamon on multiple occasions prior to that video because I got tired of it's random, constant and almost un-avoidable appearances on the internet, brought about by it's overzealous fanbase. The Tale of Dirty Renamon came about when that very fanbase whined about my mistreatment of this fictional character, asked me to stop and even take down existing videos with Renamon in them, then wished death upon me when I wouldn't comply.

This is where Krystal comes in, because apparently, according to the writers of the requests, Krystal from the Star Fox game series is pretty much another Renamon. That comes as no surprise, but earlier I made the joke about not realizing which Krystal the PM writers were talking about, which is partially true. Either this character is in fact, not as popular as Renamon, or the Krystal fanbase had the decency to not smother the general internet to death. Either way, I only saw basic screenshots of the character when the Star Fox game came out and then I never saw the character again, fading from memory and therefore, not becoming annoying enough to poke fun at.

Another reason I decided against poking fun at Krystal is, it seems Kitty0706 has already done it and appears to still be doing so. I see that as a fair trade. He can pick on Krystal and I can pick on Renamon. I do wonder just how much the Krystal fanbase reacts to his "wrongdoings" if anything. Maybe I should ask him sometime.

Finally, picking on Krystal would include a second furry to the mix, which could easily contradict what I've said in the past. Sure I'm sickened by the furry lifestylers, whom I've mentioned in my post about furries, but I still want to make it clear that I don't hate the entire fandom and a whole. Going after Renamon for being unavoidable and having lunatic fans that want me killed is one thing, but picking on another furry character who I only remembered through request would make it seem like I'm a furry assassin for hire.

In conclusion, Krystal had the decency to stay out of my un-related Google image searches, TF2 games and only has one tiny Steam group that I actually had to search for. Therefore, someone else less fortunate can pick on her. Renamon however, will always be The Gmod Idiot Box's personal Kenny.

Good news and bad

2010-07-09T01:53:00.000-07:00

If you're a regular reader, you may have read "The Un-named TF2 Story" post. If you haven't, give it a read here because this post is an update of that one with a larger explanation than I originally thought.

The decision has been made as to whether or not I should upload the TF2 story to Machinima.com. However the decision didn't come in the thinking perspective I originally had in mind. The decision had actually come to me after I had sat down and did a bit of research. I'm rather surprised at myself that I didn't know of this information sooner, but at least I discovered it before I had gotten any work done on the project.

You see, for a long time I thought Valve had a large support for it's machinima community. I thought this due to the massive flexibility of the Source engine, what with Garry's Mod, Source SDK Faceposer, even the quickly popular "Source filmmaker" seemed like much support in a non-verbal sort of way. It wasn't until just recently that I discovered that Valve actually doesn't favor machinima after reading the Pixel Eyes Productions blog. The section on this can be found here. Though it came as quite a shock to me, I also could understand where Valve was coming from. I mean, it's irritating enough as it is for me to have people ask me if they have permission to use Dr. Hax in their videos, even though I've never cared to begin with due to the characters being just inflated versions of existing Half-Life 2 characters. I could only imagine the stress of having to expand one's legal department and manage all the permissions of the hundreds wanting to do cyber puppet shows and then managing court dates to those who brushed too close to copyright.

In short, as far as I know, Valve has never cared what a YouTube nobody like me does with their engine as long as I'm not making a cent off the videos. It's free advertising and that doesn't bother them one bit. If you were a popular gaming company, this knowledge is pretty basic: court sucks and free advertising is awesome. That is why, due to my utmost respect for my favorite game company and the kindness of my heart, as faggoty as that sounds coming from a dude, I have decided not to produce the video for Machinima.com. It's going to remain being worked on for the free YouTube account just as the GMod Idiot Box has been. This is where the good news and the bad news comes in. The bad news ... for some of you ... is that I will be abandoning the effort to make the video widescreen while still using a CRT monitor. The good news is that I can begin production right away without busting my ass trying to seek out permission rights and adhering to guidelines.

Looks like we're back to the way things were and honestly, that's a huge relief for me and probably for a lot of you as well. Well, hopefully soon I'll have a decent name for the project too.

The Un-named TF2 Story

2010-06-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

For most of you who aren't aware, I'm not starting on the GMod Idiot Box: Episode 10 yet. I've been wanting to work on a different video project that I was rather excited to do, mainly because it was story based again. Basically, it's going to be another Machinima brought up by GMod with a full story involving TF2 characters and an extremely strange, unknown force screwing up the game world. I was going to get started on it immediately until Machinima.com sent another e-mail wondering if I was going to get off my ass and actually submit something to them for once. Well, okay, they didn't put it rudely, but rude is great for shortening.

It's true that yes, while I was ignorant, I signed the offered contract and only recently after, discovered nobody bothered to actually watch my videos and tell me what I couldn't do anymore until I researched it myself. Thankfully though, the TF2 project (which I've yet to come up with a name for) could very well fall within all the proper regulations of a Machinima.com video ... sort of. There are two problems I'm facing right now, though ...

The first is, Machinima.com requires that I use a 16:9 aspect video format. People no doubt know by now that none of my videos have 16:9, but a 4:3 instead. Reason being is because I'm still using a CRT monitor. It's not because I can't afford a widescreen display or anything, it's that I honestly don't care that much about a widescreen display for computers enough to spend over $100 on one. The CRT has done me mighty fine and unlike game consoles, PCs allow you to switch your aspect ratio at will so you don't have black bars at the top and bottom forced upon you. Of course, even with a widescreen display, you ever notice how some movies still have the black bars at the top and bottom? Kind of defeats the whole fucking purpose, doesn't it? But I digress, the CRT does everything I need it to. Sure it's not very portable or wide, but the colors and lighting are perfect for atmospheric games and just overall use AND I got this monitor free from a friend who's attachment to widescreen monitors got the better of him. Now I know what you're thinking, "That's okay, you can set a 16:9 aspect ratio in your editor and just zoom in on the image to fill the sides of the screen!" That's another problem. I do everything I can to make GMod record at 60 FPS so I can get a nice fancy motion blur effect in Vegas. To do this, I have GMod's aspect ratio at 1024 x 768 and I tell Fraps to record at half-size. If I were to zoom in at all, the video would look like pixelated hell and completely defeat the purpose of waiting for the uber high quality version to download. Anyway, I personally don't see the appeal of getting "uber sweet" quality on YouTube. Maybe a DVD or Blu-ray player, but YouTube? I dunno. Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out a way around this widescreen thing to make sure it still looks good, even if it means recording at 30 FPS and losing the motion blur. A widescreen monitor will fix a large portion of the problem, but I'm not willing to shell out the bucks to make my free time hobby look better. Maybe if this was a job, that would be another story.

The second problem is, at one point in the video, I had my heart set on using a particular song. The song is "Such Great Heights - The Postal Service." Machinima.com still has quite a policy against the use of mainstream music and insist you either make your own music or use a small list of music that doesn't seem to work in any situation ... that or the Newgrounds audio portal. I did send an e-mail to "The Postal Service" requesting permission to use the song in the video, but I haven't heard back from them yet. I'm not saying Machinima.com is wrong for enforcing this policy, it's completely understandable ... but it sure is damn inconvenient nonetheless.

Still, with these two factors in mind, I still feel kind of bad that I haven't submitted anything to Machinima.com because of "signers remorse" if you will. The guys there have been really nice and understanding and their rules will only be getting in the way of one creative aspect of the video. I'm also rather curious to see how that will go if I submit it there. If I do, I'll post a video on my channel with a link to it for easy access. If it doesn't make it there, well, then it'll just go right back to my channel as originally intended.

So in conclusion, I'm kind of battling with red tape right now and hopefully it won't be a process that will go on much longer. Once the decision is made, the production can begin and I'll update the decision on this blog post. Peace!

UPDATE: Good news and bad

What makes a scary game?

2010-05-02T04:50:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to stop neglecting the blog, I've decided to bring up a topic that has often come up around the time of the "Tagged" video, scary games! When simple PMs had come along about them, I seemed to find myself being a lot more long-winded than intended in response. I know this post may have little to nothing to do with the videos on my channel, but this also isn't the first post I've made that talks about video games, so I figure it couldn't hurt to do another one every now and again.

Obviously I've been quite a fan of the scary games. Scary movies may have been around the longest, but I believe the true essence of fear and immersion has been mastered by video games. Nowadays, it's easy to watch a scary movie with how predictable and formulaic they've become. There's the camera angles that seem to give away what's about to happen next, the very stupid main characters who travel together and are marked for death by being sexy, stoned or comedic and of course the fact that these movies need to cling to jump out scares repeated to the point of sigh inducing. A movie normally isn't very entertaining to watch without multiple characters interacting with each other either, but a video game however, puts the player in the perspective of the protagonist, giving a game the edge in allowing him to be completely isolated and forced to rely on him/her self to survive. This is where a game can excel greatly in delivering the element of fear. The experience no longer is in the hands of the actors, but in the world around the player. In a video game if the world can draw the player in, piss poor voice acting can be excused, where as in a movie, if the acting is crap, it's going to take away most, if not everything from the presentation.

Unfortunately, and I don't know about you, but I'm starting to see scary games take the same path as scary movies where the designers just don't seem to be grasping the concept of real fear anymore. As times grew current, I'm starting to see a repeated pattern when new survival horror games come out. Back then, they truly got it right with titles like Resident Evil 2, Silent Hill 1 - 4, the Penumbra series, Fatal Frame, Condemned, etc. Nowadays, many of the newer titles like Dead Space and F.E.A.R 2 makes it feel like they've really lost their grip on the element of fear. I wish I had a bit more titles to give examples of, but unfortunately, the selection of current dated survival horror games are slim and none, probably to make room for more retarded, stale, realistic shooters with regenerating health and chest high walls to hide behind so companies can make a quick buck. Speaking of which, that's probably where the survival horror platform fell short, because game companies stopped trying to appeal to a certain audience and just tried to appeal more to the majority audience of instant gratification schmucks who hate challenges and can't stand not having a large gun in hand. I also get the feeling that companies have gotten so used to appealing to that majority, that when they try to make a scary game, they get stuck in the habit of giving the protagonist large weapons and armor to use. That's where the fear falls flat on it's face. With a suit of protective armor and a gun that blows the enemy apart, monster encounters become something to look forward to, so the fear of getting killed ruins the atmosphere of the game as well, leaving the game's only leg to stand on being jump out scares. That's where both F.E.A.R 2 and Dead Space suffered. The games didn't scare anymore, they only startled. I'm not saying either games were BAD by any means, they were fun enough, but still not scary because they lacked the stillness and atmosphere to make it properly scary. Basically, empowering the player and giving him too many things to shoot at takes away from the fear factor.

