T w e n t y S i d e d
The show is on hiatus this week. I’ll be announcing the next series on Thursday. In the meantime, I thought I’d give a look at how we do what we do. It’s a lot more complex than most people imagine.
 |
Note that Josh needs to wear two sets of headsets. One for the game, the other for vent. The vent discussion must be isolated from the game, or else the other hosts would hear our own voices echoing back at us over Livestream on a five-second delay, which would be a recipe for madness.
Livestream is too low-def to use as the raw footage. It lags out, pixelates, runs ads in the middle of recording, and throws up little ad boxes with pixel-hunt close buttons and distracting animations. It really blurs the line between free service and intentional griefing. So we need to capture the footage with Fraps to get a nice, clean recording suitable for sharing.
Editing seems to take Josh a few hours. Then the encoding in WMM takes about an hour. Then the upload to Viddler takes another hour. Then Viddler spends about half an hour re-encoding the whole thing in their internal format. Then I can watch the final cut of the episode and write the post to go with it. Then everyone reminds me that I left the video set to private. Then I go fix that.
A couple of people have suggested that we cover console games. This just isn’t feasible. Aside from the fact that I’m the only one in the group who owns any consoles, trying to video capture a console game would add another branch to the technological clusterfarg you see above. I have a video capture card so that I can play console games through my PC, and it’s a mess. There’s serious video delay issues if you go for HD (which we would need to do) and the equipment to do so is expensive. And Fraps does strange things with video-in that I’ve never been able to solve. In short, it would be messy, expensive, and probably wouldn’t work very well, all so the crew could comment on console games they haven’t played and don’t understand. Which would lead to self-righteous protests from people who insist you “know what you’re talking about!!” before you criticize something.
So let’s not do that.
We talked about doing Deus Ex. The idea is that I would be the player and Josh, Mumbles, and Rutskarn would commentate. Note that unlike Josh, I can’t talk and play at the same time. When I play, I stop moving as soon as I start talking. Or I talk with lots of halting pauses. “This is the part… (shooting) this guy, see… (more shooting) this guy wanted us to use a non-lethal… (stops to fiddle with a door) this… this weapon here… (shouting and chaos) no, this weapon… see how it’s like a… uh… (episode ends) this is the… it’s a crossbow that shoots… (the rest of the team leave Vent) see how these guys… well, that last guy, if you notice how he was… um, like, taking damage, like, over time?” It might be amusing to see me do it in the same way that it might be amusing to see Stevie Wonder play frisbee, but my family assures you that watching me act like an idiot does eventually get old. So I’d have to keep my mouth shut.
We batted the Deus Ex idea around for a bit but then shelved it. I think a full run of Deus Ex would be too long to fit our current format. It was made back in the glorious days of 20-hour shooters, and so we’d spend almost five months getting through it. But I think a three or four episode tour of the early game would be a lot of fun and would be a nice contrast to the modern stuff we’ve been playing. Maybe play until we reach Lebedev, which is a good example of actual choices and consequences in a game instead of a binary “do you want the good points or the evil points?” decision.
We were going to do KOTOR next. We got together on Saturday night with every intention of chasing down Darth Revan, but Josh found out that Fraps can’t record the in-game videos. We could convert the BNK video into an AVI, and then Josh could edit that footage back in. Or, we could just go with a game that’s not going to be such a hassle.
Starcraft 2: Rush Analysis
I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.
TitleWhat’s Inside Skinner’s Box?
What is a skinner box, how does it interact with neurotransmitters, and what does it have to do with shooting people in the face for rare loot?
The Mistakes DOOM Didn't Make
How did this game avoid all the usual stupidity that ruins remakes of classic titles?
Bowlercoaster
Two minutes of fun at the expense of a badly-run theme park.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
KOTOR? DEUS EX? you name two of my most favoritest games ever and then casually tell me you’re not gonna give them the spoiler warning treatment after all… This makes me sad. You’d better do a really cool game to make up for this Shamus!
But seriously, I appreciate all the trouble you guys (and girl, although Mumbles doesn’t seem like someone who cares about this sort of thing it never hurts to be careful) take to give us these great videos. Whatever game you do next you’ll probably rock it anyway. Just promise me it’s not a pipedream remake.
Wait a sec. *Mumbles* is the one that’s a girl?
Oh my.
Now I’m really confused. Who did you think was the girl? Josh??
