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Geemer posted:JPG vs PNG You're right, I think I may have done that very thing. I usually capture video and pull frames from that in virtualdub, but I just tried capturing shots directly from the game and I can see a bit of a difference between the two shots (barring the incidental difference since these weren't taken from the same instant). Regardless, it's probably time for me to move this over to TSF so I'm not cluttering this topic up with my picture woes anymore. Thanks for the input, everyone.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:24
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SirDifferential posted:Pirates LP: I think your intended approach to the black borders is the best of the ones you've suggested in the test poster. The thing is, all the dialogues you're talking about are ones the game puts up on a pretty regular basis; you might be better off just using the picture to announce their presence and transcribing the text, which doesn't really lose anything over your approach and requires fewer images (also after the first couple of times you can just drop the text and say "You know the drill. It's a Spaniard this time. Do we close?") I'm also a bit concerned about how long you'll really be able to carry interest in the game. I mean, I love Pirates! in all its incarnations, and I'll likely follow your thread when it appears, but ultimately Pirates! gameplay, while fiendishly addictive, isn't all that much fun just to watch, and the original game doesn't really have any plot to help sustain reader interest. I'm running a Wing Commander: Privateer playthrough at the moment which uses a similar "OK, tell me what to do next" gimmick, but I don't think it'd have got much further than I currently have without the game's plot to play alongside whatever freelancing the thread wants. Ilanin fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 18:27
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Alrighty... the Bad Games thread is up and I'm both excited and terrified to see what comes of it. Habermann's post already has me giddy. Thanks for the feedback yesterday and today everyone!
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Jun 28, 2013 18:49
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Ilanin posted:I'm also a bit concerned about how long you'll really be able to carry interest in the game. I mean, I love Pirates! in all its incarnations, and I'll likely follow your thread when it appears, but ultimately Pirates! gameplay, while fiendishly addictive, isn't all that much fun just to watch, and the original game doesn't really have any plot to help sustain reader interest. I'm running a Wing Commander: Privateer playthrough at the moment which uses a similar "OK, tell me what to do next" gimmick, but I don't think it'd have got much further than I currently have without the game's plot to play alongside whatever freelancing the thread wants. I think that at the point where all the mechanics of the game have been met is also the point where the LP can reach its conclusion. The intention with this thread, and if successful the ones that follow, is to present a piece of oldschool gold that has influenced the gaming industry of today. The LP for the remake version of the game did reasonably well by narrating the story, but I believe that this was at least partly aided by the fact that the game featured so cartoony graphics. Pirates, in its core, is a small game that probably results in a small LP.
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Jun 28, 2013 19:31
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quote:The Thinker knows how this will end. Let's Play Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den. Alright, one last looksee to make sure it's still good before I post the thread. I uploaded a new version and messed with the audio settings, so that buzz shouldn't pop up again.
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Jun 29, 2013 00:43
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Niggurath posted:edit: Also on a technical end you've got some frame blending going on something fierce. And with how this game handles motion and headbob, that ghosting makes things even worse. If you want to host a video online most of the time it's locked to 30fps. I personally think that videos missing the smooth movement from a game like FzeroGX or ZOE might ruin the visuals too much, so I'd rather have frame blending. (edit: I just realised this should go on the tech support thread) wiregrind fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jun 29, 2013 |
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Jun 29, 2013 06:02
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I’d like to start off by saying thank you to everyone who gave me constructive criticism on my first test post. My friend and I huddled together and decided that an SSLP would definitely be a better format for showing off this game. I believe I was far too nervous the first time, which is why it came out as such a mess. So with some help, I've changed this up. Sorry I took so long to say something, but I felt I should have something to show before replying, since test posts are what belong in this thread. This is my first time attempting an SSLP, so please point out any beginner’s mistakes I may have made. Again, thank you for the help. The images aren’t quite the quality I would like them to be, but the way this game is animated makes it rather difficult to get crisp shots at times. If anyone knows any way to improve them, please let me know. --------- Let's Play...  