Now looking back at my all time favorite horror series, Penumbra, that's the kind of game that had me spazzing out every 10 minutes and minimizing the game so I can watch retarded YouTube videos to calm down. Then I'd regain the will to keep going and repeat 10 minutes later, especially since I always played it at night with the lights off. The thing that made Penumbra stand out was, you were trapped underground alone, helpless, desperate and you fought like shit. You were able to fight a bit in Penumbra: Overture, poorly at best, but in Penumbra: Black Plague, you didn't get a single weapon. Your only option was to escape the spaced out monster encounters through hiding and luring them into traps, otherwise, you were screwed. That, my friends, is how you pull off a true horror game. Put the player in the shoes of an average Joe, a more realistic character that didn't seem like they came out of a Hollywood movie and could beat ass while still being a skinny civilian. Next, make use of stillness in the game! Let the atmosphere and world around them scare the player too and when they do encounter monsters, the player should dread the encounter due to his lack of fighting skills and the fact that he can't find much ammo IF he were given a firearm. As for the monsters themselves, they should pose a true threat if the player attempted to go up against them.

So that, in a nutshell, is my opinion on a truly scary game formula. I'm hoping that developers don't keep up the bad habit of empowering players in a supposedly scary game and hopefully Frictional Games' upcoming title, "Amnesia" will set a nice standard on how to get the job done.

Busted-ass computer

2010-04-25T13:58:00.001-07:00

Here's where I come on to apologise more for being scarce lately. We've been here before, haven't we?

As some of you may know from catching the short bulletin I put up on my YouTube channel, my computer is broken. Has been for about a week and a half now. I'd gotten quite a few private messages on the matter, so I thought I'd go ahead and update a blog post about it. Apologies for not updating it as often as I used to. I'm trying to make each post worth reading, rather than sounding like the kind of person that goes on about school being hard, their sandwich being tasty or their dog chewing off their other foot ... boring!

Anyway, here's the deal on it. It seems my video card, the GeForce 8800 GTS, has died. You have Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (or "40MM Grenade" as I call it) to blame for this, because it died as I was playing the thing. Thankfully, I was able to find a nice fellow who was selling his GeForce 9800 GTX on Craigslist for only $90. Granted, yeah, it's not a current gen card, but I don't exactly have the funds to go balls to the wall on the upgrades. Now I thought just plain replacing the card would be the end of my troubles, but apparently somewhere along the road, I guess my computer got a virus on it and it wouldn't let me so much as boot windows anymore, so I had to reformat my computer. Now before anybody starts spazzing out thinking the Idiot Box episode progress is gone, it's not. I store all the raw Fraps clips in my external HD and I back up all my crap onto it regularly, so no worries there. Here's the part that's taking me the longest though. My OS was Windows XP Home before I reformatted and unfortunately I can't find the install disc to get it going again. People have said to upgrade to Windows 7 time and time again, but here's the other problem ... I was laid off a couple months ago and don't exactly have the money to pay for a new OS right now. My job situation is starting to look up, but it takes time to get comfortable spending money again. It also doesn't take a mind reader to know what you're all thinking right now: Pirating. C'mon, I'm no good at maintaining pirated software. Never really have been.

Anyway, the situation probably won't handle itself overnight, but that certainly doesn't mean I'm finished, here. Y'all just gotta be what you have been for so long ... patient! Hopefully my luck will change and I'll find the XP disc very soon, too, because everything was totally great with Windows XP. The only problem I've had with it is my gifted copy of Just Cause 2 won't run on it. As for the progress of the upcoming Idiot Box episode, I'd like to say it's probably 75% done. I'm trying to incorporate plenty of short skits in between the long ones and get the episode into the 9 minute mark without the skits feeling forced.

UPDATE: As of May 1st, my computer is now fixed and ready to go. It's just a matter of getting all my games downloaded again, getting Sony Vegas 9.0 Pro back again and organizing all the backed up files until the projects are ready to be edited.

Much exclusive news, everyone!

2010-02-24T16:32:00.000-08:00

Jeez, I haven't updated this in a while, have I? Alrighty, well I figure quite a bit of thoughts have been going through my head and you, the cool fans who read the blog deserve to get in on some more neato exclusive information and news and shit! Whoo!

So since late January, I pretty much got laid off the site I was working and have been playing it by ear on a new one. It's been a month now and it gave me the free time to get a lot of Machinima work done, as well as finally being able to hang out with some friends again, rather than my work schedule fucking me in the ass 6 days 'til Sunday. With that time again, I was able to finish GIB 8, finish the intro and 2 skits for GIB 9 and work on the 100,000 sub milestone which should hopefully be done within the week.

Originally, the milestone video was going to be a little gag piece called "A Day in the Life of Dr. Hax." The video was going to be about ... well ... yeah, a day in his life where he reacts to everyday stuff like grocery shopping and whatnot, the angry way. Of course, the only reason I thought of doing a video like that is because many fans whined a whole lot about Dr. Hax not getting his own skit in GIB 8. Then I realized why I had kept using Dr. Hax. It's not because I liked him, no sir, it's because the fans adored him. As for me, I'd like to set the record straight ...

... I do not like using Dr. Hax that often. He is a one-dimmentional character with one line and one function that should not be getting THIS many skits of his own and the only reason I use him as much as I did was because the fans demanded him. His 0.5 second appearance in GIB 8 was supposed to send that message across. Alas, it seems nobody even SAW him and just said, "Wut, no hax?"

So not only is Dr. Hax one of those characters that should keep his appearances entirely "cameo" timeframe wise, I thought about the video idea more and I realized people were probably going to be doing a whole lot of skipping of many portions of the video to get to the good parts after seeing it the first time. In other words, the idea was a slightly amusing one at best, which would not withstand audience attention well enough to deserve it's own video.

Instead, the milestone video came to me in the form of a private message, one of many that has repeatedly come from a certain hardcore fanbase that grow increasingly irritating with their whiney demands. I'm not going to spoil too much, as the private message will be posted in the video description of the upcoming video, but let's just say, not only will this be a fimiliar funny, over-the-top video, but it's also a great big "WHAT-EVUH, I'LL DO WHAT I WANT!" to that particular hardcore fanbase that has whined far enough.

Aaaaand finally, I remember back then, I planned on doing a Gmod Arena called "Jack Thompson VS Uwe Boll" but as time went on, I realized that really isn't going to work out for two reasons. One is, Jack Thompson was disbarred from being an attourney at all years ago, so it would be like beating a dead horse. The biggest reason however, is barely anyone knows who Jack Thompson or Uwe Boll is, ESPECIALLY not Jack Thompson. Since Uwe Boll is pretty much better known and is impossible to like, viewers will just go into the video thinking, "I just hope Uwe Boll dies is all." But I'll tell you what ... I'll leave that descision up to you guys with a poll. Should I make that video next, or forget about it and just use that time to stick with the other upcoming projects? The choice be yours, dawgs!

Okay! That about covers everything! Once again, thanks for being the cool fans and reading the blog posts! Hopefully I don't neglect the blog that long again. That was mean ... sorry blog! D8

No, really, chill the hell out

2009-12-28T02:35:00.000-08:00

Yeah, if you ask me, the end of the year holidays were pretty eventful ones. You regular readers of the blog, who are also the much cooler of the fans, probably remember that early October was the month my shift was changed and I started work all afternoon for 6 days out of the week. This of course, led to me coming home late at night each time with no room to talk to my team of mappers, modelers and reskinners, much less do most of my general errands. A lot of that was reserved for the one day off I had each week. Even then, the end of the year was also a very busy one for my resource team as well, so not much got done in the last 3 months. At this very moment, I'm a little over half way done with The 8th episode of The Gmod Idiot Box and also half way done with a special project that was meant for Halloween, until of course, my shift ate me alive. I'm still doing the project though, because it's very different from what I usually do and helps me flex my "scary" muscle a bit, being a lover of horror games. As for GIB 8, I'm still waiting on one more re-skin and a custom model job for a new regular character to complete the episode.

Of course, the very wide time gap since the last episode has let the much more spastic fans, (don't pretend you don't know who you are) to start assuming the weirdest shit and of course, start spreading rumors. I mean, LIFE isn't to blame for getting in the way of the ammount of free time you have, right?! Here's just a few of those rumors I've been getting:

1 - I was banned from YouTube and was unable to access my channel ... regardless of the fact that I was regularly posting bulletins
2 - I completely stopped making videos without warning because I was pissed at the fans
3 - Someone posted a "Rick Roll" video with the GIB 8 title and was unable to title it like I usually do, leading to my refusal to post the video with a title variation.
4 - I died
5 - I didn't want to tell anyone that the episode was "scrapped"
6 - I ran out of ideas
7 - I was sending the episode to friends only
8 - My computer got hacked

The list goes on, really. That's just what I could come up with off the top of my head at 3:00 AM. So anyway, to recap for the impatient of you, it wasn't because I was abducted by aliens, it's as simple as shit getting busy for me and my resource team. Don't you think I would give better warning before I stopped making videos, let alone the Idiot Box series?

