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

And it made one-eighth the difference.

On the other hand, (Fire Emblem: Three Houses) you also miss out on showing off a lot of the cross-house supports and miscellaneous dialogues for students, many of which are pretty drat good, so it may be worth including those that at least support with the main lords with potentially a "recruit everyone" path for the last one.

# ? Sep 4, 2019 21:50

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# ? May 18, 2024 07:23

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

Mega64 posted:

On the other hand, (Fire Emblem: Three Houses) you also miss out on showing off a lot of the cross-house supports and miscellaneous dialogues for students, many of which are pretty drat good, so it may be worth including those that at least support with the main lords with potentially a "recruit everyone" path for the last one.

I have access to a game script dump, so I can at least try to document any support chains the LP ends up missing.

Unhelpfully, due to how Three House's internal packfile works, none of them are actually labeled with who's who, but there's surely gotta be some kind of pattern I can discern.

# ? Sep 4, 2019 22:09

Takes No Damage: Nov 20, 2004; The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.; Grimey Drawer

Was cruising around Artix's old LPs and noticed that the LPArchive pages for both his FF13 and FF13-2 LPs link to the SA thread for 13-2, leaving me without a link to the first thread

https://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-XIII-(by-Artix,-Fedule)
https://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-XIII-2-(by-Artix-and-Fedule)

# ? Sep 5, 2019 07:40

Red Metal: Oct 23, 2012; Let me tell you about Homestuck; Fun Shoe

Takes No Damage posted:

Was cruising around Artix's old LPs and noticed that the LPArchive pages for both his FF13 and FF13-2 LPs link to the SA thread for 13-2, leaving me without a link to the first thread

https://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-XIII-(by-Artix,-Fedule)
https://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-XIII-2-(by-Artix-and-Fedule)

keep scrolling down

# ? Sep 5, 2019 08:00

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

Well, here goes nothing.

Thread title: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, or: 3 Fires, 3 Emblems, 3 Houses

quote:

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a turn-based strategy RPG developed by Koei-Tecmo Games, with assistance from series creator Intelligent Systems, and published by Nintendo on July 26th, 2019 for the Nintendo Switch. In Three Houses, players take control of Byleth, a mercenary in their father's group, who ends up being recruited by the Church of Seiros, the dominant religion in the region of F�dlan, to teach at the Officers Academy, located at the Church's headquarters, Garreg Mach Monastery. Byleth is offered the opportunity to teach one of the groups representative of the three countries that rule F�dlan: the Black Eagles, the house of the Adrestian Empire, led by the imperial princess Edelgard von Hresvelg; the Blue Lions, the house of the Kingdom of Faerghus, led by the royal prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd; and the Golden Deer, the house of the Leicester Alliance, led by Claude von Riegan, heir to the ruling seat of the Alliance.

Three Houses represents a radical departure from many series traditions. In-between story missions, players now deal with having to schedule a finite amount of in-game time between the start of the game and the end of the game, analogous to a far less micromanagement-heavy version of Persona or Atelier�though, oddly, the time-limited elements were apparently inspired by Pikmin. How players can spend this time ranges from exploring Garreg Mach Monastery and interacting with the students under their tutelage, to hosting and attending seminars by Garreg Mach faculty, to participating in optional battles.

In terms of mechanics, Three Houses simplifies many series mechanics, and borrows a few from Fire Emblem Gaiden, a title notable for its unique and strange mechanics. Gone is the weapon triangle, a series tradition, replaced by abilities that can be learned through mastering a given weapon type. Gone is magic that can break like weapons�instead, units get a low amount of magic uses per map, but they refresh once the battle is over. Returning from the GBA and GameCube/Wii Fire Emblem games is weapon weight, a mechanic that makes players balance stronger weapons with their units' attack speed. Returning from Gaiden is equipment, non-weapon items that units can equip to gain extra offensive or defensive capability.

Very big thanks to the Fire Emblem Hacking Discord, members of whom provided the script text dump and character portraits I use in this LP. Hacking my Switch is a scary prospect, so they saved me some anxiety.

Very big thanks also to Serenes Forest, which provided an easy resource of datamined info, and also clarification on some in-game vagueness. In particular, the Combat Art descriptions used in the LP are borrowed from them, rather than using the sometimes-lacking in-game ones.

SPOILER POLICY

The fact that there is a timeskip in the middle of the game is not a spoiler, nor are the post-timeskip character designs except for Byleth. However, anything beyond mentioning its existence and speculating about it is not allowed. This includes discussing gameplay implications of it.

Do not discuss support scenes we have not seen yet.

Do not talk about plot that we have not seen yet.

Absolutely do not talk about plot from the other routes that we have not played yet.

