New Xanatos video CS: The Movie Trailer

Well, I guess this could be considered a retro post considering all the hype in the machinima community that came with its sudden release, but here you go: Xanatos finished a new video and it was released by Machinima.com.

As one of the extras, it was an honor to witness a new Xanatos production in progress, especially since I think there's been too little of it these past 2 years.

New Updates

Hard to believe, especially with my extended absence, that there is a lot of breaking news going on in my world.

First of all, the web series Extra Credits has been picked up by Penny Arcade's PATV, and will debut its latest episode on Wednesday.

I've been helping out in testing the premise of a podcast that will run on Extra Credits' fan website Extra Curricular. Who knows when it will finally be made into a real podcast, but our first tests can be found here. Special thanks to Ikono for everything he did to help out our growing community.

Finally, in the torn apart world of the Janus Syndicate, Xanatos has decided to work on a Counter-Strike: Source parody trailer to commemorate the announcement of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. A mishap has forced a slow in progress, but Xanatos plans to finish it by the end of this week to be released by Machinima.com over the weekend.

Hope to see you later with something interesting!
J*Rod

Turbine Trouble released

Well, it's been rather quick, but the TF2 machinima has just been posted on YouTube.

Click to watch in HD

As it's said in the description, I may find a match in a Payload map to make another video. But for now I'll get back to the Extra Curricular forums.

Enjoy!
Pepe "J*Rod" Siete

Extra Curricular forum and upcoming TF2 machinima

Inspired by the problems that the chat for our Extra Credits Steam group had in realizing its potential, a few chat regulars (including myself) decided to create a fan forum called Extra Curricular, which I personally thought could be a good name for EC's games fund.

Within minutes of its first announcement on the Steam page, the forum admins were surprised to see an introduction by Yug from Game Damage, also co-hosted by Yahtzee from EC inspiration/sister series Zero Punctuation.

Also, I'm working on a TF2 replay machinima called Turbine Trouble. It's based on the last part of a match in ctf_turbine. I rendered and posted of one of the full takes as a preview of the full video, which will be posted in 720p HD.

See you later!
Pepe "J*Rod" Siete

New Steam group for Extra Credits

As a longtime fan of Extra Credits, I previously e-mailed James Portnow about whether they were interested in making a Steam group or not. I saw a potential of having another outlet of information and a closer connection between EC Nation and the games that they love so much.

Unfortunately, James did not express that much interest in making and moderating the group himself, especially since much of the crew's time was spent on either the show itself, or their jobs and future plans.

But after seeing the overwhelming support from EC Nation to support artist Allison Theus, and even making the raised funds multiple times higher than their goal, I decided to make a fan page to increase support for the show through Steam.

You can visit the new group here and feel free to invite others as well.

Best!
Pepe "J*Rod" Siete

New Portal 2 map for contest!

For the Summer Mapping Initiative at ThinkingWithPortals.com (which is almost over), I made a new single player map as an entry for it.

As of this posting, I have released version 2 of it. The latest version can be downloaded here and discussed here.

New VB6 Hangman game finished, Restarting Brian's Life mod

While I was away doing other things, I completed a Hangman game in Visual Basic 6. It features a board right out of Wheel of Fortune, a placebo loading screen, a crappy icon, music cues right out of TF2, and a cartoon hangman made entirely with lines and shapes made in VB.

[Download] (2.07 MB)

Anyway, I'm more confident I can restart the Brian's Life mod I've been working on designing for a few years. We just need some help in designing the characters and areas to start out. If you want to help out, e-mail me at czfjrod@gmail.com and join our Steam group.

Thanks!
Pepe "J*Rod" Siete (this is my new alias)