Ricky Grove 00:40
Hey everyone, my name is Ricky Grove, and I am leading the And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast for this week. I'm here with my pals Phil Rice, Damian Valentine and Tracy Harwood. Hey,

Phil Rice 00:54
hello, yo, yo.

Ricky Grove 00:56
We're going to be looking at Damien's pick, which is pretty interesting as a space theme for this week. Now, Damien, you said you had a little news before we start talking about your film. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 01:06
one of the games that we've been following since we started this show is Star Citizen because we've been watching some other videos made with that game. But Star Citizen has a second component to it called Squadron 42, which is a single player game with the whole story and cinematic element to it. And they've been very quiet about it for quite some time. Obviously, they don't want to show off too much, because they want to get away this story and all of that. But at the recent CitizenCon, which is their anniversary for reaching the crowdfunding goals, they do a big convention and they show off all the latest developments, they decided to show off what they've done with Squadron 42, because they reached a big milestone, which is its feature complete, and all they have to do is the polishing. Now we're going to say that they don't give a date on when it's finished. So they anticipate doing a lot of polishing on this technique, right. So don't get too excited. But they released this video, which shows off the game, some of the cinematics and they're talking about how the character animated and you get to see it from the game perspective. So you get to see the cutscenes. And you're walking through and then show off that the customizable characters because you do this cutscene. And it kind of fade cuts between different type ways that you can customise your character. So you have a black man, a white woman, and you know, all kinds of different combinations that show up in this one sequence. And then they're showing off. Some of the big Hollywood names, doing performances in this and how they're captured, their likeness is and how you can interact with them in the game. And this is quite a lengthy videos showing up. But they'll see they talk about how they did it. So it's not just showing the game. But you get to see some of the motion capture with the the actors in the motion capture gear with the cameras on their face to capture all of the expressions in the microphone there in front of them as well, which looks really happy. And you got the designers of the game talking about how they've improved the rendering capabilities in the game since they last showed off something and dude, like, this is what you look like compared to what looks like now. And it's really interesting. And of course, this is a very cinematic game. And we've seen people use Star Citizen in a very cinematic way. So it's interesting to see what the developers are doing it themselves. And yeah, maybe that will go. So this will go back to the community. So people making machinima with the game can use some of these tools themselves. So I just thought it's very interesting to see this video and I wanted to mention it because it's inspiring. It's interesting. So there we go. Squadron 42 as the update, there'll be a link in the below.

Ricky Grove 03:57
Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, well, that's the news first, Tracy.

Tracy Harwood 04:00
Oh, just sort of following on from that a little bit. Actually, what I picked up is the day of the virus 29 5360 seconds of horror, machinima contest for Star Citizen, ironically, and what I saw was that people could upload content to TikTok or use TikTok as the entry process for it. And it kind of got me thinking about what's going on with Roberts Space Industries that they're kind of being you know, pushing out promoting the fact that people can kind of create contests it you know, machinima and enter contests and all the rest of it. And it's something that we'll pick up from my point of view when we talk about your picks this week, Damian, because I think there's a little bit more to this, the fact that they're getting a bit have, you know, keen to promote what they're up to, in the light of the release of Starfield think that I think that's what we're really seeing. So I'm quite intrigued to see the way in which they're tackling the launch of Starfield and, and how they're going about putting all these little bits and pieces out, that might tease people to stay with them. So I just throw that out, I'll put a link to it. I'm just trying to see when the deadline for it is I think it's it runs out quite quickly. Although I think it's open until the end of November. So I think you've got time to enter if you're interested. That's it. That's my comments on that one.

Ricky Grove 05:43
I've got a quick bit of news about Second Life. Second Life has added PBR rendering Physically Based Rendering to their system, which is a little con kind of odd, because I would have thought what they would have really worked on is the ability to stream improving their streaming services. But it Physically Based Rendering does make things look a lot better. The textures take on a realistic quality to it. It's all based on real life, ways that the rays of light, hit certain objects and reflect in different ways. So it's fascinating to see that I haven't seen examples of it. But there are a couple of interesting videos on that, that show the difference between before and after using Second Life and Physically Based Rendering. That's good news for machinima filmmakers, because it gives it a more compelling look. Second, life has always had a kind of, well, I don't know, specific visual style that looks kind of cartoony, I guess, is what you would say. I remember talking to Hugh Hancock once and asking him why he didn't, when Second Life was in its prime, and what about 10 years ago, and I asked him why he never wanted to work in second why he didn't work in Second Life. And he says, because I don't like it the way it looks. It just doesn't it's not appealing to me. And I think maybe this switch to PBR might change that.