Every time someone thinks Rutskarn is a girl, I take the internet to Taco Bell.
Um, maybe I’m just a clueless noob type, but I REALLY didn’t get this reference…
A little help, somebody?
There’s no reference, I made it up in my brain.
Making fun of Rutskarn is a Mumbles Passtime.
I think it’s really an internet thing in general, Mumbles.
Yes, yes it is.
Silly little person that he is and all. = D
careful there, mumbles he may cut you off from the pun factory.
He. Now that’s a thought I have to get used to, now. *shudder*
Ha! Not only did you think Ruts was a girl, you thought he had an attractive voice!
Awesome.
Rutskarn’s a boy? I thought he was some sort of hideous pun demon.
He is, but a gender-specific one.
What are you guys talking about? Everyone knows Rutskarn is a mechanical squirrel, and thus genderless, crafted entirely from chocolate who killed his creator and assumed his identity.
Yes, but that creator was male, and therefore Rutskarn’s current identity is male.
Wait, Rutuskarn is a guy?
Rutskarn is the girl who always yells “Stop shooting me!”, right?
Every time I insult Rutskarn, you give me free food?
You might want to re-think this plan.
Though I had my suspicions for a while during ME1, no. And We’ve seen Shamus’s epic beard before. Therefore, Mumbles (who is, shockingly, not a non-girl) can prepare a massive party at TacoBell indeed.
So.. no Deus Ex. No KOTOR. The situation seems dire, indeed.
How about Overlord? That’d be funny, and you’d have plenty of puzzle to rant about.
Pleeeeeeeeeeze make the effort! I would love to see Darth Dick against the universe! I guess I’m assuming that you would be taking the dark side route – seems to fit right in to your “chaotic stupid” way of doing things. And to let HK have some fun…
(I tried to play a dark side playthrough, but found I just couldn’t stand making the dark side choices and gave up very early on.)
And then make the Light Side choice at the last minute just to show how meaningless all the other choices were.
“I was rude to a Sith. I’m a hero again!”
Seconding this. Man, KOTOR would seriously rock.
While a full-season Shamus-play Spoiler Warning might be too much of a good thing (bad thing, whatever), I’d still be interested in seeing one or two episodes of you act like an idiot.
I’m fully aware that’ll never happen, mind.
Could you break the link between game and commentary (edit: looking back, that sounds daft, but stick with it…)? That seems to be the biggest problem.
Josh (or Shamus or someone else) pre-records it and distributes it as a file.
(If you can mirror the VGA in some way and record on a separate machine, that might be better.)
You all get on Vent.
All press play on your separate off-line players; if your a fraction of a second off, it doesn’t matter.
You press record on Vent.
At the end, dub the Vent recording over the top of the game video audio, then shove down the `tubes.
The downside is the game doesn’t react to the commentary (“hey look back at this thing down here?”). But frankly, that doesn’t happen very often and when it does Josh is usually too busy fighting/dying to do much about it. If you give him a list of “things we want to talk about” then he can look at them specifically.
EDIT: Oh, and Jade Empire?
Mnaw, I think that the reaction, behaviour and other minor details would immediately fall apart. I mean, sure, maybe it could work, but it may aswell just turn out to completely ruin the episode, who knows.
I think it would hurt some of the fun and the spontaneousness of the whole thing. For example, we’d never get moments like Mumbles telling Josh to do something, without warning him that a deadly trap is about to be sprung.
The video’s set to private.
(hee hee hee)
I still say you should have done Barbie Horse Adventure… Your fools to pass that masterpiece of a game up.
My 8yo daughter loves that game (she’s a horse nut)… it gets REALLY boring to watch, REALLY REALLY REALLY fast.
And the storyline is lame, even by children’s books standards (ok, it’s not quite as bad as Dick and Jane).
I started to listen to a few of these, but one of the microphones (Mumbles?) is so scratchy it gives me a headache to listen to it.
Looks like a lot of work to put these together though, so I’m sure you can’t get everything perfect.
Embarrassing newbie mistake! I fixed my mic about three episodes in so I could say BEEEESSS without ripping listener ears out.
So you fixed your mic for a noble cause. Not many can say the same.
Yes. And now while playing Bioshock and using my favorite plasmid, all I hear in my head is “BEEEESSS, BEEESSS, BEEESS”.
Yippie.
Man, that schadenfreude sure hit the spot.
