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

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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gatz: Oct 19, 2012; Love 'em and leave 'em
Groom 'em and feed 'em
Cid Shinjuku

Lazyfire posted:

Get Your rear end off Mars: Let's Play Red Faction I & II

Your voice is a little bit low volume wise, but everything else is really good. Sometimes you ignore interesting stuff happening on screen in favor of explaining something else, but that's a pretty minor thing.

# ? Nov 30, 2013 17:20

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 12:18

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

gatz posted:

Your voice is a little bit low volume wise, but everything else is really good. Sometimes you ignore interesting stuff happening on screen in favor of explaining something else, but that's a pretty minor thing.

The voice is always something I worry about. For some reason my mic records at a low volume and I have to amplify the track to make it anywhere near decent. For some reason the music and effects of the game are coming through right over my voice despite a pretty hefty autoduck. I've never seen that happen until now.

# ? Nov 30, 2013 17:46

Highwang: Nov 7, 2013; No Pineapple?
No Thank You!

General Ironicus posted:

Someone has written a Master's thesis about LP and why it deserves academic attention in media studies and related fields. It quotes a lot of people here and the video bibliography is pretty much a timeline of notable threads in the subforum: https://www.academia.edu/5260639/From_Jackasses_to_Superstars_A_Case_for_the_Study_of_Lets_Play_

The man's certainly well spoken, but he's essentially just regurgitating ideas found in several Retsutalk videos. It would've been interesting to discuss economic or societal impacts of the LP, but really it just felt like a 60 page history lesson.

# ? Nov 30, 2013 18:52

CrookedB: Jun 27, 2011; Stupid newbee

General Ironicus posted:

Someone has written a Master's thesis about LP and why it deserves academic attention in media studies and related fields. It quotes a lot of people here and the video bibliography is pretty much a timeline of notable threads in the subforum: https://www.academia.edu/5260639/From_Jackasses_to_Superstars_A_Case_for_the_Study_of_Lets_Play_

Nothing particularly insightful about that thesis, to be honest.

Now if someone were to analyze the way LPs serve/oppose the neoliberal capitalist model...

e: what the guy above said :v:

# ? Nov 30, 2013 19:24

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

I can't speak to the quality of this thesis because it's not in my field, but I'm familiar with the specific genre of academic writing that it's in, and I think if you're going to read, it's important to understand that we're not the target audience. The point of a document like this is to argue to a reader who's familiar with the author's discipline that LP is an interesting phenomenon that's worth being studied. The author's profile indicates that he's applying to PhD programs, so this will probably end up being part of his eventual dissertation, which will be primarily concerned with doing some of that study.

(The reason I know this genre so well is that my own dissertation was of the same basic structure: here's an interesting phenomenon, here's why it's interesting, and here are some good questions for further research. The difference is that my work was in an area that's largely unintelligible to a non-specialist, so I never had to worry about my work being misinterpreted as unoriginal.)

# ? Nov 30, 2013 20:24

pokecapn: Oct 17, 2003; yeah, galo sengen

ultrafilter posted:

largely unintelligible to a non-specialist

I think I've found my Formal Group Moniker.

# ? Dec 1, 2013 00:02

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

Just got my msc in video game videos and I'm teaching undergrads about unregistered hypercam. Academia is actually a lot like la mulana.

# ? Dec 1, 2013 01:18

MonotoneMorgan: Nov 20, 2013; The saddest day in Octavian's life was the day he was asked to shave his mustache.

vilkacis posted:

"Baldo"? "Yless"? Now why do these names sound so familiar...

You might want to look into making gifs of things like battle animations, especially since you mention how impressive the on-field effects are. Most emulators can record video footage and VirtualDub (which is free) can convert .avi into .gif.

Since the prologue is long enough to be an update all on its own, you might not need Billy at all - you could just put the character creation at the end of the intro and run with the thread-created hero from the start.

I think I might do this and treat the Billy section as a good warm-up for the actual thread.

quote:

Please put a blank row between distinct parts, like commentary and enemy lines

It makes it easier to read.

On the other hand, when there are multiple lines from the same character using the same portrait, I personally like to keep their lines together and use a line break and spacer like this "" instead of repeating the portrait when needed.

Done and it looks much nicer!

quote:

There's a 20 emoticon limit per post, and you've gone over it in Scenario 1. If you must use smilies as portraits, you'll need to upload them as images. However, since even the generic units do seem to have mugshots, I recommend using them where available (though I do like generic commander , all else aside).