I reserve the right to say "this is a spoiler, please edit your post" about anything, even if it is not explicitly mentioned in this policy.

Also, one thing: Three Houses contains characters who are canonically bisexual, and several character relationships between characters of the same sex that are not textually represented as romantic, but could be subtextually interpreted as such. I expect there to be discussion of LGBT+ topics and analysis in this thread, as such. Please do not be a bigot in response to this, or yell at people for having interpretations that you do not share. Don't get angry that someone ships Mercedes and Annette, or yell about how anything non-heterosexual is all just The Gays Shoving Their Lifestyle Down Your Throat. I have a direct line to the LP mods and am not afraid to immediately direct them towards anyone violating this rule.

Debating the quality of the representation in Three Houses, or problematic elements thereof, is also forbidden. It's a valid discussion, and one I've thought a lot about as a bi person myself, but it's not one I particularly care to have in the thread.

Here's the primary version of the test update, on my website.
And here's the backup version on the SSLP Test Poster.

I'm primarily worried about image sizes, since I can't go much lower than the size I have right now before the font starts becoming hard to read. Any thoughts?

Rea fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Sep 6, 2019

# ? Sep 5, 2019 21:07

vilkacis: Feb 16, 2011

Ragnar Homsar posted:

I'm primarily worried about image sizes, since I can't go much lower than the size I have right now before the font starts becoming hard to read. Any thoughts?

It's fine, but the maximum allowed width on the archive is 900px, if that is a concern; anything above that gets downsized in the process. I find most of the text still fairly readable at that size, though some of the smallest help boxes are squint-inducing (but you can just transcribe those).

And if you're not going to host the opening cinematic, just find one uploaded by someone else and link that. Making a throwaway account for it is also a solution.

# ? Sep 5, 2019 23:12

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

vilkacis posted:

And if you're not going to host the opening cinematic, just find one uploaded by someone else and link that. Making a throwaway account for it is also a solution.

The thought of making a throwaway legit did not even occur to me. Time to go do that...

I still want to keep the stills in, though, for people that don't watch the video. The cutscenes are pretty important, if nothing else than for hammering in important plot stuff. None of them are as long as the opening, too.

# ? Sep 5, 2019 23:19

Takes No Damage: Nov 20, 2004; The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.; Grimey Drawer

Red Metal posted:

keep scrolling down

??? The LPArchive posts and video links are there for both games, but I still don't see a link to the first thread. Or I'm just a drunken rear end in a top hat and am missing the link after reading both pages multiple times, but haha what are the odds of that haha :sweatdrop:

# ? Sep 6, 2019 05:57

Felinoid: Mar 8, 2009; Marginally better than Shepard's dancing. 2/10

Takes No Damage posted:

??? The LPArchive posts and video links are there for both games, but I still don't see a link to the first thread. Or I'm just a drunken rear end in a top hat and am missing the link after reading both pages multiple times, but haha what are the odds of that haha

I believe he meant in said thread, which was actually the thread for both. It was simply renamed when they switched games, or something like that.

# ? Sep 6, 2019 06:02

Artix: Apr 26, 2010; He's finally back, to kick some tail! And this time, he's goin' to jail!

13 and 13-2 were done in the same thread because I had to do a bunch of grinding for the 13 postgame so in the process of switching to the PC version we just started 13-2 in the same thread. "Scroll down" in this case literally means scroll past post #2 and you're in the 13 part of the thread.

# ? Sep 6, 2019 15:45

Takes No Damage: Nov 20, 2004; The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.; Grimey Drawer

I totally did not notice you bumped the OP down and created an LP Thread-2. Working half-sequel naming suffix confusion into your own Let's Plays is some fuckin dedication man

# ? Sep 7, 2019 02:59

Qtotonibudinibudet: Nov 7, 2011; Omich poluyobok, skazhi ty narkoman? ya prosto tozhe gde to tam zhivu, mogli by vmeste uyobyvat' narkotiki

GrandmaParty posted:

I'd open suggestions for golf games.

Have you considered:

# ? Sep 8, 2019 20:35

G-Mawwwwwww: Jan 31, 2003; My LPth are Hot Garbage; Biscuit Hider

florida lan posted:

Have you considered:

If I can source it, I'm down.

# ? Sep 8, 2019 21:33

OOrochi: Jan 19, 2017; On my honor as the Dawnspear.

Okay, well I've been thinking about trying my own LP for a while, and things have finally settled down enough to give it a shot. So here goes:

quote:

Hello and welcome to an LP for Fell Seal: Arbiter�s Mark!

What is this game?
Released in April 2019 by indie developer 6 Eyes Studio, this is another take on the isometric turn-based Strategy-RPG. It is unashamedly inspired by and takes cues from the Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre series but I think it makes some nice steps that let it stand on its own.

