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StupidSexyMothman
Aug 9, 2010

SelenicMartian posted:

What exactly is necessary to run a team vs. team LP? Just make two team threads, a main/observer one, and expect goons to self-organize?
There's no hidden information in the game, so it's kinda like chess.

Pretty much. It worked surprisingly well for chess and rock-paper-scissors all things considered.

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Gosts
Jan 15, 2016


I really wasn't sure if I should post this here or in tech help, so I apologize if this is not exactly the right place for this, but:

I am planning on running a podcast LP of Paranoia (as in, the table-top RPG) in the near future. I'm looking for feedback on my plans, and for any ideas or things I should know before starting a podcast, in order to help make it better and more entertaining.

If you don't know: Paranoia is a tabletop game a lot like dungeons and dragons but with more sci-fi and backstabbing, and less dungeons, and very few dragons. I would be probably running this with 3-6 players volunteered from my usual group of players, so we will all know each other well and have good chemistry. Not worried about that part.

Things that I have concerns about are:

1. Is there a lot of market for an audio-only tabletop shows? The only popular TTRPG-shows I know of have everybody in person (we play over internet due to several thousand miles between us all) have extremely good recording equipment and multiple angles so they can see all the players faces (we don't even use webcams), etc.
I know that there ARE podcast-games, but the only people I know that like them are turbo-nerds, like me. I'm not really clear on if they have a big audience or not.

Paranoia isn't really a game that has a grid, or miniatures, or maps that I could show, in the first place. The only visual things we have in the game are dice rolls (which I don't think would be a problem for an audio show because people tend to shout the numbers they get anyways) and sometimes, text blocks. For example, I might give my players a list of locations they can visit for their reference, or a list of suspects in a mystery, or a bunch of bullshit for them to keep track of, like all of their missions. Most of this stuff would be boring to go over all of anyways, so I figure it's not too important.

But, if there's no video, where does it go? Soundcloud? (Maybe that's a dumb question. There's plenty of audio-only poo poo on youtube.) Still, i'm curious about where i'd end up hosting this.

I've considered what kind of video I could put with the show, if I did want to do some. I could just have a list of our names, and highlight the ones who are speaking? To make it clearer if you're listening and can't tell two people apart? Or, I could display some of the rules and charts in the game so you can follow along? We often draw our most amusing moments to commemorate them, some of us being actual artists. (and some using MS paint.) We could put a bit more work in, and draw, you know, several of the more important moments? And switch between them as they happen? Honestly, none of that seems incredibly appealing to me, except for possibly the last one.


2. Second concern is audio quality: MANY of us have both a good connection and a nice microphone, but some of us are missing one or both of those. Nobody sounds *bad*, we certainly sound good enough that we don't mind listening to each other. But, if you were listening to a podcast, how much does the quality matter? If everyone is clear, do you care? What if one guy or girl is a bit scratchy? Would you not want to listen to it at all?


3. Third concern is, I guess, time. We probably would play once every two weeks, and most serials like this update once a week. I would need the two weeks because I would probably be doing the editing myself, and also I need to prepare for the next session, and also I have a life. But we get delayed sometimes, too. Would an update schedule of 'pretty much whenever' be acceptable if it was good enough? As both a host and listener, I'd rather have a solid, prepared session air than two sketchy ones, but there's a point where i'd probably forget about a podcast and lose interest, too.


4. I imagine i'd use audacity for recording and editing but if you have a better idea let me know. Especially if I DO decide to use visuals of some kind.


And finally, like I said, any other feedback or podcast advice in general would be SUPER DUPER. Thanks for reading.

HerpicleOmnicron5
May 31, 2013

How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?


Gosts posted:

3. Third concern is, I guess, time. We probably would play once every two weeks, and most serials like this update once a week. I would need the two weeks because I would probably be doing the editing myself, and also I need to prepare for the next session, and also I have a life. But we get delayed sometimes, too. Would an update schedule of 'pretty much whenever' be acceptable if it was good enough? As both a host and listener, I'd rather have a solid, prepared session air than two sketchy ones, but there's a point where i'd probably forget about a podcast and lose interest, too.

For this one, just put a break in every two hours, upload that week by week. Run it for a couple sessions before you commit to uploading it too, so you have a backlog to protect against delays. Your sessions are probably going to be four hours long or north of that, right? That'll guarantee a weekly upload.

