Damien Valentine 00:35
hello and welcome to another episode of renown facility. Complete the machine this week, and I'm joined by Tracy Harwood, hello. Phil is still doinghurricane cleanup. He's fine, so you don't need to worry about him. He's justgot a lot to do. So he can't make it to our recording session, but he will be back with us next month, and Ricky is getting ready for Halloween. And look, I think he's looking forward to scaring lots of people, so that should be fun for him.

Tracy Harwood 01:10
If you're in North Hollywood, go and take a look, because it looks amazing. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 01:15
I would kind of wish I could go and see him.

Tracy Harwood 01:17
I know. I know,

Damien Valentine 01:19
right. So we're going to be discussing machinima news, or machinima related news in this episode. So Tracy, what have you found for us?

Tracy Harwood 01:29
Yeah, well, I've got quite a lot of bits and pieces this month, mainly a series of interesting projects to share, but also some kind of useful sources of stuff that I found. Firstly, the BBC sound archive has been released for free and includes more than 33,000 samples that you can use in your films, and they date back to the 1920s and they include things like footsteps and machines and crowds and events all sorts of different things. I'll put a link on the show notes. I'm not 100% sure if everybody around the world can access these I think they can do you know, if they can Damien? I have no idea, but I hope they can. I hope they can as well. I'm fairly sure you can. So let's leave it at that, and then let us know if that's not the case. So that's that one. Then Evan Ryan shared with us a link to an auto painter AI, which creates textures for 3D models with AI in Blender sounds like a really interesting tool to have in your arsenal. So check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes, but in the meantime, thanks to Evan for that one. Google has introduced a film search AI tool. Now it's not something that's actually going to help you find something in a film, or at least that's not how it's being described. It's going to help you find something when you point your own phone's camera using something like a GPT, like chat bot to interface with it. So it basically seems that you can find out more about the environment that you're in, rather than interrogate anything that you might want to find in a in a Shazam kind of like way. However, my thoughts are if you can actually point your phone at a TV and computer screen, then why can't you find something from whatever's on the screen? I guess we will find out in due course. But quite interesting, that we're able now to do sort of image matching in order to find source material, I guess IP, and the way things are presented or restricted using IP might be one of the challenges going forwards with that, but we'll see in time.

Damien Valentine 04:13
I saw as an advert for the Google Pixel nine phone. I think it is the latest Google Pixel phone anyway, and they're showing off these features. And they had someone got shot of a chair, and they drew a circle around it, and then the search was able to find the chair to buy. Oh, okay, yeah, so you can do stuff like that with it. To be honest, I didn't take a whole lot of notice. I just remember that when I saw this, and I thought, okay, that