While it doesn�t have a crazy amount of missions (nowhere near the hundreds of missions that FFTA2 has, for example), this game does have a good variety of story missions and side quests to work with. There are even a number of hidden quests with hidden requirements that remind me of the ones in the original Final Fantasy Tactics.

With that said, NO SPOILERS. Whether for characters, classes, plot, or anything else. I think this game has a lot going on and I�m at least going to attempt to show everything off in due time.

Updates:
1:Gelligh

And because the first update is mostly tutorial and a cutscene, here's update 2, which should more accurately reflect the rest of the game

Any thoughts/suggestions on how to improve it before I start?

# ? Sep 13, 2019 04:28

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

Looks good. :justpost:

# ? Sep 13, 2019 04:36

G-Mawwwwwww: Jan 31, 2003; My LPth are Hot Garbage; Biscuit Hider

OOrochi posted:

Okay, well I've been thinking about trying my own LP for a while, and things have finally settled down enough to give it a shot. So here goes:

And because the first update is mostly tutorial and a cutscene, here's update 2, which should more accurately reflect the rest of the game

Any thoughts/suggestions on how to improve it before I start?

Get it boo! Looks great

# ? Sep 13, 2019 04:42

ulmont: Sep 15, 2010; IF I EVER MISS VOTING IN AN ELECTION (EVEN AMERICAN IDOL) ,OR HAVE UNPAID PARKING TICKETS, PLEASE TAKE AWAY MY FRANCHISE

ultrafilter posted:

Looks good.

...also, I loved this game, so I�ll be following.

# ? Sep 13, 2019 05:03

biosterous: Feb 23, 2013

The only quibble I have is that the portraits you're using for the dialogue are a bit tall, but since they're pulled straight from the game like that (and come with those pretty borders) I don't know if there's a better way to do it that's worth the effort.

# ? Sep 13, 2019 05:04

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

OOrochi posted:

Okay, well I've been thinking about trying my own LP for a while, and things have finally settled down enough to give it a shot. So here goes:

And because the first update is mostly tutorial and a cutscene, here's update 2, which should more accurately reflect the rest of the game

Any thoughts/suggestions on how to improve it before I start?

The in-game screenshots look a bit pixelated. Did you resize these at a non-integer ratio, or is that just how the game looks? (And if so, does it occur on all resolutions?)

# ? Sep 13, 2019 07:07

G-Mawwwwwww: Jan 31, 2003; My LPth are Hot Garbage; Biscuit Hider

Gearing up for Golf Story and the golf survey-

Should I split them up into two separate threads?

# ? Sep 13, 2019 15:51

vilkacis: Feb 16, 2011

OOrochi posted:

Okay, well I've been thinking about trying my own LP for a while, and things have finally settled down enough to give it a shot. So here goes:

And because the first update is mostly tutorial and a cutscene, here's update 2, which should more accurately reflect the rest of the game

Any thoughts/suggestions on how to improve it before I start?

Is that the original resolution? The help text is squint-inducingly tiny, so if you've shrunk it, it's a bit too much in my opinion. You can go up to 900 pixels wide without incurring the wrath of the archive, so I would, if it's possible.

I'd put a blank line between all images and text, it makes it easier to read. And maybe also crop the portraits down to squares, as any longer exchange results in a lot of scrolling as it is. This

identifies the character just as well as this

without taking up unnecessary space.

E: also, you have colons after this

portrait, but not the others. Better to be consistent!

vilkacis fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Sep 13, 2019

# ? Sep 13, 2019 21:44

OOrochi: Jan 19, 2017; On my honor as the Dawnspear.

Thanks for all the feedback!

I just took the image dimensions from another LP I�d been reading, so I can definitely adjust those to be bigger.

I�ll try out all the formatting advice as well. The square portraits are an especially good idea.

# ? Sep 13, 2019 23:27

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

I've been working on putting together my LP for Tony Hawk's Underground 2. In previous games, I kept the game soundtracks turned off, and replaced them with alternatives to try and avoid copyright claims, either by using midi versions of songs, or by using video game music.

But as I'm playing, recording, editing, etc, I just find that I don't really notice or mind the lack of music. I'm in a much more active role than a viewer though, so I was wondering how strongly others feel on this. What are your opinions on these three options;

-Actual game soundtrack
-Replaced game soundtrack (with music from NES games)
-No soundtrack

# ? Sep 27, 2019 21:38

IGgy IGsen: Apr 11, 2013; "If I lose I will set myself on fire."

Replace every song with Superman by Goldfinger.

Like, unironically.

I never played that particular game, though, so I can't really say how much the game does or does not benefit from its Soundtrack. Generally, if it can't be kept due to copyright ID stuff, I'd prefer some kind of replacement.

