The Sandcastle - Let's Play Discussion and Drama (Archive info in OP!)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > The Sandcastle - Let's Play Discussion and Drama (Archive info in OP!)

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Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

ivantod posted:

Hey guys, I was just wondering if there are any updates regarding the Cloudflare timeout error when posting longer posts? As far as I can see, it's still an ongoing problem.

Thanks.

Admin are aware of the issue. It's being looked into. No ETA. Patience is asked, they are particularly busy atm.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 13:58

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# ? May 18, 2024 14:29

ivantod: Mar 27, 2010; Mahalo, fuckers.

Blind Sally posted:

Admin are aware of the issue. It's being looked into. No ETA. Patience is asked, they are particularly busy atm.

Thanks for the info!

No rush, sorry if I came across as pushy, it wasn't my intention!

# ? Apr 4, 2018 14:03

Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

Not at all, it's no problem!

# ? Apr 4, 2018 14:29

mateo360: Mar 20, 2012; TOO MANY PEOPLE MERLOCK!
ONLY ONE DIJON!

Now see, this is the kind of thing that really holds me back from even attempting a screenshot LP. I get trying to make it look good but when we are nitpicking on the pixel level on a PSX game it really just kills any enthusiasm to even try.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 16:56

Arist: Feb 13, 2012; _{who, me?}

You generally only really need to worry about it with pixel art.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 17:10

Siegkrow: Oct 11, 2013; Arguing about Lore for 5 years and counting

Blind Sally posted:

Not at all, it's no problem!

Is it at all related to Lowtax breaking his spine? It happened at roughly the same time.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 17:18

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

mateo360 posted:

Now see, this is the kind of thing that really holds me back from even attempting a screenshot LP. I get trying to make it look good but when we are nitpicking on the pixel level on a PSX game it really just kills any enthusiasm to even try.

See, I'm fine with the nitpicking, and getting people to go through what I've put together with a fine-toothed comb is why I put it up in here. I'd rather learn this stuff now and not have to deal with the nitpicking when I'm 20 updates into the LP. If vilkacis (or anybody else) knows what codec to use or what settings to plug into OBS or ePSXe to stop that, it'll have been worth the nitpicking. It's just that the utvideo codec I used to get that shot in the first place is actually the best codec I've found so far; the others were all either worse or actually unusable. Personally, I think it looks acceptable, and as a last resort I could post it, but I'd like to try for better.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 17:28

DMorbid: Jan 6, 2011; With our special guest star, RUSH! YAYYYYYYYYY

I'm a huge nitpicker when it comes to image and video quality (please don't ask me how much time and money I have invested in making my retro console games look as good as possible on original hardware), but those screenshots look absolutely fine to me on a huge 4K screen. Yeah, sure there's a bit of extra blur because it's not a lossless image and you can see it if you zoom in, but it's not like we're dealing with a super low quality source video or *shudder* bilinear filtering on 2D graphics.

DMorbid fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Apr 4, 2018

# ? Apr 4, 2018 17:49

Kanfy: Jan 9, 2012; Just gotta keep walking down that road.

mateo360 posted:

Now see, this is the kind of thing that really holds me back from even attempting a screenshot LP. I get trying to make it look good but when we are nitpicking on the pixel level on a PSX game it really just kills any enthusiasm to even try.

Realistically 95% of your audience is not going to complain or even notice stuff like that, so it's more about how high you want to set your own standards. There are screenshot LPs run with messy-looking .pngs like ten times the filesize of what'd be necessary or considered acceptable in this thread without the LP police coming to kick down anyone's doors.

I'm not saying that's desirable or that you shouldn't give any fucks about anything, but as long as you get at least the basic stuff right, at the end of the day it's your own choice how good you want your presentation to be.

Kanfy fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Apr 4, 2018

# ? Apr 4, 2018 18:00

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

Commander Keene posted:

So, I'm looking at starting up an LP of the PSX version of Wild Arms. How does this look?

Oh hey. I remember I tried following Azure Horizon's LP (the intro movie and theme really got my attention), but it was as boring and incoherent as all his LPs. Looking forward to this.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 18:23

ricdesi: Mar 18, 2014; Does it really need saying?

ivantod posted:

Hey guys, I was just wondering if there are any updates regarding the Cloudflare timeout error when posting longer posts? As far as I can see, it's still an ongoing problem.

Does anybody have any workarounds--it makes posting SSLPs a bit annoying (I know I can use the test poster for now, but...)?

Thanks.