Anyway, for a quick update, I expect to have the very late Halloween video out mid January. As for the Idiot Box, I'm hoping Dec and DMGaina can provide me with the last of the resources neccessary to finishing that video around the same time frame. Those of you patient fans, thanks for sticking around!

Battle of the boredom

2009-10-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

Sup fellas! When boredom at the slow hours of work kick in, you think about all kinds of dumb crap during those time. Sometimes as those hours crawl by at a snail pace, it gets so bad, you start updating your blog on your cell phone. This is one of those days for me! So, dumb crap topic of the day comes from remembering a silly little debate between me and Skye about which of these two completely contrasting videogame protagonists would win in a battle to the death. Metal Gear Solid's, "Big Boss" VS God of War's "Kratos." I won't say which one I was voting would win because there's a chance it will create favoritism for that character. Place your votes in the poll to your bottom right and let's settle this once and for all!

Well, I guess you're also wondering about video progress. Free time has been cut down pretty bad lately, but the intro and the first skit to The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 8 are already done and the Halloween video hasn't even gotten started yet. I'll still do it obviously, it just won't be done by Halloween like I hoped.

Also, Andreas Carlbom's comment below is awesome

UPDATE: Kratos won literally by 4 whole votes. The scores came out something around 144 to 140. All I had to think was ... REALLY? THAT close? I figured this would be no contest. Kratos rules, braw

Fuck my life

2009-10-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

Well, my new shift has me working 9 hours during the afternoon, leaving me approximately 2 - 3 hours of free time late in the evening when everything closes. That gives me no time to do any errands or shopping of any kind, leaving me to do all my errands on my days off.

So yeah. Shit sucks. Don't expect video updates anytime soon

But thanks to Veteran Sergeant Centurius, everything looks a lot brighter! =D

UPDATE: This shift was over some time ago. I may have almost an equally crappy shift, but I'm just happy to be working. Thinking back, I want to delete this post because now I realize what a whiny fuck I was.

JOO HATE RENAMON!

2009-09-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. Seriously. I can't believe the controversy around this character. See, I don't hate furries. I've said this countless times. I have many friends who are furries. Yet poking fun at this character, which is practically interchangable with Judeth Mossman or Alyx Vance seemed to constantly spell the words, "DAS BO SCHITT HATES FURRIES!"

For the longest time, I didn't know who Renamon even was, but her appearance was about as common as that fucking obnoxious "awesome smiley" you see everywhere. People's in-game spray logos, Steam avatars, YouTube avatars, Renamon tribute videos pop up in "related videos" when not related whatsoever, a number of un-creative people's fursonas were of Renamon, models of it on the Garrysmod.org front page and even re-models of Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2. Irritation with it's constant appearance grew until Google images started wishing the destruction of my eyeballs by favoring porn images of Renamon more and more when I was searching for images to go into the videos. It wasn't until I finally started asking around a couple friends that I knew it was from a kid's show that I only distinctly knew of called Digimon. Disturbing. To this day, I STILL don't know why people hold this weird yellow thing in such high regard.

The moment I poked literally a split second of fun at her by having UberKleiner blow her away in the 10,000 subscriber milestone video, YouTube freaked. "HOLY SHIT, DAT WAS RENAMON, YOU HATE FURRIES!" "What have you got against Renamon?!" "Good job blowing that bitch away!" Certain individuals even said they went through spells of depression for days because of this fictional character and wished death upon me. It was as though I backed over furry Jesus with my car! The reaction wasn't really scary as it was ... rather amusing. I poke fun at all kinds of people in the videos, even if it wasn't even directly aimed at who they were or what they stood for. They were just in the dopey crossfire like any other person, but when Renamon is thrown into the crossfire, people flip out. I mean, I really liked Alyx Vance in all the Half-Life 2 episodes and yet I still make her hump things and get blown up. Obviously there's still plenty of level-headed furries who don't mind fun being poked at Renamon, but some of them need to seriously lighten the hell up.

Now to be fair, yeah, Renamon is standing out a little more to me than just a random ragdoll to be caught in the crossfire, mainly because she's practically just another "awesome smiley", overused and freaking everywhere. I guess when I think about it, I don't really HATE her, I'm just sick of seeing her. Think of it as my silly little way of coping ... boo hoo ... (lulz). Plus, I find some of the much weirder fan's over-the-top responses to her being maimed amusing because I'm a disturbed fuck, hur hur.

There. You have been informed of my trivial little irritation. Now get back to work. Those awkward, angry private messages of hatred toward my Renamon maimings aren't going to type themselves.

Cast of Characters!

2009-09-17T05:11:00.000-07:00

Why did it take me so long to do this? I dunno, forgetfulness and laziness I guess.

-- Das Bo Schitt --

A citizen who once lived in City 17, now granted his own home by Dr. Breen after the second episode of his pirate TV show, The Gmod Idiot Box was released.

The Gmod Idiot Box started out as a pirate television show Das Bo Schitt created, that was accessible through a secret tuning each day at 6:00 PM. The show's original purpose was to boost the morale of the citizens in hopes of battling the combine much more effectively. When a home was raided by Combine officers one day during one of the showings, one particular civil protection officer took notice of the show and enjoyed it, ultimately obtaining the frequency of the show and spreading it around to the rest of the Combine. Eventually, word of it made it all the way back to the citadel. Dr. Breen didn't personally enjoy the idiotic show himself, but because it boosted even the Combine's morale significantly, he gave the show it's own public channel within the city, mostly playing reruns due to slow production, and relocated Das Bo Schitt out of City 17 and into his own home away from regular Combine juristiction as reward for his un-intended deed for all citizens and Combine alike.

Das Bo Schitt now lives in the quiet neighborhood of "Evocity" where apparently the first civil protection officer to stumble upon his show shares the house with him.

-- #1 --

He was the first civil protection officer to stumble upon the Gmod Idiot Box, as well as the very first soldier ever to be created of the Combine force. He was designed as an android with simulated human thought. After many tests of the soldier's capability, they realized many strengths and weaknesses with the projects. The up-sides being, he had incredible strength, capabilities and made descisions rather quickly, as well as acting upon them almost immediately. The down side was, he turned out just a little TOO human. He found so much hilarity in things and often ignored orders, going rogue in favor of getting his own way. He was never arrested or brought back in for further design touch ups because for one reason, the project already costed a ton of funding and Dr. Breen dared not spend another cent, having already scrapped the project in favor of the cheaper method ... converting humans into mindless soldiers. The other reason? He was simply too damn good at what he did, being the most capable soldier of the entire Combine army, regardless of his otherwise weird, unorthadox and rogue methods.

Imagine #1 as a 14 year old spastic gamer in an adult body and you'd pretty much sum up his personality. Where he sucks horribly at book smarts, he excells highly in street smarts and will do whatever it takes to get what he wants, usually through means of playing dirty and unfair. He'll attempt to win a boxing match by kicking his opponent in the groin or breaking something and using it as a weapon. Unlike the other civil protection officers, #1 prefers a crowbar rather than a stunstick, for it provides multiple uses and doesn't need to be charged.

Today, #1 reigns not only as the first soldier, or the first Combine to come across the show, but also is considered the #1 fan of the Gmod Idiot Box. A month after episode 2 came out and became available on YouTube, he became impatient for the next episode and tracked Das Bo Schitt down in Evocity, ramming his car off the road and forcing him to hurry up and make the next episode. A month later, #1 caught him vacationing without any announcements to the public and stole a headcrab canister, launching it to his location and forcing Bo Schitt to make the next one. After a while, Bo Schitt realized there was no running from #1 and decided befriending him was the best course of action. By episode 4, #1 had moved in with Bo Schitt, finding and beating the YouTube stick figure plague, "Bob" to keep Bo Schitt's patience in good standing. Ever since, the good outweighed the bad and they became mutual friends. There will always be times when #1 is an asshole, but there's always some price to having constant protection and over the top beatings of those that simply annoy. Besides, #1 seems undeniably fun to have around.

-- Charles Olson AKA, Chuckles the Cheat --

Chuckles is infamous for many things. His pranks on others originally surfaced as a coping mechanism for the unfortunate state of the world after Earth's surrender, but got too much enjoyment out of it and no longer has to cope anymore. Now griefing is a state of mind for Chuckles, finding so many ways to prank and grief others with his shinnanegans for endless laughs. Chuckles had worked in cyberspace for a very long period of time to the point where he discovered how to literally hack the very fabric of reality, simply by using an average cell phone. Due to this, he was given a wide range of abilities, like passing through walls, making himself unusually fast, or even indestructable. He passed the word on to many citizens and thus, hacking was the new epidemic in the city. Many citizens however, don't grasp the full potential of their hacking and are usually able to be handled by the average Combine soldiers, but Chuckles still proves a real nuisance to everyone including Dr. Breen, making him a priority one target for Dr. Breen's counter-hacking plan. #1 however will not pursue Chuckles, for he finds what Chuckles does hilarious.

-- Dr. Hax --

Dr. Hax was created by Dr. Breen as the ultimate countermeasure to the damage caused by the year of the hacking outbreak. Still, many citizens including Chuckles continue to hack to this day and Dr. Hax is always there to stop them. Created to look exactly like Dr. Breen, Hax was given a giant head so everyone will remember Breen's face ... a reminder of who they're dealing with in the city. Granting admin privilages to the world around them to combat hackers easier, Breen even armed Dr. Hax with what was known as "LUA Monitors." These monitors were modeled after large, heavy CRT monitors, which are incredibly accurate and hurt like all hell when they hit. They are also designed to restore the default settings of their target, returning anything out of the ordinary back to normal on impact. Telekenetic launching is the method of which these monitors travel, often summoning monitors into being, or simply launching a monitor from nearby after it's coded manually by Dr. Hax once he has control of it. Sometimes however, Dr. Hax is quick to jump the gun and wrongfully accuse someone of hacking when it seems "too good to be true." A good example of this was when a fight broke out between #1 and Das Bo Schitt in the Evocity streets. He noticed #1's weilding of a full sized car and called hax upon him, only to be knocked out by the flying car, which was thrown by ultimately legitimate means, as #1's strength is still something to be feared.