The fact that your not doing KOTOR doesn’t depress me because your skipping a fantastic game, it depresses me because I’ll never get to hear Josh utter the words “Darth Cuffbert”…
Half Life 2.
No need to consider much. Runs like a wet noodle nowadays, looks good, plays smooth (in terms of gameplay), changes locales so the scenerey doesn’t get boring, no out-of-game cutscenes.
I am seriously disappointed that you did not consider it.
Also, to avoid sounding like a HL2 fanboy (which I somehow am not, despite wanting to see that game on SW), I recommend X2:The Threat. Those who’ve played it (more than the initial 7 hours of headbanging) will understand :P
Whilst I love the X series, that would possibly be the most mind-numbingly boring Let’s Play to ever be aired. It’s 95% sitting there waiting for the pretty stars to drift past
HL2 is long and honestly there’s HUGE portions with nothing interesting to comment on. Sure the introductionary levels, nova prospekt and the citadel are fine but the highway, sewer, waste treatment and city 17 levels are lessons in dull in my mind.
Plus I’ve played through it too many times to find much interest in them commenting on it.
Plus Shamus clearly loves this game too much. Praise is boring :P
KOTOR is long though when you break it down. As most lets plays more than adequately demonstrate, an RPG is going to be an exercise in repetitive tedium (by video standards).
Keep up the hard work, I know this isn’t easy!
Hey shamus, if you ever want to never have to deal with ads again for programs like viddler, there’s a little plug-in for firefox called adblocker. It works wonders for watching videos. Just type it into google and you should get it. A person told me about it when I was watching streams on livestream and started going insane, like you guys would.
That doesn’t stop the Viddler ads. Changing your Geohash location to Somalia stops Viddler ads. Adblock does nothing against Viddler(did you really think no one on this blog had tried adblock?)
He’s talking about livestream, not Viddler. Although it sounds strange if it actually works.
This is the reason I LOVE Viddler! I’m from Bulgaria and I get no commercials. When I use Blip I have to listen to 30 secs of an unskippable commercial for every video. It gets really old, really fast. Not to mention that those commercials have NO chance of working on me, because they are for products that are not sold over here.
Works for me, cept when I allow ad’s on Shamus’s site, and then I just go to Viddler and watch it.
I’d still love to see you guys (and girl) team up in L4D and talk about it. But seeing how long it takes and how much work you got in your hands already, I guess you wouldn’t need any more side projects :P
I second that. I’m a bit worried that the games may be too short to really be more than short, one-off episodes though.
If you guys did this and wanted a fourth, I never say no to L4D. =p
If you guys do a special episode like this and want an Infected team, I know a group of four who would love to eat some survivors.
Here’s a hint, three of them rhyme with Rebar, Lays, and Wackfawkes.
I’d watch that.
The problem is, they couldn’t really talk a lot in the meantime, beyond the average “OH CRAP HELP THERE’S A HUNTER ON ME HELP”.
I have a feeling it would be kind of like walking five dogs while trying to type a text message and recite Shakesperian poetry. While on a bicycle.
It would still be fun to watch and listen to.
Scratch that, it wouldn’t be fun, it would be hilarious.
I laughed at this, out loud, at work. I read the comments thread, pasted this in, and I’m grinning like an idiot as I try to not laugh again. Seriously, that’s just comedy gold (that it could apply so well to me probably helps).
And seriously, is there not some way to simply capture the actual feed? One would think someone would have come up with one of those by now – some hardware that captures the actual monitor feed (like Ye Olde VCR did to Ye Olde TV, you know?) instead of using software that has to interact with everything… That sounds a lot simpler (though perhaps more expensive).
As Shamus said, the feed is relatively low-quality, compared to Fraps.
I think he was talking about recording the video signal being sent sent from Josh’s computer to his monitor, not the Livestream feed. In the event that such devices exist, they would allow you to perform high-quality screen capture, without lagging the computer. You’d still need to run Livestream, though.
Hey all! So I think I’m failing at the internetz, because I keep losing comments to the ether. Lemme try again.