Tracy Harwood 04:39
kind of thing's been around for for a while, really, I've seen that done on on shopping center apps, basically, interesting that Google are now doing it, but I'd like to see a more expansive use of it. So whether that will happen, or whether this will allow that to happen, or whether you can integrate it with other tools that mean that can happen, I don't know. But I can see potential, certainly quite interesting potential uses for it, along the lines of Shazam, you know, where you can, kind of, you know, tell your phone to listen to a piece of music and say, Well, what is that? I think that would be particularly interesting, useful anyway. Another thing that I saw was this wonderful tribute by Gerry Anderson about David Graham. Now David Graham, unfortunately passed away a couple of months ago. Graham was the voice behind Jerry and silver Sylvia Anderson's most iconic characters, such as Parker and brains and Gordon Tracy and various others. And it's a really lovely little video to sit and reminisce on. And I'll share the link and the in the notes on that one too. Definitely a lovely watch if you have any kind of affinity with those sorts of old kids programs. I think not just kids, but you know what I mean? Yeah, I also found a trailer for mouse pi for hire. Now you remember, I think was it earlier this year or last year we sort of saw the IP for Disney's Mickey being released, and various people using it in all sorts of odd and interesting ways. Well, this game was one of those potential ways that the IP was going to be used. And what's quite interesting is that now we have the official trailer for the game, which is going to be released next year. It's actually really good. I was, you know, really interested to see what was going on with this particular thing. We said we tracked the IP on it. It's worth having a look at it. I can't wait to see the game released. See actually what this is going to be like, but I think it's going to be fairly impressive, just from the look of what the trailer is all about. So we'll share that see what you think alternative viewpoints are very welcome, of course, and then, rather Intriguingly, the the another bit of news that we picked up Ben Grussi shared this one with us is this kind of curious story about Kamala Harris's presidential rally live stream from of all places, Azeroth in World of Warcraft. Now it's many, many years ago that we first came across various politicians harnessing the power of virtual worlds and MMPORGs to campaign in Ben and I actually talked about some of these in our pioneers book, when we were discussing the political intrigue, really around Alex Chan's machinima, which he released way back in 2005 but I was kind of intrigued that this, that this sort of this is being claimed as being the first of its kind, because it isn't fundamentally although it may well be in World of Warcraft. But I think what's quite interesting is, why use World of Warcraft, of all the games that you could use? Why is this one an appropriate one to reach a younger audience when the game's 20 years old, and we've been lamenting its demise in recent episodes of this show. And moreover, it's got a, you know, a more Asian target audience in some respects. So, yeah, there's a there's a whole lot of questions and not a lot of answers in terms of why this is being used in this particular way. However, when this episode is released, this news omnibus will be released, actually, I think it will be a kind of a moot point, because the decision will have already been made and the votes will have been cast. So whatever the impact of this choice is, it'll all be behind us as this episode goes live, but it's an interesting strategy. Nonetheless, I think irrespective of one's political persuasion, I have to say that I do fondly remember Oxfam's wonderful take on politics using World of Warcraft, which he filmed, I don't know if you remember this Damien 2008 Machinima Film Festival which took place in New York. Um Oxhorn created this real, you know, satirical political skit on what it was like to be a candidate, and you know how these candidates stood up to one another? Yeah, you do remember, I've tried to find a link to I couldn't find a link. I'll dig a bit harder. I'll ask, ask one if necessary. But I don't think anything much has changed in terms of the political commentry. Tree and the ham fistedness that you obviously get through that kind of comedy. But, yeah, strange choice, I think, is what I would say on that one. And then in terms of the interesting projects that I picked up on, well, I saw probably one of the best AI generated films I've seen so far. It's called pigeon bringer of doom and destroyer of humanity, by solo films, and it's been made using runway and mid journey. It's horrific. It really is. It's It's uncanny and weird and, gosh, it absolutely works as a as a story. Definitely recommend you have a look at that. And then another, which doesn't work quite so well is the flower that never dies, and that one is by new gates. Entertainment, I don't think it's quite so imaginative as the pigeon film, but it's nonetheless a an intriguing more of an adventure style, story well trodden tropes and what have you. But just shows you those two, those two films alone, just show you that AI is becoming more usable for story making, storytelling purposes, which I think is intriguing in itself, and then this isn't AI, but I think, at least I don't think it is. But it's composited, and it's using, I think it's using a game mod to do it. This one is mixing Terminator and cyberpunk, 2077, and it's an interesting conflation of these kind of story tropes, where, you know, you've got, you've got the sort of the settled cyberpunk world juxtaposed with this, you know, this, the more surprising elements of the Terminator character, and there's this real twist of humor in the telling of the tale that's presented. And that's by Eli handle B WAV, who I think we've discussed in terms of mods he's created in the past. So my guess is that there's a mod being promoted in the back through through the process of storytelling. And again, I'll put a link to this one, and then for those of you that are new to Warhammer JT music have done their thing with a rap. Always a great intro to any game, I would say, just have a look at this, and you will straight away get the point of it. And for those of you who are already passionate about the game. Here's something else that you can have a critique of in terms of your beloved game. And my last thing for this month, in this month's News episode, is that Ian Hubert's Dynamo dream Part Two is finally out, and it's an absolute Corker. I don't know if you remember, we reviewed this part one a couple of years ago, well, three years ago, I think, and this episode continues that story. It's called prepare for execution. It's a complete you know, it runs on directly from the end of that episode one that we reviewed. I'll put the link on the show notes. I'll also put the link to our previous review, which, when I looked, I could not believe it was Episode 16 of the show.

Damien Valentine 13:38
Wow, that goes back quite away, doesn't it? It goes, it's

Tracy Harwood 13:41
2021, it is quite a long way. That's astonishing. Um, but you know what? We were so enamored with it in that first episode. We've all been waiting for its second episode. And it's, it's a real shame that we are not all here to just sort of say, Yeah, that's great. I can't, can't wait to sort of see what Ricky and Phil think about it. But that's it for my news this month, some some really interesting potential resources there, and some great projects for you to take a look at as well. I look forward