-- UberKleiner --

During the hacking epidemic in the city, many machines, including the ones in Dr. Kleiner's lab were suffering breakdowns and sometimes even explosions. This was due to the fact that the serious ammount of hacking around the city created rips in the fabric of reality, creating an unstable fusion of reality and fiction in the form of data. This rogue data appear in the form of what was best described as "nonsense" appearing out of nowhere. While Dr. Kleiner was watching the movie, "Dumb and Dumber" on his lab computer, a nearby hack cause a rip that became so severe, the computer exploded in his face, causing a fusion of Kleiner and the fictional movie. Thus, UberKleiner was created and though Dr. Kleiner was never hurt from the incident, UberKleiner lives on through the rips in reality, appearing at extremely random moments to share with everyone ... the most annoying sound in the world. The lazer cannon blasts during such a sound still has yet to be even explained, but then, no one has been able to make sense of what comes of these rips in reality.

-- Gravity Cat --

The result of the resistance science team's attempt to create an advanced teleportation rift. When a lab cat was sent through the rift as the first teleportation experiment, it never came through to the other side and was lost. A week later, sightings of a feline with the same description as the one in Kleiner's lab, showed up in an abandoned home along the coast. Rumor had it, the cat was able to defy the laws of gravity and had un-explainable, dangerous powers at it's disposal, but only when it was un-amused. Since then, the quest to amuse the cat was on, just to see if it would bring good to the ones that amused it. Unfortunately, a man in a purple suit stepped forward in an attempt to satisfy the feline with a number of horrible dance moves. The man failed and the one they called "Gravity Cat" escaped, blowing away everything in his path. He eventually found his way back to Kleiner's lab late at night and caused terrible damage. To this day, Barney still struggles with nightmares of the Gravity Cat, even though he was already long gone after exacting it's revenge. One can only assume that the abrupt arrival of Gravity Cat sightings means that it too travels through the rips in reality, much like UberKleiner.

Channel comments disabled

2009-08-20T04:19:00.001-07:00

With the release of The Gmod Idiot Box Episode 7, I've decided that I've had enough of the channel comments. I'd left it up for some time thinking it would be fun for the fans to kind of communicate a bit, get more involved in my channel than just watch videos and take off elsewhere afterward, maybe even give a little open constructive criticism, but the longer I'd left it up, the worse things got.

The channel comments became a horrible spam factory with no end in sight, and not the fun kind of spam where people crack jokes, fool around and have fun, no the frustrating kind where people threaten to un-subscribe because I haven't posted a video in less than two weeks or just plain holding down the number key of the next GIB episode and hitting the post button. Not only that, but there's been other crap too, like weird rumors being posted as well like, "WHY DID YOU STOP MAKING EPISODES?!" and people asking me questions even though there's a private message system for that. Some critique the front page video that I'm promoting as though I was the one that made it too and best of all, yes you guessed it, THEY ASK ABOUT THE FUCKING MUSIC which I've been pointing a link to a dozen times over in every single Gmod video I've ever made. Worse yet, people think I'm here to compete with other machinima makers like DJY1991 and Kitty0706. That's flat out ridiculous. I mean, can't we just enjoy them all and not try to figure out who's better? I CAN, I'm friends with both of them. DJY1991 and ICTON inspired me to even START making Gmod movies and Kitty0706 inspired me to take the effort to lip sync characters more often. In turn, I like to think they learned a couple things from me too.

Another reason for this is, I'm going to be taking a bit of a break from the videos for a while after I make the 50,000 subscriber milestone video. It won't be a SUPER LONG while, but maybe a month or two and I don't feel like enduring the inevitable spam of the number 8, threats of un-subscribing if I don't hurry up and make more videos or people being douchebags to me because they can't seem to pass the time on their own. I will be checking back every now and again to read and respond to the private messages, but other than that, a break's a break.

Boycott?! O NOES!

2009-08-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

Most of you are fimiliar with the "Das Bo Schitt Boycott" YouTube channel and Steam group that has come up about 4 - 5 days ago. Many are already very confused by this and have been starting rumors every now and again. I didn't want to have to even bother giving attention to this matter because it seems to ridiculously trivial, but rumors suck, so it's time to hit the podium once agian.

To give a bit of backstory to this whole thing, this silly little "boycott" was started by a guy named TNTX32, whom from what I understand, used to make Garry's Mod movies until a handful of my fans found similarities to my videos in his, namely the "Haaax!" bit that I've been doing for some time. Because of that, he's shut down all his movies and devoted unbelievable ammounts of time to being what he calls, "A professional troll." Go ahead, read back over that, I'll let that sink in. Am I kidding? I wish I was. I really wish I was. Since then, he created the YouTube channel and Steam group to try and boycott, spam and even hack my YouTube page over an attack that wasn't even of my doing.

Once he spammed my Steam page trying to brag that his boycott was working out really well. His Steam group still sits at the 2 members that it started out with and his YouTube page is subscribed to by myself for a laugh, who later passed the word onto Kitty0706 and DJY1991 and subscribed for the same reason. Others include several of his own alts, who later had those accounts shut down by YouTube and of course, a couple of my own fans who are just screwing with him. Yeah, I'd say he's coming along just fine.

That's one other thing I wanted to mention, just because I subscribed to the channel doesn't mean I support my own boycott. It means I'm curious to see if he plans to release any BIG AND SERIOUS, yet laughable news about how evil I am and how I'm in DJY1991's MAFIA, true quote from him, by the way. I mean, isn't that was a subscription is for? To track when a channel releases a video? It also doesn't mean the boycotter is just me pulling a publicity stunt. I understand this guy is so delusional and batshit bonkers that it would create skepticism over if it was real or not, but I'm afraid it's not looking like that.

So the backstory is now laid out and the rumors are hopefully put to rest. I do apprieciate the fan's support in saying that I shouldn't let this troll get to me, but it isn't really neccessary. I'm getting about as much laughs out of this as you guys are and it hasn't bothered me since it even started. I don't feel good about the fact that the guy felt so compelled to throw away his hobby and resort to this lunacy, but the thing is, he didn't HAVE to. I've endured people constantly comparing my videos to the Idiots of Garry's Mod when I was first starting out, but that didn't stop me, there were still plenty of good comments as well. The act of being driven out of doing those movies was his own doing and he has no one to blame but himself for not sticking with it because of what a couple of my fans said to him.

UPDATE: Luchosifonq popped out of his disguise and exposed himself as A SPY!!! He turned on TNTX32, altered his boycott YouTube channel and then shut it down completely two days later. The Steam group is still there, but ... pretty much dormant, so I'll just call the boycott void now. This post will still remain up for a funny flashback at best.

Chill, y'all

2009-08-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or is the pressure to create the next episode heavier than the last 6 anticipated episodes? I dunno, maybe it's just me and the fact that a lot is changing here that's got me worked up enough to think so. Anyway, this isn't going to be a long post, but I still want to get the point across that the Gmod Idiot Box Episode 7 IS in the works and I only will consider ending the series at episode 10, but who knows? I'm merely considering it, it's not to say for certain. Until then, there's no reason for you to spam my YouTube channel with the next episode's number. They WILL come. You should only start worrying about it once episode 10 comes out and even if that is the end of the Idiot Box series, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop making videos. It might even mean more frequent updates! The idea is that each time I come up with a skit idea, I'll make it and then release it as it's own video so people aren't waiting an entire month for content and it's easier on me.

Anyway, just a short update on that note that I think everyone deserved to know and so I can reduce the ammount of spam on my channel. And for the spammers, it's not going to make the episodes come any faster. Just saying. Yay

So many frauds!

2009-07-24T06:55:00.001-07:00

So it's come to my attention more and more lately that there have been many frauds of myself all over the internet at an increasing rate. Much of it started around the time The Gmod Idiot Box 6 came out and since then, a lot of people had claimed they have seen me in public Garry's Mod servers. I think it's time I sat down and cleared things up here, since the channel description seems to have failed to catch people's attention on this matter.

First of all, to get me to play Garry's Mod on a public server, heavily admin protected or otherwise is like pulling teeth. I haven't played on a public Gmod server since the first Gmod Idiot Box and I don't plan to anytime soon. The reason for this is, Gmod is LOADED with griefers beyond any game I think I've ever played, hence why I don't find it much fun when my contraptions keep getting broken by spastic players who can't find fun in anything besides violence. So trust me on this one, if you see me in a public server, that isn't me, I can promise you that.

Another large contribution to the fraud network is a Facebook fan page in my name. People, I DO NOT have a Facebook page. If I did, don't you think I would have linked it in my channel description, or even announced it in a video or the blog? Sorry guys, but the social networking thing is something I'm just not into and I can pretty much guarantee that I'd wind up neglecting the page I started, be it Myspace, Facebook, Twatter (huhuhuhuh) or anything else. I'm not really sure if this page was created as a means of good faith to further increase awareness of my videos or not, but it's creating a ton of confused fans who swear they have spoken to me before. People are already confused enough reading "Music listed in video description" and understanding what the hell it even means apperently, but this is only making things worse.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope everyone can become better informed on this matter now so they don't spot me in Gmod servers only to have their hopes dashed so much later when they PM me and I haven't the slightest clue who they are.

Idiot Box shifting gears

2009-06-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so regardless of the 9:58 time frame in the recent Idiot Box 5, comments have shown that people find that episode to feel "short" and not as good as the other episodes. This I can agree with. I've been trying to do the more longer, structured skits lately, but I can kind of tell that the style in that sense isn't really all that fun and re-watchable as rapid fire gags.