It amuses me that Spoiler Warning was thinking about doing KOTOR, because my friend, KingODuckingham, and myself have been hard at work with our own video LP, currently in its sixth episode about KOTOR! Our video LP is called “WASD” and comes out every Wednesday and Saturday night (which essentially translates to Thursdays and Sundays, for those not on PST). We have a big advantage technologically in that we can meet together occasionally to record a batch of episodes, so we don’t have to deal with the Livestream mess. Check us out here:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/WASDShow
@Josh – Best way I found to deal with those BNK files is to download the free tool from RAD Game Tools themselves. It can convert BNK to .avi for you. Also, another great free tool is Virtual Dub, which can basically convert anything to anything, extremely useful in dealing with that random FRAPS codec they use.
Look forward to some of your guys’ comments! We hope to have an honest-to-goodness website up and running soon, but until then, Viddler it is. ;)
I never managed to run KOTOR on my PC, there were always some graphic card issues or whatnot, thanks a lot for that link :)
I had similar problems with KOTOR when I tried it on the PC–very buggy I guess? I played KOTOR the first time on the X-box, so playing through on the PC is a slightly different experience for me–they added another (admittedly small) planet in the PC version!
Also I can’t figure out how to swing my swords/lightsabers around wherever I go, which I totally knew how to do on the X-box, that’s a huge disappointment. Anyway, glad we could help. ;)
First time I’ve commented here but I’m a long-time reader first-time poster. Your blog has been in no small way inspirational, Shamus. Thank you!
I think ‘x’ by default unslings and does the twirling animation on the pc? I never had KOTOR one problems, but KOTOR 2 always forgets to give the corpses their skins if they’re just atmospheric corpses.
This makes Peragus far more disturbing, but also hides some plot points…
One thing that might be worth looking at is the OnLive service–it’s cloud-based gameplay with free spectating possible. Their library isn’t huge yet, but it would sidestep LiveStream. Just a thought. [It looked impressive at PAX this year.]
I don’t understand how a 20-hour shooter is too long when you’re considering RPGs (and have filmed them in the past). A full play-through of KOTOR takes me around 40 hours, though I suppose there’s quite a bit you can skip along the way. The in-game videos in that one are just weird; I had a lot of trouble with them crashing the game.
Remember Fallout 3? That dragged on a fair bit. It’d be all right if they could be sure the game would support, what, 30-40 episodes of commentary, but really, what game would, and what exit strategy is there if the whole thing starts to drag for some but not for others? 20 hours, that’s near enough a semester’s worth of lectures, the best analysts and orators in the world are going to be hard pressed to fill that time meaningfully talking about one work.
Me, I’m glad they’re not doing KOTOR. I got it off Steam a while ago and haven’t finished it, since Morrowind is eating my time. I’d feel obligated to hammer away at it if it was up next. Part of the problem is I played Jade Empire just before, so the combat and movement just feels wrong.
I still hgave hope for Psychonauts especially since its like $10 on both Steam and GoG. But since few people actually played it, I have a feeling our friendly commentators may not have either.
I know I have, and I’m pretty sure at least a few others have as well, although the collecting might get old.
Honestly, Tim Schafer HIMSELF said something along the lines of “a lot of people bought Psychonauts, actually, but everyone keeps pretending it was a flop to preserve its little ignored-darling status.”
So… yeah?
Actually, I never bought the game myself. Back in the day (so about 4 years ago) Gametap had it as one of the free to play games through its free service. I also played Second Sight that way but all the voices sounded like everyone inhaled helium 10 second before hand which was hilarious (I quit playing due to the infinite number of guards when an alarm sounded, being used to Deus Ex where the alarms merely called the existing guards to your area).
One of these days I’m going to buy it from GoG, I just have too many games on my plate as it is.
Oh and the collecting stuff if I remeber wasn’t too bad for the most part and you don’t need to get all of them to still have 90% of the nifty abilities.
I TOTALLY SUGGESTED THIS.
YOU ARE TOTALLY AWESOME. THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE IN REPLY TO YOUR STATEMENT.
THEY SHOULD TOTALLY LISTEN TO YOU.
I’m hoping for a more obscure title this time through. Maybe something in the goth-punk genre?
What? Batman?
Although not obscure, he certainly fits the genre.
(Or did we have something in mind?)
“Gothic-punk” is a phrase coined by White Wolf to describe the setting of the World of Darkness.
I have a feeling that VtM:B would not be taken well, nor would it be over in less that 60 episodes. It would give Shamus things to rant about, and Josh easy ways to completely break the game, but, it’s long, and unless you mod it, it’s incredibly buggy.
