The Let's Play Sandcastle [Let's Play Discussion / Test Posts. Interest Check = Ban]

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Polybius91: Jun 4, 2012; Cobrastan is not a real country.

Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

So uh I have no clue what console this is on but somehow I doubt that it outputs at 471x324 or anything close to that. How are you capturing your images?

It's Turbografx. I ran an emulator, stuck the FRAPS video recorder to it, went back to the video, and lifted screenshots at certain points. I could try switching to screenshot mode, but the most I can do is 1 screencap per second and I'd miss a lot of stuff that way.

# ? Jul 1, 2012 22:53

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 20:34

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

You could batch resize them with Irfanview. I use it myself to grab screens from footage, and edit them afterwards.

Edit: A quick 640x480 test. Looks fine too me.

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jul 1, 2012

# ? Jul 1, 2012 23:50

Deceitful Penguin: Feb 16, 2011

Tin Tim posted:

"What the gently caress is a Pipboy? All i got is this Id card." Let's play: The Fall- Last days of Gaia

Screenshots Look fine, commentary bearable, game seems interesting, ready for the presses.
Mechanics look fairly d20, might just be the attributes though.

Deceitful Penguin fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Jul 2, 2012

# ? Jul 2, 2012 00:55

Polybius91: Jun 4, 2012; Cobrastan is not a real country.

Tin Tim posted:

You could batch resize them with Irfanview. I use it myself to grab screens from footage, and edit them afterwards.

Edit: A quick 640x480 test. Looks fine too me.

Okay, thanks! I'll be sure to download Irfanview and give it a try.

EDIT: I realized that the first time I screencapped, I cut some dead space off of the left and right sides of the battle sequences. Does this 560x480 one look okay?

Polybius91 fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Jul 2, 2012

# ? Jul 2, 2012 00:56

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

So The Room, what springs to mind when the phrase is uttered? Well there's that movie that I'm sure everyone has seen because it's utterly lovely but what about the game? The fourth entry into the Silent Hill series, and the last one handled by the original Silent Hill team, is definitely a bit frowned upon. But will that stop me from showing it off and trying to have some fun with it? Of course not; so without further ado here it what will be the first two updates. Hopefully it will show off the two main aspects of the game (the apartment and the individual worlds); and any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Also it may look a bit washed out but that's the default gamma settings, though I can certainly turn it down a bit. The game just isn't as dark as the other Silent Hill games.

Apartment portion
Otherworld portion

Also I do apologize to you Germans, but for some reason Sony doesn't want you listening to the soundtrack and thus has blocked the videos there.

Polybius91 posted:

Military Madness

Really I don't think you want to resize these down to a smaller size since a lot of the onscreen units are fairly small. Also if you want a simple guide to gifs I'm sure there is one in the Tech Fort or in the PYF forums; I'm not overly familiar though with gifninja though. A little bit of effort though could probably get you better quality gifs and streamline the process for the in the future.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 03:24

Zackcat: Nov 28, 2009; Let me tell you about Silent Hill Visual Novels~

Niggurath posted:

So The Room, what springs to mind when the phrase is uttered? Well there's that movie that I'm sure everyone has seen because it's utterly lovely but what about the game? The fourth entry into the Silent Hill series, and the last one handled by the original Silent Hill team, is definitely a bit frowned upon. But will that stop me from showing it off and trying to have some fun with it? Of course not; so without further ado here it what will be the first two updates. Hopefully it will show off the two main aspects of the game (the apartment and the individual worlds); and any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Also it may look a bit washed out but that's the default gamma settings, though I can certainly turn it down a bit. The game just isn't as dark as the other Silent Hill games.

Apartment portion
Otherworld portion

Also I do apologize to you Germans, but for some reason Sony doesn't want you listening to the soundtrack and thus has blocked the videos there.

Really I don't think you want to resize these down to a smaller size since a lot of the onscreen units are fairly small. Also if you want a simple guide to gifs I'm sure there is one in the Tech Fort or in the PYF forums; I'm not overly familiar though with gifninja though. A little bit of effort though could probably get you better quality gifs and streamline the process for the in the future.