But don't worry about is there a market or not. If you build it, they will come. And if it's something you're doing anyway for fun, and not just work for you? Then a market is irrelevant. If your sessions are good, the uploads will be good.

Roth
Jul 9, 2016

I noticed Jump Force is on Game Pass now and man is that a tempting game to LP.

Gosts
Jan 15, 2016


HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

For this one, just put a break in every two hours, upload that week by week. Run it for a couple sessions before you commit to uploading it too, so you have a backlog to protect against delays. Your sessions are probably going to be four hours long or north of that, right? That'll guarantee a weekly upload.

But don't worry about is there a market or not. If you build it, they will come. And if it's something you're doing anyway for fun, and not just work for you? Then a market is irrelevant. If your sessions are good, the uploads will be good.

That is a good idea. It probably makes sense to divvy them up anyways. Thanks.

Waffleman_
Jan 20, 2011


I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna!!!

Need some opinions on image sizes. The top image is at the same resolution as my capture footage and the bottom is resized down a bit. Is the top too large or could I get away with that size?



Kheldarn
Feb 17, 2011



Waffleman_ posted:

Need some opinions on image sizes. The top image is at the same resolution as my capture footage and the bottom is resized down a bit. Is the top too large or could I get away with that size?





I personally have no issues with the top image.

Also, I checked your post in the Awful App on my phone and on my tablet, and they both end up at the exact same size. They're both also perfectly readable.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

The LP Archive's maximum width before thumbnailing images is 900px, and you're under that with your original resolution. I would say that anything below that limit is fine. Unless you're doing, like, 5000px height. But you're not.

Waffleman_
Jan 20, 2011


I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna!!!

Yeah, my worry was more that they'd be too big to scroll through a bunch of them all at once without being annoying.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
800x450 is a common resolution for LPs, and yours are only a bit larger than that. It'll be fine!

vilkacis
Feb 16, 2011


Noooooo. This is a sprite based game, please do not blurrily resize it to random sizes. It should be played and recorded at 640x480 so it looks nice and crisp and screencapped as pngs, like so:


rujasu
Dec 19, 2013

You must have some really good vision if you thought those images were blurry.

EponymousMrYar
Jan 4, 2015

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

The bottom image is a bit blurry from the resize it got put through. The top is fine but not as crisp as it could be since it's a jpg.

flatluigi
Apr 23, 2008

here come the planes
vilkacis' image is easily the best of the three though

OddHaberdasher
Jan 21, 2016
They weren't so bad as far as Avdol (or 'Abdul') is concerned, but it would definitely be a noticeable difference as far as the overworld and battle screens are concerned. You need every pixel to be as crisp as possible for those.

In unrelated news, I'm currently pondering starting my first Let's Play (a Visual Novel) and I'd like to ask some advice, if this is the right place.

First question: Is it better practice to link to the officially released OST on Youtube as neccessary, or to upload that OST to your own channel and link it there (mainly for consistency reasons, as a few tracks are missing in the official OST)?

Second Question: In the VN I'm thinking of LPing, the protagonist does not have a sprite. He does make an appearance in one or two CGs, but his expressions in those CGs are neither diverse enough to match the other characters, nor generic enough to just put everywhere. How should I handle this?

Third Question: At times there are questions asked of the player (true/false, yes/no style questions). However, these questions, depending on the answer, lead to further questions (e.g. Answering 'yes' to Q1 leads to Q2A, while answering no leads to Q2B). Is there a polling site or something I could link to that would allow such a structure, or should I just set each question to a vote individually?

Waffleman_
Jan 20, 2011


I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna!!!



Yeah, I'll probably have to rerecord, this is much better. Needed to change my recording setup.

Waffleman_ fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Apr 23, 2020

vilkacis
Feb 16, 2011

rujasu posted:

You must have some really good vision if you thought those images were blurry.

It helps that i'm familiar with how it's supposed to look.

Also

OddHaberdasher posted:

They weren't so bad as far as Avdol (or 'Abdul') is concerned, but it would definitely be a noticeable difference as far as the overworld and battle screens are concerned. You need every pixel to be as crisp as possible for those.

this is correct.