I played it unmodded before I ever played it modded and didn’t find the bugs to be show-stopping. A lot of the worst ones you can miss if you’re not doing all the side-quests.
But if you don´t do the side-quests, don´t you end underleveled for the Final Showdown of Ultimate Slaying?
They were underlevelled for the ending of Mass Effect because they skipped most sidequests, too, they just cheated in great gear and such for it. This is a show, so a little jiggery pokery to preserve the flow isn’t a great tragedy.
The only mandatory sidequests are the Plague and the serial killer one. Possibly whatever the thinbloods want you to do. Also, the prothetics maker, because Vampire Reginald Cuftbert the Third would totally run around smacking people with an actual severed arm.
Also, going into the hospital and feeding heather to make her your blood slave.
Cheating is ridiculously easy, if they wind up in the end crawl without a goodly amount of xp and items, you can cheat for them.
Cheating isnt even actually necessary. As long as you take any race with obfuscate, you’re home safe whatever level you are. Just spend any and all of your first points on that spell and voila: instant melee kills on everything except a few lategame bosses. That would get very boring to watch though.
“But since few people actually played it, I have a feeling our friendly commentators may not have either.”
What would the tone change to the show be if the game was new? Would there be a lack of commentary, or would the novel experiences make up for it? Would the chance of being “stuck” ruin the flow?
Hmmmm, it would make for an interesting experiment…
And after this its mass effect 2,right?Right?!Come on,dont hold out on us!We need to see how shepard punches the reporter again!!
I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favorite choice on the Citadel.
Please start using space after punctuation marks. I know it’s not technically needed for correct writing, but it just makes it ever so slightly more readable.
Sorry,but wont do it.Same reason I dont use smileys whenever I can,or typing 0 instead of o on my cell phone.
And what reason is that? I just don’t see a connection between those things and leaving a space after punctuation.
Space after punctuation is just a style,the same way putting a smiley after you make a joke is just a style.And it is not my style.Is it easier for me to convey that Im sarcastic if I put ;) after a sentence?Sure.But I wont do it.
Writing about proper grammar(even though neither way is wrong, and your method will be assumed to be wrong by the majority of the population) while leaving out an apostrophe and using poor sentence structure. LOL!
;)
I already am writing in a non native language for me,so everything I type is already just so people would understand me.I could always just type in my native language and leave a link towards a translator in the end of the sentence.People would still be able to understand me,but it would take much more effort on their side.So I dont bother myself with using apostrophes,or capitalizing letters(except when replying to someone specific,like to Shamus,or to Viktor).
Technically, all comments are replies to Shamus.
And you used to respect good style. This is the first thread I’ve seen you not.
I really don’t agree that using smileys and replacing letters with numbers is equivalent of using space after punctuation when it comes to writing style. If only because the latter is the only one recommended to me by language teachers. And not following the latter causes spell checkers to throw a fit.
And you’re not the only one who has English as a secondary language. My native is Finnish which has some loan words but is otherwise very different from English. Granted, using space after punctuation is recommended in it as well, but there’s a lot less capitalisation.
Hey, a Finn. I used to hang out with a bunch of Finns (purely online, obviously). Something they used to remark to me was that learning English seemed easy compared to learning Finnish. Would you agree with that?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: Not by much.
Full-ish:
Most if not all of my friends who have said so have been good at English from a young age, most likely because they’ve played games and watched TV shows and movies that were in it (only children’s entertainment is ever dubbed here) So they’ve most likely been good enough to pass mandatory English classes by the time they’ve started. Add to this the fact that Finnish teachers are more likely to note even the smallest of mistakes and it’s very likely that they just felt like Finnish was more difficult.
Then there’s Penny-Arcade’s Tycho’s posts where he mentions about teaching his son (or daughter, can’t remember) English, and mentions the fact that in English there’s barely any connection between how words are written versus how they’re pronounced. Finnish has some of that, but there’s only a few that don’t follow a rule and the rest could be considered technicalities. (‘-ng-‘ is pronounced as a velar nasal, as well as ‘n’ in ‘-nk-‘, but this happens naturally IMO)
However, in Finnish words get endings that can mutate the stem word by some, which seems to be a rare attribute in a language. And hard for some to learn. There are also some obscure exceptions in rules and so on, but so does English. Which feeds my suspicion that the Finnish saying that English is easier just feel like it because they never had as knowledgeable and pedantic English teachers as their Finnish teachers.