The Story: Mega Man X Command Mission takes place in the 23rd century about 100 years after the events of other games in the Mega Man X series. A new substance known as "Force Metal" is extracted from the debris of a small meteorite. New technology based on the metal revolutionizes the field of Reploid Engineering. So of course the only smart thing to do was build a whole city/island centered on this new technology, mining and smelting the metal so later Mavericks can come in and take it. Let's also make sure there’s no Maverick Hunter base set on the island to protect it. I’m sure there’s some sort of Maverick invasion quota they have to fill per year. Giga City, where the game takes place, is an artificial island in the middle of an ocean. A takeover of the island is staged by a Reploid named Epsilon, who has gathered others to his cause. They call themselves The Rebellion. What exactly they’re rebelling against is less clear. But this assult brands him and the others with him as Mavericks, so a call is made by Colonel Redips to the Maverick Hunters for backup. This is where the story begins. And quickly ceases to make any sense. At least it’s upholding the fine tradition of the later Megaman games. About the Game: Despite the game's plot being so easy to lose track of, the gameplay is pretty good. It's a turn-based RPG, which is very different for a Megaman game, with some neat mechanics thrown in to keep things interesting. I am set on finding all the items in each level, getting X and Zero's extra armors, and fighting the extra bosses. I’ll be playing the PS2 version of this game, so I can’t collect all the extra figurines present in the game, since some can only be obtained in the GameCube version. But the GC version is for masochists who enjoy unnecessarily high encounter rates and hurting their palms trying to spin the C-stick inhumanly fast, although the graphics and sound are a tiny bit better. About the Let’s Play: The purpose of this LP is to show off this game to any Megaman X fan that may have missed it, and hopefully explain everything to any others who played this game and were just as confused as I was. This is going to be a hybrid SSLP, with videos included for cutscenes. The Chapters:  Part 1 Part 2
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Jun 29, 2013 20:43
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Quite the improvement! The only thing that looks off is the spacing. There's no need for an empty line after every screenshot. Do make sure to have an empty line BEFORE every screenshot, though.   "Also, I'm not sure if the portraited dialog needs double spacing." "This way, there's less distracting empty space. Much cleaner."
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Jun 29, 2013 21:03
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In addition to what Lizard Wizard said, you're going to want to proofread your posts. I saw an 'emeny' in there, and I'm sure there are other spelling errors I didn't catch. Other than that, yeah, looks good... Well, except for the screenshots. There's this fuzziness to all the footage. I know from experience that this is likely a problem with the raw footage itself, as opposed to your screenshot process, and I'm not sure entirely how to fix it. Possibly if you deinterlace your raw footage and then grab screenshots from that? Someone else more tech savvy than me, please correct and/or confirm this. I'd also recommend having videos of the boss fights at the end of the updates. That way, you show off the fights that are actually interesting, since the battle system is the really good part about this game. Prythian fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jun 29, 2013 |
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Jun 29, 2013 21:37
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Prythian posted:Well, except for the screenshots. There's this fuzziness to all the footage. I know from experience that this is likely a problem with the raw footage itself, as opposed to your screenshot process, and I'm not sure entirely how to fix it. Possibly if you deinterlace your raw footage and then grab screenshots from that? Someone else more tech savvy than me, please correct and/or confirm this. It's very difficult to say without knowing her workflow. Animated Reviewer, how are you capturing the footage and how are you taking screenshots?
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Jun 29, 2013 21:40
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gatz posted:It's very difficult to say without knowing her workflow. Animated Reviewer, how are you capturing the footage and how are you taking screenshots? I'm capturing with a Canopus ADVC110 through VirtualDub. After capturing, I also use VirtualDub to de-interlace the footage. Then I use an Avisynth script so I can brighten the video and take screenshots through AvsPMod. Screenshots are cropped and/or edited in GIMP. Prythian posted:I'd also recommend having videos of the boss fights at the end of the updates. That way, you show off the fights that are actually interesting, since the battle system is the really good part about this game. Oh yes, I did. Well it's linked before the fight starts, maybe I should add more flashing lights to it. Glad my friend suggested it and glad you confirmed it, I wasn't sure if that was wanted or not. quote:
Ah! Thank you, I shall do that. It looks better.
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Jun 29, 2013 21:58
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Animated Reviewer posted:Oh yes, I did. Well it's linked before the fight starts, maybe I should add more flashing lights to it. Glad my friend suggested it and glad you confirmed it, I wasn't sure if that was wanted or not. Whoops! Yeah, I completely missed that. I'm going to be following this if you do it, by the way, since I was planning on doing a Command Mission LP eventually (once I figured out how to get rid of that fuzziness in all the screenshots. It might not be possible without using an emulator rather than capturing.)