Phil Rice 07:25
Yeah, PBR textures. Probably most of the people that listen to our show know but PBR textures is traditional textures and shading our there's a diffuse texture, which is basically the main colour of the item. And then you have a normal map to give it some kind of textured look, there's a specular map, which is another image that determines how light generally bounces off of it. And a couple other optional maps that you can add, and PBR rendering is just a more advanced version of that there's still you still have the diffuse, which is the traditional texture that's on something to colour and you still have normal or bump maps. But then you also have ambient oclusion maps, which is a particular way, like Ricky said, related to the way that light interacts with the surface. There's a metallic shader, and there's also a roughness shader. And then there's other, you know, optional advanced ones and stuff. And the result is pretty stunning. Like, if you if you've worked at all with iClone as an example, if you if you download an older generation model, and bring it in, and it has traditional textures and shaders, and you bring in a PBR model and apply the textures there. Yeah, it's, it's quite dramatically different. One of the things that I actually enjoy quite a bit as I'll, I'm sourcing out a prop or something like that for iClone. And when you first generally when you first bring in an FBX prop in iClone, the textures don't always apply automatically. So you have to drag them over into the little grid on a clone. And as you add each texture, each shader you can see the difference in real time on the it's pretty neat because when you first get the diffuse texture of I don't know Darth Vader or something, it's pretty plain looking. It's pretty and then you bring in the normal map and then you bring in the the ambient oclusion and then as each one goes, it's like okay, now we're talking. Yeah, that's pretty exciting to that. It's gonna be interesting to see because there's a I assume there's still a very active content creator community. On on second, yes, there is. Yeah, creating avatars and, you know, clothing and accessories and all of that stuff. Well, that changes their process in a pretty significant way. It's there's no straight conversion process from traditional shaders to PBR it's, it's It's a different process to generate those images. But it's also a well documented process. That's right there are plenty of tutorials and guides on how to do those in Blender or whatever tool that they're using to make their their content so I don't I don't see it as being any kind of set back frankly, most of the people that are creating you know, apparel and accessories in Second Life, they're pretty experienced modellers. Anyway, they have to be so yeah, they probably already know how to do that. And the smart ones will jump on that very fast because the difference is is it's quite noticeable.

Damien Valentine 10:35
And once you get a lot of PBR content in the non PBR content is going to really stand out creations Yeah,

Ricky Grove 10:47
yeah,

Phil Rice 10:48
well to see warning in the relation store if you see something that says it was made for iClone 5, buyer beware, you're gonna get a little texturing work to do

Damien Valentine 10:59
Yeah, it's not that hard to do once you have it

Phil Rice 11:03
it's not

Ricky Grove 11:06
all right. Let's go on to your pick Damien. You pick something from Starfield what's what is that? And why did you choose it?