The biggest hurdle at learning Finnish I’d say is the mutable stem words, which can look very different when used with a suffix than without, which can lead to confusion. Doesn’t really help that while Finnish sports relatively few exceptions in it’s rules those exceptions stand out all the more.
I might remember some bits wrong, and I think I’m forgetting quite a bit. It’s been several years since I last studied Finnish, so if anyone is curious I suggest visiting Wikipedia or something. Just remember, getting a headache is par for the course.
All in all, if 10 000 people who didn’t know either Finnish or English nor any language from the same groups, I’d say most would find English easier to learn. I just doubt that a Finnish, whose parents spoke Finnish and grew in an area where it was spoken, actually had harder time learning Finnish. Just had harder time perfecting it, which is at least what my Finnish teacher tried to do.
Or did you mean on a personal level? Hard to say. After all the first time you start learning a language is at the age of 1 or 2 (can’t remember) and I had first English classes the same year I turned 9. I didn’t really have a hard time learning either. I scored lower in Finnish, but that’s to be expected since I actively improved my English but not Finnish when I was young.
To be fair, you’re far less likely to find someone that doesn’t know a language at least somewhat related to English (a very large portion of the world’s languages are either Romance languages or Germanic languages; English is a Germanic language with a large Romance vocabulary) than you are to Finnish (which, along with Hungarian, belongs to its own language group unrelated to any other language on the planet.)
So any random sampling of 10,000 is more likely to have less knowledge of Finnish than English.
All I remember of Finnish from the several years I spent hanging out with Finns was a few curse words, and probably pretty basic and crude ones, as most of the Finns I knew were still in high school or just out of it.
PS I hear you guys are kicking some international butt in education these days. Good for you.
And there are people with much less skill in english than me,so should I go and fix all of their mistakes?I could change my typing,but I dont want to try.Ive typed like this forever,and while I am always improving my vocabulary and grammar,Im not going to try to rectify my use of punctuation.Call me stubborn or trolling for that,but look at my nickname before you do.
@krellen(its nicer to reply in a single comment):
Really?Ive never used apostrophes and space after punctuation marks before(except in rare cases of words ending with s),so maybe youve got me confused,or didnt notice.
And while technically all comments are replies to Shamus,its not really so.There have been numerous discussions that he hasnt been part of(and probably a lot he didnt even care for,as well as some he didnt even read).Why else did he implement the system to reply to a certain person after all?
Shamus has stated, more than once, that he reads every single comment that is posted, even the ones posted to really really old posts.
If, for example, someone misspells something consistently it’s safe to assume that he’s not aware of it. Correcting him in that case is not in my opinion rude or wrong, but helpful. It’s hard to improve yourself if you don’t know about any mistakes. However it’s very easy not to improve yourself and ignore other’s attempts to do so.
In this case I just hoped that you’d change style, thinking that you had not realised that your current style makes your posts less comfortable to read. Although I’m just happy you’re not using that annoying “Every Word Starts With A Capital Letter”-style.
“Windows Movie Maker.”
THERE’S your problem!
No, but seriously, it’s the big problem, as it encodes like crap and barely does what you want it to do editing-wise.
I use Camtasia, which gives me options like encoding into flv, which I could then upload to Viddler and they wouldn’t re-encode it at all, leaving the finished product looking better than ever. (so long as I set the resolution or forced Viddler to do mine, or just skip that headache and use blip, which, with the smaller file size from properly encoded files that WMM doesn’t do, would be possible)
You can use other programs, of course, so long as they can process a video in a file format that’s not WMV, like say, MP4 or AVI, or again, FLV if you’re going the Viddler route. (Viddler likes FLV cause that what it encodes the files into, so uploading a FLV means Viddler will just host it instead of ruining it then hosting it)
EDIT: Livestream is also a problem, but I don’t actually have solutions for that… ustream would be your best bet, or maybe do a Skype video call, though there’s probably a better alternative that I’m simply not aware of floating around the internet…
Could take some searching, but I’ll bet that search time is more than made for the time you gain with not going insane with Livestreams greifing disguised as advertisements.
Agreed. Windows Movie Maker is the biggest turd of a video editing application on this planet.
Anything is better. Hell, cutting film by hand is better!
You mean cutting by hand and pasting it with your own spit!