Damien Valentine 14:13
to watching the prepare for execution, because I do remember that first one was so good. So yes, another part of my evening entertainment, I think covered. Thought, yeah, yeah. So I've got some news. There's a lot of Star Citizen news, which is obviously a game that we cover quite a bit with some of the films that we review. So October is the annual Star Citizen Con. This represents the anniversary for when the game was successfully crowdfunded. So every year they do a convention that you can go to in person, and they show off the latest developments of the game. Yeah, this year is in Manchester, which is in the UK, but neither of us actually went to it in person, but I did watch the live stream. Games of some of the main events. And, you know, there's some things I thought we should talk about. So the first one that came up was the, it's a panel called the stars to my destination. Started as a 1.0 and this was the outline of what they consider to be the feature complete game that they could sell as a complete game experience. Um, they should say that that's not the end of their work. It's just that's where they're comfortable calling it a feature complete game. And so they show off this technology as lots of base building. So if you want to do that, you can build your base on the planet. And they show off that. But the really thing, big thing, was they're talking about in game organizations that if they're big enough and have enough resources, they can build their own space stations. And they showed a lot about how that was going to be work. There'd be five solar systems to visit, which they did admit was a down from the initial 100 that they promised in the crowdfunding campaign, where they said that the way that they're portraying planets has changed since then. Originally, you would just land on the planet, and you have a small set environment, and you could go to a lift and it would take you somewhere else, whereas now they've got the whole planet, and so they have to spend a lot of time, you know, building all of that. So doing that 100 times, I can see why they're scaled down a little bit. But from the way it was phrased, they will be adding more systems as time goes on. It's just those five are the ones that they're going to set out for this. 1.0

Tracy Harwood 16:47
is that going to be like expansion pack stuff? Do you think they

Damien Valentine 16:51
didn't really elaborate on that? So I'm not sure how it's going to work. I think they're more focused on this is where we want to be rather than what comes later. But they just, they just want to make a point of that's not the end. There's going to be a story that players can get involved in that will teach them various aspects of the game. So, you know, if you want to be a combat pilot, it will take you in that direction. If you want to be the trader or a miner or a pirate or whatever the story will adapt and teach you what you need to know about how to play the game, which I thought that's a good idea, because I haven't spent a lot of time in the game, because every time I tried it, it's not the most stable thing, because obviously, still in development, but there's a lot to do in it. And the game, because it is in development, they haven't spent a lot of time on tutorials, because why would you do that when the teachers are going to keep getting changed anyway? So I understand why. It's just they just drop you in it, and you have to figure out yourself at the moment. So having a system in place for when the game is actually released to teach you those things, that's a really good idea. There's something else about character dressing, characters combining armor and clothes, so you can mix and match different looks, which is, you know, for machinery, that's good because you gives you a greater range of character appearances for your film. But also, just as a player, if you want to, you want to put a long trench coat of your armor. You can do that, which is something I'd like to do. So yeah, that's mostly about that. And then the next part of it was the squadron 42 gameplay reveal. This is the single player story that takes place in the same world as Star Citizen. They showed off. It's the first hour or so of the game, and they had a developer on stage playing it, and it crashed a couple of times, which always happens when they're doing their live presentations. It's become a running joke. But what he did was, as soon as it was over, he went to their office, which is in Manchester as well, and he recorded a new playthrough without any crashes, which then got uploaded onto YouTube that night, which I have to admire. His dedication to the game and the fans to go off and do that, because it's not it's an hour and it's about an hour and a quarter. So that's a lot of time to, you know, to sit down and play a game and to record it, and then to edit it and put it up onto YouTube and all that. So I was really impressed you did that. It looks stunning. It's a very cinematic experience.

19:32
Oh, wow.

Damien Valentine 19:33
I have to admit, more it seems like you spend more time watching it than actually playing it, because they Oh, you really, good. Yeah. So the idea is you this new part. You're not actually a pilot yet. You're just this young officer on the ship. You want to be a pilot, but they haven't given you the training for it, and so you're just there, you're talking to the captain, and then suddenly these aliens attack, and you're thrust into this huge space battle. Yeah? There's all taking place in real time around you. So you look out the window, you can see stuff happening. It's actually happening. It's not just a rendered thing that's been put in front of the window. And you've got some big name stars, Gary Oldman was there and Mark Strong, Gillian Anderson, Henry Cavill, they were just there in the battle doing their bit. You spend more time watching it, and then it kind of cuts in where you're in the gun Tracy ship, and you're shooting out these alien ships that are attacking you. And then it goes on to the next part of the story. Eventually your ship.

Tracy Harwood 20:32
Do you win?

Damien Valentine 20:34
You survive. Okay, that's

Tracy Harwood 20:36
not the same.