Ditto on this, it's been a full week now and it's become more than a bit problematic for large OPs that require regular edits.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 19:32

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

The people running the Something Awful forums are overworked, sick, death or all of the above. Don't get your hopes up.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 21:26

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Carbon dioxide posted:

The people running the Something Awful forums are overworked, sick, death or all of the above. Don't get your hopes up.

But where are War, Famine, and Pestilence?

# ? Apr 4, 2018 21:30

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

But where are War, Famine, and Pestilence?

zen death robot is Famine, Smythe is Pestilence, NYC Tattoo is War, and Lowtax is Death. Or just dead. Someone should go check on him...

# ? Apr 4, 2018 21:33

Jamesman: Nov 19, 2004; "First off, let me start by saying curly light blond hair does not suit Hyomin at all. Furthermore,"; Fun Shoe

Blind Sally posted:

it looks like a tonne of extra work to me :/

I mean, once you have a template that works for you, all you need to do is just type in different text or change a character image, so it's not much more work than typing it out as a forum post.

Here's a quick and dirty example I did that took an hour or so, and then all I'd need to do is change some text and swap a new pic into the frame. The hard stuff is done.

Jamesman fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Apr 4, 2018

# ? Apr 4, 2018 21:47

Epicmissingno: Jul 1, 2017; Thank gooness we all get along so well!

This seems like the perfect time to post a test update.

It's supposed to lead in to the thread choosing a new protagonist, so that's why it ends the way it does.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 22:14

tiistai: Nov 1, 2012; Solo Melodica

mateo360 posted:

Now see, this is the kind of thing that really holds me back from even attempting a screenshot LP. I get trying to make it look good but when we are nitpicking on the pixel level on a PSX game it really just kills any enthusiasm to even try.

Don't confuse Sandcastle advice with the criticism you may or may not get from your LP audience, it's not a valid comparison. Seems to me that if people didn't point out mistakes and give some pointers on how to maybe fix them, Sandcastle wouldn't be doing its job.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 22:56

ricdesi: Mar 18, 2014; Does it really need saying?

Carbon dioxide posted:

The people running the Something Awful forums are overworked, sick, death or all of the above. Don't get your hopes up.

That's fair, the timing is pretty unfortunate, what with Lowtax currently pulling off a very convincing Schr�dinger's Cat costume.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 23:03

vilkacis: Feb 16, 2011

Commander Keene posted:

If you have any good recommendations as to video codecs, or if OBS isn't the way to go with this and there's a better (freeware) screen recorder I'm all ears; I'll even re-record that update.

It's not really my table, unfortunately; I generally just save uncompressed video (which is huge, but clean) for what I need. I use the emulator's screenshot/video recording function if possible; otherwise Fraps because I've had and used it for a long time, but A, it's not free, and B, I hear it's not considered great at this point.

Still, the blur is fairly light for the most part, and it doesn't make your images super heavy, so it's not a huge issue.

quote:

The black borders are in-game; they only appear in the prologue.

On the sides, too? Fair enough, then. If it's an in-game effect, do leave it in.

quote:

Yeah, I was a bit worried about that. But the single-sized sprites for the humans make everything too tiny, and I'm planning to use official art portraits for the characters that have some to use. I could size Al up to match, though.

You don't need to be able to make out every detail on the sprites, they just need to be big enough to identify the speaker. Smaller "portraits" are generally better, in my opinion.

Still, if you want to keep the 2x characters, maintaining it for every character is better. (I'd suggest cropping the large ones down to a face/head, though.)

quote:

OK, I was going to gif that, but I decided it might be too similar to Ryan, so I left it out. Would a gif be better, or should I just include a screen mid-nuke?

It's up to you! We've seen the effect animated already, so a gif isn't necessary, but there's no harm in having it animated, either.

quote:

I'll readily admit I'm a complete newbie when it comes to video and gifs; I'm not really sure how to remove frames and still keep it looking smooth. I'm using VirtualDub to pull the gif from the footage, and Gimp to optimize. If there's a better way, or if you know a good guide or tutorial, I'm all ears.

Try the "process every other frame" option under video->frame rate...

If it's still not enough, try the Convert to fps option and set it to, say, 10 or 15. You'll have to experiment a bit to see what works best; it's always going to be a compromise in terms of file size and smoothness.

I'm not familiar with Gimp so I don't know what kind of options it has. But reducing the number of colours in a gif also tends to reduce the size. It might still look decent if you drop from 256 to 128 or even 64. But again, it depends on the image, so you'll have to experiment.

quote:

So I should keep the whole screen when I make gifs unless it's something very small and localized? Fine by me. I was trying to minimize file sizes in order to decrease the load on browsers (and slower Internet connections).