I've reduced it down to 17 by swapping the :cry:

for their respective character mugshots. I think I will keep :3:

though.

Thanks for all your feedback, I think this might be ready to go live tomorrow!

# ? Dec 1, 2013 01:22

StoryTime: Feb 26, 2010; Now listen to me children and I'll tell you of the legend of the Ninja

Highwang posted:

The man's certainly well spoken, but he's essentially just regurgitating ideas found in several Retsutalk videos. It would've been interesting to discuss economic or societal impacts of the LP, but really it just felt like a 60 page history lesson.

I thought the whole idea of a Master's thesis was to, essentially, swallow and regurgitate existing knowledge into a new worthwhile whole. Which this paper seems to accomplish. The end result might be a boring history lesson for the denizens of this forum, but a very useful reference for other people studying modern media.

# ? Dec 1, 2013 01:24

Kiavahr: Oct 17, 2013; Outrageous Lumpwad

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

I'm posting this again because it seems to have gotten lost in the all the thread title talk. I've added a sample image from the test poster to try and catch some attention as well.

Off-Site Screenshot Test Post for Divinity: Dragon Commander.

I'm not quite ready to start this: I want to get my hands on the Divinity: Original Sin map editor so I can do a couple small bonus (fake) scenes for the D:DC LP, somewhat like the fake screenshots I did for Divine Divinity.

Ah, I missed the test post link the first time around so I was working up a list of now irrelevant questions.

If the RTS battles stay that short (<20-30 min each?) I would definitely prefer to watch them as videos only. They could use a bit more subtitling with strategy and explanations of things that are happening though. For example I couldn't understand the sudden shift in playstyle when you attacked that 2nd-last base alone until I read the text version where you explained how they had no air defenses. Then again I'll probably recognize units and buildings better when they're introduced gradually rather than all at once, so that might not be a problem in the LP proper.

I'd say overall it lives up to the quality of your previous Larian LPs and is good to go.

# ? Dec 1, 2013 01:39

Rosoboronexport: Jun 14, 2006; Get in the bath, baby!; Ramrod XTreme

I'm thinking of doing a playthrough of Crysis 2 xenophobic style. Skipping/stealthing pass human opponents and killing only aliens. Stealth mechanics are pretty broken story-wise as I think human body count is around ten in total (plus a couple of accidents here and there) even though story does not count for it. Also I've tried to find the real locations and showcase how well Manhattan island is transferred into the game.

The test mission game audio is a bit broken (Nvidia Shadowplay hooks to the audio before my sound card and only recorded FL and FR channels) but I wonder how the pacing works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oimMf8c88AE

# ? Dec 1, 2013 21:27

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Lazyfire posted:

OK, so I got some good feedback on the issues I had before I started this, so I went ahead and recorded some video today for Red Faction. It's a short game, but so is Red Faction II, so I decided to do them as one thread so instead of doing to different threads for two fairly short games. Let me know of any glaring problems in the video or commentary.

Get Your rear end off Mars: Let's Play Red Faction I & II

Latest Video
Episode 2: Miner Barracks

Table Of Contents:

Episode 1: Miner's Revolt
YouTube

Episode 2: Miner Barracks
YouTube

Table of Contents:

Coming Soon!

What is Red Faction?

Red Faction is a franchise of games published by THQ and developed by Volition running for 10 years and four titles before being shelved by THQ after the critically panned and low selling Armageddon didn't live up to expectations after the success of the previous Red Faction game, Guerrilla. THQ would find itself on the shelf a year later, and much of their catalog, including Red Faction, sold to Nordic Games. Check out TyrantSaber's LP of Red Faction: Guerrilla here if you haven't seen it/played the game yourself. It is easily the high point of the franchise. The two games that started the franchise, Red Faction and Red Faction II were released within a year of each other and somehow managed to look and play completely differently. Where Red Faction I (hereafter known as just "Red Faction") was closer to Half Life than to Halo, Red Faction II was basically Halo with destructible environments. That last point, the destructible environments, is the main theme tying all the games together (if you thought it was Mars, you're wrong. Red Faction II takes place on Earth). The games got even less similar when the franchise was revived for Guerrilla, which was a third person open world game instead of a first person mission based shooter.