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Jun 29, 2013 22:04
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a thread about masochism is now open for business I guess!
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Jun 30, 2013 01:21
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Animated Reviewer posted:I'm capturing with a Canopus ADVC110 through VirtualDub. After capturing, I also use VirtualDub to de-interlace the footage. Then I use an Avisynth script so I can brighten the video and take screenshots through AvsPMod. Screenshots are cropped and/or edited in GIMP. You probably should take the problem over to the tech support thread. I'm not familiar with the ADVC110, but maybe someone can help you there.
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Jun 30, 2013 01:42
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So, here's something a bit different. Er, sort of.  Final Fantasy IV is a pretty cool RPG, I think. It's not the best, nor the worst, but it's certainly up there. One of the first ones I ever played, now I'm gonna do something silly. I'm gonna take a little girl, and use just her for the entire game. Because I can. If you care about the plot at all, this is probably not for you. I'm not even gonna touch it, save for occasionally highlighting where we're meant to go next. If you want to know what's actually going on, then Bellmaker and Mega 64 have both got you covered. Update 01. Rod-ia Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 08:18
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I got a question, I wanna show off some adventure games I love to death, but I don't know the best format for them. Like for example, The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble has a lot of vocal dialogue and a lot of quick animation slapstick. Would a video LP of that be good, or a hybrid? For the Animated slapstick, would it be better just to turn that into a gif?
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Jun 30, 2013 08:57
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Dragonatrix posted:So, here's something a bit different. Er, sort of. I actually tried this run before, though I ended up getting stuck on Barbariccia. I'm interested in seeing how you'll handle a few things in the future, though solo Rydia is probably not as bad as solo Cecil in his problem areas due to her damage output. As for the actual test post, you may want to put a quick explanation as to how you have Rydia so early, even if it's just "Gameshark" or whatever. Also, you don't need to show off every item you get in a screenshot. I suggest showing off the important items and summarizing stuff like Potions in text. Besides from those minor points, I'm digging it, especially once you go into combat and start explaining tactics. I'd definitely follow it.
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Jun 30, 2013 12:48
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Senior Scarybagels posted:I got a question, I wanna show off some adventure games I love to death, but I don't know the best format for them. Like for example, The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble has a lot of vocal dialogue and a lot of quick animation slapstick. Would a video LP of that be good, or a hybrid? For the Animated slapstick, would it be better just to turn that into a gif? Video worked well enough for the one in the archive, and it's always worked for me as well. I can't imagine Woodruff specifically working in a non-video format. It just might be worth occasionally editing out a bit of backtracking in the portions of the game shortly before you get the Transportozon - keep it when you're showing shortcuts and things are still close together, remove it when it gets boring.
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Jun 30, 2013 13:11
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Dragonatrix posted:So, here's something a bit different. Er, sort of. I get that this is a challenge run, and there are LP's on the archive which deal with the plot, but I think you're still glossing over things a bit too much. We don't need a transcription or plot dump, but you're providing absolutely no context at all. I didn't realize you weren't at the point in the story where Rydia first appears until the end. I'm not even sure how you're playing with only one character who you haven't even met in the story yet, and I think that's a little bit important for the LP.
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Jun 30, 2013 16:40
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Dragonatrix posted:So, here's something a bit different. Er, sort of. Sounds interesting, but I am curious how the game will handle both her switching to adult form (does this happen at Paladin switch over?) and the Golbez fight where it's scripted everyone who not Cecil dies.
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Jun 30, 2013 16:57
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Dragonatrix posted:So, here's something a bit different. Er, sort of. You need to explain in a lot more detail what you're doing. How did you get Rydia before you went to Mist?
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Jun 30, 2013 17:58
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Basically Everyone posted:Explain "how." Alright, so I've added the "how" and cut down the amount of pointless treasures shown. Might still need to add a few more things for what brief parts of the scenes I do bother with, though.
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Jun 30, 2013 18:27
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Dragonatrix posted:So, here's something a bit different. Er, sort of. I like it. Course, I just got done being balls deep in this game, so it's all still fresh in my mind. Still, looks good to me! Post 'dat poo poo and I'll certainly follow it. Are you going to stick to her child version the whole time or switch to the adult when it happens?