Solid as always. Good to go whenever.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 03:57

Xerophyte: Mar 17, 2008; This space intentionally left blank

Polybius91 posted:

Okay, thanks! I'll be sure to download Irfanview and give it a try.

EDIT: I realized that the first time I screencapped, I cut some dead space off of the left and right sides of the battle sequences. Does this 560x480 one look okay?

You appear to be doing some sort of filtered and non-integer resize, both of which will blur your image. Change to filter to use nearest neighbor and make sure you're scaling to exactly 2x of source.

For comparison (edit: I should say that the source is from the internet somewhere so it might be off. Turbografx games are generally 256�239 native res so I'm fairly sure it's accurate, though):

Note that the pixel edges are sharp everywhere and that the text doesn't shift color near edges.

Xerophyte fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jul 2, 2012

# ? Jul 2, 2012 04:21

KKoserYaks: May 4, 2012; And what you call chaos is my beauty.

Niggurath posted:

Silent Hill 4

Didn't know you were getting to this so soon. Looks good to go.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 04:22

Kaubocks: Apr 13, 2011

So my friend and I have been in talks of attempting a Mega Man X6 LP when Zarah finished doing X1-5. Now that he has, I'm looking to start recording footage. Thing is, the only thing I've ever used my capture device for so far was my multiplayer video of Half-Minute Hero and for anyone who wasn't directly involved, cobbling that thing together was an absolute nightmare for me (I am the worst video editor ever).

Before I start banging out gameplay footage and talking over it and writing OPs for it, I really just want to get a general sense if there's anything I should do with what I've got. I recorded a short test video of the intro stage, deinterlaced (I think I did it right anyway), cropped, resized, and now I'm showing it here.

Mega Man X6 Test Video

How's the quality seem to you guys?

# ? Jul 2, 2012 07:56

Materant: Jul 22, 2010; see, what you don't understand is he now has

THE MANLIEST MUSTACHE

_{_{_{_{it defies physics}}}}

Kaubocks posted:

So my friend and I have been in talks of attempting a Mega Man X6 LP when Zarah finished doing X1-5. Now that he has, I'm looking to start recording footage. Thing is, the only thing I've ever used my capture device for so far was my multiplayer video of Half-Minute Hero and for anyone who wasn't directly involved, cobbling that thing together was an absolute nightmare for me (I am the worst video editor ever).

Before I start banging out gameplay footage and talking over it and writing OPs for it, I really just want to get a general sense if there's anything I should do with what I've got. I recorded a short test video of the intro stage, deinterlaced (I think I did it right anyway), cropped, resized, and now I'm showing it here.

Mega Man X6 Test Video

How's the quality seem to you guys?

It seems a bit blurry to me, although I have no idea what might have caused that.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 09:06

SatansBestBuddy: Sep 26, 2010; by FactsAreUseless

Kaubocks posted:

Mega Man X6 Test Video

How's the quality seem to you guys?

Seems fine to me. A bit blurry and maybe some frame blending but nothing that would seriously hurt an LP. I would suggest dumping it in the Tech Support Fort and seeing if a better trained eye could spot any issues and give you some advice.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 09:19

Mico: Jan 29, 2011; A billion dollars.

Materant posted:

It seems a bit blurry to me, although I have no idea what might have caused that.

Blend Fields method of deinterlacing, if I had to guess.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 09:30

Tin Tim: Jun 4, 2012; Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Deceitful Penguin posted:

Screenshots Look fine, commentary bearable, game seems interesting, ready for the presses.
Mechanics look fairly d20, might just be the attributes though.

Thanks for the input! I already brushed up my writing a bit before launching the thread.
Yeah, I also see some DnD in the system, and mentioned it in my improved update.
.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 11:04

Admiral H. Curtiss: May 11, 2010; I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.

Kaubocks posted:

Mega Man X6 Test Video

How's the quality seem to you guys?

Yeah, this is blurry. I remember being rather perplexed at your 1024x768 source capture back when we did the multiplayer video, so could you perhaps describe your whole workflow in detail?