Pretty much. I think some things benefit more from having the whole screen, like the axe - it's better to see where it lands. Same goes for things like Al porting in, it's nice to see where it happens. But it's a judgement call, of course.

It's good to be considerate, I definitely try not to make my updates too heavy as well, but if you can make something look much better for a relatively slight size increase, it's probably worth it.

mateo360 posted:

Now see, this is the kind of thing that really holds me back from even attempting a screenshot LP. I get trying to make it look good but when we are nitpicking on the pixel level on a PSX game it really just kills any enthusiasm to even try.

Pixel art needs to be nitpicked on the pixel level.

There's nothing saying you have to use the sand castle or listen to anyone's advice. But if someone asks, why would we not try to help them make their images as good as they possibly can?

Kanfy posted:

Realistically 95% of your audience is not going to complain or even notice stuff like that

This is also true.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 00:12

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

vilkacis posted:

Pixel art needs to be nitpicked on the pixel level.

There's nothing saying you have to use the sand castle or listen to anyone's advice. But if someone asks, why would we not try to help them make their images as good as they possibly can?

At the size that sprite would have been, I never would have been able to tell if it was 1 pixel or 4 pixels.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 00:21

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

vilkacis posted:

It's not really my table, unfortunately; I generally just save uncompressed video (which is huge, but clean) for what I need. I use the emulator's screenshot/video recording function if possible; otherwise Fraps because I've had and used it for a long time, but A, it's not free, and B, I hear it's not considered great at this point.

Still, the blur is fairly light for the most part, and it doesn't make your images super heavy, so it's not a huge issue.

ePSXe doesn't have a recording function; BizHawk does, but my PC's not great, so it tanks the framerate whenever anything is happening on-screen. Somehow, ePSXe + OBS (or even BizHawk + OBS) is much faster than using BizHawk's built-in recording. And I haven't been able to find any options in OBS that are truly lossless, so unless someone has a suggestion, this is probably what I'm going with.

vilkacis posted:

On the sides, too? Fair enough, then. If it's an in-game effect, do leave it in.

Yeah, all the borders are present in-game. They'll vanish once I start actually playing.

vilkacis posted:

You don't need to be able to make out every detail on the sprites, they just need to be big enough to identify the speaker. Smaller "portraits" are generally better, in my opinion.

Still, if you want to keep the 2x characters, maintaining it for every character is better. (I'd suggest cropping the large ones down to a face/head, though.)

Hmm. Maybe I should just go with 1x sprites for the portraits. It's not like a whole lot of the characters have art to begin with.

vilkacis posted:

It's up to you! We've seen the effect animated already, so a gif isn't necessary, but there's no harm in having it animated, either.

Try the "process every other frame" option under video->frame rate...

If it's still not enough, try the Convert to fps option and set it to, say, 10 or 15. You'll have to experiment a bit to see what works best; it's always going to be a compromise in terms of file size and smoothness.

I'm not familiar with Gimp so I don't know what kind of options it has. But reducing the number of colours in a gif also tends to reduce the size. It might still look decent if you drop from 256 to 128 or even 64. But again, it depends on the image, so you'll have to experiment.

I'll try "process every other frame", but setting the FPS to 12.5 resulted in VirtualDub cutting too many frames out; the gif of Garrett spitting, for example, was two frames, and just blinked back and forth.

I've already been using Gimp to reduce to 128 colors, and it hasn't had any really noticeable visual impact on the gifs, but the file sizes tend to get cut in half between that and Gimp's gif optimization, so I think I'll keep doing that.

vilkacis posted:

Pretty much. I think some things benefit more from having the whole screen, like the axe - it's better to see where it lands. Same goes for things like Al porting in, it's nice to see where it happens. But it's a judgement call, of course.

It's good to be considerate, I definitely try not to make my updates too heavy as well, but if you can make something look much better for a relatively slight size increase, it's probably worth it.

Both of those gifs do have a full screenshot directly after them; I figured that would suffice for showing what the layout was like. But if it's really better to leave the whole screen in, I'll do that.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 01:12

vilkacis: Feb 16, 2011

Commander Keene posted:

I'll try "process every other frame", but setting the FPS to 12.5 resulted in VirtualDub cutting too many frames out; the gif of Garrett spitting, for example, was two frames, and just blinked back and forth.

Yeah, there are a lot of factors that influence what you can get away with, and it differs between images.