Damien Valentine 11:14
Oh, it's actually not long after we recorded last month because we were talked a lot about Starfield last month and a potential head for machinima. So as the next day afterwards, I started thinking, wonder if anyone's made anything with machinima with Starfield? Yeah, I came across these two videos. I think I talked about them together, because they're both kind of related. So the first one is called Starfield, the feature no one talks about, and it's kind of it's not really a machinima film, it's more of a guy who's familiar with the game talking about the potential for star fields, as a machinima or a tool, he starts off by explaining what machinima is, and he showed some clips from some other films, some I recognise that some look familiar with. And then he talks about, he's on to talking about the game. And he's talking about how the games moddable and all different kinds of customization the content in it, and you know, the vast array of locations and stuff like that. And then he concludes with a demo, Battle video that he made himself. Now it's not a cinematic masterpiece, but it's not meant to be, he just wants to show off that you can do a scene in the game. So it's a battle between some soldiers and some alien bug things in the desert. And he's used console commands in the game. So as we record this, there are still no mod tools for the game. So he did this without any of that he just used the consol in the game. And he, the way I understand it, is he found a location in the on a desert planet, and he spawned a lot of Marines on one side, and then he put the spawns some of these bug things nearby, and he basically let them fight. And he got into with the camera, which I'm not quite sure how he did that there must be a mod somewhere that would do that. And he basically filmed and he did get some really good shots to show off its potential. I mean, it's not, it's just a battle between soldiers and bugs you've seen in Starship Troopers or aliens or anything like that. So it's nothing special in that regard. But it's not meant to be like I said, but it's kind of shows off the potential of what Starfield can do now without the mod tools available. And I think he wants to he made this video to encourage people to, to go out there and do something. And they are quite intrigued by this camera tool that he used. And it might be fun to document some of my own experiences in the game in like this. Yeah, I hope you do that. Yeah. And then I'll get on to the second video, which is, it's called The Mantis. So in the game, the Mantis is kind of a Batman like, vigilante. And you as the player, you have the option to become the Mantis if you take the right side quests, you can get the ship and the gear, and you can go out and doing that. And there's this whole element of if you get attacked by pirates, and you're flying, the Mantis ship, they're terrified of you and they'll flee. And there's different ways they can interact. Some they'll just sustain. Sometimes they'll just say, I'm gonna give you all my money don't kill me. Which is really hilarious. But I don't want to talk too much about the Mantis lore because you know, if you play the game, you don't that spoil it for you. But what someone's done is they've obviously been inspired by that lore, and then making a machinima series about the Mantis in the game world. And so what we've got here is just it's just a trailer for it because they haven't finished it yet. And it kind of shows off that the Mantis character talking about how he is going out looking for justice and you know very Batman like as. And it's only about a minute or two long so it's not very long. It shows us all different kinds of shots of the game and how the story is developing. So I thought these are two good examples of where we get one encouraging people to make machinima with it. And here's one summons are we working on something. And obviously, we haven't got the end result for that. But I thought these are gonna be my two picks. It's we were talking so much about Starfield last month. So yeah, people are already working on it. So what did you guys think?

Tracy Harwood 15:38
I go next. To me. Yeah, I was the first one I thought it was a really interesting kind of creators' eye view of the potential of of Starfield. And you're right. We talked about this quite extensively last month. But this guy takes it a little bit further than just that kind of oh, yeah. It's got great potential. He provides this really interesting demo, I think. And yeah, the demo is not massively, you know, there's no, there's no great story or anything with it. But what is quite astonishing, with it is the, the, the animation quality. And the and the way that that kind of unfolds, considering all they are is NPCs. I mean, that was interesting, I thought, and so the level of the detail through it and the way the soundscape is presented, I thought that was, I mean, I really thought that was a very interesting example of just how high quality this game is going to be. And I think it's got masses of potential, which, which clearly, you know, this guy does too. The bit that I liked less about this was this kind of conflation of the story that he wanted to tell with the sales pitch around it. And I understand why he's done that course I do. And he, you know, he kind of, he does have an interesting point to make. You know, I mean, that's kind of fair enough, I suppose. But But, but the way that he presents it is both a conversation about its potential. And he does that with the audience. But this sort of sales pitch, I find that just a little bit annoying, as well. So that was that was kind of my take on the on the first one. The Mantis you know, I thought as a teaser, I thought that was really interesting. It all you know, another example of just what quality the animation is in this game. I thought he set the scene really, really well. He's got this kind of hero, this vigilante type and this kind of intriguing, visible, you know, invisible entity that I thought I thought that was really well animated actually. So again, there's another piece that demonstrated the story potential. Sound design I thought was really interesting. animation was beautiful. And actually with that one I thought the Mantis one i thought i I can't wait to see this actually, I can't wait to see who else with it. But the bit that intrigues me beyond that is when I was looking at their you know what these guys were doing? Quite clearly the people that this is pulling in, across all the Machinima community that it will communities is the Star Citizen machinima making community. And I'm really, you know, I suppose beyond the obvious appearance of the environment and the different things you can kind of do with the stories you might want to tell it has to be because of the problems and confusion that Roberts Space Industries created when it teased Squadron 42 last year. And if you remember what it did at that time was it updated the rules on the premise of protecting you know, protecting the use of the game by basically highlighting what folks could and couldn't do. And ultimately, what that did was created this environment of of confusion and uncertainty about just what you can do with machinima using Star Citizen. And I remember the the, you know, the consequence of that. I don't know if you remember. Do you remember the Barely Not Monkeys space opera Adrift. You remember that? That's that's which was absolutely gorgeous. Well, in December last year after after they'd released these updated rules, they then released a statement, which basically said that the game had prevented them from finishing Adrift, part two. And they basically said that at that point, their set had been removed from the game for some time, but I What this this particular engine does the star what's it called? Star? Yeah. What I hope this does is actually enables creators like those guys to actually work and finish the the films that they've been putting together. And I think that transition is is exactly why we're seeing Roberts Space Industries now put out some of these kinds of like, you know, little teasers, little contests and, and so on so forth, because I bet they're running very nervous about what the impact of this game and its potential will actually have on what they do. So I think, you know, for that reason alone, these two picks Damian were really interesting ones to discuss on reflect on for me, so thank you.