It needs to be mentioned that Red Faction is difficult. You may die in the first few rooms of the game if you aren't careful, and the game isn't above sticking a guy in a blind corner with a super weapon, or stocking your timed exit path with bullet sponge enemies. If you don't know some of the tricks the game has in store are coming you'll end up dying a ton, and even if you do know, there's no telling if the competent or incompetent enemies are on duty that day; you could end up getting one shotted, you could end up dancing between sniper fire for three minutes straight. If the competent enemies are there you may also end up getting sent pretty far back on each death, there is no autosave on the PC, you have to manually save your progress. The quick save button will be your best friend when playing the game. Red Faction II isn't nearly as bad as that, but I'll end up cheesing at least two sections as it is the only reliable way I've found to not be destroyed every time.

Destructible environments? What does that mean

You know how in like every FPS when you fire a rocket at a wall it just leaves a couple scorch marks (save for Battlefield, I guess) and you wonder how in the year of our Lord Twenty Thirteen game developers can't figure out how to get a rocket to make a crater? Red Faction touted the ability to do that and more back in 2001 on the second version of a console brand now on its fourth revision. Developer Volition created what they called Geo-mod, or Geometry Modification, so that when the theoretical rocket hit the wall of the cave behind you it left a nice big hole in the rock...most of the time. When you get down to it the system is pretty simple. When an explosion hits a surface the game takes into account the blast radius and pattern of the explosive and then creates negative space in roughly the same shape as the explosion. By creating the negative space parts of the environment are removed creating holes and gaps in the world. There are still a large number of things that can't be destroyed, in Red Faction a black with tan spots texture appears when something is "invincible" to Geo-Mod, a trait that becomes more common as the game goes on. Red Faction II also used Geo-Mod, but to a lesser extent. By 2009 Guerrilla used the Havoc engine, Geo-Mod was dead. A big point of Geo-Mod in the first two games was that it could be used to create alternate paths or access secret areas. I'll be showing off as many of those as I can remember to do while pointing out the faults and successes of the system.

Why both games?

They are fairly short. Red Faction is probably not longer than four hours, Red Faction II is maybe the same length if not half an hour longer. It's fairly entertaining to see how Volition went and changed the way the game worked in a year, and the things they still ended up behind the curve on. For example, both games pair fairly inaccurate weapons with an inability to aim down sights on most weapons, but in the second game they figured out how to get the character portraits to animate when they popped up on your screen. They hadn't figured out subtitles, but they did add a dedicated grenade toss button. As I've said, they're also completely different games. I feel like Red Faction was heavily influenced by Half Life at times; it has an "everyman" hero who gets thrust into a situation where only they can succeed, and who has to use smarts and cunning at times to get through areas instead of brawn. Red Faction II is a full bore sci-fi military shooter where your squadmates celebrate you blowing a man apart for being conscripted by the person you are trying to overthrow. The second game isn't even set on Mars, it starts five years later on Earth and the titular Red Faction is not even the same group from Mars, they just use the name (not sure if they pay licensing fees or what).

How will the LP work?

I plan on doing a few updates per week, probably keeping to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. Videos are going to be fairly short, with 15-20 minutes being normal and the outliers being 30 or so minutes at the latest. In areas with copious deaths I'll probably put something together to play at the end of the video or string several levels together into a death reel. I'll be taking on Red Faction and then Red Faction II back to back. All updates will be collected in this OP and notices posted in the thread. I'm aiming to be fairly informative with the videos, explaining out the different mechanics, faults and systems at play in the games. I will be attempting to not really lament the lack of modern shooter conveniences like objective markers and the ability to Aim Down Sights, but I won't shy away from mention them when I die in a situation where it would have saved time and frustration.

I hate to be a pain on this one; I just wanted to make a final check to see if there are any glaring issues with the OP, videos or anything else for this. I'd like to start on this in the next few days, and while I know I don't need approval, it's always good to have another pair of eyes look over these things.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 02:09

Speedball: Apr 15, 2008

Looks okay to me!

# ? Dec 2, 2013 04:02

Roar: Jul 7, 2007; I got 30 points!

I GOT 30 POINTS!

I haven't watched the Red Faction video yet but I do hope that you show off some of the stellar AI in the game.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 05:23

MonotoneMorgan: Nov 20, 2013; The saddest day in Octavian's life was the day he was asked to shave his mustache.

It's live now - Der Langrisser thread
Again, thanks for all your feedback.

Roar posted:

I haven't watched the Red Faction video yet but I do hope that you show off some of the stellar AI in the game.

