Elden Ring

S3 E93 Twin Peaks (Sept 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 6, 2023 Leave a reply

An homage and ‘unofficial tribute’ to the classic 90s TV series, this week’s review discusses a film of a game demo created by Blue Rose Team for the PS1. The demo covers the intro and events surrounding Special Agent Cooper’s arrival at Twin Peaks and his encounter with Laura Palmer and the Black Lodge. Steeped in the mythos of the virtual world that has been created, well, at least that applies to some of the CM crew more than other/s, we discuss how well it translates to contemporary times, the story portrayed and the issues that arise from this type of transformative work.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Preliminary discussion, Convergence Mod here

Sony’s update on its Ghostbuster’s Unreal test –

Twin Peaks film, released 8 August 2023 –

Download demo from here

Original Twin Peaks intro here –

S3 E89 Half Life 2: Daydream (August 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 9, 2023 Leave a reply

A performance by a camera ham, shutterbug or just a plain histrionic narcissist? This week’s review discusses an older machinima that has highly contemporary themes in it: carry-on-regardless, daydreaming, whatever, so long as the virtual camera is rolling. The film is called Daydream (2009) set to the titular song by Lovin’ Spoonful, created by Mystfit and made Valve’s Half Life 2. Needless to say, we loved the humor but what makes this machinima interesting is that it was a scripted production created by running a path sequencer inside the game, harking back to the early days of how machinimas were made but so is reminiscent of how contemporary tools such as iClone and Unreal now work.

This week we also begin with Ricky talking about ultra-wide monitors, using it to play Elden Ring (a mod required) and the #SAGAFTRA strike; and, Phil gives an overview of his remastering project of the Machiniplex collection and his homage to the great Hugh Hancock, founder the #machinima movement, the upcoming showcase of Bloodspell and also his own response to some of the hoopla that Hugh created at the time of its release in 2006!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Film, Daydream by Mystfit, released 6 January 2009

Gigabyte ultra-wide screen and Elden Ring mod, by Nexus Mods

Machiniplex Collection, remastered by Phil Rice – https://bitly/Machiniplex

Bloodspell trailer for Phil’s showcase channel –

S3 E85 Its Just A Game (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 13, 2023 Leave a reply

Nope, its not ‘just a game’, its one of the most visually stunning Gothic story open worlds ever created (according to Ricky)! In this ep, we discuss GraysonFlows’ tribute to the world of Elden Ring, set to Max Richter’s November composition, which highlights the beauty of the game from the exhausting open sequence to the final prize, creatures, battles and voice acting.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Its Just A Game | Elden Ring ‘The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story…’ by GraysonFlows, released 19 May 2022

Otis_Inf Camera Mod Patreon channel link here

Carbot Animations – Elden Ring cartoon channel link here

Quake 1: Ray Traced Mod by sultim_t (Dec 2022)

Ricky Grove Blog December 19, 2022 Leave a reply

Even the everyday gamer knows how much graphics technology has advanced over the last few years. The days of the old, pixelated textures on walls and rocks are long gone. So much so that gamers with more advanced skills have gone back to classic games like Doom and have re-coded them to include advanced graphic technology like high-definition textures and ray-traced rendering.

I’m not going to go into detail about ray tracing in this short article. You can find a complete explanation here. Essentially it has to do with how light is reproduced in a 3D game engine. Ray-traced rendering makes everything in a 3D scene look more realistic and believable. This is why adding ray tracing to games like Doom and now Quake is so exciting. The original blocky look to the game is gone. In its place is a more believable environment that adds so much to the atmosphere of horror in the game. This is perfect for those who want to go back and play the original game: it’s a better experience. It is also great for those first-time gamers who didn’t grow up with Doom or Quake.

Although certainly not at the same level of realism as modern games like Elden Ring, the new Quake mod is pretty damn good if you ask me. The sultim_t team deserves a standing ovation for their hard work.

You can download the Quake Ray Traced Mod by clicking the link. We also have a short trailer that sultim_t put on out the mod. The comments for the video are worth a read as well. Of course, you need to buy Quake from Steam in order to get started. The mod is free.


Completely Machinima S2 Ep 43 Films (August 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 11, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Damien, Ricky and Tracy discuss four very different films.  Damien reviews an interesting explainer on witches in The Folklore of Phasmophobia game, Ricky presents us with another of Jae Solina’s tutorials, this time on path tracing in Omniverse, Tracy selects Tiny Elden Ring – yep, its tiny! And Phil, absent due to sickness, ironically picked a satirical Zombie fest, which mixed Walking Dead ‘live action’ with machinima!  The team then discuss that approach to creating films, highlighting some of the key challenges with some more fab examples of films that have used the techniques well. 



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

0:57 The Folklore of Phasmophobia | Modern Mythology, by The Digital Dream Club (released 9 January 2021)

The Folklore of Phasmophobia

9:51 NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Path Tracing Test, by JSFilmz (21 June 2022) and a nice little article on the difference between rasterization, ray tracing and path tracing that folks might find interesting, Nvidia says real-time path tracing is on the horizon, but what is it? By Eric Frederiksen, Gamespot.com, 1 May 2022

NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Path Tracing Test

17:33 Tiny Elden Ring | Tilt Shift, by Flurdeh (11 April 2022) and here’s Flurdeh’s list of filmmaking tools https://github.com/Flurdeh/Youtube-Resources and a post-production tutorial on the tilt shift effect tutorial, How to create Tilt-Shift / Miniature World Time-lapses, by Science Filmmaking Tips (24 Jan 2017)

Tiny Elden Ring

27:27 What a typical project Zomboid Run looks like, by Pathoze (26 Jan 2022)

What a typical project Zomboid Run looks like

31:45 Discussion: using live action with machinima footage in films, what are the challenges?

Examples mentioned –

39:11 Damien’s The Great Bug War on Machinima Expo (8 December 2014)

Damien and Kim Genly

46:12 Ricky’s reference to a 2D/3D combo – Carson Mell’s TARANTULA A-1 : Nightmares (5 August 2012), shot in  Los Angeles

TARANTULA A-1: Nightmares

48:30 Phil Tippett’s stop mo film Mad God, including live action with animation (now available on Shudder TV)

Mad God

51:20 Tutsy Navarathna’s film, A Journey into the Metaverse and an interview we did with him on the podcast in Season 1

A Journey into the Metaverse