So next episode, I hope to be shifting gears and see the outcome of it. We're going to go back to the old days of just plain quicker, silly humor, damn the punchlines and buildup. After all, that's what the beginning of this series was founded on, right? That of course, won't mean I'm just gunna bombard people with complete batshit random retardedness, but we're simply going to try to re-visit the old comedy stylings of the first Idiot Box for a bit and hopefully keep the video length long as well. Ideally, not only should this please the fans who've stuck around this long, but also because this styling of humor is a lot more fun and easier to do.

Anyway, I know these two stylings are two different demographics in a sense, so I opened up a new poll on the right. Which do you prefer? Built up, structured skits like in GIB 4 and 5, or the more constant goofy laughs like in GIB 1 and 2? I don't count GIB 3, because it sucked ass.

Peace!

Machinima.com: Final Verdict

2009-05-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so after much debate with the idea of posting several of my existing videos on Machinima.com, I've come up with a final verdict that I hope you, the fans, will find much more reasonable.

Taking into consideration, the polls, comments and private messages about the idea in general about the Machinima.com partnership, here's the plan I've got going. Many people have a point about the music use, that it will cause a ton of problems regardless of the enthusiasm Machinima.com has given me and as we all know, The Gmod Idiot Box has an awful lot of music per episode. That of course, would mean I'd need to get an awful lot of permissions, run a lot of risks and probably wind up paying for a lot of them too. That is why I plan to drop the contract to upload The Gmod Idiot Box to Machinima and keep it to my channel alone. Other movies, such as Gmod Arena, I do plan to upload to them though, considering I've already gotten permission from Rob Dougan to use the Chateau track on Billy Mays VS Vince. Then of course, Jack Thompson VS Uwe Boll will also be available there as well, as long as I can get those custom ragdolls made of the two.

So hopefully by doing this, everybody wins. Yeah sure, I'd be lying if I didn't think the idea of profit from all five videos would be awesome, but what would majorly suck is letting the fans and subscribers down. Without you guys, Machinima.com wouldn't have even glanced at me. So not only am I keeping the idiot box on my channel for the subscriber's sake, but also for freedom sake. At least as long as the idiot box remains on my non-profit YouTube channel, I can continue to throw in plenty of music clips and gags while paying no mind to the consequences from a business standpoint.

Now to recover the original recording footage of Billy Mays VS Vince that I deleted a day before Machinima contacted me because I thought I didn't need it anymore. I hate the shit outta myself for that.

(In the end, the real final verdict is I've abandoned the whole contract. Once again, this post is kept up as a record of overcoming my ignorance)

Machinima.com, here I come!

2009-05-11T06:53:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that I removed the last post I made about Machinima.com, which stated that they probably wouldn't pick me up due to the problem of copyrighted music, or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong ... very wrong. On 05/06/09, I was contacted by Machinima.com and it looks like they're picking me up after all!

Now of course, that's probably going to mean that the existing videos will probably get taken down and moved to the Machinima.com site and YouTube page as part of the agreement and the videos will wind up in my favorites, linked to the Machinima YouTube. This of course, is most likely going to cause a problem for my current subscribers. No doubt I still plan to upload videos to my channel, but the Idiot Box and Gmod Arena series will be available on Machinima.com's YouTube channel and site. This causes me a lot of concern about as equal as my excitement. Words like "sell-out" and "abandoner" come to mind and it would really suck to know that I would be letting down many of my current fans and subscribers, even just a little bit.

I'm going to be opening up a new poll on the right. Please go ahead and vote on that and maybe even comment while you're at it. I'm not going anywhere, the videos are simply moving, but it still bugs me that somehow, this could anger the fans, who have been nothing but awesome in the last 5 - 6 months I've started my Gmod movies.

So what do you say?

(This post is now void, as I abandoned the contract, but I'm still keeping this up as a record of overcoming my ignorance. Lawl)

New Gmod Arena?

2009-05-07T02:52:00.000-07:00

All right, so I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I do plan to make a new Gmod Arena at some point. The bad news is that it will not be between Billy Mays and Vince. Two reasons: One, it would seem kind of a tired fight after their first fight was an eight minute video and two, the way the fight ended made it awfully hard for Vince to come back after that. That sucker doesn't have a torsoe anymore! Well, all right, maybe further down the line, I'll make another Billy Mays VS Vince, but for now, I have plans for two new combatants. Yeah, they may not be YouTube celebrities like the two pitchmen from the last arena, but surely there's people who would love to see these two going head to head.

I present to you: Jack Thompson VS Uwe Boll.

For those of you un-fimiliar with either of the contenders, Jack Thompson used to be an attourney who constantly tried crusading against questionable media, such as rap music, the Howard Stern show and of course, violent video games saying they're fully responsible for youth violence. He's of course, disbarred now for mocking a judge and is now simply known as a "Violence activist" now. Seen here is an interview he did with Chris Matthews during the Virginia Tech massacre where he blames the shooter's actions solely on Counter-Strike when there wasn't even any proof or evidence he was even immersed in the game.

Uwe Boll is a god awful German movie director who's made several belly-up movies based off violent video games such as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne and the new Postal movie. A few years back, he got in the boxing ring with Something Awful's, Rick "Lowtax" Kyanka as a part of Uwe Boll's challenge to his negative reviewers. The challenge? "Put up or shut up." Yes, apperently he thought punching his reviewers would make his movies un-horrible.

The project isn't under way yet, as I'm still waiting on their custom ragdolls to be made for Garry's Mod by two people. For now, I'd like to make sure I have one project going at a time. For the last few weeks or so, it's been quite a Machinima loaded month for me, having been helping DJY1991 with Half-Life: Full-Life Consiquences 3, Idiot Box 5 and of course, the 10,000 subscriber milestone video. Once Idiot Box 5 is done, hopefully by then, the ragdolls will be done and I can get started.

As for a sequel to Billy Mays VS Vince, maybe I'll let them have their re-match later on down the line, but for now, it's time to allow other combatants to settle some scores.

The IOGM Comparison

2009-04-03T06:50:00.000-07:00

Before this can begin, time for a backstory.

Yes, I've said it once already and I'll say it again, The Idiots of Garrys Mod by DJY1991 (AKA, Mr. Werg) was my inspiration to start making GMod movies. The original idea was to do an outright fan video, but as I got further into the thought process, I realized that batshit random humor was something I wasn't all that good at and wasn't really my style anyway. From there, I decided to make my own GMod series with written skits and see how it would turn out. First I needed a name and originally I thought of using the name, "GMod TV" but upon researching it, I found it was already taken by DRCAM122. Being still sold on the idea of multiple scripted skits, I came to The GMod Idiot Box. Some skeptics assumed I went with the name so I could piggyback off IOGM's search results and yeah, I'll admit, that probably did help get me noticed starting out, but that's not the reason I came to the name. The term, "Idiot Box" is as most people know, a term for a television set, and since this is going to be a kind of TV show about a sandbox game, I was sold on the double meaning. From there, The GMod Idiot Box was born. The first skit I ever did, "The Most Annoying Sound in the World" was tried with two of my best friends as actors and me filming. The skit was still a great idea, but I came to discover that using actors wasn't quite my style and plus it easily mushroomed into a lot of frustrations, what with server maintinence, time zones and whatnot. That's when I used my skills of manipulating ragdolls entirely by myself for the "I Can Break These Cuffs" skit and was completely sold on the idea, for reasons explained in my "Ragdolls > Actors" post.

So now I can safely say "GIB" has worked out pretty good due to much positive fan feedback. Now is where I can get to the frustration that I've been having lately. Time and time again, I've recieved comments saying this is a ripoff of IOGM, this is better than IOGM, whatever. Yes, this is done with Garry's Mod and yes, I do use the static to transition from one skit to the next, but why can't anyone see the differences in between the two? IOGM uses mostly actors with both playermodels and voice and the humor is completely and totally random. GIB uses 90% ragdolls and each skit is scripted, aside from the occasional 2 second joke (I like turtles!) and no voice acting at all. It's two different demographics when you take the time to think about it. I'm even having people comparing Billy Mays VS Vince to IOGM even though the only thing that resembles IOGM was the fact that it was done in Garry's Mod, which is flat out rediculous. The only conclusion I can draw from this is, if you make something with any similarity to something that's really popular at all, people will always say you're ripping it off. Very well, let's apply this logic to other things ...

All video bloggers and debaters are ripping off The Amazing Atheist, all GTA4 videos are ripping off "GTA 4 - Bloopers, Glitches & Silly Stuff" and all people that make YouTube poops are ripping off Deepercutt. Oh and people who make anime music videos just need to knock that shit off entirely ... just saying.

Yes, the static is a bit on the ripoff side, but let's face it, the static is really the best way to transition between skits in the form of changing the channel. Some have tried to avoid the static entirely in fear of being called ripoffs, but a rediculously loud test pattern in between skits or an obnoxious sound clip from the Simpsons or whatever just feels un-natural and annoying when seen more than once.

Wrapping it up, I do not deny for a second that the Idiots of Garrys Mod did inspire me to make GMod machinima. Hell, it probably inspired GMod machinima entirely and anyone who said it didn't inspire them in some way, they're probably lying. Still, inspiration doesn't always mean a ripoff and hopefully the compare and contrast I've done will help people realize that GIB is different in style.

I know 99% of the viewers won't read this and continue to make comparisons between the two because I've given up on assuming people read into things ... or even THINK anymore. "Music listed in video description" has been in all the credits I've ever done and still people ask again and again about the music. I worked at a motel once and when there were no more rooms available, we would plant three different signs that say "No rooms left" on the night window and people would still lean to look past the signs and into the window and still ask if rooms were available. We're headed into the Idiocracy generation fast and all I can do is applaud the Luke Wilsons who make it through.

Also If you haven't seen Idiocracy, do it. I command you.

Ragdolls > Actors

2009-03-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

Yeah, you may have guessed I get a lot of people asking if they could act in my Gmod movies regardless of my preference not to. I think people really deserve an explaination as to why that is.