# ? Sep 27, 2019 22:53

Leal: Oct 2, 2009

IGgy IGsen posted:

Replace every song with Superman by Goldfinger

IGgy IGsen posted:

Like, unironically.

# ? Sep 27, 2019 22:55

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

Even though THUG2 is not necessarily one of the greatest Tony Hawk games, it's still Tony Hawk. As far as I'm concerned, that means the soundtrack is at least half of the experience.

Of course, copyright claims suck as well. I always keep the licensed soundtracks intact in my LPs and only replace songs if a video actually gets blocked (which has happened once, thanks a lot Philip Glass :argh:

), but I understand if you're a bit wary about doing so. :v:

# ? Sep 28, 2019 00:02

Hwurmp: May 20, 2005

re-create the songs using only your mouth

# ? Sep 28, 2019 00:06

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

Hwurmp posted:

re-create the songs using only your mouth

Commission Smooth McGroove for covers of every song.

# ? Sep 28, 2019 07:27

AdmiralViscen: Nov 2, 2011

Are FrankZP�s Dragon Quest LPs expected to go into the LP Archive or is there some reason they won�t? Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask / poor etiquette.

# ? Sep 28, 2019 14:33

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

And it made one-eighth the difference.

The LP�s author has to e-mail baldurk to request they be added. All the required info to get a LP archived should be in the OP.

# ? Sep 28, 2019 15:09

drygear: Aug 2, 2007; the frog

Hi, I'm preparing to do an LP for the first System Shock. I have a first video made ahead of time and would appreciate any feedback for things I might want to do differently going forward. I know that the music is too loud here, and that my commentary could be better. If anyone has any suggestions for things like pacing, brightness, audio, my approach, etc., I'd appreciate it.
It's hard for me to gauge how effectively this will maintain the interest of the viewers so any feedback on that front would be helpful as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEpTENSwEk8

# ? Sep 29, 2019 23:50

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

drygear posted:

Hi, I'm preparing to do an LP for the first System Shock. I have a first video made ahead of time and would appreciate any feedback for things I might want to do differently going forward. I know that the music is too loud here, and that my commentary could be better. If anyone has any suggestions for things like pacing, brightness, audio, my approach, etc., I'd appreciate it.
It's hard for me to gauge how effectively this will maintain the interest of the viewers so any feedback on that front would be helpful as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEpTENSwEk8

Please remove the country music + "puzzled oysters present" thing, please, it looks so gaudy.

# ? Sep 29, 2019 23:59

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

Yeah, country music doesn't really fit with a game like System shock.
"Puzzled oysters presents" is kinda cheesy but I you're trying to start it as your personal Brand for LPing, kinda like redchocobo and Zorax with orbital geese and Bobbin with Threadbare Inc, that isn't too bad, but I would recommend doing two things:
Put it at the very beginning of the video while you present yourself, and change the generic "X presents" with a starry background for an actual Logo. I dunno, a simple Clam with a question mark? An oyster with confused eyes.

# ? Sep 30, 2019 02:36

drygear: Aug 2, 2007; the frog

I was expecting negative reactions to that. I was expecting people to say it was tonally off or looked amateurish and ready to defend against that, but to call it gaudy... that'll actually get me to take it out.

I might try to use title cards in a different way in the future- it's not necessarily a branding thing, more of a way to focus people's attention. Maybe something as simple as a fade in at the beginning of every video will suffice.

# ? Sep 30, 2019 03:00

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

At last, 11 years after it was created, we finally have

as a usable thread tag in LP. Have fun, people.

# ? Sep 30, 2019 22:45

IGgy IGsen: Apr 11, 2013; "If I lose I will set myself on fire."

nine-gear crow posted:

At last, 11 years after it was created, we finally have as a usable thread tag in LP. Have fun, people.

Can we also have the only objectively good tag on SA based on the objectively best tweet of all time here, please?

Not trying to make demands but it feels kind of important to have a Rowdy Ringsports in-joke here

# ? Oct 1, 2019 01:58

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

crow is working on it...

# ? Oct 1, 2019 05:17

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

This is SA. Making a new thread tag probably involves fiddling in about 20 configuration files in a specific order, and sacrificing a virgin bunnyrabbit to the dark gods at full moon.

# ? Oct 1, 2019 06:16

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

hey, i said crow was working on it! you trying to throw off the man's sacrifice to the dark gods???

# ? Oct 1, 2019 06:45

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# ? May 18, 2024 07:23

Mraagvpeine: Nov 4, 2014; I won this avatar on a technicality this thick.

What kind of god accepts rabbits as a sacrifice? A goat is better, and more traditional.

# ? Oct 1, 2019 07:17

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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