That made my day - thanks Roar. And I second you showing this... quirky AI off, Lazyfire.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 07:02

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

MonotoneMorgan posted:

That made my day - thanks Roar. And I second you showing this... quirky AI off, Lazyfire.

I should mention that the LP would focus a lot of attention on the weird aspects of the game like the NPC AI, bugs, stupid plot points and other weirdness that pervades the game. As a game it has some interesting features and a not-terrible story, but the strange little moments the game generates will always be the star of the show to me.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 12:37

skoolmunkee: Jun 27, 2004; Tell your friends we're coming for them

It seems like no one has any problems with this (yay), so I'll go ahead and make a thread later tonight unless someone's got something to say real quick. Or forever hold your peace.

skoolmunkee posted:

Hello! I am pretty much finished with my screenshot LP aside from a wrap-up kind of post, and I realized I need something a little less ambitious than Majin as a first video LP. So please let me know if there's anything I should fix for this:

Let's Play The Cave: A hillbilly, a knight, and a monk walk into a cavern

The Cave is a 2013 side-scrolling platform-adventure game by Double Fine (PS3, Xbox360, WiiU, Steam, and iOS). It is about seven curious and flawed characters who, in order to obtain their deepest (darkest) desires, descend into a talking cave. It's charming, funny, and good-looking- The Cave that is, not the cave. Well, the cave is those things too. This game is not the Kickstarter-funded one- it was developed by Ron Gilbert, who you may know as the creator of Maniac Mansion. You'll see elements of that game in The Cave, as well as some things which would fit right in with Psychonauts.

***NO SPOILERS***

It's likely some of you have played this game, but for those who haven't, I'd like them to discover things about the characters, stories, puzzles, etc. as they're uncovered. That's one of the most fun bits. So please don't spoil anything, even in black bars. (If you've got a spoilery question for me, I have PMs!)

The game is very minimalistic in its way- although there are seven characters, each with their own story to discover and desire to fulfill, you can only bring a few through the cave at a time. There are environment and object puzzles, but no inventory system. It is as humorous and visually interesting as you'd expect from a Double Fine game, which makes it very enjoyable to watch as far as I'm concerned. The game is surprisingly dark- who would have thought that a game about one's deepest desires involved so many atrocities?

If you'd like to see a little of the game in action, here's the official announcement trailer which does a pretty good job.

What that trailer isn't able to show is the multi-character nature of some of the puzzles. You can swap between your three characters at any time, which is often necessary to solve a puzzle. It's a neat dimension of the game, and with each character's unique ability can sometimes change things up a little bit.

There is a local co-op mode where people can play through the cave together, but it's pretty unlikely I'll be able to show that off. Someone else is welcome to, though!

--- (second post)

For this Let's Play, I'll be letting the thread decide which characters to bring through on the first and second trips. The journey through the cave goes through several distinct sections, which will make natural breaks for videos (and will make it easy for me to cut out repeated sections on later playthroughs). Each update will be between 10-20 minutes long in most cases. I plan to have some help from co-commentators (Ritcheyz, Skippy Granola, and Geop individually on different sections) so we can have a bit of fun while we watch the characters win a princess's heart, achieve zen mastery, find true love, and blow up cans of creamed corn.

Meanwhile, let's get the game started and show you the characters you've got to choose from:

Let's Play The Cave #0: The Campfire (YouTube only)

# ? Dec 2, 2013 13:47

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

Lazyfire posted:

I hate to be a pain on this one; I just wanted to make a final check to see if there are any glaring issues with the OP, videos or anything else for this. I'd like to start on this in the next few days, and while I know I don't need approval, it's always good to have another pair of eyes look over these things.

I watched the entirity of the first video and skimmed through the second one quickly. One thing I noticed about the first video is that, while you very clearly try to only talk when there's not too much action going on, sometimes your voice still gets drowned out by the game a little.

In the second video you seem to make use of auto ducking to resolve this issue, though. I would recommend going back to the audio tracks for the first video (assuming you still have them) and giving them the same treatment you gave the second video.

Other than that, you're good to go as far I'm concerned!

# ? Dec 2, 2013 18:06

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

JordanKai posted:

I watched the entirity of the first video and skimmed through the second one quickly. One thing I noticed about the first video is that, while you very clearly try to only talk when there's not too much action going on, sometimes your voice still gets drowned out by the game a little.

In the second video you seem to make use of auto ducking to resolve this issue, though. I would recommend going back to the audio tracks for the first video (assuming you still have them) and giving them the same treatment you gave the second video.