As for Garrett, you don't need to do anything with it, since it's already so small. It's more for bigger stuff like the knights fighting demons.

quote:

Both of those gifs do have a full screenshot directly after them; I figured that would suffice for showing what the layout was like. But if it's really better to leave the whole screen in, I'll do that.

I feel like it's more impactful to see the axe landing in the proper spot than to split it into two images, where the moving axe is "out of context".

But of course it's just my opinion; you don't have to agree with it!

# ? Apr 5, 2018 04:15

Epicmissingno: Jul 1, 2017; Thank gooness we all get along so well!

Since nobody's mentioned my test update, I'm going to take no news as good news and :justpost:

. Hopefully it turns out not to be complete crap.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 12:23

Miacis: Oct 9, 2012; Get off my lawn!!

Perhaps a bit late for the party on bestiary entries but, whether you do it in text or pictures,

code:

Resistances
Fire: 150      Ice: 100      Wind: 100       Blast: 100
Earth: 75     Dark: 0     Light: 125

Dazzle: 800    Sleep: 200    Poison: 100     Drain Magic: 100
Confuse: 100   Fizzle: 0     Paralyse: 100   Inaction: 100
Charm: 100     Death: 150    Blunt: 100      Sap: 100
Decelerate: 100              Divine Intervention: 100

Please don't keep this sort of nonsense unless it's somehow essential to the game. Even by Etrian Odyssey standards of "I need to know how to take down this random encounter with statuses", this can all be summed up as:

Weak to element: Fire, Light
Resists/Ignores element: Earth, Dark
Weak to status: Sleep, Death, Dazzle

Because in practice, all you need to know is what elements to use and avoid, and what statuses can be exploited. There are always edge cases where some boss will say, be exceptionally weak to an element, or resist everything but absorb Light, in which case you have text for that. But for 95% of enemies, this is more than enough.

Miacis fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Apr 5, 2018

# ? Apr 5, 2018 13:18

ricdesi: Mar 18, 2014; Does it really need saying?

Miacis posted:

Perhaps a bit late for the party on bestiary entries but, whether you do it in text or pictures,
code:
Resistances
Fire: 150      Ice: 100      Wind: 100       Blast: 100
Earth: 75     Dark: 0     Light: 125

Dazzle: 800    Sleep: 200    Poison: 100     Drain Magic: 100
Confuse: 100   Fizzle: 0     Paralyse: 100   Inaction: 100
Charm: 100     Death: 150    Blunt: 100      Sap: 100
Decelerate: 100              Divine Intervention: 100
Please don't keep this sort of nonsense unless it's somehow essential to the game. Even by Etrian Odyssey standards of "I need to know how to take down this random encounter with statuses", this can all be summed up as:

Weak to element: Fire, Light
Resists/Ignores element: Earth, Dark
Weak to status: Sleep, Death, Dazzle

Because in practice, all you need to know is what elements to use and avoid, and what statuses can be exploited. There are always edge cases where some boss will say, be exceptionally weak to an element, or resist everything but absorb Light, in which case you have text for that. But for 95% of enemies, this is more than enough.

Seconding this. Those 100s are super-redundant and make the bestiary entries difficult to parse without sitting on it for a minute to figure out what relevant info is even in there. Only include information that is "interesting" from the monsters, basically anything that's not neutral.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 15:26

Fedule: Mar 27, 2010; No one left uncured.
I got you.

Mr Death Robot says the large post bug should now be fixed. It was something really dumb.

Anyone still getting it?

# ? Apr 5, 2018 17:27

ivantod: Mar 27, 2010; Mahalo, fuckers.

Fedule posted:

Mr Death Robot says the large post bug should now be fixed. It was something really dumb.

Anyone still getting it?

For me it works fine now.

Thanks for fixing it!

# ? Apr 5, 2018 17:28

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Fedule posted:

It was something really dumb.

Isn't it always? But I still wanna know details if they're available.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 17:33

Lotus Aura: Aug 16, 2009; KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

Fedule posted:

Mr Death Robot says the large post bug should now be fixed. It was something really dumb.

Though he is long gone, Radium's ghost still haunts the forum.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 17:55

Fedule: Mar 27, 2010; No one left uncured.
I got you.

The issue was, an nginx update changed/introduced a default max post size of 16kb. There wasn't a max size set before now so that was suddenly being imposed. Now it's set to something large enough to allow 50k char posts again.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 18:01

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Ha, yep, that sounds about right. Thanks for the added info. In exchange, I'll leave you with the Case of the 500-Mile Email, which has a similar underlying cause.

# ? Apr 5, 2018 18:11

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Fixed up the prologue to my Wild Arms LP according to suggestions. Better now?

