Man, I’m terrible. I’ve waited since August to answer some of your questions. Hopefully you don’t all hate me for that, but I think I’ve given you plenty of other reasons to loathe me before this oversight.
Because it’s Christmas and I’m feeling charitable, I figured it was finally time to give you guys a few answers. As I said last time, feel free to leave more questions in the comments, especially if I didn’t get to your question this time.
And now, Q’s plus A’s:
1) What all have you been up to since the hiatus?
GamerSushi! Nick, Jeff and I help run the video game blog and even recorded a few podcasts. We’ve been on a bit of a break from that (for reasons I’m about to list below), but they’re a good time and worth a listen. We’ve got a video podcast going up soon if Nick can ever pull himself from his beard long enough to do things.
In terms of other stuff going on, Daniel and Nick have both been out in Los Angeles, working for the man and making some money with various productions. They are currently working on a pilot for Dan Harmon’s Channel 101, an original piece they crafted with Jace called Street Justice. I’ve seen the script and I think it’s going to be awesome. As soon as it’s online, I’ll direct you guys over to it. Daniel’s also been updating a design blog, Done Well Is So Much Better, at times. It’s neat.
As for me, I’ve been working on the second draft of my novel. I’ve also taken a freelance writing gig with Rooster Teeth to help on Season 10 of Red Vs Blue. It’s kind of cool. I wrote a tad more about it on my blog, if you’re interested.
2) Do you guys miss working on content for Smooth Few Films?
Yes and no. I don’t think any of us miss the exercise in tedium that was Leet World, or the ridiculous daily grind that made up Web Zeroes. Much less doing all that work for no pay. The experience taught us a lot about ourselves and about what we like to do, but we’re not itching to go back to that formula of lots of work and no lives for no compensation.
That being said, we do get that itch and miss out on the fun part of storytelling. There’s nothing quite like writing or producing something and knowing that thousands of people are going to see what you’re working on, and soon. Everything else since then has felt like working in a vacuum. So yeah, we get nostalgic about the platform that we had to show people our stuff. But that’s about it.
3) Will you guys make anything in Counter-Strike: GO?
This is a tricky one. I don’t want to say never, but I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep either. As of right now, I’m not in love with the character models of CS: GO, and I’m not sure it would translate all that well for a fun little updated TLW short.
In addition, I’m not even sure what kind of machinima opportunities would even be available with the updated engine. It’s one of those things where I’d have to play it for awhile and see if there was anything we could do. And on top of that, we’d all have to want to do it.
I think my big worry would be releasing a one-off short, and then having people go nuts and demanding more. That’s a good problem to have, to be sure. But it’s still an issue to consider.
4) I was thinking of using Roxio Game Capture for the PC to capture footage, do you think this piece of hardware is a good buy? Or should I use an actual capture card?
I’m not the expert here (that would be Daniel and Nick), but I’d recommend a dedicated capture card when you can, if your concern is maintaining the quality of the original. I’m guessing going through a box like that is adding a stop for the footage, which just gives it another spot to lose quality. Also, I haven’t read great reviews of that particular piece of Roxio hardware. If nothing else, and you decide that you don’t want to invest the kind of money in a dedicated card, I’d always recommend hardware over software.
5) Can I make TLW DVDs for my own personal use?
Go for it. The reason we never made them is because we can’t sell them. Download the episodes and go nuts! You can’t sell them either, by the way. So don’t do that.
Okay, so this is the question I asked in the previous thread;
Will you guys ever release the rest of the S1 Soundtrack, and the S2 Soundtrack?
The rest of the Season 1 soundtrack, yes. I’ll probably do some of that later this week, actually. Sorry for the delay.
The Season 2 soundtrack? Probably not. Most of those bits are just 30 second cues that Jace cooked up. I doubt he’ll want to revisit those 30 second cues and turn them into full fledged songs 2 years later.
Why not release the 30 second cues? Season 2 had some pretty kickass music.
Well, 30 seconds is being generous. Some of them are 10 seconds, some are 20, some are 40. We’d have to go through each episode, find the original files Jace sent, divy them up into a lot of different music clips, etc…
Another part of this is that we don’t just want to release whatever and call it content. I know Jace wouldn’t be a fan of that, either. If we think it’ll be valuable at some point, we’ll do it, but otherwise, it’s probably going to be too much work for not enough value (for you guys).
I can see that, but they’d still be nice to have at some point. However, I do see your point. It’d be great if Jace mixed the stuff into a soundtrack, or maybe even just a couple of songs.