OddHaberdasher posted:

First question: Is it better practice to link to the officially released OST on Youtube as neccessary, or to upload that OST to your own channel and link it there (mainly for consistency reasons, as a few tracks are missing in the official OST)?

Link to the official release when you can and upload the missing tracks yourself? If it's official, they're probably there to stay.

quote:

Second Question: In the VN I'm thinking of LPing, the protagonist does not have a sprite. He does make an appearance in one or two CGs, but his expressions in those CGs are neither diverse enough to match the other characters, nor generic enough to just put everywhere. How should I handle this?

Maybe make him an icon that's just a silhouette?

Waffleman_ posted:



Yeah, I'll probably have to rerecord, this is much better. Needed to change my recording setup.

That looks much better, but it's huge. A single image should not need to be 900kb! How are you saving those? Anyway, simply running them through the batch conversion command in irfanview with a high level of png compression should squash the file size by a lot, so it's worth looking into.

e: Re-saving it made it ~30kb but that's still much more than mine, so i looked closer



and there's some weird noise in there. It's not a huge deal or anything, it's not really visible, but capturing fully lossless footage would still mean much smaller images.

vilkacis fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Apr 23, 2020

DMorbid
Jan 6, 2011

With our special guest star, RUSH! YAYYYYYYYYY

Considering how important it is for many SSLPs, there probably should be some kind of PNG optimization guide in the tech support thread. Of course, that'd necessitate someone writing such a guide in the first place. :v:

One day, I'll write that ""How to record high quality footage from original hardware" guide and its followup, "How not to gently caress up your aspect ratio in old games"...

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
A handy two step guide to PNG optimization:

Step one: run pngout in irfanview when saving the image.
Step two: alt tab over to Netflix and watch three full seasons of a tv show. The image should be just about done processing by the time season three wraps up. Repeat for each image in your update. If you did it right, the plugin should have reduced the file size a little more than 2kb per image!

Seriously, that plugin was so useless when I tried it. It took ages of churning for a single image and the gains were so marginal. I can't believe I used to be the standard recommendation for newbies making screenshot lps around here.

Nidoking
Jan 27, 2009

I fought the lava, and the lava won.

OddHaberdasher posted:

Third Question: At times there are questions asked of the player (true/false, yes/no style questions). However, these questions, depending on the answer, lead to further questions (e.g. Answering 'yes' to Q1 leads to Q2A, while answering no leads to Q2B). Is there a polling site or something I could link to that would allow such a structure, or should I just set each question to a vote individually?

I've been thinking a bit about this, mostly for potential future projects, and I think my approach would be to ask some more general questions in the thread and apply those answers to the in-game situation. Obviously, it has to be tailored to the specific situation, but a trolley problem-style moral question or an overall motivation that the character should have might lead to a particular set of answers without giving away too much about what's going to happen or slowing things down while you collect the specific answers you're looking for. I've got an upcoming decision that I plan to break down into three questions that sound like morality questions, but it's just going to choose from a set of upgrades.

OddHaberdasher
Jan 21, 2016
Thank you, Vilkacis, for your answers. The answer to my first question has helped, and I believe I have found a image that will serve adequately.

Thank you, Nidoking, for your answer. I'm afraid that the method you propose will not exactly fit (or else, that I lack the imagination to phrase such questions in a suitable manner). I appreciate your intent, but I don't think your method will work for me. Fortunately, my wanderings have led me to a solution that should work perfectly.

There's still a lot to do before I can produce anything, and I may come back with more questions, but this has been helpful. I wish you good luck in your own endeavours.

OddHaberdasher
Jan 21, 2016
Is it just me, or is the link to the Image Format guide (This one: https://old.r1ch.net/img-formats/) no longer working for anyone else? I'm pretty much cobbling together an understanding of what's a good idea and what isn't by just scouring the web and it would be a great deal simpler (and produce less anxiety) if the link actually led to a guide instead of a 404. Am I missing some obvious thing? It's probably not a browser thing because I've tried both Firefox and Edge...