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Jun 30, 2013 19:07
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Dragonatrix posted:Alright, so I've added the "how" and cut down the amount of pointless treasures shown. Might still need to add a few more things for what brief parts of the scenes I do bother with, though. This might be nit-picky so early in the project but even in this edit your explanation of why Rydia is there still drips with being just an afterthought. Which, obviously, it was, since it took Mega64 to point it out. And that's going to happen to the best of us, since a mechanics-oriented LP has so much to communicate that the LPer has already had to internalize! Just bear in mind that in an LP like this, where you're doing weird stuff with the system, the how and why is the reason we're interested.
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Jul 1, 2013 00:12
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So myself, my girlfriend, my cousin, and his fiance all decided to do an LP together. We'd love some feedback. There are a couple of known issues with this first video. There's weird flickering at the top, and the emulator crashed at the end, so the video ends kind of abruptly. We thought the content of our commentary would be too difficult to recreate in a genuine way, so we're leaving this first video as is for now. I think we've fixed both of those issues by using a different emulator, so things should work better in future episodes. The new emulator also makes the game generally look better, so that's a plus. Let us know what you think! ------------------------------------------------------------------------  Let's Play Yoshi's Island with Double Date!  The Game Yoshi's Island was released for the Super Nintendo in 1995. It's pretty rad! Technically, the full title of the game is Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Mechanically, the game plays very differently in comparison to the previous Mario games. It's still a solid platformer, but Yoshi has a unique moveset that includes eating enemies, turning them into eggs, and then throwing the eggs at enemies and environmental obstacles. Of course, you also have to mind baby Mario, who serves as a sort of life bar: get hit, and baby Mario flies off in a bubble. You have to catch him before the timer hits zero, or Kamek's henchmen snatch him away and you lose a life. Beyond the game mechanics, Yoshi's Island has a unique, painterly art style and a great soundtrack (minus the baby Mario cry...). All in all, it's a great game. The Group There are four of us that will play and commentate in this LP. I am Ryan, and I am joined by Traci, Cory, and Christine (SA accounts are forthcoming for everyone). We decided to give ourselves a group name, mostly because we thought it would be fun, and hopefully it makes it easier to refer to us as a group. That name is Double Date! In case it wasn't obvious (and because we forgot to mention it in the first video), we are two couples who like playing and watching games. Less obviously, Cory and I are cousins, and grew up playing Rogue in a basement. All four of us love LPs, and decided to give it a try together. Why This Game? When an individual decides to do an LP, I think the choice of game is a little easier, as it comes down to, in part, personal preference. For us, we have to accommodate the tastes of four people, to the best of our ability. Yoshi's Island stuck out as a good choice for several reasons. It's pretty approachable, nice to look at and listen to, and not too huge of a commitment for our first LP. It's part of a franchise we're all familiar with, and we thought it would be fun. The LP This is not an informative or comprehensive LP. We will be lucky to 100% any levels really. We're going to try to establish a schedule of 3 updates per week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Most episodes should be around 20-25 minutes.  Table of Contents Ep1: Making Out with Piranha Plants
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Jul 1, 2013 04:47
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You could stand to turn the game down a bit - it's hard to hear the commentary at times!
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Jul 1, 2013 05:15
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If you are going to make an LP of a game that has been done a couple times (including an active thread, I believe) it really is important to explain why your group's LP will be different and worthwhile. I guess handing a controller to a colorblind guy who never played the game in the first video is one way to do that. Overall, I don't see myself watching more of the series, but I played Yoshi's Island to death as a kid and as such I would probably not be the target audience. Technically, as Lizard Wizard says in the post above, your sound is a bit loud (I also thought voice volume was a bit loud, not just game noise). As much as it may pain you or be a bit of an annoyance, I would redo the first video so you don't have those emulator bugs as the first thing people see of the LP. Hearing someone say "I have technical problems in this video, but I promise to deal with them later" doesn't inspire confidence. The added bonus of doing this over is that you will also have someone who knows the basic mechanics and controls playing the game instead of a complete blind run of the first levels, even if it is the same guy. Having three people yelling at the player on what to do isn't super interesting commentary in the end.