TWO SETS OF HEADPHONES? Really? Where do we chip in to buy Josh even a piece-o-junk little UBDJ box so that he can get the audio into a single set of cans?
Or use ear buds?
Or maybe pump the sound to desktop speakers and pull a headset off one ear?
Or maybe, just maybe, have a separate program for recording voices/game sound, so that you can listen to both with them interfering with each other?
This is one of those annoyingly easy problems to solve that still requires really detailed directions and on the fly troubleshooting; I could solve it in 5 minutes or less if I was actually at the computer he uses, but trying to give him advice over the internet is next to useless.
Yeah. Why don’t we just chip in and buy him a Mac? I do this kind of thing (not for video games, but for other purposes) all the time. I use a composite-to-firewire box to take my video feed into the computer (Sd only, since I don’t have need of HD atm). This feed is then displayed on my secondary monitor in either Quicktime (if I’m recording to disk at the same time) or PhotoBooth. I use Camtwist to create a virtual webcam from the video window, which is then streamed using a variety of tools, depending on the need: Ustream for larger audiences, or an RTSP server for smaller ones (hosted on my own E10 network). If I need to do fancy crap to the feed like lower thirds or PiP, I’ll use BoinxTV to do the studio work (in which case I can eliminate the intermediary Quicktime or Photobooth windows).
Damn, that looks confusing when I read it back. But it works, and it’s quite simple- honestly! I can change it up depending on what I’m streaming, too- for example, if my source(s) is/are all HD cameras with Firewire ports, I’ll run them all into a hub and use BoinxTV for the switching and everything, and let Camtwist feed the web stream.
I dunno- maybe it’s because I am a full-time media tech and do this all the time, but it makes my angels weep to hear how difficult Shamus and his crew have it to make this Wonderful Thing for us.
Where IS that damn DONATE button, Shamus?
PS: For the two-way audio issues, is it possible in Windoze to set up multiple virtual sound inputs and then choose which one goes where? With my system, each piece of software allows me to choose the video and audio sources (independently), so I can tell Ustream or BoinxTV to use one audio source (line in, for example) while I record to disk from the Firewire input (which is both audio and video, but since my inputs are RCA, I can mess around with that however I want).
I would like to see you do a horror game, Silent Hill perhaps. But thinking about it that might not be the best idea since it’s been confirmed – the 4 of you instantly kill any notion of suspenseful atmosphere or fear.
Maybe Guitar Hero instead – everyone booing at Josh while he misses his beats. I can’t see that ever possibly getting old.
I am actually kinda hoping Dead Space will be the next one.
I second the motion – particularly so I can hear someone else bitch about invulnerable bosses, so I’m not alone about that.
In all seriousness – I made it past the freaking asteroid shooting sequence, but that boss stopped me dead, and switching to Easy would mean going through 5 chapters of gameplay again.
I’d suggest Amnesia: The Dark Descent (most terrifying game I’ve ever played), but that’s really an experience meant for one. Maybe you could each play the game to a certain point by yourselves (and record it) and then put it all together with some commentary of your experiences of each session. :)
Yes. Oh, god, yes.
Or anything else by Frictional Games. Wait, that’s just Penumbra, isn’t it; crap.
;)
(And obviously Reginald Cuftbert’s play style is completely unsuited for Penumbra. Don’t know about Amnesia, since it’s still on my list, but I bet the same applies. I’m not sure if that would make it funnier or more annoying, but I’m betting “more annoying” after a pretty short while. Too bad…)
At most, Cuftbert would try to stunlock the monsters by throwing furniture at them.
jade empire please!!!
Do a Thief game!
ANY Thief game.
I love the Thief games, but it seems to me that either there would be a lot of long periods of nothing happening while waiting in the shadows for openings in the guard patrols, or Josh would try to play Reginald-Cuftbert style and Vita-chambers would start looking like a good idea.
You should consider doing Bloodlines, lots of things to talk about in there.
Alpha Protocol. Plenty of things to whine about, doesn’t get stale and still has some reedeeming points worth talking about.
That or Fallout: New vegas : The Return of Cuffbert
They’d sure have a hell of a time getting through the myriad of bugs that plagues the PC version.
I think you should do System Shock, show these young whiper-snappers whats what!
Or, if you are looking for a real hassle, go track down Marathon!
Check out Aleph One for Marathon – it’s pretty much The source port. (Bungie opened not only the source, but released the game content free as well! SO GO GET IT!)
