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!

Aw, man, that's sad news. Hate to see PW go out like this.

# ? Jul 19, 2018 15:32

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# ? Jun 5, 2024 12:41

POOL IS CLOSED: Jul 14, 2011; I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.; Pillbug

Aw, hell. I was hoping that wasn't it. :smith:

# ? Jul 19, 2018 16:34

FeyerbrandX: Oct 9, 2012

Also jumping on the "Give the archive money" bandwidthwagon.

I tried asking awhile ago for it, since even though I whitelisted I never got ads. So now if ads aren't an option, double needing to contribute.

# ? Jul 20, 2018 00:26

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

Yeah, I'd be totally onboard with helping to support the archive.

# ? Jul 20, 2018 01:20

Leal: Oct 2, 2009

Blind Sally posted:

Aw, man, that's sad news. Hate to see PW go out like this.

Dammit I thought this was the goon known as PW.

Make a patreon Baldurk.

# ? Jul 20, 2018 01:44

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Make a patreon, I could give you at least a dollar every month.

# ? Jul 20, 2018 01:44

Pierzak: Oct 30, 2010

To clarify, I neither meant nor endorsed Patreon in my original post and I hope this won't result in exclusives or privileged readers. I just wanted to pitch in for the running costs because I love the archive and the effort put into it and would like it to keep existing.

# ? Jul 20, 2018 13:15

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

Pierzak posted:

To clarify, I neither meant nor endorsed Patreon in my original post and I hope this won't result in exclusives or privileged readers. I just wanted to pitch in for the running costs because I love the archive and the effort put into it and would like it to keep existing.

He just said that its existence isn't in jeopardy in the first place, so I think worrying about Patreon-exclusive content or whatever at this point is leaping pretty far ahead.

# ? Jul 20, 2018 13:41

Fates End: Oct 17, 2009

Hi, I'm gearing up to do an LP of a VN called Inganock of the Brightest Flame.
Opening post: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=151619
Test post: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=151618
My main concern is the gameplay video; I'm worried that the volume might be too loud or the text speed might be too fast for some people to read.

# ? Jul 20, 2018 16:31

HerpicleOmnicron5: May 31, 2013; How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?

It looks fine, and volume's no issue thanks to volume sliders. It's spot on. Never heard of this one, so I'm looking forward to the thread!

# ? Jul 21, 2018 00:07

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

Kanfy posted:

He just said that its existence isn't in jeopardy in the first place, so I think worrying about Patreon-exclusive content or whatever at this point is leaping pretty far ahead.

What kind of Patreon-exclusive content would baldurk even provide, anyway?

# ? Jul 21, 2018 01:11

limeicebreakers: May 1, 2017

Hosting space, maybe. For audio and the like.

$10+ Patreons get a new, exclusive picture of Lowtax's neck every month.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 02:05

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Here goes a dumb test post

In August of 1944, Allied Forces have destroyed a large German army in the Falaise Pocket and are marching straight toward the frontiers of Germany. In the South, French and US forces landed near Marsielle and quickly made their way up the Rhone river valley and the US 7th Army has pushed its way north toward the border of the Reich. Many obstacles still remain- Supply bottlenecks, a coalescing German army, the powerful West Wall, and probably most importantly, the Rhine itself, a long, nearly impassable river that stretches from Switzerland to the North Sea.

Welcome to Beyond the Rhine, a ~~consim~~ grog game about the campaign from September 1944 to April 1945. It is one of the games in the Operational Combat Series, published by MMP. It is a massive game, the second-largest in the series in terms of geography, and a nice, wide open canvas for strategy on both sides. OCS is an operational level game series with a heavy emphasis on logistics in driving play and it will play a big part for us in this game. Oh, here's the map.