Well for starters, it's not because I can't stand working with other people ... okay, so maybe it is, but the OTHER reason is because ragdolls offer a much, MUCH wider variety of entertainment with their customizable movements as long as you know what you're doing. Yeah, I know, there's also faceposer, but you're still using pre-set animations most of the time. My point is, by using actors who run around using preset playermodel animations, bobbing their heads and spewing their god awful voice acting, I believe it takes a very large portion of the entertainment value away. Plus manipulating ragdolls has a strange charm to it, especially for the actual Gmod players. Not only will the humor be there, the Gmod players will sit and wonder in amazement how you pulled it off too. I still have many, many people believing that Billy Mays VS Vince was done with multiple ragdoll animators in a server, when the four extra people in the credits actually helped with finding me audio, maps and giving me a new productions logo. The posing and editing was done by me alone.

Another problem I have with use of actors is the fact that they simply cannot control themselves. Swear to God, every actor I've ever known act like they're at the computer eating a heaping bowl of Captain Crunch with a mountain of sugar and ground up Ritalin pills. I went into a server once to help a member of the "Shadow Of Death Clan" film a Gmod movie he was doing, but 8 / 10 players just ran around deathmatching each other until the director just gave up and started making a building look like it was exploding instead.

All right, so let's say you've finally found some good actors. Well besides the first argument I've made against the use of actors, there's also the problem of finding a server ... ah yes ... a server. You have to manage the shit out of it, put up all the mods on it and hope all your actors have the same mods that it does, actors LOVE shouting over each other, you could be amped to film a certain scene but not all your actors could be online and of course, they always try to butt in on your script or say they're not getting enough scenes. If I ever actually did need actors, I have two of my best friends on that job and they're all I could ever need. As for using actors beyond them, I can pretty much say for sure that if I used those in all my movies, not only would they not even be half as funny, but I'd have pulled all my hair out and called it quits after GIB3 with how much a pain in the ass it is to work with general actors as a director.

So in closing, ragdolls don't shout, argue, deathmatch and are always punctual when you need them. They don't create drama to deal with, they go with your script no matter how stupid or nonsensical and when you don't need them anymore, it's simple as a remover tool away. I do apprieciate the fan support, as I believe I have some of the best fans out there, but use of ragdolls in singleplayer will always remain my style. What I REALLY could use are a team of people who are good at creating custom ragdolls and maps. Now that kind of help I can cheer for with my thruster propelled arms.

Stance on furries?

2009-03-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

If you don't know what a furry is, feel free to check the wikipedia page. I do not suggest you Google it.

I have been asked in YouTube personal messages about the seemingly ongoing pattern in the names in the credits in the past, as they all have something in common ... furries. Many have eventually started coming down to one simple question: Are you associated with furries? This was a question that needed much more elaboration than the FAQ could fit. I had an opinion of this for a good while that hadn't been updated blog-wise, but I only recently found the drive to give a new perspective, and as such, decided to clear the comments of the last post in hopes for some fresh ones consistent with this updated version.

For the longest time, I was rather naive to the concept of furries. I had it under the impression that it was a fandom that was rather subtle and often used for imaginary purposes, same as making elven characters for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign or something along those lines. I then thought it sprouted beyond that for many around the year 2000, but honestly, I was basing that theory off the fact that I've had friends who used furry characters in a simple manner and around Y2K, became a little more exposed to the more public aspects of the fandom. As time went on and furries became a lot more active in the Steam community, the stance on whether I'm with or against furries has become a very hard one to take.

Like I said before, I've had friends who are furries and still do to this day. My best friend of 10 years is considered a furry, but she's always had the mentality of "keep it behind closed doors, because it's not a lifestyle." For a time, my brief understanding was, people often made a kind of furry version of themselves known as "fursonas", they often used the character for escapist, imaginative purposes in certain themed games or art, and yes, some of them even make a suit of their character for themselves. Well, though that last one was rather strange for me, the bright side of it is, at least it was rather interesting to know people had the skills to make such a thing. I know I sure as hell wouldn't have the patience or the skill to do such a thing. I figure as long as they're not doing the suit thing in say, a restaurant or a public park, and just with other furries, it's none of my business and it's not disrupting anyone ... unless they read too much into it through Google, but that's just looking to get angry now and that's unhealthy.

This is where the furry fandom has hit the opposite snag for me. Lately the fandom has been getting harder and harder to accept. Enter, the furry "lifestylers." These are the ones that have gone too far with the fandom, making animal noises and flat out advertising their furry status right out in the open, and I don't mean harmlessly with just their furry avatar, I mean with full on personal details. These things range from "mate" status with other furries, sexual preferences and even a big list of "pets" and "masters" or even their kinks. This particular aspect of the fandom is what frankly pisses me off. We don't need to know this shit, so keep that to yourselves or at the very least, in a restricted realm specifically meant for that. Steam is NOT that place. What's worse is, after spouting their inner most hideous personal lives with everyone, they tell the disgusted people to go fuck themselves and then to respect them for who they are. Sorry, that's now how the world works. This is no better than a gay guy walking into work for his first day and advertises his sexual orientation, his boyfriend status and how he likes it in bed. Again, nobody needs to know that. As far as I've seen, you don't hear a straight person going on about that un-provoked, so frankly, knock that shit off, act like the rest of us when expected and maybe the rest of us can accept you a whole lot easier. Oh, and let's not forget the ones that honestly believe being a furry makes hate upon them racism. Furry is not a race and you know it, I shouldn't have to make points in my favor on this. This is a FANDOM, people. It may be amusing to escape every now and again to your character in the proper realm, but that does not make you a full-time animal and to think so is ludicrous. If a Harry Potter fan went around in public thinking they can blow people away with a wand, they will get a wedgie just as fast as those who think acting like a constantly, sexually frustrated animal in the improper realm is cute and acceptable.

As you can imagine, the furry fandom has become very hard to defend as of late, but for me, I haven't given up on the entire fandom and I certainly don't hate furries in general. It's true that the furry lifestylers have given the entire furry fandom a really rotten name, but I like to think I'm still optimistic. There's still plenty of cool furries who simply are in it as a fandom and not a lifestyle choice, who don't use the term "furry" as an excuse to be idiotic and a sexual nut job. There's crazy, over the top furries and then there's cool furries who know where the fandom belongs, just as there are crazy religious fanatics and religious people with their head on straight.

So in a nutshell, yes, I have no problem associating with furries as long as they're not taking it to extreme levels. The cool, level headed ones are out there, I know quite a few as friends already and they have helped immensely with the videos. 'Nuff said

Music used

2009-03-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

All music used in my Gmod videos will be listed here in editable form because I screw up the names quite often. All music used is copyright of Warner Music Group (WMG)

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 1 --

00:30: Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack - Pizzicato Playtime
00:56: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass - Spanish Flea
01:44: Andy Hunter - Go
02:00: Akira Yamaoka - Promise (Reprise)
02:20: God of War Soundtrack - Battle the Lethal Sirens
04:01: Royskopp - Remind Me
04:11: Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack - Hit and Run
04:42: Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack - Crepe Suzette
05:42: Haddaway - What is Love
05:54: Andy Hunter - Go
06:33: HIM - The Sacrament
06:41: Akira Yamaoka - Overdose Delusion

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 2 --

00:53: Heavy Breakfast Machine - Nobuyukinyuu
01:16: Du Hast - Rammstein
01:44: Miracle - Cascade
03:26: Saw Theme
03:30: Cold Blood - Akira Yamaoka
03:49: Benny Hill Theme + my edits
04:14: Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who
05:29: A Taste of Honey - Herb Alpert and the Tijuanna Brass
06:22: Dum Da Dum Doi Doi - The Neverhood Soundtrack
06:52: Beyond the Sea - Bobby Darin

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 3 --

00:15: Merry as a Grig - Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack
00:32: Moon of My Nights - Kalmah
00:56: Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz
02:00: Pot City - Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack
03:21: Crazy Loop - Dan Balan
04:40: Heute ist mein Tag - Blumchen
05:40: Water Caverns - Goldeneye 007 Soundtrack
06:20: Tomorrow I'll (Robotnik's Penis Song) - Igiulamam

-- Gmod Arena: Billy Mays VS Vince --

Hackney Carriage - Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack
Hollywood Holiday - Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack
Chateau - Rob Dougan
Witchcraft - Akira Yamaoka
Battle1 (Final Fantasy Usa) - The Sentence of Death - Final Fantasy Arrange" by Hellion Sounds

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 4 --

00:59: Furious Angels - Rob Dougan
01:27: The Thieving Magpie - Gioacchino Rossini
03:12: The Storm Begins - Jennifer Haines
04:49: Transporting Isabella - Dead Rising Soundtrack
05:16: "Suitsong3" - Half-Life 2 Soundtrack
06:30: The Isle of Creation: God of War 2 Soundtrack
06:56: Beautiful and Mysterious - Tomb Raider Soundtrack
07:30: Happy Families - Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack
08:24: Helicopter - Bloc Party

-- The Watchable Subscriber Milestone Video (10,000) --

00:01: Valse Moderne - Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack
01:23: Can-can - Jacques Offenbach
02:23: Spindlelegs - Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack
02:49: Lateralus - TOOL

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 5 --

00:04: Bubba Dub Bossa - Curb Your Enthusiasm OST
00:42: Furious Angels - Rob Dougan
01:19: The Puzzle - Curb Your Enthusiasm OST
01:49: Chicken Bone - Cowboy Bebop OST
02:42: That's Just the Way it is - Bruce Hornsby
03:13: Drive Faster - Transporter 3 OST
04:34: So What's New? - Herb Alpert and the Tijuanna Brass
06:40: The Egg and You - Cowboy Bebop OST
07:42: The Philip Glass Ensemble - The Watchmen OST
08:38: Stay With Me - Ian Slider (Newgrounds Audio Portal)
09:24: A Stray Child - Akira Yamaoka