That doesn’t sound like THAT huge a hassle… I would totally love a KotoR Spoiler Warning! Though it’s right at 20 hours, too…
Minecraft.
Someone had to say it ;)
You can’t do KOTOR?!?!?
NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
*Sniff* It’s like my favoritest game ever. Tied with Golden Sun and Civ.
And I’ve been thinking: Reginald Cuftbert and Conan are both Reginald in two alternate dimensions, since there stories happen in the future-ish, don’t know if that lines up right but who cares, its cool. Jack Ryan is totally Reginald’s ancestor, the gene-splicing and plasmids make drug abuse and rampant alcoholism part of the Cuftbert family’s genetic code.
So who shall be the next PC in the glorious Cuftbert Dynasty?
Tell everyone you are doing WoW next, then laugh a lot.
OH! Do System Shock II Shamus! Remember when we used to play that two-player and used the office intercom so we wouldn’t have to yell? Good times… Good times…
And you can show everyone how much better the Olde Tymes of video games were!
Hmm! Would be cool to see Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
Obviously anyone playing it really should make sure they get the very latest unofficial patch otherwise playing it would suck due to all the bugs.
I think the Spoiler Warning crew would love to play as a Malchavian (half-bonkers, TV set talks to you, you have conversations with a street sign, etc. *laughs*)
Sad story of that game is that Troika went belly up after making the game.
The game is the best Vampire game made so far. (amazing atmosphere)
The game was rushed (QA and polish was sorely missing) and kinda buggy like sadly many of Troika’s games,
It was supposed to be released shortly after Half Life 2 since it was using the Source engine (which was still not fully complete BTW so Troika had to modify a lot of things to make it work).
Then the Half Life 2 source was leaked, and Half Life 2 was delayed.
I think Bloodlines sat like 6+ months longer than intended before release due to that, months that “could” have been used to polish the game and fix the bugs.
If any here haven’t played Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
get it, then get the latest unofficial patch for it.
The game pretty much rocks, highly underrated.
Nice humor, campy and entertaining script, good voice acting, vampires that are real vampires, not the crappy teeny romance vampires that certain recent movies and TV series portray.
This is after all The World of Darkness roleplaying universe this is based on.
Also: the endgame can go die in a fire and get its ashes blown into a molten pit of magma. Basically, the game is superb until after you get to the observatory.
You say that, but I was playing a slow-motion katana-swinging Brujah samurai making the entire end sequence into Kill Bill – Undead Edition.
I mean, it would have sucked if I had been using my normal high speech build, sure, but it’s not THAT irredeemable.
I didn´t mean the difficulty (though there´s something of it) but that the game suddenly (well…not so suddenly. Technically, since Hollywood that it becomes more and more combat-centric*) asks you to make nothing but combat after encouraging a diverse or not-much-of-a-fighter character.
What really irks me, though, is that it stops trying to be smart and degenerates into a hack-n-slash. It´s just a series of corridors plagued with enemies before you can have a boos fight.
I agree (though my personal way to be suffiently badass to ‘we ran out of alternate ways to slow down the player’ is to only take ONE kind of speech) but I think they could do a lot with Bloodlines. And you can discuss WoD (or the upcoming MMO) if things get slow, like the Sewers bit!
Honestly, the Sewers was worse for me than the run up to the final encounter. I think it was longer…
The sewers is the start of the decline. While the Mandarin’s obstacle course is somewhat interesting, it’s still largely a shoot-fest.
Much as I’d like to see Jade Empire, that runs into the same movie issues as KOTOR, so it’s probably out. Hitman might be kinda cool, but I don’t know how well it would be suited to this. Deadspace might have enough to talk about, though not a lot of variety in the stuff, so maybe not. I realize now that I haven’t played a lot of first person shooter games.
You know….you kinda spoiled the big surprise of kotor in one of the Bioshock posts :D
Anachronox. Quake 2 game engine. Purely linear JRPG. It sucks and is amazing all at once. You would not believe the crazy stuff that happens in that game. Plus it has the line “I will kill you, with DEATH.”
Shamus, why don’t you try “The witcher” next?
Where do spoilers come from? Well, when a mommy spoiler and a daddy spoiler love each other very much…
When are you announcing the next game? It’s thursday. ANNOUNCE OR I WILL STEAL YOUR COMPUTERS IN YOUR SLEEP!