Other than that, you're good to go as far I'm concerned!

It's actually the same sound file, believe it or not, all one recording. I plan on putting a more severe duck on the audio and re-encode it when I get the chance, I watched the results on the 3rd and 4th video and there are times where I get completely drowned out by the game audio despite these setting being totally fine for every other LP I've ever done.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 18:44

gatz: Oct 19, 2012; Love 'em and leave 'em
Groom 'em and feed 'em
Cid Shinjuku

Lazyfire posted:

It's actually the same sound file, believe it or not, all one recording. I plan on putting a more severe duck on the audio and re-encode it when I get the chance, I watched the results on the 3rd and 4th video and there are times where I get completely drowned out by the game audio despite these setting being totally fine for every other LP I've ever done.

Have you looked in the sound options in the control panel to see if you can boost the mic volume at all? I'm assuming you're using windows.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 18:55

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

gatz posted:

Have you looked in the sound options in the control panel to see if you can boost the mic volume at all? I'm assuming you're using windows.

Yeah, I've checked everything out and no such luck. Audacity is recording at top volume as well. I've just put an amplify on my audio track which seems to work well, but it isn't perfect by a long shot.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 19:36

unfair: Oct 6, 2012

Lazyfire posted:

Yeah, I've checked everything out and no such luck. Audacity is recording at top volume as well. I've just put an amplify on my audio track which seems to work well, but it isn't perfect by a long shot.

You should use Audacity's "compress" feature on both the voice and game audio before you duck them. That should solve 99% of problems with you be drowned out. The exception is voices in the background that share the same tone as yours - but a manual additional duck of 3 db on those rare sections should fix it right up.

For reference I use 5 db ducking with 2 second fades.

E: please note that using compress only, or using amplify and then compressing will result in a slightly different sound. Pick whichever way you prefer, but if you amplify first then you need to noise remove again before you compress. If you don't you'll introduce a bit of white noise.

unfair fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Dec 2, 2013

# ? Dec 2, 2013 19:47

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

skoolmunkee posted:

It seems like no one has any problems with this (yay), so I'll go ahead and make a thread later tonight unless someone's got something to say real quick. Or forever hold your peace.

There's nothing there to have a problem with since you didn't show how a typical level / video would go. Didn't the old thread have a "don't show off the intro, use some mid-game level as a template for a typical video" suggestion in the OP?

# ? Dec 2, 2013 22:27

unfair: Oct 6, 2012

e: whatever, I'm not going there.

unfair fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Dec 2, 2013

# ? Dec 2, 2013 22:45

skoolmunkee: Jun 27, 2004; Tell your friends we're coming for them

Xander77 posted:

There's nothing there to have a problem with since you didn't show how a typical level / video would go. Didn't the old thread have a "don't show off the intro, use some mid-game level as a template for a typical video" suggestion in the OP?

Hm, okay. Well it said to include the first update, but I suppose it's not really representative of the normal gameplay or the commentary. I plan to have a co-commentator and I just didn't want to have them record something for a mini update that would only be used in the sandcastle. I'll see if someone is up for it.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 23:00

unfair: Oct 6, 2012

skoolmunkee posted:

Hm, okay. Well it said to include the first update, but I suppose it's not really representative of the normal gameplay or the commentary. I plan to have a co-commentator and I just didn't want to have them record something for a mini update that would only be used in the sandcastle. I'll see if someone is up for it.

Just post it - you're doing voting and the Sandcastle is only a useful formality anyway. Technically your video is solid and gives a good feel for commentary style.

# ? Dec 2, 2013 23:02

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

Just posting this for my usual double quality check. I'll start the thread on Friday, and if you spot any serious problems that I missed, I'll have enough time to fix that.

quote:

A Magical Space Adventure With Henry Rollins - Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter

You know what's cool? Space! Don't try to act like it isn't, because you know drat well that it is. Space has aliens, lasers, spaceships, funky planets, and lots of rocks floating in an endless void. If you don't think that's cool, then you should see a doctor because you're broken. But you know what's also pretty cool? Bounty hunters! Gruff people that live a life on the edge, always on the hunt for some perp and the money on its head. Shooting guns, getting in fights, drinking in shoddy dive bars, being the strong arm of the law, that's the good life! Now, if you are at least a little bit like me, you probably think that it would be sweet to combine those two cool things, right? Boy, do I have good news for you!