# ? Jul 2, 2012 12:51

Meis: Sep 2, 2011

Polybius91 posted:

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress - Let's Play Military Madness

Know what I love? Strategy games. You know what great strategy game hasn't gotten an LP?

This one. I'm gonna go ahead and change that.

Wrong. Good luck doing a better LP that this one! :v:

Edit: (That last sentence was sarcasm. The "LP" only has one 30 minute video where the commentators barely even talk about the game. Still a very entertaining video, but not really an LP of the game!)

Meis fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Jul 2, 2012

# ? Jul 2, 2012 13:31

Jewel: May 2, 2009

Meis posted:

Wrong. Good luck doing a better LP that this one!

Yo, not trying to sound harsh here, but can you not do that?

I've went to LP something one time and prepared everything for it, then found out someone's already done it, and better, and it kinda makes you feel like crap for putting in the effort. :shobon:

# ? Jul 2, 2012 13:47

Brainamp: Sep 4, 2011; More Zen than Zenyatta

Jewel posted:

Yo, not trying to sound harsh here, but can you not do that?

I've went to LP something one time and prepared everything for it, then found out someone's already done it, and better, and it kinda makes you feel like crap for putting in the effort.

It's critiquing dude. Funnily enough this is the thread exactly for that.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 14:03

Color Printer: May 9, 2011; You get used to it. I don't
even see the code. All I see
is Ipecac, Scapular, Polyphemus...

Brainamp posted:

It's critiquing dude. Funnily enough this is the thread exactly for that.

Except there was no critiquing other than "Here's some dudes that already did that, good luck trying to be better than them"? There's simply pointing out the other LP and then there's pointing it out and going "welp good luck"

# ? Jul 2, 2012 14:07

Pork Lift: Oct 9, 2007; Winner of the 2012
Highway Traffic
Prediction Razzies

Pretty sure it was a joke guys. Those happen sometimes.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 14:14

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Yeah, especially since the Freelance Astronauts version, even though it's pretty funny does literally nothing to show off the game since Maxwell Adams is the only one who cares.

Also, Pork Lift, I like your new mod avatar it is very well deserved for your tireless efforts in the Friendzone.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 14:49

Meis: Sep 2, 2011

Jewel posted:

Yo, not trying to sound harsh here, but can you not do that?

I've went to LP something one time and prepared everything for it, then found out someone's already done it, and better, and it kinda makes you feel like crap for putting in the effort.

It was a joke! If you see the video, it's not really a serious LP of the game. More a 30 minute gameplay video while people make sexual innuendos regarding pizza. Sorry the joke fell flat. Well, Pork Lift got it. Must be a case of subtle british humour or something? But yes, sorry

# ? Jul 2, 2012 15:01

Jewel: May 2, 2009

Meis posted:

It was a joke! If you see the video, it's not really a serious LP of the game. More a 30 minute gameplay video while people make sexual innuendos regarding pizza. Sorry the joke fell flat. Well, Pork Lift got it. Must be a case of subtle british humour or something? But yes, sorry

Oh, it's fine! It's late here and I kinda just assumed you were serious because some people tend to find "the popular LP'ers" "better" than the other ones :v:

Of course, this is mostly the mentality of the other communities like Youtube, SA seems pretty nice about not doing that.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 15:03

Meis: Sep 2, 2011

Nah, it was probably my fault. I mean a joke that you have to explain is not a good joke at all, is it?

# ? Jul 2, 2012 15:06

MeccaPrime: May 11, 2010

Meis posted:

Nah, it was probably my fault. I mean a joke that you have to explain is not a good joke at all, is it?

Take it Lovedump guys. :rolleyes:

# ? Jul 2, 2012 15:26

Meis: Sep 2, 2011

MeccaPrime posted:

Take it Lovedump guys.

I loving love lovedump. It gives me the fuzzies :3:

# ? Jul 2, 2012 15:33

Kaubocks: Apr 13, 2011

Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

Yeah, this is blurry. I remember being rather perplexed at your 1024x768 source capture back when we did the multiplayer video, so could you perhaps describe your whole workflow in detail?

Yeah, my capture device is quite an oddball of design.