Ricky Grove 20:48
Well those are great points. Tracy.

Phil Rice 20:51
I'll go next. So yeah, the with the first one the the Starfield machinima, it Yeah, it is interesting that we were just talking about it in those very terms about what potential there is. And it seems like the person who made these videos is excited by those same things and wants to excite others as well. You're right, that the demo that he did isn't as like some kind of standalone work or something that doesn't doesn't make much sense. But if you think about it, a lot of the a lot of the Star Citizen stuff that we've seen is not like Adrift. It is some space battles and gun battles. And, you know, that's it's a younger audience. That's, that's what they're interested in. So it may have been a pretty savvy idea for on his part, because, you know, me I'm looking at it for the potential of character driven drama, you know, of course, close ups and but you know, that's, that's, that's not maybe got the mass appeal that, let's say Starship Troopers does, which I'm not putting Starship Troopers itself, by the way in that category. Because the reason Starship Troopers is a work of genius is because of the writing. It is one of the most masterful pieces of satire ever put on film. But a lot of people who enjoy Starship Troopers. They don't they don't get that from their head. Yeah, it gets literal, you know? So that's, that's just there's just different people looking for different things. So the conflation when you said the word conflation, Tracy I thought sure you were going to talk about his summary of the rise and fall of machinima because in a kind of one paragraph, he says, you know, machinima was a big thing. And even though the Machinima YouTube channel isn't around anymore, people are and I just thought, Oh,

Tracy Harwood 22:53
yeah. lost me.

Phil Rice 22:56
I need to recognise that you know, like them or not. Capital M machinima.com. was very successful in hijacking that term and redefining it as what they did. Where of course, as we've declared, I think on our anniversary episode, we're in the process of taking that name back. And your your help as an audience is much appreciated. So I didn't really dwell on that anyway, yeah, I think there's there's there's definite potential for Starfield machinima, but the stuff that I want to see that would get me excited enough to buy the game specifically for that is more can it pull off character driven drama, like, like we saw in Adrift, which is just incredible. I want to comment also on the the the game is keeping us from making this i I'd be interested to know what they meant by that. If they mean the game, like I guess you said their set got deleted, but

Tracy Harwood 24:06
Well, I would guess it has to do with the representation decay. Do you remember we had this discussion about what it was was that they were actually stopping people doing? And one of the things that came up was the representation of, of characters in in machinima? Well, the problem that they had was that the the, the way the characters looked, will look in what's it called Squadron 42, is exactly the same as in the Star Citizen, general version. And therefore, you can't you can't not have them look look the same and I would guess that would be one of the main things. But the other thing would have to be to do with the way that they funded that I would suggest, because they weren't necessarily you know, they They were, you know, they were professional actors in there as well. And I would say that there probably be something in the way that that, that had been developed as a project and the way that they were thinking about how they might develop it into something more substantial is probably also that, you know, it's to do with the trajectory, the the pathway that they were on with that are hugely, hugely disappointed when, you know, when they, they said, Oh, we can't continue with it, because I was so looking forward to seeing what the next episode was going to reveal to us.