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Jul 1, 2013 10:56
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Lizard Wizard posted:You could stand to turn the game down a bit - it's hard to hear the commentary at times! Alternately, autoduck. baldurk wrote a nice and easy guide on Autoducking and it's super easy. my $0.02 beyond that is if your commentators have different volume levels, do some dynamic range compression first. I find that makes autoduck a lot less likely to be annoying and more likely to be handy.
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Jul 1, 2013 18:03
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Abitha Denton posted:even in this edit your explanation of why Rydia is there still drips with being just an afterthought. Wow, really? Alright, so I've editted that bit again to expand on it as best as I can. Hopefully it's a lot clearer and reads better now. While I was at it, I also added an extra bit of in-game dialogue to make it clearer what the game wants you to do.
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Jul 1, 2013 18:22
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Lazyfire posted:If you are going to make an LP of a game that has been done a couple times (including an active thread, I believe) it really is important to explain why your group's LP will be different and worthwhile. I guess handing a controller to a colorblind guy who never played the game in the first video is one way to do that. That, and you might want a video that doesn't abruptly cut out a minute into 1-3.
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Jul 1, 2013 18:45
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Lazyfire posted:If you are going to make an LP of a game that has been done a couple times (including an active thread, I believe) it really is important to explain why your group's LP will be different and worthwhile. I guess handing a controller to a colorblind guy who never played the game in the first video is one way to do that. So, when choosing Yoshi's Island, I did look in to see whether it had been done before. Unfortunately, I only looked at the archive, not the master list, before deciding on the game. However, looking at the master list, I think we're pretty distinct from the other three LPs of the game. For Krakhan's archived LP, the google videos are gone, and the AVIs are in a quality that I personally find unwatchable. The Famous Ghosts LP is similar in that it is a casual, comedy LP. But I also think their humor is more dry, they're definitely more laid back than we are, and they have more recent knowledge of the game. Plus the group composition is just different. Vicas' LP has been on again, off again since 2012, and is obviously focused on being comprehensive, informative, and 100%. Vicas is recording the GBA version of the game, and records commentary in post, which just leads to a different flavor of commentary. Overall, we're unique because our group has a unique composition and high-energy style, and our approach to the game is more casual. We think that LPs can be pretty entertaining when the people playing a game don't know a lot about it, because the viewers get to learn along with us, or laugh at our mistakes. However, we do have a mix of skill and familiarity in our group, and we weren't planning on having Cory play the entire time. For example, Christine is pretty drat good at the game, and we were going to lean on her when game presents a challenge. However, I understand if our style just isn't your bag. Like I mentioned, I'm not promising to deal with the technical issues later, they've been dealt with. If we recorded something today, it wouldn't have the flickering and it wouldn't crash. And we're certainly not hesitating at the prospect of putting effort into rerecording the first episode. In fact, it was on the table for a couple of hours while we were deciding what to do. In the end, our decision was that a rerecording would look better and end more cleanly, but it would be not nearly as funny or entertaining, leading to an overall net loss in quality. You and Lizard Wizard are definitely right about the audio loudness though. Psion, we don't really know how to use autoducking with our setup. We're using a Snowball omnidirectional mic to capture all of our voices and the game audio. This seemed like the simplest solution to recording the audio, but it looks like it precludes us from using autoducking, as there's only one audio track. Will it be able to help us out if that's the case? If not, I was thinking about just turning down the microphone gain by around 10% (it's at 100% right now...), and dropping the game audio coming from our soundbar by a couple of notches. In case it isn't obvious, we aren't well-versed in the technical aspects of recording, so advice like yours is definitely appreciated.
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Jul 1, 2013 18:48
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Autoducking is just a case of Audacity (a free app) looking at the commentary track for when it peaks and lowering the game audio relative to that. If your game audio is baked in to the same record as the commentary then you're SOL but you should consider recording game audio and commentary audio to two saparate tracks in the future. The amount of voices in the commentary track, or the microphone used generally shouldn't stop you from Autoducking if the audio is clear enough and not brimming with background noise (another thing you can get rid of painfully easy with Audacity).