Oh, and by the way, the commanders of the allied forces will be goons. You don't need to learn the game, or even interact with the rules at all. I will play the nitty-gritty details, but I'd like you to input the broad directives. I will also be playing the person on my avatar, giving you a wily opponent ~~who will probably make a lot of mistakes.~~

The command positions will be:

SHAEF - Overall commander of all Allied Forces - will be able to propose distributions of supply and change non-divisional reinforcement locations and give overall direction to the campaign
Chief of USAAF, RAF, and FAFL - Distribution and direction of Allied air forces.
US 1st Army Commander - Commands US Forces on the northern side of the Ardennes, supporting the British and advancing toward Aachen
US 3rd Army Commander - Commands US Forces to the south side of the Ardennes, moving on toward Metz and the Saarland
US 7th Army Commander - Commands US Forces coming up from Southern France- will take part in operations in the Vosges and Lorraine in general
Canadian 1st Army Commander - Trickles in slowly but will eventually be a sizable force. Historically, the Canadians spearheaded the clearing of the Scheldt, but goons might try something different
UK 2nd Army Commander - Commands UK Forces holding Antwerp and Brussels. The route to the Rhine is almost empty in their sector, but might it be a mirage? Who knows!
French 1st Army Commander - will not be present immediately, but shows up quickly. They will command all French Forces except the FF 2nd Armored, though you might ask for this division anyway.

If you're in command, and you have any questions you want answered, i'll try to give some in-character briefings and memos from some poindexter staff officer. Some of them i'll give anyway about game mechanics that may be coming up later. And probably a couple right away.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 15:16

biosterous: Feb 23, 2013

If you want feedback, you're gonna need to show us what an update would look like or something.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 18:21

Brunom1: Sep 5, 2011; Ask me about being the best dad ever.

And it seems the tindeck admin's decided to speed up the schedule and wipe out all files now, rather than August 1st.

From what I can see, everything is already gone.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 19:16

a cartoon duck: Sep 5, 2011

I'm not surprised, given how long tindeck's been praying for the sweet embrace of death by now.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 21:22

Mega64: May 23, 2008; I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.

The EU thing was an excuse in the first place since the admin's been trying to sell the site for years but never could find a buyer. Hell, the law they referenced as the reason they're closing Tindeck didn't even pass.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 21:34

Darth TNT: Sep 20, 2013

Brunom1 posted:

And it seems the tindeck admin's decided to speed up the schedule and wipe out all files now, rather than August 1st.

From what I can see, everything is already gone.

Well that explains why half of an old lp was missing while the other half was fine. Good thing we make backups.

# ? Jul 23, 2018 09:44

Tuxedo Ted: Apr 24, 2007

Haifisch in the Ace Attorney thread has been using Clyp for game audio. Anyone else tried it so far?

# ? Jul 23, 2018 22:48

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

Tuxedo Ted posted:

Haifisch in the Ace Attorney thread has been using Clyp for game audio. Anyone else tried it so far?

It's been working fine for me so far, though you're limited to something like six hours if you don't subscribe

# ? Jul 23, 2018 22:54

5-Headed Snake God: Jun 12, 2008; Do you see how he's a cat?

I've been considering doing an LP of FF3/6, and it would be my first, so any feedback I could get would be helpful. Apart from the intro post, this would be the first.

Post

# ? Jul 31, 2018 03:14

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

Aside from a typo ("dreen" instead of "green"), it looks good to me. Though keeping up the fiction that this is totally normal FF6 y'all might get old after awhile. Eh, I'm sure you'll figure it out. :justpost:

# ? Jul 31, 2018 04:03

Oublietteer: Jul 30, 2018; Is that you, Edea Lee?

How funny, I also just started planning an LP of an FF game, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light.

I have two thing to share, the OP and the third update. The first update is mostly tutorial, and the second is rather short. This one would be about the length I would shoot for, and is fairly interesting. Obviously a lot of context will be missing, but does it look good so far?

If you want some context: It's our birthday, we talk to the king to become a man, we get sent out to save the princess from a witch that abducted her, we went through a short dungeon, and teamed up with another kid.

And as for the bad images, I accidentally captured the wrong screen a couple times. I'll have to be more careful about it. I do plan to replay the game with goon submitted names, so it's okay to gently caress up here, I can replace them the second time.

Here's the OP for it.

Here's the third update.

Also, a bit of a weird question. I see in LPs where people accept names they say stuff like "Don't submit stupid names, I don't want the adventures of Dong, Donger, and Dongest". But I always give stupid names, maybe not quite like that, and it feels wrong not to give some silly name. Does asking for stupid names sound like a neat idea, or should I be safe (and boring)?

# ? Jul 31, 2018 06:11

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

Off the cuff, I'd definitely recommend resizing your images to at least 200%. 256 x 192 (the native DS resolution) works fine on a DS, but is kind of the size of a postage stamp on most modern PCs. Always resize to integer multiples of 100% (eg do 200%, 300%, etc, not 150%) and always use the Nearest Neighbor/Point filter (it's called different things in different programs; it might even be called "no filter"). This will make your images a lot easier to see, especially for people with less than 20/20 vision.