Yeah, to Eddy’s point – the reason you remember the show (and music) so fondly is because care was put into the overall presentation. Releasing tiny snippets of disconnected music might not sound like a big deal, but I’ll bet you anything they wouldn’t live up to your expectations. They’d sound like clips of music missing their visuals, instead of actual songs.
I just feel like it’d be a shame to let all that awesome music you guys did go to waste, is all. *shrug*
Thanks for filling us in Eddy; Between your blog and Gamer Sushi, I need to catch up on my ‘Invading your personal life’ quota ROFL. Cool to hear that Dan and Nick got some work going for them, and you on your novel. You say your writing your second draft? Golly. I’ve been writing a sci-fi screenplay for about 5 years now, its on its ninth draft and counting.
As for CS: Go, I am not impressed. If CS: Source could not beat CS: 1.6 in terms of gameplay and legacy, than CS: Go will not beat Source. All these games try to be overhyped and then let down gamers on ‘improvements’ that aren’t necessary. That’s why I hate Portal 2. (This sort of thing is meant for GamerSushi)
It’s great to hear back from the Smooth Few team!
Nice to hear from you guys again. I still watch The Leet World from time to time just for the lols, would be awesome if you guys could revisit it in the future and make some kind of short movie 🙂 Hope you guys have the best of luck in your future endeavours, looking forward for the next update.
– MPC
indeed, nice to hear from you people, at least it’s good to know you’re not 100% dead.
how odd, i post right below MPC.
-Koach
Hm… Okay, here’s an idea.
If Jace dosen’t have the time or isn’t willing to spend the effort to mix the tracks himself ((I can understand why; don’t worry.)), why not release them to the fans in the form of a contest? Get the fans to mix the songs themselves, then you guys could pick the best ones to put on the front page of your site.
…Yeah, probably not gonna happen for the same reasons mentioned above, but it’s a nice thought, anyway. ^^;
It’s nice to hear u again guys.
Late chrismas to everyone!
I don’t think GO is exacly part of cs, i saw some screens and i had deja vu. Seriosly it’s just like mw3mp’s maps and sometimes it recalls tf2.
I won’t tell something bad about this game in advance, but i feeling same when cs:s came out: ” I won’t play that, cs 1.6 foreveeeeeeeer!!”
I played css few times before i watch tlw.
Im sure Valve must pay u a lot of money for adver-machinima tlw, because
after that I fell in love with game, when i playing i remember how i played 1.6, and when i watched TLW. Sweet memories. Im sure im not alone.
I also like to play Garry’s mod in TTTmod also know as Trouble in terrorist town. Heard about?
Nice and very funy game, rules like in Mafia game, were u mafia, detective and citizens. There Traitor(of terrorists),detective(of them), and innocents(fun rly? innocent terrorist lol)
there cs:s terrorist skins, on some maps hl2 skins, but game is awesome. i suggest you.
and about sountrack of season 2
nevermind 30,20,10 seconds, its better than i try to cut music from videos and remove voices.
if it needs i can buy it, music from s2e7 is ASOOOOME!
but please i need it, there lots need it.
Good luck to you all guyz!
Hey, totally agree about the bits of tracks from season 2. If You have them somewhere it’d be real generous of You to post them here.
Hope everything stays well and Happy Holidays! =)
So glad to see that you guys are happy doing new things, and have moved on since TLW. Still miss the show, but I look forward to see more things that you guys do.
Some of your youtube videos have a lot of views. Too bad valve probably doesn’t let anyone put advertisements on valve related videos.
i know its VERY L8 to ask…but what is the map that looks like a barn?
Great to hear you’re all back and running! TLW will forever be missed, but it’s great to see you back in the saddle, keep it up!
Good hearing from you guys, really miss you guy’s work but I can understand why your not creating stuff, as I’m in a smaller scale similar boat at the moment with game programming. Still I got incredibly fed up with work today and wound up finding an old leet world file I saved out of fan-boyness which led to me watching a bit of the show all over again. Which then to pass more time led to me messing with Mario Paint Composer.
Enjoy the first minute or so of the Producer’s Theme in mario paint composer. May do the rest of it if I ever need a break again. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtUxJDG3lxM
It’s been close to a year since an upload. I’m real bummed to hear that SFF is pretty much dead. But what an incredible run it was. Thanks Eddy, Dan, and Nick, for kick-ass machinimas and fond memories.