# ? Apr 6, 2018 00:04

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Commander Keene posted:

Fixed up the prologue to my Wild Arms LP according to suggestions. Better now?

It's looking good. :justpost:

# ? Apr 6, 2018 00:25

Rea: Apr 5, 2011; Komi-san won.

Miacis posted:

Because in practice, all you need to know is what elements to use and avoid, and what statuses can be exploited. There are always edge cases where some boss will say, be exceptionally weak to an element, or resist everything but absorb Light, in which case you have text for that. But for 95% of enemies, this is more than enough.

I am going to defend the practice of giving specific numbers and say that it can be done right, but keeping everything in text and variably spaced makes it a bit difficult to read.

This is how I list damage type/disable resistances in my Etrian Odyssey Untold LP, and I'm of the opinion that it's better than just saying "Weak to" or "Resistant to." Specific numbers help people perform quick mental calculations (you can get a rough idea of a disable's likelihood by just doing BaseChance * Vulnerability), and evenly spacing stuff plus icons instead of text helps with analyzing enemies at a glance and going "okay how resistant is this thing to panic?"

# ? Apr 6, 2018 00:28

Epicmissingno: Jul 1, 2017; Thank gooness we all get along so well!

Ragnar Homsar posted:

I am going to defend the practice of giving specific numbers and say that it can be done right, but keeping everything in text and variably spaced makes it a bit difficult to read.

This is how I list damage type/disable resistances in my Etrian Odyssey Untold LP, and I'm of the opinion that it's better than just saying "Weak to" or "Resistant to." Specific numbers help people perform quick mental calculations (you can get a rough idea of a disable's likelihood by just doing BaseChance * Vulnerability), and evenly spacing stuff plus icons instead of text helps with analyzing enemies at a glance and going "okay how resistant is this thing to panic?"

The problem is that DQ9 doesn't really have icons for any elements or most ailments, so I'm kind of forced to use text or make up my own for the ones that don't. I agree with the idea that it's good to see the exact numbers for resistances; there's a lot of variable weakness and resistance numbers later on in DQ9, and I think it's better to look at exactly how weak or resistant to something a monster is too. What if something's only 75% resistant to an effect compared to 5% resistant, for example? It still might be worth using, but you'd never know if you didn't have the numbers. The example I used was a poor choice, though. How interesting could literally the first monster you fight be?

# ? Apr 6, 2018 00:53

BioEnchanted: Aug 9, 2011; He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.

The main thing for images like that is to make sure your keeping all the parts on a separate layer. I had a constantly updating image in the second post of my Lego City Undercover LP that kept a running tally of all the poo poo I'd gotten by that point, and all I had to do was delete a number and type a new one.

# ? Apr 6, 2018 20:50

FeyerbrandX: Oct 9, 2012

BioEnchanted posted:

The main thing for images like that is to make sure your keeping all the parts on a separate layer. I had a constantly updating image in the second post of my Lego City Undercover LP that kept a running tally of all the poo poo I'd gotten by that point, and all I had to do was delete a number and type a new one.

This is absolutely something to consider. Not just for infographics , but if you choose to make title blocks or other things you'd want standardized.

# ? Apr 6, 2018 21:28

ChaosArgate: Oct 10, 2012; Why does everyone think I'm going to get in trouble?

Making templates is a massive timesaver and you will thank yourself for making a baseline to start from that cuts out 90% of the work. I have a multitrack audio session in Audition, for example, that automatically ducks the audio of whatever I drop into track 1 whenever track 2 starts �speaking,� which lets me save a loooot of time from having audacity go in and actually duck track 1.

# ? Apr 6, 2018 22:27

Jamesman: Nov 19, 2004; "First off, let me start by saying curly light blond hair does not suit Hyomin at all. Furthermore,"; Fun Shoe

FeyerbrandX posted:

This is absolutely something to consider. Not just for infographics , but if you choose to make title blocks or other things you'd want standardized.

I made an alphabet and numbers template, and all I have to do is copy and paste the character I want. I can even replace colors. Feels good.

# ? Apr 6, 2018 23:38

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# ? May 18, 2024 14:29

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

I'd probably do this in Avisynth with the Subtitle filter, writing a function to overlay all the text onto a background image and updating as needed. I could grab a screencap from the video if need be, or just stick it at the end of video updates. But that's me and my obsession with finding new ways to use Avisynth to make my LPs simpler.

# ? Apr 7, 2018 15:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > The Sandcastle - Let's Play Discussion and Drama (Archive info in OP!)

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