I'm surprised that your capture method for screenshots only gets one screen at a time; I thought both of the major DS emulators (Desmume and No$GBA) captured both screens at once with their built-in screenshot tool. Even Irfanview should capture both screens as long as they're presented as a single window. Then you just crop out the screen you don't want; there are utilities like ImageBatch which will allow you to do that to a whole update's worth of screenshots in a single go. And I personally prefer the method where I record a play session and then screencap from the recording (you need to make sure you're using a lossless codec though). It takes a bit more time, but you can pretty much eliminate mistakes like this, in addition to being able to provide gifs of stuff best viewed in motion.

As for names, I'd suggest either making up names yourself or just putting it up to an unbiased vote.

# ? Jul 31, 2018 07:33

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

Oublietteer posted:

Also, a bit of a weird question. I see in LPs where people accept names they say stuff like "Don't submit stupid names, I don't want the adventures of Dong, Donger, and Dongest". But I always give stupid names, maybe not quite like that, and it feels wrong not to give some silly name. Does asking for stupid names sound like a neat idea, or should I be safe (and boring)?

LPers choice. some people dont like silly names and whatever. their LP, their call. stupid names are great and you should do whatever works best for you... but also stupid names are great.

may i suggest "Dash Rendar"

# ? Jul 31, 2018 16:22

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

The anti-recommendation for "Dongs" is practically tradition at this point. Most LPs I see are perfectly happy to have really stupid names so long as they aren't puerile.

# ? Jul 31, 2018 17:15

nutri_void: Apr 18, 2015; I shall devour your soul.; Grimey Drawer

Blind Sally posted:

LPers choice. some people dont like silly names and whatever. their LP, their call. stupid names are great and you should do whatever works best for you... but also stupid names are great.

may i suggest "Daesh Rendar"

# ? Jul 31, 2018 18:05

Oublietteer: Jul 30, 2018; Is that you, Edea Lee?

Commander Keene posted:

Off the cuff, I'd definitely recommend resizing your images to at least 200%. 256 x 192 (the native DS resolution) works fine on a DS, but is kind of the size of a postage stamp on most modern PCs. Always resize to integer multiples of 100% (eg do 200%, 300%, etc, not 150%) and always use the Nearest Neighbor/Point filter (it's called different things in different programs; it might even be called "no filter"). This will make your images a lot easier to see, especially for people with less than 20/20 vision.

I'm surprised that your capture method for screenshots only gets one screen at a time; I thought both of the major DS emulators (Desmume and No$GBA) captured both screens at once with their built-in screenshot tool. Even Irfanview should capture both screens as long as they're presented as a single window. Then you just crop out the screen you don't want; there are utilities like ImageBatch which will allow you to do that to a whole update's worth of screenshots in a single go. And I personally prefer the method where I record a play session and then screencap from the recording (you need to make sure you're using a lossless codec though). It takes a bit more time, but you can pretty much eliminate mistakes like this, in addition to being able to provide gifs of stuff best viewed in motion.

Desmume lets you choose to only show one screen, which I then took a picture of. The bad images all happened after showing both screens, taking a picture of that, and then showing the bottom only.

I will also have to look into that program as well, thanks for the recommendation! I think either that or Irfanview will be good for resizing and cropping as need be.

My computer is somewhat old and slow, and I'm not sure how resource intensive recording a video at the same time is. I was considering doing that, I'll have to research it. I was just going to do all the work for this LP on my Mac, but it looks like I need many programs to help out that are Windows exclusive, so it's good to know that now before I get too deep. I can test it out when I re-record with new names.

quote:

As for names, I'd suggest either making up names yourself or just putting it up to an unbiased vote.

Blind Sally posted:

LPers choice. some people dont like silly names and whatever. their LP, their call. stupid names are great and you should do whatever works best for you... but also stupid names are great.

may i suggest "Dash Rendar"

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

The anti-recommendation for "Dongs" is practically tradition at this point. Most LPs I see are perfectly happy to have really stupid names so long as they aren't puerile.

That post was literally my first one here, so despite reading many LPs, I wanted to be sure it wasn't some sacred rule. Good to know I can play this game with names I like (hopefully)!