Somewhere around the year 2000, Warthog Games had the same idea. They wanted to make an open world game about being a bounty hunter in space. At some point, they seriously described it as "GTA in Space!" The game was supposed to have a reputation system to represent your standing in the galaxy, and catching bounties would make you climb up the ranks. There was also some kind of plot that the player would get roped into along the way. And to sweeten the deal, your character had a big Mexican hat, a popped collar, a slick visor, and a small cape over half of its torso. The ultimate space cowboy outfit, if you ask me. But for some reason that didn't work out, and the game was redesigned. Kind of a shame, because the initial idea was rad as hell.

Anyway, what the game ended up being was a mediocre FPS, that wasn't very successful after its release for Playstation 2 and Xbox in 2003. A year later, the promised PC port came out, and the planned Gamecube version was quietly canned somewhere in between. Oh, the cool cowboy outfit was also scrapped, because the developers wanted to make the main character more accessible or something like that. They also enlisted Henry Rollins as the voice actor, and he has the acting talent of a brick in this game. The main selling point was the seamless and fluid transition between space and foot combat, and it's also the only thing that makes this game stand out a bit. Space combat plays a pretty big role, and is honestly fun and well executed for the most part. But on the other hand, the game has a bunch of problems, questionable design choices, wonky mechanics, and the PC version comes with its own list of bugs and glitches. Also, the PC version has lots of signs of being a shoddy port!

Yeah, I enjoy this game, but I'm also honest enough to say that it's not that good overall. However, it still has its moments, and a lot of the elements are neat and deserve to be seen. It just falls short when you look at the bigger picture. Still, I think we'll have a fun ride with this! At the very least, we can chuckle at Rollins trying to portrait a hard boiled space bounty hunter.

The background for our story begins 400 years into the future. Having pioneered warp drive technology, mankind has fully explored the Solar System, along with terra forming a number of its planets. Beyond this, a number of neighboring systems have also been chartered. Most contain nothing but lifeless rock, but two of these systems, Dela and Hasali, prove to be rich in resources and life forms. For the first time humans make contact with a number of alien life forms, some of whom get mad at over-zealous colonialists who corrupt and exploit the native species. But 400 years later, the human colonists have become fully integrated with the indigenous life forms. The political and commercial power-bases are established back on earth, but have branches that span all three systems, and employ members of all races. The dominant races are Human, Jaldari, and Valleakan. And with the three systems now fully colonized, the big corporations look out for virgin territory.

The Tannan Corporation, the largest conglomerate, launches a series of probes through a prototype light gate, and the Vagner system is discovered. The stampede into the Vagner system has much in common with the North American land rush, but this time instead of homesteaders and prospectors, it's huge conglomerates battling over land and mining rights, with smuggling cartels and pirate clans fighting over whatever's left. It's a new frontier where rules don't exist and everyone's out to make a fast buck. To counter crime, a police force known as Enforcers are established, and sponsored by the major corporations to protect their interests, on the condition that they will also protect law abiding traders and settlers. This motion comes from the political body called the High Senate, who also put in place an elite military service called the Rangers, whose job is to monitor the Enforcers and tackle some of the more serious criminals.

We'll be following one such Ranger, named Mace Griffin. What starts off as a normal search and rescue mission, quickly goes south and leads to the loss of his whole unit. But to make matters even worse, Mace is blamed for the whole thing and sentenced to ten years in prison. After his release, he has changed, and so did the galaxy. The Rangers were discredited and eventually disbanded, and the Guild of Bounty Hunters rose in their place. Since the Enforcers were hopelessly overwhelmed with the task of keeping the Vagner system safe, the Guild now does was the Rangers used to do. Though, the Guild is much less concerned with upholding the law or monitoring the Enforcers, and mainly looks out for profit. Mace is out for revenge for being framed, and joining the Guild is his only way to get started. But while he tracks down the pieces of his past, he slowly stumbles into something larger, and much more sinister.

Since the PC version is a shoddy port, I have very little control over the internal audio settings. There are only two sliders, one for the music, and one for everything else. This is kind of a problem, because the internal mix is also terrible. Dialog is often pretty quiet, while other sounds just spike the hell out, and there are no subs in this game. I'm doing my best to fix that with editing, but there are lots of cases where I just can't do anything about it. Like, when somebody is talking and suddenly a noise spike comes from out of nowhere. The intro in the first proper episode is a pretty good representation of what I mean. This is just fyi, and I'm honestly doing what I can to counter it. I thought about adding subs myself, but I already put a lot of time into the videos. Making subs on top of that, would likely either kill my motivation, or make the updates come at a snail's pace. Sorry, not gonna happen. Though, if there is a particularly bad case, I may jump over my shadow and do it for that part. We'll see!