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 6 --

00:04: Gay Activity - The Ren and Stimpy Soundtrack
00:57: MPA - Anything to Say
02:12: Time to Know - Cowboy Bebop OST
02:55: Jeopardy Think Theme (80s)
04:03: Olley Oxen Free - The Neverhood OST
04:41: Bad Dog, No Biscuits - Cowboy Bebop OST
05:52: Cat Blues - Cowboy Bebop OST
06:41: Believe - Antiloop

-- SUPER SECRIT!.wmv --

00:07: Dance of the Swans - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
00:58: Amazing Grace - John Newton
01:24: Funeral March of the Marionette - Charles Gounod
01:36: Absurd - Fluke
02:00: Industrial Tileset - Timesplitters OST
02:11: Leo Stenbuck (Break Out) - Zone of the Enders OST
02:55: Industrial Tileset - Timesplitters OST
03:08: Gay Time - Spongebob Squarepants OST
03:30: The Lumbering Giant - ???
03:41: Neodaemmerung - The Matrix Revolutions OST
04:26: Funeral March of the Marionette - Charles Gounod
04:43: Don't You Forget About Me - Simple Minds

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 7 --

00:13: Stay with me - Ian Slider
00:58: Hooked On Multiphonics - Terminator 3 OST
01:50: The Day of Night - Silent Hill 2 OST
03:30: Detectives and Donuts - Joel Steudler
03:48: The Toy Trumpet - ?
03:59: Joyful and Triumphant - ?
04:30: The Train Man Cometh - The Matrix Revolutions OST
04:55: The Gonk - Dawn of the Dead OST (1970s)
05:24: The Lonely Man - The Incredible Hulk (1970s)
06:02: The Philip Glass Ensemble - The Watchmen OST
08:41: Outsider - Renard (Now ruined with lyrics)

-- Treat or Else --

00:08: Circus Nightmare - Captininsanity
04:24: True - Akira Yamaoka
06:40: Crazy Train - Transporter 2 OST
06:52: Dance of the Hours - Amilcare Ponchielli
07:21: Colossal Monument - ?
08:11: Love Psalm - Akira Yamaoka
09:05: Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 8 --

00:05: Barber of Seville Overture - Gioachino Rossini
00:19: Neodaemmerung - Matrix Revolutions OST
01:15: Annen Polka - Johann Strauss
02:05: Right Behind You - Team Fortress 2 OST
03:06: Saw Theme
03:22: Crazy Train - Alexandre Azaria
04:48: Felt Tip Pen - Cowboy Bebop OST
07:53: That's Disgustingly Beautiful - Renard

-- The Tale of Dirty Renamon --

00:01: Tiamat - Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection OST
00:28: Land of Giants (Peace) - Serious Sam II OST
01:55 and 02:17: Drive Faster - Transporter 3 OST
03:04: Glacier - Unreal Tournament 2004 OST

-- The Gmod Idiot Box: Episode 9 --

00:07: Habanera - Georges Bizet
01:51: Yo Pumpkin Head - Cowboy Bebop Movie OST
02:31: Sabre Dance - Aram Khachaturian
02:48: Careless Whisper - George Michael
04:09: Alone in Town - Silent Hill 2 OST
04:45: "Comic Song" - ?
06:04: The Merry Peasant - Robert Schumann
06:55: Escape - Craig Armstrong
07:18: The Isle of Creation - God of War 2 OST
07:59: Electric Fountain Theme - Tekken 6 OST

-- "Update Day", A TF2 Story --

00:00: Grunty Challenge - Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts OST
01:04: Severnaya - Goldeneye 007 OST
01:46: Library - Resident Evil 2 OST
02:01: Anitra's Dance - Edvard Grieg
04:17: Setting up a Fight - Fight Club OST
04:53: The One Who is Torn Apart - Xenogears OST
05:43: Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra
06:29: Poet and Peasants - Franz von Suppé
07:12: Pooland - Conker Live and Reloaded OST
07:55: Setting up a Fight (Re-imagining) - Asahnoln
08:39: Surprise Buttsecks - Dutvutan (Scoutellite)

-- Computer Quest (200K subscriber milestone) --

00:00: 2001: A Space Odyssey Theme
00:21: ??? - Mass Effect 2 OST
00:47: Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife - Mastadon
00:58: Mall - Timesplitters OST
01:25: Coffey on the Mile - The Green Mile OST
02:37: Windows XP Tour Music
02:45: Buckethead - Botnus
03:00: We No Speak Americano - Yolanda Be Cool vs D Cup
03:45: Eenie Meenie - Justin Bieber
04:23: Western Theme - Timesplitters 2
04:52: Heart of Courage - Two Steps from Hell
05:55: New York Theme - Crysis 2 OST
06:20: Main Menu Theme - Bulletstorm OST
07:05: Poppin' Around - Ren and Stimpy OST
07:48: Defection - ParagonX9 (Newgrounds Audio Portal)

-- The GMod Idiot Box: Episode 10 --

00:05: 2001 a Space Oddysey Theme (completely botched)
00:26: Live is Beautiful - Deadly Premonitions OST
01:41: Convoy - Unreal Tournament 2004 OST
02:35: Saw Bitch Workhorse - The Matrix Revolutions OST
02:48: Skunkape - Poker Night at the Inventory OST
03:43: Koopa Castle (OC Remix) - Zircon
04:27: Neodaemmerung - The Matrix Revolutions OST
05:15: JAWS theme
05:35: Tiptoe Through The Tubas - ???
05:48: Crystal Caverns - Trine OST
06:28: Always a Catch - The Dark Knight OST
08:34: Jump Program - The Matrix OST
09:09: Among Thieves - Uncharted 2 OST
09:40: Academy Hallways - Trine OST
09:53: Tritsch Tratsch Polka - Johann Strauss
10:47: Turkish March - Mozart
11:08: Pulling of the Pin - The Neverhood OST
11:48: Fire Planet - nsrenard
12:42: 10_amb - Amnesia the Dark Descent OST

What's so bad about Halo?

2009-03-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, I had mentioned my dis-taste for Halo, but never explained why. Here's the explanation, you'll just have to forgive the rather angry tone. Over time, I'd grown quite angry with Halo for reasons outside of just playing the game.

Yes, I've played all three Halo games. I don't count Halo Wars because it was said there would be no more Halo games after 3, basically summing up Halo Wars as nothing more than what's best described as a Lucasarts scheme. Anyway, all three Halo games were average at best to me. Everything about it just felt like it had been done before except for the new health system that arrived in Halo 2 ... and this is where the rant begins. This health system was so ridiculously easy, all it took was to hide behind a rock for 5 seconds and I'm back to full health in an instant. The weapons were pretty boring, the vehicle sections weren't anything special, the player floated and performed sluggishly and the Master Chief didn't seem like a badass character in the least. The only thing that made him stand out from the rest of the grunts was his shielding suit. He had the personality of a pile of chewed gum and just took orders from a smart mouthed AI construct. So with my own opinion in mind, I set out to find out why the Halo fans liked this game so much. They've only been able to provide me with one single answer: It took no thought or skill to play. Yes, basically, the Halo fans are saying even the kids who held lit M80 fireworks in their hands could still play this game as long as they could still access the "throw grenade" button. Multiplayer is insufferable because thanks to this game reaching out to the idiots, they FLOOD this game and make every effort to damage your faith in humanity severely. Someone messaged me and assumed I was just playing the campaign on easy mode all the time and must play on super hard mode to get a challenge out of the game. That's certainly not a point in it's favor, because any game can be hard when you switch to hard mode. I never play any game on easy mode, ever, no matter what game it is. I always play normal, then hard if it's worth playing through again. A good example of why I think Halo is so patronizingly easy would be that I've seen these "Halo masters" pick up Half-Life 2 for the first time, and they'd get angry and stop playing because their dumb asses died a lot at the hands of common sense.

I wouldn't have minded Halo and it's shitty game mechanics if it were easy to not play and just ignore. Unfortunately, it had to go on to stomp the shit out of the entire shooter genre. Many have said Halo "revolutionized" the genre, but reducing the inventory to a selection of one boring rifle and one boring pistol in most cases seems kind of a step backward from fun and the health system just made it stupidly easy for the player to get through the game as long as they keep hiding for a few seconds. It also gave the game's level designers an excuse not to balance the levels anymore or put breaks in between the action, which ensured anyone could make a shooter now ... and they do. All that health system did was make it so they could throw in endless cannon fodder enemies and the gameplay length will pad itself out with the stupid amount of hiding behind chest high walls you'll be doing.

Inevitably, someone is going to make the point that the above statements are simply an improvement of realism for shooters. First of all, if you want a realistic health system, I'm sure they can make a game where one bullet lands you in the hospital for 2 months real time. Second, fuck realism altogether. The shooter genre used to be a means to escape reality by being an implausibly strong bastard with an array of over-sized guns that shoots lightning, but still challenged you by urging the utilization of your environment, health, equipment and switching to the desired weapon for varying situations. Why the hell are we trying to simulate real life with our video games now anyway? Will these realism nuts trample some more Wal-Mart greeters when the ever amazingly realistic Cubicle Quest hits shelves?

All that in mind, I stand by the statement that Halo has forever ruined shooters. So many companies are on the Halo bandwagon, it made shooters brutally repetitive, artificially padded and simply not exciting due to the health and weapon system's destroying of urgency. Only Valve seems to not have their head up Halo's ass because they didn't let the sales figures of a game that any incompetent player could pick up drive the force of their shooter. They managed mad sales figures and awards without trying to "fit in" and instead, stuck to what made shooters fun, then expanded upon it without replacing it. There was nothing wrong with health meters and multitudes of guns on hand and it was only made more fun when a more clever player utilized the physics engine to his advantage to conserve his health and ammo.

So with all this in mind, Halo can go suck it and I'll continue geeking out over Valve shooters. At least they still understand what a FUN game is.