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Jul 1, 2013 19:00
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And My Fax! posted:Psion, we don't really know how to use autoducking with our setup. We're using a Snowball omnidirectional mic to capture all of our voices and the game audio. What you want to do here is to take the raw audio from the video and put it into Audacity and then put the commentary track into audacity. Because you'll have two tracks at that point you can autoduck to your heart's content. Just make sure to put a sample track into audacity first to see what rate the sound comes in at, as recording voices at a different rate will lead to commentary desync, as Psion will tell you. The mic may be the limiting factor in being able to do that if it is also picking up the game sound, maybe turning down the computer/tv would be a good idea in this case. And I think you misunderstood my statement about not being the audience for this LP, it was more because I've seen and done everything there is to see and do in this game. There's nothing inherently wrong with someone playing a classic SNES game, nor doing it with a group of people, my lack of interest is personal rather than contextual.
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Jul 1, 2013 19:12
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Sundowner posted:Autoducking is just a case of Audacity (a free app) looking at the commentary track for when it peaks and lowering the game audio relative to that. If your game audio is baked in to the same record as the commentary then you're SOL but you should consider recording game audio and commentary audio to two saparate tracks in the future. The amount of voices in the commentary track, or the microphone used generally shouldn't stop you from Autoducking if the audio is clear enough and not brimming with background noise (another thing you can get rid of painfully easy with Audacity). Ok, I think I understand. I'm at work and can't mess around with the setup right now, but I'm trying to picture how we could record two audio tracks at once. So far, we've used fraps to capture the video and the Snowball simultaneously. Can Audacity capture the system audio and the microphone audio simultaneously, as two separate tracks? I can't tell by looking at its website. If that would work, I think we can change the Snowball setting to only record the "front", where we're sitting on the couch. I worry that it would still capture some of the game audio coming from the tv, but maybe Audacity's noise cancelling could filter it out? I just wouldn't want to have an echo of the game audio, and we need to be able to hear the game audio ourselves too. Thanks for breaking it down for me, Sundowner. Lazyfire posted:What you want to do here is to take the raw audio from the video and put it into Audacity and then put the commentary track into audacity. Because you'll have two tracks at that point you can autoduck to your heart's content. Just make sure to put a sample track into audacity first to see what rate the sound comes in at, as recording voices at a different rate will lead to commentary desync, as Psion will tell you. Right, that speaks to my question about recording the commentary and game audio separately and simultaneously, as right now we don't have a separate commentary track. And good call on keeping an eye on the rate, we'll be sure to watch for that...desynch can be very distracting as a viewer. Sorry, I think you're right about my misunderstanding. Rereading, I think I get it...playing a lot of a game like this would sour anyone on it. Thanks for being willing to help despite that! 
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Jul 1, 2013 19:18
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And My Fax! posted:Right, that speaks to my question about recording the commentary and game audio separately and simultaneously, as right now we don't have a separate commentary track. And good call on keeping an eye on the rate, we'll be sure to watch for that...desynch can be very distracting as a viewer. You have it mostly right on the audio. Start recording an Audacity track and have the mic as the input for that. Save that track as whatever you want, then either close that track out or open up a new audacity file and bring in the raw video audio (File->Import Audio->Double click on the video you just recorded). This will load in the game audio. Next do the same thing for the commentary you just recorded and it will appear below the raw game audio. Line up the tracks from there and perform any noise reductions or amplifications on the commentary you need and then autoduck the game audio. It sounds much more complicated than it is. If you need a way to sync up tracks I usually start audio recording five seconds after video recording and then use any hints of game audio my mic captured to sync better from there. The thread is here to help people improve their LP's quality before they are posted, so long as you don't get super defensive over what you've produced and are willing to at least listen to our advice most posters will be willing to help out regardless of if they want to see the game LPed or not.
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Jul 1, 2013 20:15
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And My Fax! posted:Overall, we're unique because our group has a unique composition and high-energy style, and our approach to the game is more casual. We think that LPs can be pretty entertaining when the people playing a game don't know a lot about it, because the viewers get to learn along with us, or laugh at our mistakes. These are pretty empty statements that can apply to pretty much everyone looking to hit record and film their Genuine Reactions™ without putting much thought into their LP. Are you in marketing? To people who aren't familiar with your group, what, specifically, are you bringing to the table when you LP Yoshi's Island? Why this game? Admittedly, at the end of the day we're just watching people Let's Play games. But with a game like Yoshi's Island, I think you need to bring more to the table than "this time it's our group". edit: and of course Audacity is your friend. Getting your commentary on a second track goes a long way since you can adjust the volume for each separately. If you're sharing one microphone you'll also want to play with distance so that everybody's picked up about evenly.