Damien Valentine 20:37
Well, the problem was, it crashed without telling the end. So I did go back and watch the end afterwards, and you is kind of vague about what happens after that, because they don't want to give away too much, because that's the beginning of the story. Um, but the ship you're on gets really badly damaged, and so it cuts in, and you have to, you're blasting that into space, and you have to You're in zero gravity, and you have to navigate through bits of debris to get back to the last big chunk of your ship, and yet to the bridge, and you have to defend it against the aliens. They're exporting it. That's where it crashed. But then you get to an escape pod, and then it goes on to the next part of the story, whichever that's going to be, they showed a sort of cinematic trader of just things that had that. It looks very exciting. Mm, yeah, so yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Well,

Tracy Harwood 21:33
I hope it is exciting, because, considering how they've, you know, interfered with the Machinima creators. Because of this, it's gotta be worth it, yeah. So to you know, to justify it, surely,

Damien Valentine 21:49
I think it will. I mean, they said that it's about 30 hour campaign. It's gonna Yeah, and they said it's gonna be released in 2026 which I wouldn't hold them to that, because they do have reputation of delaying the games because they are. I think the biggest problem is they strive for perfection too much, and they don't stop to say that's enough. We can add more stuff later. They just want to put it all in in one go. So wow, I don't expect them to stick to that 2026 date, but I do look forward to playing it, because I liked what I saw I wrote more than the actual open world multiplayer bit. So, right, right. And the next thing was, when I was waiting for one of these panelists to start, they were showing a different part of the streamers, some of their presenters were walking around the convention, and then this area set up where these in game organizations had tables to promote themselves and what they were doing. So the presenters were going, you know, asking each one about what they do. And there was some sort like a private security company would go, and if you need an escort, you go to them and they'll you can pay them in game money, and they will come and protect your ship, or you go off and do whatever it is you want to do, and stuff like that. But the one that I really wanted to talk about was called hub net, and this is an in game organization that's all about making films and videos. So the guy that was interviewed, he said he was the the organization was the Netflix of Star Citizen. And that's what they do, is they make videos. And there's a feature length film, which I got the name of it offhand, but they've done all kinds of video content anyway. Oh, called overclocks. That was it. They had a post. Oh, yes, I know those guys, yeah. They had a poster up on the table to promote it, like a proper, excellent poster. Yeah, e

Tracy Harwood 23:52
studios there, yeah, yeah.

Damien Valentine 23:55
And so I thought, you know, I understand why they have, like the private security company and the trading company some of that, but I didn't expect an in game movie studio, yeah, and so I thought I'm going to mention that on on the channel, because it's unique, and it's machinima, and I kind of need to see more about what they do. And we

Tracy Harwood 24:17
have actually been in contact with EE studios, and they did send us a link to overclocked, and we've just never got around to having a chat about it, but it is on our list of the many films and series that we will be looking at. So yeah, we are aware of these guys, and I've been for possibly over a year, a couple of years, maybe you didn't say that. My

Damien Valentine 24:51
understanding is hub net gets is to bring all these creators together into one. So EE Studios is part of it. Okay,

Tracy Harwood 24:57
okay, I see, yeah. Yeah. Well, Overclocked is what they make. I

Damien Valentine 25:01
think, Okay, right? So, yeah, that is the all the starters of the news that I look forward to playing the game when it's finished. Well, I have actually downloaded it today, one of the films we're going to be reviewing later in the month is a Star Citizen film, and after watching it, I thought it's time to well, after watching that and these presentations, it's time to give the game another try, because every time I have it's not been entirely stable, or it's run really slowly. So I'll give it another go, because it's been a while, but it took so long to download it that I will pop up as a recording earlier on the previous episodes that it's only just finished installing, so I'm going to be giving it a try later.

Tracy Harwood 25:51
What would that be? Eight? Nine hours?

Damien Valentine 25:53
That's about six, I

Tracy Harwood 25:55
think. Good grief, yeah. And

Damien Valentine 25:58
it wasn't the download, it was the actual install that took that long I downloaded took about half an hour, and maybe an hour. I wasn't keeping track of it, but it's just it got stuck, and I thought I'll have to sort out later. But then a little pop up said it's complete, so give it a try later. Oh, wow. I do have a few extra bits of news that not necessarily started to them, but still machinima related. I did that mini episode a couple of weeks ago about the secrets of Luminara contest. This is just a little reminder that when you see this video, you still have a few weeks left to enter, but I wanted to get people working on it as soon as possible, so you had that initial video, but this is a reminder that you've got until the end of the month to enter and some really good prizes, so it's worth giving a shot. And some other news, someone has created Hamlet in Grand Theft.