Video FAQ

2009-03-23T23:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the section for all the frequently asked questions about my Gmod movies that nobody will bother to read and ask anyway! Woot!

Q: How to I get Garry's Mod?
A: Go to www.steampowered.com to get the Steam client and register an account on it. This will let you purchase and download a wide variety of games including Garry's Mod. Remember that Garry's Mod is not a game on it's own. If you don't have games like Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source, the game won't work right.

Q: What tools do you use to make your videos?
A: Fraps to record the screen
Sony Vegas 9.0 Pro for editing
Audacity for recording other sources of audio
Paint for cheap-ass alterations to screenshots

Q: How do you get the ragdolls to move so well?
A: I always have the option to not show the physgun beams when working the ragdoll's movement and then just use the camera tool to give the illusion of me not working them at all. It's an extremely basic process, it just requires multiple takes until I'm satisfied with the movement sometimes. For more complex movements, like Billy Mays doing the Liu Kang bicycle kick, I did something similar to what "FancyPants" does with his ragdolls. If you'd see his "Dancing Ragdolls" tutorial video, you'll get a pretty good idea of that process. I'm really not doing anything out of the ordinary, it just takes a good understanding of the physics engine and PATIENCE!

Q: How do you make the phsygun beams invisible?
A: Open the build menu, go to the "Options" tab to the top right, select "Hiding" and then un-check the box, "Draw physgun beams"

Q: I press the ~ key, but my console doesn't come up!
A: In the options menu, go to "keyboard" and click "Advanced." There will be a check box labeled, "Enable developer console."

Q: How do you remove the health and ammo meter from the screen?
A: Bring up the console and enter "cl_drawhud 0" to remove it and "cl_drawhud 1" to bring it back

Q: When an NPC or a player dies, I want to remove the kill notice at the top right of the screen.
A: Bring up the console and type "hud_deathnotice_time 0"

Q: Need any help with your Gmod movies? Can I be in a video?
A: I don't like using actors in my movies. The only time I did use actors besides just myself, was in my very first skit, "The most annoying sound in the world." On GIB and the April Fools video. I came to realize using ragdolls was much more amusing and since I could manipulate them well, I was sold on that idea instead. The reason I don't film with others is for multiple reasons.
1: I can't stand server upkeep. I always have to worry if certain models are on it, certain mods, weither or not the server broke down, etc etc.
2: If my ping isn't between 1 and 5, the ragdoll movements lag and if I am the one filming, that is very bad for the project.
3: I make these videos in my spare time in between work, friends and whatnot, and that schedule is often very different, so I can't be bothered to schedule when me and the actors can come in to start filming and I don't want them bitching at me when I started without them.
4: I have a bad habit of not giving others much to do. I've been filming alone for over a year now, so I'm very much accustomed to handling everything myself. It creates many bored players who will always wind up running around, throwing things, firing machine guns and ultimately getting in a shot by accident when I was recording.
5: Having other actors creates drama and the illusion of favoritism. For example, "Well he was in more shots than me! I wish I was your best buddy ever, but nooooooo!"
6: Many people don't have all the models, maps and so forth for a certain scene and it eats up a ton of time making sure they got every last thing before resuming a film.

I am however looking for skilled model creators. It would have been so awesome to have someone create a Billy Mays and Vince ragdoll before I started the project.

Q: Will there be a Gmod Arena 2?
A: I would like to do another one and originally I had planned to do "Jack Thompson VS Uwe Boll" but as time went on, I realized barely anyone even knows who Jack Thompson is, or even Uwe Boll for that matter. Uwe is a little more known for his god awful movies, so from an audience standpoint, all they are going to hope for is that Uwe Boll doesn't win. For now, I'd like to wait on it until I discover two combatants that are both well known and would probably hold a grudge against each other. Two possibilities have been either Dr. Phil VS Oprah or Joe Rogan VS Carlos Mencia. A big obstacle with both is getting plenty of their voice clips that work well in a fight video.

Q: What song is that from?
A: Still having trouble with "Music link in video description" in the credits, are we?

Q: Why didn't you make Vince the Scout from Team Fortress 2?
A: Have you actually tried posing the TF2 ragdolls yourself? Let's do a little hands-on activity, shall we? Take the scout out and freeze his head only in place. Now try and make him put his arms up over his head. Now make him do a thumbs down. How about flip off the camera? Done? All right, now for the short answer ... the TF2 ragdolls are extremely broken and buggy. Vince would have fought like a popsicle stick jointed taffy man! That wouldn't be fair to the Vince fans, would it?

Q: Can I use Dr. Hax, Uberkleiner etc in my video?
A: I have never really cared who used any of my characters from the start, so go nuts!

Q: Why do you ignore so many friend requests on Steam/YouTube?
A: For Steam, unless I know you and want you on my friends list, I'm going to keep hitting that "ignore all" button. Sorry, I'm just trying to be selective and keep mutual friends on there, rather than sift through a list of complete strangers. As for YouTube? They pretty much made the friends list completely and totally useless, so I see no point.

Q: Where did you get that HAAAAX sound from?
A: That's actually from Half-Life 2. When a refugee spots a Manhack, they shout out about four variations of the sound.

Q: What song is that from?
A: ...

Q: How do you get Valve sound effects, voices and music like that?
A: My method is quite different from other people's, as my sound card is an old Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card that still has the "What U Hear" feature on it. With that feature, I'm able to record direct from my sound card. With that in mind, I go into the "Valve Hammer Editor" and go into the Sound Browser. Every single sound from the game I've selected is listed and all I have to do then is open Audacity and hit record, then play the sound I want and save it as a .wav file. Now yes, I understand there's probably different, more non-complex ways to do this, but this method is very quick for me. The music from the game doesn't play on this list however, but thankfully, since I purchased Audiosurf, the Orange Box soundtrack is included, so I just use that.

Q: How can I download your videos? I want them on my Ipod!
A: I now have a wegame.com account! You can go here and download either the .mp4 version of the vid, or the very original version in it's raw, flawless form.
http://www.wegame.com/user/DasBoSchitt

Q: What's your computer specs?
A:
AMD Phenom 8450
Triple-Core Processor
2.10 GHz, 4.00 GB of RAM
GeForce 9600 GTX
Windows 7 64 bit

Q: How did you get the Left 4 Dead maps in Gmod?
A: I didn't. I put all the characters in a chroma key (green screen) environment and then went into Left 4 Dead and took screenshots identical to the position of the characters and then combined the two

Q: How do you make a ragdoll run?
A: Using a combination of a stand up contraption for the body and sawblade wheels at the bottom of it, you're able to weld the body to the contraption and then use the axis tool to attack the sides of the feet against the sides of the wheels. Then it's just a matter of turning the contraption invisible by opening the color tool and finding a "checkered" palette beside the color palette. Turned the checkered one all the way down to apply invisibility to the pieces of your contraption.

Q: How do you make frozen ragdolls fall over with force?
A: There's two methods. One is making use of the weld tool's weld break value and another is a mod known as the "Sleep n' wake" mod at www.garrysmod.org. Both have their advantages and disadvantages in Machinima, so mastering both may be key. First of all, the breakable weld method is done by applying it to certain limbs on your frozen ragdoll. Let's say for example, you have a ragdoll that is pointing at an oncoming car that will hit him. The most common weld break limit is 800 to 1600. All you have to do is apply the appropriate strength on varying parts of the ragdoll that holds the most weight. For example, a hand often only need 800 to 1000 in value. Apply it to the hand and then you can either apply the other end of the weld to the world or the torsoe of the ragdoll. Obviously either the chest or the head of the ragdoll will be supporting the most weight and a weld of 1000 to 1600 will need to be applied. Any portion of the ragdoll that is expected to hold it up MUST be welded to the world. Now carefully unfreeze the ragdoll and if done correctly, it should only slack slightly, but overall, be where you need it. Now a nice bit of pysical force will cause the welds to "break" and down they go. The Sleep n Wake tool makes it much easier, keeping the ragdoll up in one click, then any physical force applied releases the ragdoll and makes it fall over. However the disadvantage of the mod is that if you want to have a ragdoll do something like slap another ragdoll's extended hand away, only the breakable weld can pull that off without making the entire ragdoll fall over. On the other hand, breakable welds often require more excessive force to knock the ragdoll over. Simple things like getting shot with a small set of bullets with little force often won't do the job. That's where the mod has it's advantage. As long as you can master the breakable welds, using both will get you everywhere

Q: Where do you get all your other sound effects not related to Valve games?
A: www.findsounds.com is your friend ... Sometimes. Other sources are recorded using the same "What U Hear" feature as mentioned before, taken from other YouTube videos, flash movies and so forth.

Q: How do you make the mouth move on a ragdoll while still moving a nearby limb?
A: That's an editing trick I use in Sony Vegas 9.0. Let's use Francis when he said, "I hear a witch!" As an example in GIB7. First, I place a static camera on Francis and take one shot of him lifting his arm and pointing a finger up. Next, I change his facial expression to almost each said letter of the desired voice clip you'll be using and take still shots of each one still looking through the camera's view. Once done, using the "cookie cutter" tool in Vegas, I cut out all of Francis' head in the "pointing" recording I made and in it's place, put each facial change in time with his voice clip until it's all properly timed. This is going to take a lot of patience, but nothing ever good is made without effort!

Q: If you film alone, then how do you make multiple ragdolls move on screen?
A: Again, this is done either with editing using the cookie cutter tool, or using invisible contraptions to movie the other ragdolls.

Q: Some of your videos are blocked in my country, or have been flagged for 18 or older content!
A: That's also where the WeGame account comes in. Remember, it's http://www.wegame.com/user/DasBoSchitt

This FAQ will be updated as more questions come up. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a private message on my YouTube account. The blog comments I'm afraid I don't have any direct way of responding to questions posted there. PMs on YouTube, I check and respond to as often as I can.