This game has a pretty standard orchestral soundtrack. Don't get me wrong, it isn't bad, but it's just bland and you probably heard similar tracks before. That's why I decided to turn it off, and replace it by music of my own choice! I'm going to stick to Synthie music, since I think that it just fits this game. It's also a cool genre that needs more love. And if you by chance have watched my Shogo LP, you'll know that my taste isn't garbage. If you didn't, then you just have to trust me, okay? I'll always credit all the songs at the end of each epsiode, and you can pretty much find all of them on Youtube. I'm no audio engineer, so my mix probably isn't perfect. But I've spent a lot of time to create a baseline that should be fine for most people/sound systems. If you have a problem with my mix, or just an opinion about it, go ahead and say it! I'm always open to improvement.

This is going to be a pretty chill thread, where we can chat about music, space, bad FPS games, and maybe bounty hunting? I'll probably even post a few rad tracks every now and then, and don't mind other folks doing it. This shouldn't devolve into a PYF thread, but as long as all of us have fun, I'm cool with it. Except,

NO SPOILERS!

The story isn't going to blow your mind, but should still be experienced without interference. So please don't ruin our space mystery.

Intro
This will later link to a post

Chapter 1 - Hold Position
Same as above

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Dec 3, 2013

# ? Dec 3, 2013 00:12

Speedball: Apr 15, 2008

I swear Id's LP's are cursed or something...

# ? Dec 3, 2013 02:05

TheMcD: May 4, 2013; Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Speedball posted:

I swear Id's LP's are cursed or something...

I haven't been around that long (as might be self-evident) but from what I've seen, this behavior seems to be in line with any sort of LPs of larger RPGs as well. The same thing (albeit a bit less intense) seems to happen in Lizard Wizard's Oblivion LP. Combine that with Id doing the LP, and it was pretty much inevitable this kind of stuff would happen.

# ? Dec 3, 2013 02:13

Cooked Auto: Aug 4, 2007

TheMcD posted:

I haven't been around that long (as might be self-evident) but from what I've seen, this behavior seems to be in line with any sort of LPs of larger RPGs as well. The same thing (albeit a bit less intense) seems to happen in Lizard Wizard's Oblivion LP. Combine that with Id doing the LP, and it was pretty much inevitable this kind of stuff would happen.

Or any major game title LP. I mean aside from the puns going out of control a couple of times the Last of Us LP has been locked for more or less the same reasons as the Fallout one at least once.
Feels like I missed out when I did Halo. :v:

# ? Dec 3, 2013 02:18

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

TheMcD posted:

I haven't been around that long (as might be self-evident) but from what I've seen, this behavior seems to be in line with any sort of LPs of larger RPGs as well. The same thing (albeit a bit less intense) seems to happen in Lizard Wizard's Oblivion LP. Combine that with Id doing the LP, and it was pretty much inevitable this kind of stuff would happen.

I just don't understand how hard it is to read "No spoilers, no flamewars" and not understand the concept behind it. I've been fairly lucky in my LPs where people seem to understand the idea that they need to be careful about plot details, but every other thread I go into people are just jumping to reveal plot points.

# ? Dec 3, 2013 02:34

TheMcD: May 4, 2013; Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Lazyfire posted:

I just don't understand how hard it is to read "No spoilers, no flamewars" and not understand the concept behind it. I've been fairly lucky in my LPs where people seem to understand the idea that they need to be careful about plot details, but every other thread I go into people are just jumping to reveal plot points.

I'd wager there's some sort of innate desire to discuss interesting plotpoints, which almost always end up being spoilers. The LPer talks about something that is a bit foreshadowy, and then it's like the floodgates have been opened. One guy says something, then somebody else pitches in, and then poo poo gets hosed.

I wonder how it'll go for my threads once I make my way to more popular games (I've had ideas about a narrative VtM:B LP and a narrative FO3/FO:NV LP, but that'll come once I feel more secure in my writing and have knocked off the Safecracker games). Probably not much better.

# ? Dec 3, 2013 02:39

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

TheMcD posted:

I'd wager there's some sort of innate desire to discuss interesting plotpoints, which almost always end up being spoilers. The LPer talks about something that is a bit foreshadowy, and then it's like the floodgates have been opened. One guy says something, then somebody else pitches in, and then poo poo gets hosed.