It's an SD recorder so I can't exactly capture high quality stuff with it. It's recorded as a .avi at 640x480 (I remember looking over our chats to see what size I should record at and this was the closest setting-- the next step up was 1024x576) and at 29.97 FPS. With the file, I made my usual AVS for it.

code:

AviSource("X6test.avi")
Load_Stdcall_plugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\Let's Play!\Video Editing Bullshit\MeGUI\tools\yadif\yadif.dll")
Yadif()
crop(40,10,-40,-10)
Lanczos4Resize(640,480)
ConvertToYV12()

Then I encode it through MeGUI with these settings:

Kaubocks fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jul 2, 2012

# ? Jul 2, 2012 15:48

Zarah: Sep 30, 2010; SUCCESS
There's only one way to go from the top.

Zarah posted:

Obligatory Refrigerator Comment - Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.

Released in 2003, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb is a fun little action-adventure game that follows the events surrounding a certain archeologist in 1935. It was developed by The Collective, Inc. and published by LucasArts. Although there haven't been many notable Indiana Jones games and I have only played a couple, I particularly like this one. It really captures the feeling of the Indiana Jones universe without leeching from it too much. It's all in the subtleties.

The gameplay in Emperor's Tomb is pretty similar to Tomb Raider or other such games, although there is a much bigger focus on melee combat instead of gunplay (it wouldn't be Indy if a brawl didn't erupt everywhere he went). Along the way, we'll be collecting plenty of other weapons and items to use in our adventures, like machine guns, grenades and demolition charges. Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our trusty whip as well.

If you've read this far and you aren't sure who this Indiana Jones fellow is, then I'd highly suggest you leave the thread and go watch the movies. Seriously, they're good. Go. I'll wait.

SPOILER POLICY: Don't spoil anything from the game before it shows up in the LP. There's not really a lot to spoil, but there's enough. However, you're open to talk freely about the movies and television series. Just keep things regarding the game quiet.

My two buddies Ketro and Crazed will be joining me for this LP once again. Neither of them have played this game, but we're all pretty familiar with Indiana Jones.

Episode 1 - Ceylon - Secret Entrance

Digging this up from the previous page to see if there's any other comments anyone wants to make before I go whole-hog with it.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 16:18

slowbeef: Mar 15, 2005; Will Harvey hates you, and everything you stand for.; Pillbug

Zarah posted:

Digging this up from the previous page to see if there's any other comments anyone wants to make before I go whole-hog with it.

I have a meeting to run off to, so I could only watch the first 5 minutes.

All in all, I'm happy with it. As far as critique, you guys reference Mega Man X6 a lot... I guess that's a previous LP you did that I missed? So I was kinda lost.

It's not worth redoing the video just for that or anything, maybe something to keep in mind for future ones. You guys can talk over each other once or twice, like you talk right over the other guy's "I get my tea from there!" joke, so maybe pause for those one-offs or something (but admittedly, that's hard to do).

I liked it. I'm an Indy fan, so if you started the thread, I'd give it a watch. I say go for it.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 16:41

Jack-Off Lantern: Mar 2, 2012

Zarah posted:

Digging this up from the previous page to see if there's any other comments anyone wants to make before I go whole-hog with it.

Is there a reason why this is only 480p?

Or is there still no widescreen hack/config edit for Emperor's Tomb?

Because back when this was released, it was apparently a planned feature or something, for some patch.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 18:18

discworld is all I read: Apr 7, 2009; DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Hymirvetr posted:

Is there a reason why this is only 480p?

Or is there still no widescreen hack/config edit for Emperor's Tomb?

Because back when this was released, it was apparently a planned feature or something, for some patch.

I'm pretty sure he's playing this on an original X-Box, so he might only be using an SD capture card.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 18:27

Jack-Off Lantern: Mar 2, 2012

Niggurath posted:

I'm pretty sure he's playing this on an original X-Box, so he might only be using an SD capture card.

Oh yeah, I'm just stupid and missed the Xbox Button prompts.

Nevermind, then.

The rest looks and sounds good. I will follow this, loved this game even though the plot is a bit sub par for Indy. At least it's no Crystal Skull.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 18:50

JordanKai: Aug 19, 2011; Get high and think of me.