I have to take care of some stuff first, but I'll work on resizing those pictures and testing recording this week, and hopefully get the LP started by the weekend. Thanks for all the advice!

# ? Aug 1, 2018 04:09

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

Alexeythegreat posted:

# ? Aug 1, 2018 04:21

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

Oublietteer posted:

My computer is somewhat old and slow, and I'm not sure how resource intensive recording a video at the same time is. I was considering doing that, I'll have to research it.

Make a keystroke recording first, then you can play that back after and record an AVI off that. It'll ensure it runs at normal speed while playing and you can do other stuff while the playback is recorded as an AVI.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 10:57

Choco1980: Feb 22, 2013; I fell in love with a Video Nasty

My computer is getting pretty long in the tooth itself, where desmume doesn't playback at perfect speeds, and I'm still okay recording via obs while i play for my later screengrabs.

If you frequent the 30 years of final fantasy lp megathread, you might know I'm partial to the name choice "FRON"...

# ? Aug 1, 2018 15:09

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

Oublietteer posted:

My computer is somewhat old and slow, and I'm not sure how resource intensive recording a video at the same time is. I was considering doing that, I'll have to research it. I was just going to do all the work for this LP on my Mac, but it looks like I need many programs to help out that are Windows exclusive, so it's good to know that now before I get too deep. I can test it out when I re-record with new names.

My PC's not great either, and won't record from Desmume's built-in recording function without significant framedips. You do have three options here, though:

Power through. Even if your gameplay isn't at full FPS, the recording will be, if you record using the emulator's built-in recording. Try fiddling with the settings; recording unfiltered AVI files will result in less CPU overhead than recording to a container format or encoding the video on the fly, although file sizes will be huge (100 or more GB for an hour of video isn't uncommon). Encode after you record to save space.
As Dragonatrix said, you could record your controller inputs first using the emulator, then record the AVI off of those inputs also using the emulator. This method will take longer (although you could do other things while waiting for the video to record), but it will result in clean gameplay and the best quality video.
Record gameplay using OBS or some other screen-recording utility. For whatever reason, emulator + OBS seems to have far less system overhead than recording using the emulator. You might even be able to encode the video at the same time. This may require some mucking around in OBS' settings first, though, because the video I got from pointing OBS at BizHawk was not nearly as clean as from BizHawk's built-in recording, despite encoding with a lossless codec in AVI format. I suspect bitrate may be to blame.

# ? Aug 1, 2018 22:24

Oublietteer: Jul 30, 2018; Is that you, Edea Lee?

I didn't test it out too much, but recording using OBS seems to work well. It''ll get thoroughly tested when I actually replay it, though.

I've been looking at the Tech Support Fort for a bit, and I'm kind of lost on what I need to do to do what I want. I just want to record a video, get screenshots from it, make gifs, and not upload it. All this talk of encoders and settings is a bit over my head. I'd ask in that thread for more details, but I have the last post in there but edited it, so I don't want to edit it again and have it get missed or double post. I'm embarrassed to sound so dumb, but if someone could point me to what programs are best to use for this, I'd appreciate it.

Also, I did resize the images, but I think they came out a bit poorly. I set them to 200%, and while they're obviously bigger, I feel they are too blurry. I uploaded large copies of the first couple of images from my example update here: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=151727 . What do you guys think? I used Irfanview to do this, if that means anything. I was testing out recording at a larger size in OBS, which was looking pretty nice, though it may not have been a proper integer like CommanderKeene suggested.

# ? Aug 3, 2018 07:11

Lacedaemonius: Jan 18, 2015; Rub a dub dub

I'm just gonna go out and say it. With all the talk of giving Baldurk tons of money he doesn't need (but definitely deserves), what if we gave him the money and he did a video hosting

I mean, what could go wrong?

# ? Aug 4, 2018 17:34

Rebonack7: Aug 27, 2015

I'm currently running a gamebook LP of the Give Yourself Goosebumps series, and the stupid title I picked way back when I started is getting on my nerves. Can I get a mod to change it for me?

# ? Aug 6, 2018 16:16

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Rebonack7 posted:

I'm currently running a gamebook LP of the Give Yourself Goosebumps series, and the stupid title I picked way back when I started is getting on my nerves. Can I get a mod to change it for me?

What would you like the new one to be?

# ? Aug 6, 2018 17:12