I wonder how it'll go for my threads once I make my way to more popular games (I've had ideas about a narrative VtM:B LP and a narrative FO3/FO:NV LP, but that'll come once I feel more secure in my writing and have knocked off the Safecracker games). Probably not much better.

I think audience size has something to do with it. It's like a Godwin's law of LP that the more posts you get the more likely someone will reveal important plot details. In a thread that doesn't get a ton of posts your chances are pretty low, but when you hit like three pages between the OP and the first update it's bound to happen. Poor Id, done in by his own popularity.

# ? Dec 3, 2013 02:46

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

TheMcD posted:

I'd wager there's some sort of innate desire to discuss interesting plotpoints, which almost always end up being spoilers. The LPer talks about something that is a bit foreshadowy, and then it's like the floodgates have been opened. One guy says something, then somebody else pitches in, and then poo poo gets hosed.

I wonder how it'll go for my threads once I make my way to more popular games (I've had ideas about a narrative VtM:B LP and a narrative FO3/FO:NV LP, but that'll come once I feel more secure in my writing and have knocked off the Safecracker games). Probably not much better.

Honestly it's more of a case of the LP'er than the game; pretty much when you become uber popular and have an expansive audience, there's possibility that that expanding audience won't be able to not spout endless meme's and catchphrases or trying to expound endlessly in regards to spoilers or theories. It's the inevitable curse of anyone who becomes popular; people will start drawing fanart of what you look like in real life and will demand that you never stop LP'ing a series (case in point Dark Id and Drakengard).

# ? Dec 3, 2013 02:56

geri_khan: May 16, 2009; Fucking blocks... I'm gonna climb the shit outta you!

Well, it looks like youtube isn't a safe home for my Catherine LP anymore.

quote:

Your video is blocked globally.

Here are the details:

"양띵TV삼성[막장연애스토리 캐서린!! 4-6편]", visual content administered by: 4:23
CJ E&M

It doesn't SEEM to be a copyright strike, but it's not good.

That said, I suspect that CJ E&M doesn't have anything to do with Catherine and this is a false positive. I can't find any connections between them and Atlus. Do you guys think this is worth trying to dispute or contact them over?

... maybe I should just try getting on that Internet Archive...

# ? Dec 3, 2013 03:04

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

geri_khan posted:

Well, it looks like youtube isn't a safe home for my Catherine LP anymore.

It doesn't SEEM to be a copyright strike, but it's not good.

That said, I suspect that CJ E&M doesn't have anything to do with Catherine and this is a false positive. I can't find any connections between them and Atlus. Do you guys think this is worth trying to dispute or contact them over?

... maybe I should just try getting on that Internet Archive...

I think this is a false positive, just contact the "owners" and they'll probably release the strike unless they are vindictive dicks. Also, didn't Atlus get bought by Sega not too long ago? Don't they hate LPs or am I misremembering?

# ? Dec 3, 2013 03:07

geri_khan: May 16, 2009; Fucking blocks... I'm gonna climb the shit outta you!

Lazyfire posted:

I think this is a false positive, just contact the "owners" and they'll probably release the strike unless they are vindictive dicks. Also, didn't Atlus get bought by Sega not too long ago? Don't they hate LPs or am I misremembering?

They hate Shining Force 3. Took down a bunch of videos about it, big stink, internet drama, SEGA apologised but left a big mess and some people never got their youtube accounts back (last I heard). Regardless, I can't find a link between CJ E&M and SEGA.

It's not a strike, just blocked globally. For whatever reason those seem to be different things, but suggests it was done though Content ID I think. I'll write them a letter once it's not 2AM and I'm not up for work in 4 hours.

# ? Dec 3, 2013 03:13

D_W: Nov 12, 2013

There was something I read about some months back about some company that was putting claims on Atlus related videos. It was mostly Persona 3 and 4 stuff though. It might be similar thing. I don't remember hearing that it was ever resolved.

# ? Dec 3, 2013 03:16

kirbysuperstar: Nov 11, 2012; Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

Wasn't it a Russian model using the moniker Persona or something?

# ? Dec 3, 2013 03:22

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 12:18

D_W: Nov 12, 2013

Yeah. Something like that. I think it was someone claiming to be her or someone who represented her. If I'm remembering it right she claimed no knowledge about it over twitter or some other social media. It might be worth scrounging up the details.

# ? Dec 3, 2013 03:44

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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