Zarah posted:

Digging this up from the previous page to see if there's any other comments anyone wants to make before I go whole-hog with it.

I'm not sure if it's the game audio or the commentary track, but there is a pretty noticeable stream of white noise going on throughout the entire video. You might want to put the sound through Audacity's Noise Removal function to see if you can get it out of there.

# ? Jul 2, 2012 23:58

Admiral H. Curtiss: May 11, 2010; I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.

Kaubocks posted:

It's an SD recorder so I can't exactly capture high quality stuff with it. It's recorded as a .avi at 640x480 (I remember looking over our chats to see what size I should record at and this was the closest setting-- the next step up was 1024x576) and at 29.97 FPS. With the file, I made my usual AVS for it.

640x480 should be good, but the 29.97 FPS sound off. Either it's deinterlacing on the fly while recording, which might explain the blurryness, (this is quite likely actually!) or it's dropping half the frames and thus an entire set of fields. What recording software do you use, and does it have an option for recording at 59.94 FPS, or for which filter it uses to scale the incoming 720x480 signal to 640x480?

Also, I've never quite trusted MeGUI to do sensible settings automatically, so I'd recommend you to check "No Target Size (use profile settings)" and configure x264 in one of these ways:

Adjust CRF or Bitrate as appropriate. (experiment a bit with a short sample and see how they turn out)

# ? Jul 3, 2012 00:55

Polybius91: Jun 4, 2012; Cobrastan is not a real country.

Took another shot at Military Madness.

Here's a battle screenshot with the black border cropped out:

I found that a bit large, so here's the same screenshot at 75% size:

Thoughts?

Also, I'm relieved the existing LP wasn't really an LP.

# ? Jul 3, 2012 01:05

Level 1 Thief: Dec 17, 2007; I'm busy, and I'm having fun.

Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

640x480 should be good, but the 29.97 FPS sound off. Either it's deinterlacing on the fly while recording, which might explain the blurryness, (this is quite likely actually!) or it's dropping half the frames and thus an entire set of fields. What recording software do you use, and does it have an option for recording at 59.94 FPS, or for which filter it uses to scale the incoming 720x480 signal to 640x480?

Any capture card will combine two interlaced fields into a single frame which may or may not be properly combed, at 29.97 FPS for NTSC. Then you run a deinterlacer. This is how it's supposed to work.

# ? Jul 3, 2012 01:49

Admiral H. Curtiss: May 11, 2010; I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.

Ah, yeah, you might be right about that. Sorry, I usually don't work with SD capture cards or interlaced signals.

# ? Jul 3, 2012 01:53

Kaubocks: Apr 13, 2011

Alright, let's try this again. How's this lookin'?

Mega Man X6 Test Video 2

# ? Jul 3, 2012 02:54

Materant: Jul 22, 2010; see, what you don't understand is he now has

THE MANLIEST MUSTACHE

_{_{_{_{it defies physics}}}}

Kaubocks posted:

Alright, let's try this again. How's this lookin'?

Mega Man X6 Test Video 2

Looks acceptable. Granted, I don't know what X6's standard quality is.

# ? Jul 3, 2012 03:03

Didja Redo: Jan 24, 2010; Wanna try my freedom meat BBQ meat?

This was going to be my bonus video for the Let's Play as Art thread but then we didn't end up doing bonus videos and the thread died and I completely forgot about it and now there's nowhere else to post it SO hopefully this is kosher if not I will put it away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crsis3BW8ns

# ? Jul 3, 2012 08:14

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 20:34

Didja Redo: Jan 24, 2010; Wanna try my freedom meat BBQ meat?

Polybius91 posted:

Took another shot at Military Madness.

Here's a battle screenshot with the black border cropped out:

I found that a bit large, so here's the same screenshot at 75% size:

I'd actually say the second's a bit small. The first is a good size and much crisper. Go with that.

# ? Jul 3, 2012 08:17

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > The Let's Play Sandcastle [Let's Play Discussion / Test Posts. Interest Check = Ban]

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