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Jul 1, 2013 20:23
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Dragonatrix posted:Wow, really? Alright, so I've editted that bit again to expand on it as best as I can. Hopefully it's a lot clearer and reads better now. While I was at it, I also added an extra bit of in-game dialogue to make it clearer what the game wants you to do. Okay that sounds a lot better, but I am wondering what happens when you have to fight Golbez in the Underworld. That fight had a script where all characters other then him would get killed, then adult Rydia would appear.
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Jul 1, 2013 21:10
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Lazyfire posted:You have it mostly right on the audio. Start recording an Audacity track and have the mic as the input for that. Save that track as whatever you want, then either close that track out or open up a new audacity file and bring in the raw video audio (File->Import Audio->Double click on the video you just recorded). This will load in the game audio. Next do the same thing for the commentary you just recorded and it will appear below the raw game audio. Line up the tracks from there and perform any noise reductions or amplifications on the commentary you need and then autoduck the game audio. It sounds much more complicated than it is. If you need a way to sync up tracks I usually start audio recording five seconds after video recording and then use any hints of game audio my mic captured to sync better from there. Ok, that makes sense. I think we'll have to experiment and bang out the process, as this is obviously more complex than what we had for the first video. But your instructions make sense. I hope I'm not being viewed as defensive...I'm trying to do a better job of explaining our thought process than I did in the first post I wrote last night. We want people to tell us what we're doing wrong, but I think that some amount of this talk of justifying the existence of the LP is a little silly, definitely subjective, and contrary to the rules of the forum. Spiffo posted:These are pretty empty statements that can apply to pretty much everyone looking to hit record and film their Genuine Reactions™ without putting much thought into their LP. Are you in marketing? While I'm not in marketing, I am in corporate sales, and I was raised by a marketing professional . Sorry if that sneaks out in the way I write.But really, you don't see the difference between a group consisting of 2 men and 2 women, and a group of just two men? You don't think that there's any difference in dynamic between live, in-person commentary and post commentary via Skype? I think if there were half a dozen LPs of a dude playing Yoshi's Island by himself, and this was just me playing Yoshi's Island and asking for feedback, your criticism would be valid. But that's not the scenario; instead we have 3 existing LPs of the game, distinct from one another, and we're adding another distinct LP to the mix. Not to mention the fact that Famous Ghosts' LP was concurrent with Vicas' (considering Vicas' has been going since February '12, this is probably not a surprise). Not only that, but beyond Yoshi's Island there are many games in the master list with far more LPs completed, including at least one game with more than 10 complete LPs. It just seems silly to me to treat LPs on SA as some sort of museum, where we have to curate the selection lest we have a repeat LP. We're doing this because we think it would be fun. We make each other laugh, and we think we can make other people laugh too. There's a lot of love out there for this game, and the combination of ease of recording, mix of experience among the group, length of the game, and the depth of the game for commentary led us to choose Yoshi's Island in particular as a starting point. Further down the line, we'd like to LP modern games that would require an HD-PVR, and there's likely to be a lot less crossover there with existing LPs, but the start-up costs are a lot higher. We want to try out the LP idea, be as entertaining as possible, and at the end of the series, determine if we want to move forward with a more costly set-up. I hope that makes sense.