Damien Valentine 25:37
Once they got the mod tools I imagine they could do a drift with this. Yeah, I think so. And as for the set being removed, I guess as the game gets old content is being removed from it because it doesn't match up with the newest stuff with Starfield, you can build your own ship, you have all these different components, you just slap them together. So this is my background here is Starfield, that's my ship. And I started together with the different components. So they're just kind of like you're getting like a kitbash. Yeah, you get different home cockpits and you just put it there and then you get different rooms you just connect them together. And you know, there are limits on what you can do because each piece has different connection points. So you can't just make absolutely anything into a big jumble it has to make sense in to the game. But you've got a lot of freedom for it. And you can choose different interiors and so on. So they could build a ship that looks the way they want.

Phil Rice 26:33
Or get crazy and take it all over to to iClone slash Unreal. Yeah. You figure there are some assets from that original production that are salvageable, which is the voice performances, the the sound effects and stuff like that. So it would be an endeavour, for sure, it would be quite quite an ordeal to do. But if they really wanted to, they could could pursue it. But it sounds like it's just another manifestation of what is always and has always been the risk of building something on a foundation of a of someone else's property, a game, if you have commercial aspirations for it, if you're just having fun, those risks are not really as as big a deal. So okay, so the Mantis, I did not know anything about the lore. So I think I when I watched this, I was kind of assuming that this was you know, that it was original story. Now clearly the the Batman-ish elements were, were clear, but I didn't realise it was built on lore, it

Damien Valentine 27:39
is their own story. They just taken an element of lore after the game to do their own thing. So yeah,

Phil Rice 27:46
yeah. This one, we we covered a film in a prior week where we, it was the iClone film of the big creature, and we kind of kind of savaged it for for some issues that we saw with the writing. And I think to a lesser degree, the same critique could be applied here in terms of maybe being a little bit too direct and a teaser. It's a little bit different. Different rules, because you're, you've got a different objective altogether than a standalone short, but it's it reminded me watching this and I've watched it a few times is the challenge of conveying a serious tone. Like in machinima, maybe in particular, it's challenging because the you know, machinima tends to be a little bit lighter, I guess. Not always. Not always. But, you know, it's, it's hard to convey a serious tone that doesn't go across that line where you're taking yourself too seriously. Right? It's a tough, that's a tough balance, I really, I respect the, the endeavour and they did that, you know, they did a fairly decent job with it. Now naturally, I couldn't help but because I was a little bit critical of the writing, I couldn't help but come up with a list of suggestions where they could where they can avoid the serious tonal problems so as a free service of of this the show, I'm gonna go ahead and present those and I really saw copyright to these ideas. One would be you know, the, the main line of the the kind of apex of the teaser is I am the hunter, the executioner, and the only bulwark against all evil in this filthy universe. An idea one would be kind of a parody of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty where as soon as he said that, then it cuts to his employer Hey bulwark against Evil get back to work. That's right. Is this guy who's right in his mind? He's the mantis. But really he's just the, you know, a janitor or the cafeteria worker or something. That's idea number one. Take it if you'd like it. Idea number two would be romantic comedy. I am the hunter the executioner and the only bulwark against all evil in this filthy who is that and the very shapely alien woman would be the Mantis but for his uncontrollable womanising and constant distraction almost a Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, he wants the girl. So that's idea number two and number three would would of course, I can't pass this up without going to lowball route which would be I am the hunter, the executioner and the only bulwark against all evil in this filthy universe. But first, I must face my nemesis. Psoriasis or lactose intolerance. So yeah, anyway, those are some ideas if they had a change of heart and wanted to turn it into a Batman esque comedy. Those are some possible ideas that they could do. Well, Phil, then then you don't have to worry about conveying the serious tone. It's now it's a satirical tone. So Wow.

Ricky Grove 31:25
And that's copyright free. Ladies and gentlemen, we write free ideas. That's right.

Phil Rice 31:30
I'll be uploading those to the Internet Archive after the show.

