Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 17, 2006

Filed under: Rants 9 comments

A bit about that YouTube video I posted.

It was made with Windows Movie Maker, a rather inept piece of software that is just barely able to fullfill its intended function. Doing this was like digging a hole using a shovel with a bendy rubber handle. After some practice I was able to get a feel for what sorts of activities would cause crashes and lockups so I could avoid doing them.

The most infuriating problem was the way it would lose track of where it was supposed to be in the audio track. I spent a lot of time trying to get visual cues to line up with changes in the music. (I hope someone noticed.) With WMM, the two only stay in step if you start playing the movie from the very beginning. If you start playing the movie in the middle, the sound track will be out of step by several seconds. If you are trying to get some visual event at 1:45 to line up with some part of the music, you can’t just jump to 1:45 and work on it. No, you have to play the entire clip from the very beginning, watch the movie, and try to get a feel for how far off the movie is. Then trim or pad according to your best guess and try again.

Beating up on Microsoft is so cliche that there is no way to get into this without saying something that hasn’t been said a thousand times already. This sucks, and nobody seems to care.

I really enjoyed making this, but I dread using WMM again. Maybe I’ll poke around and see if there are any good tools for this that don’t have a price tag aimed at professionals.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 The Beige AgePrevious Post

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Bowling+Rollercoaster=Fun

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 17, 2006

Filed under: Movies 62 comments

 Silent Hill: Cinematic SubplotPrevious Post

Next PostSilent Hill: Plot analysis 

I have fashioned a YouTube video, suitable for public consumption:

I expect such highbrow stuff to be quite beyond the ken of the hoi polloi, but one must do one’s part for the sake of The Arts. I urge all decent people to link, rate and share my efforts according to the demands of propriety and decorum.

Thank you.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Silent Hill: Cinematic SubplotPrevious Post

Next PostSilent Hill: Plot analysis 

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Dreamfall: Places to See

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 17, 2006

Filed under: Game Reviews 3 comments

 Dreamfall: Spooky GirlPrevious Post

Next PostDreamfall: Nitpicks 

Still collecting lots of screenshots from Dreamfall. Concerns about the plot abound, but visually this thing is just relentlessly good.

I will say this: Dreamfall is big, scenery-wise. How big? I would liken it to Final Fantasy X. It’s hard to judge, though. I’m sure I’ll beat this game in under 20 hours, and even a “quick” run through FFX is going to cost you about 60. However, if you removed all of the combat from FFX and reduced the game to travel time and cutscenes, I think you would be left with something the size of Dreamfall.

I’m not saying one is better than the other. A game which offers 100+ hours of game time is pretty great, but there is also a lot to love about a game which strips everything out except the essential parts: Character, story, and exploration. It offers these juicy morsels without distractions or filler. It’s like a box of Lucky Charms with all marshmellows and none of the cereal.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Dreamfall: Spooky GirlPrevious Post

Next PostDreamfall: Nitpicks 

3 comments

Porco Rosso

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 16, 2006

Filed under: Anime 0 comments

 Fullmetal Alchemist, The MoviePrevious Post

Next PostAnime Day 

Pete Zaitcev watched Porco Rosso and offers up a generous supply of screenshots. I’d forgotten how great it looked. (It was the very first post in my increasingly anemic anime category.)

He also poses an interesting challenge – the final frames of the credits offer an interesting bit of animation that Pete suspects is based off a real photograph or scene. You’ll have to go there and have a look for yourself.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Fullmetal Alchemist, The MoviePrevious Post

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DM of the Rings XVII:
Of Dubious Value

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 16, 2006

Filed under: DM of the Rings 85 comments

 DM of the Rings XVI:
TeamworkPrevious Post

Next PostDM of the Rings XVIII:
Cartographer's Lament 

Lord of the Rings, Tentacle monster, player apathy.

One of the things I loved to do in our campaigns was give out magical items which were interesting but mostly useless. We’ve been trained by movies that if you find some seemingly unimportant bauble, then the story will later create a situation where it will be the key to solving a problem in an unexpected way.

My favorite was a rope I gave them that untied itself the moment you let go of the knot. It was pointless, but enough of a novelty that they hung onto it. Another was a chalice that would purify any water you put into it. It was sort of a magical water filter which could turn a glass of swamp sludge into mineral water in about five minutes. Another was a magic staff which had only one property: It could be placed tip-down on the floor and it would keep itself balanced.

Once in a while they would haul out one of these magical booby prizes and actually put the thing to some unexpected use. I always loved when they did that.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 DM of the Rings XVI:
TeamworkPrevious Post

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Cartographer's Lament 

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I’m back, feelin’ good… FEED ME

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 16, 2006

Filed under: Pictures 9 comments

 Pictures from Silent HillPrevious Post

Next PostEvil has a bendy new ally 

And we’re back. My kid is doing great.

I’m still plowing through the comments from the weekend, plus email, plus cleaning the lint out of the spam filter and checking out the new incoming links. So, if I don’t respond to something you’ve said, that’s why.

I actually have some notes and stub posts from last week that I need to hammer into some sort of shape before the original ideas leave me altogether. So, a couple of my posts may be a bit stale in the next few days. (As in: Linking to stuff everyone is done talking about.) I actually have quite a lot of stuff like this. On Tuesday and Wednesday I was on some sort of writing bender, and it all got stuck in the queue when things went sideways on Wednesday.

I feel good today. You know that depressing slump you feel right after vacation or something really, really happy? That sadness that hits a couple of days later? I’ve noticed emotions are always like this. The week after summer camp was always a slide into depression for us as kids. The post-camp world seemed empty, dull, and lonely. This was because we were coming off a five-day manic spree and the pendulum was swinging back. I knew this was the cause (I knew there wasn’t really any reason to be depressed) but that never made me feel any better.

But today I’m experiencing the opposite: I feel energetic and happy for no other reason than I’m no longer stressed. I’ve even got a new DM of the Rings for later today.

2¹⁶ geek points to the person who can identify the source of the needlessly obscure title to this post.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Pictures from Silent HillPrevious Post

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Remember Me?

By Shamus Posted Saturday Oct 14, 2006

Filed under: Personal 15 comments

 Where is ShamusPrevious Post

Next PostSeizing Up 

I’m back. Just got home from the hospital, with my daughter. She’s on the mend. Feels like a week since the last time I was home.

On Wednesday night I held my limp daughter in my arms while her open, unblinking eyes looked past me. I couldn’t feel her breathing, and for a good minute or so I wasn’t even sure if she was still with us. If you’re a parent then you can probably imagine what this feels like. If not, you’ll have to extrapolate. Anyway, after those moments of primal emotions and the subsequent three days of uncertainty, writing about how “scary” the Silent Hill movie is seems childish and shallow. Something like this is great for putting things into perspective, although a healthy sense of perspective is really bad for enjoying the fantasy worlds of movies, videogames, and roleplaying.

So, I need to step back from this thing for a couple more days and, as the hippies say, “Get my head together, man.”

Thanks for the well-wishes from everyone. Really, it was nice to come home to that. She’s doing fine. She’s tired of needles and drugs and bizzare tests she doesn’t understand, and we have every reason to believe she will recover fully.

I will say this: The last five months or so certainly have been interesting.

I’m really hoping the next five months or so will be exceedingly dull. That would be just super, thanks.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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The Gameplay is the Story