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Jul 1, 2013 21:27
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And My Fax! posted:It just seems silly to me to treat LPs on SA as some sort of museum, where we have to curate the selection lest we have a repeat LP. We're doing this because we think it would be fun. We make each other laugh, and we think we can make other people laugh too. There's a lot of love out there for this game, and the combination of ease of recording, mix of experience among the group, length of the game, and the depth of the game for commentary led us to choose Yoshi's Island in particular as a starting point. Further down the line, we'd like to LP modern games that would require an HD-PVR, and there's likely to be a lot less crossover there with existing LPs, but the start-up costs are a lot higher. We want to try out the LP idea, be as entertaining as possible, and at the end of the series, determine if we want to move forward with a more costly set-up. I hope that makes sense. Well, here's the deal. The Sandcastle - and I know some people do get confused with this - isn't mandatory prior to posting an LP. You've asked for feedback, and some people here don't like the general style. If you think all your other ducks are in a row, and your thread's got worthwhile appeal, there's nothing wrong with rolling the dice and posting it. I personally don't have strong opinions toward "fuckaround group-style LPs" so if you think you'll still have an audience, feel free to do like the Tippin 40's or the Soda Pop Boys, make your thread, and see where the chips fall. Then if you do get a strong enough following, you can make the decision as far as moving forward. You might get one or two people replying "uh, great, another one of these" but if it's entertaining, well, it is. Of course, there's also the possibility that you're just terrible, but since I can't watch your video right now (at work late), I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
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Jul 1, 2013 22:18
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And My Fax! posted:But really, you don't see the difference between a group consisting of 2 men and 2 women, and a group of just two men? You don't think that there's any difference in dynamic between live, in-person commentary and post commentary via Skype? I think if there were half a dozen LPs of a dude playing Yoshi's Island by himself, and this was just me playing Yoshi's Island and asking for feedback, your criticism would be valid. But that's not the scenario; instead we have 3 existing LPs of the game, distinct from one another, and we're adding another distinct LP to the mix. Not to mention the fact that Famous Ghosts' LP was concurrent with Vicas' (considering Vicas' has been going since February '12, this is probably not a surprise). Not only that, but beyond Yoshi's Island there are many games in the master list with far more LPs completed, including at least one game with more than 10 complete LPs. I'm someone who runs with a real-life group of two men and two women as well, so I know what you mean. Thing is, with a group that large you have to take extra care to keep everybody on track. Gameplay-wise, you've got some guy who doesn't really know what he's doing wandering around, and all I could think was "get on with it!" (this isn't helped by the fact that it takes over five minutes to get to any game at all). I want to say this is a weakness of someone playing blind, but it's a Mario game. You run right and jump on stuff and find the goal. In such a story-absent game, playing blind doesn't really bring anything to the table. Commentary-wise, it's also a bit of a mess, both from the blind thing AND from the group thing. You guys aren't saying anything interesting about the game or anything in it, but are instead either A) shouting and telling the player what to do (hit that block, go back and grab that flower), B) talking over each other. Sometimes that one girl goes "BOOP" or sings along to the music instead. Duder almost started something interesting talking about the art style, but nobody bit the hook and fleshed it out, so the commentary went back to yelling at the guy playing. I admit that it's not always easy to fill the space with interesting or informative commentary, but in this case you guys missed the boat in favor of yelling "Get the flower". You guys had another kind of funny bit about "how to Yoshis reproduce?" that y'all stumbled over a bit because of people trying to talk at the same time. And of course when you get hit the conversation's gotta stop to shout a bit more. That's what I mean when I ask "what are you guys bringing to the table?" Are you playing the game particularly well? Are you talking about anything interesting, either in-game (enemies, obstacles, etc) or out-of-game (yoshi reproduction, other funny poo poo?) As it is, the commentary is kind of a mess of people talking over each other and having to explain basic game mechanics to the guy. The phrase "we're unique because our group has a unique composition and high-energy style, and our approach to the game is more casual" is kind of an empty statement that every YouTuber can use to defend just hitting record and giving it a go. Whereas "In the end, our decision was that a rerecording would look better and end more cleanly, but it would be not nearly as funny or entertaining, leading to an overall net loss in quality" sounds pretty much like a cop-out to avoid doing it again, since the commentary wasn't really funny or entertaining to people outside your group, and was mostly a bunch of people shouting over each other. Group commentary owns. My group ain't perfect, but we have to at least try to think about "What kind of things are going to be covered in this episode?" ie: planning where to start and stop the episode "Are there any specific things we should talk about together?" ie: shy guys are super-featured in Yoshi's island, you could talk about shyguys throughout the series if you needed to fill space "Do we have any particularly funny jokes or bits we want to do?" a little harder to do with live commentary You also need to think about pacing and get a feel for each others' rhythm do keep from shouting over each other. And in a Mario game, it would help to have someone competent in the game who can show it off really well. Games with actual surprises can benefit a lot from having someone blind commentating, Mario isn't one of them IMO (and preferably not in the player's seat, but ehh, judgement call, different groups find different things that work)
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Jul 1, 2013 22:38
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