Ricky Grove 31:34
Well, I enjoyed Mantis teaser a lot. I saw what you were talking about failure didn't bother me quite as much as it did you because I love the visual style of it. And I also thought the voice over was outstandingly acted. Yes. And it looks really great. But But I see your point. I think you're absolutely right. And and that idea of combining seriousness in machinima is so true. And it's been a problem since the very beginning. And I think it's because the two reasons I think that is the case. One is the Disney factor in the United States. Cartoons are always going to be associated with Walt Disney. And the fact that machinima is essentially a kind of fancy cartoon, in a way. And those two things cause people that just not take it seriously. Now we have seen. I mean, we're at this point, we've become machinima experts, I mean, all fucking go ahead and said, We are machinima experts. Not too many people have seen as many or work as hard as we have on machinima and understanding its history and its production. So we have seen many, many examples of machinima being taken seriously. And it can be done. But it is a problem, especially for new creators, and the general audience. Audience wide. I remember not too long ago, I was at a social gathering. And somebody asked me what I what I did. And I said, Well, I'm retired. But one of the things I do is a podcast. And so what's the podcast about and I said, machinima, she says, Oh, what's that? So you have the archetypal situation of trying to explain what Machinima is to someone. And one of the things they said, oh, like cartoons. Yeah, it's like cartoons, you know, the Roadrunner, and in Daffy Duck and all of that, so you're sort of fighting against the current and trying to share the idea that you can make serious drama out of it. And I think you're absolutely right, Phil. Most users for the Starfield are going to be creating shoot 'em ups and fun things that they can share with their friends or do with their friends. And that's the spirit of machinima. It's about community. So that's cool. I like that. It's just a we tend to look at machinima a little more carefully and tend to respect filmmakers and films that have a little more depth to them. And speaking of depth, the starfield feature nobody talks about, I liked but I was also bothered by this pit sales pitchy quality like you were Tracy. It's sort of niggled at me a little bit it's sort of was trying to sell machinima as being kind of cheap throw away kind of thing. You know, I wish he would have been a little more serious about it. But then again when he actually showed the machinima that he made that's the kind of machine or may he be wants to make. So that's fine. Hey, I got no problem with that. Making fun machinima has this cool is anything but I wish that you would have spent a little more time on the actual machinima created, because if he's going to try to sell it, but you want to make what it is you're selling look as good as you can. Because then more people will be convinced of what you're what you're saying. But I understand I see his point, I was appreciated that Bethesda games, including included machinima tools in their, their kit bag, you don't see a lot of game makers doing that you see game makers doing photo stuff. So you can do virtual street photography inside of it. But you don't see a lot of machinima tools coming out. So I was glad to see that. And I hope it's successful so that other companies can copy the, the the idea of giving people the tools to create things, and it is problematic with the issue of content. But it has always been problematic from day one. And we're gonna just, you're gonna have to cope with that. That's just the way it is. My feeling is, is that if you're going, if you start out and you say, I want to make a machinima that makes money, you better choose to choose the vehicle that you're going to use by reading their EULA very carefully in their terms of how to use their content very carefully. Because otherwise, you're gonna get hurt. Yeah. So you have, you have to be careful, I think the great majority of people are not going to do that. But if you do do that, make sure you read the EULA. And also, there's a possible chance of your work going viral. And it becomes very much a commercial commodity, you might want to before you start on a lengthy product project and machinima look through the terms that they have just in case something happens, it's always a good idea to do that anyway. I think if you're if you're making something that you think is going to have your name on it, and is going to be good quality work, you have to consider that. But

Phil Rice 37:07
go ahead, even just with regard to YouTube, you know, if if you're putting a video up, and if you're a YouTube partner, for example, and you put a video up, and it's gonna tell you if it detects copyrighted content in there, it's not good at detecting the visual content, but audio it can detect, and it'll just tell you, Well, you can't monetize this video. That's a no, that's a throwaway, who cares decision? If you expect you're gonna get, you know, 2500 or 5000 views. But if if you get 5 million views, like you said, if it goes viral, that's, that's a significant chunk of potential income. Right? So, if you care about that at all, then then that's worth thinking about. If you don't, then honestly, part of me envies you, you know, have have a great time with it, then, you know, that's what it should be. I want to say one more thing, Ricky, if I don't know if you are no, go ahead. Yeah, I'm done. I'm pretty much done about that first machinima video, there was a point that I've neglected to mention you, you just reminded me of it that he mentioned in the video that a lot of the manipulation he was able to do was with console commands. And I just wanted to point out that's, that's a very, very encouraging thing, in terms of future future potential for modding. If those types of manipulating and spawning NPCs and all that are readily available at the command line, then modders are going to have no trouble accessing those commands through their mods. games that don't have that exposed. It's much harder. I mean, Red Dead Redemption. Great example. None of that's exposed. So what little can be done in that game with modding, that benefits machinima is a hard slog. And the mod often gets broken every time the game updates and has to be reprogrammed. And a lot of developers just say, after a few times of that, they just go Forget it. The Hell yeah, not worth the trouble because they can't monetize what they're doing either. So the fact that Starfield, you know, they can say that they support that content all they want, but they actually built it into the game, the groundwork, that's going to enable some really amazing things. And I think free camera is the least complicated of those. I think that that's a, that's a that absolutely will exist. Whether it's a programmable camera where you can actually, you know, programme certain moves into stuff. Well, that's for the modders to work out, but if they can get access to those camera coordinates and axis, anything's possible there, that's a programme spline moves and all kinds of neat stuff. Yeah. But in terms of manipulating what's happening with the actual objects and characters on the screen. If you want an example of what a supportive game can lead to with that look at Grand Theft Auto Five, oh, my goodness, the mods, the things that people can do in that they can actually. So if you haven't played Grand Theft Auto Five, you don't know this, but a lot of the buildings, these beautiful buildings in the city are just empty shells inside. And actually, there's not a whole lot of missions in the game that take you inside buildings. And if they do, it's actually somewhere else. And it's locked out during general play of the game and stuff like that. But because the good modding structure was there, there's actually a way and it's a thriving enterprise right now, where people are good. The only thing I know to compare it to is the way Google approached Google Maps. If you remember, when they first decided to add the 3d layer to Google Maps, they outsourced or made it made it able to be outsourced for people to submit 3d models of remember their hood or building. And you should see Google Maps now my goodness that has been populated out and it's pretty amazing. Grand Theft Auto Rockstar Games basically did the same thing, or at least gave the ability for that through a mod. And there are people now who are building building out fully decorated interiors to the major buildings in Grand Theft Auto, just for gameplay purposes. But what a potential that would be for sure, of course, of course that game already has some very nice filmmaking tools in it. They're they're limited and the limitations can get a little frustrating. You can't be you know, very far away with the camera from whoever your main character is. So you have to really strategize with that but anyway, it looks like Starfield is headed down a similar path. We're just right out of the gate. They're they're welcoming modders and giving them yet. They're just commands at the command line right now. But those are tools. It's access to interfering with how the game works. And that's what machinima is. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's what good machinima that's where that can really flower is when you can actually you know, make the game do something different than it normally does. Then it's elevated above just the level of Let's Play now. It's yeah. Wow, how did you do that? That's the that's my favourite comment. On an interesting machinima film is when someone goes how in the world did you do that? Someone who knows Yeah, and they're and they're gone How did it so true when we get one of those films across our desk at this shows where we all puzzle over how do they do that? We Damian I've been we've been doing this a long time and when when you stump us it's like that's cool, man. I love it. Yeah, so yeah. Anyway, yeah, I'm very excited about Starfield to see what happens. And

Ricky Grove 42:54
listeners if you're interested in finding out where these mods are of the Starfield community is the place to go. But also Nexus Mods online is a good place to probably the biggest and safest place to download mods so that you don't download a mod that has a you know, a worm or something in it. That's a great place to check. I'm sure they'll have a Starfield section if they don't already have it. Well, that's our pick this week. Thank you, Damien. Boy, those are again, those are lots of interesting and fun. pics. The Starfield will be we'll keep an eye on Starfield, maybe one of us will jump in and make something out of it. I plan on making a big battle scene. But we'll see how that turns. We'll see. We'll see how that turns out. Thank you, everyone. Send us your thoughts about what's going on or what our content is, this week or the movies, whether we miss something or we you have an idea of your own send it to talk at completely machinima.com and as always, the show notes are completely machinima.com. Thank you, Tracy, Damian and Phil. Enjoy this conversation and we'll see you next week. Bye bye.