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
R1ch might have taken the site down. The quick and dirty version of image choice is, though:

  • For very old, low-resolution, or for sprite-based games: use PNG.
  • For anything after the 16 bit era, use JPG.
  • Always use integer scaling (2x, 3x, 4x) for PNGs: so if you have a 200x200 image, don't resize it to something arbitrary. Only resize it to 400x400, 600x600, etc. It preserves crisp edges and prevents the image from getting blurred out.
  • For resizing JPGs: ensure that it stays the same aspect ratio. So a 16:9 image (1920x1080, say) should remain a 16:9 resolution.

That's pretty much all you need to know.

ivantod
Mar 27, 2010

Mahalo, fuckers.

DoubleNegative posted:

R1ch might have taken the site down. The quick and dirty version of image choice is, though:

  • For very old, low-resolution, or for sprite-based games: use PNG.
  • For anything after the 16 bit era, use JPG.
  • Always use integer scaling (2x, 3x, 4x) for PNGs: so if you have a 200x200 image, don't resize it to something arbitrary. Only resize it to 400x400, 600x600, etc. It preserves crisp edges and prevents the image from getting blurred out.
  • For resizing JPGs: ensure that it stays the same aspect ratio. So a 16:9 image (1920x1080, say) should remain a 16:9 resolution.

That's pretty much all you need to know.

To be honest, I would add here one more thing: if you're playing an old DOS game which runs in 320x200 resolution, then you probably need to make sure to resize the images into a 4:3 aspect ratio, such as 640x480. These games were intended to be played on old CRT screens with rectangular pixels and look vertically squashed when using 1:1 ratio pixels on modern screens. This resize is typically best accomplished by first integer scaling 320x200 into 640x400 and from there normal resample into 640x480. This minimises the (inevitable) blur that has to occur here.

Psycho Knight
Jan 19, 2017

"Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!
I'm looking for a little input on screencapping a PSP title. I'm trying to decide what the best option is, as PSP resolution is pretty tiny.


Original PSP Resolution in PNG (Size: Roughly 180kb)


2x Base Resolution in PNG (Roughly 500kb)


Resized from 2x for Archive Compliance + JPG for file size (Roughly 150kb)


The original resolution looks the sharpest to me and the file size for a straight screencap isn't bad. I'm mainly concerned with whether or not the image is large enough to not be a pain to read (since this is a text-heavy game).

I haven't done a PSP title yet, so if upscaling would be better, then is there a "sweet spot" resolution to go with?

ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


The second and third are both more legible than the first. The third looks sharper than the second to me, so I'd recommend that.

Admiral H. Curtiss
May 11, 2010

I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.
You seem to be resizing with some filter, compare:

<- your 2x image
<- the 1x image upscaled with nearest neighbor

That also only makes it ~200 KB instead of ~550KB.

Your midsize option looks alright though, at least for this specific image.

Psycho Knight
Jan 19, 2017

"Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

You seem to be resizing with some filter, compare:

<- your 2x image
<- the 1x image upscaled with nearest neighbor

That also only makes it ~200 KB instead of ~550KB.

Your midsize option looks alright though, at least for this specific image.

The 2x image is a straight screencap from PPSSPP. I don’t know of any filters that were on Image 3, but it is possible that I still have some settings applied from my last LP. I'll poke around irfanview and check. I'll also try resizing up from base instead of down from 2x, like you have.

ultrafilter posted:

The second and third are both more legible than the first. The third looks sharper than the second to me, so I'd recommend that.

The issue with 3 is the resolution is too wide for the archive.

So Image 1 is no good? That's base PSP resolution of 480x248. Is the problem more the size or the sharpness?

Admiral H. Curtiss
May 11, 2010

I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.
Ah, I didn't think about that, yeah if you can up the internal render resolution in PPSSPP then by all means do that, and that also explains why the image is bigger since it actually does have more information.

And I think you misunderstood my last statement, the 2x PPSSPP downscaled image looks fine to me.

rujasu
Dec 19, 2013

vilkacis posted:

It helps that i'm familiar with how it's supposed to look.

Maybe. TBH it's probably more that I need a new pair of glasses.

OddHaberdasher
Jan 21, 2016
So, I've come to make a test post. This post consists of the OP and Parts 1 and 2 of my prospective LP. I await your critique.


OP

Part 1

Part 2

Psycho Knight
Jan 19, 2017

"Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

OddHaberdasher posted:

So, I've come to make a test post. This post consists of the OP and Parts 1 and 2 of my prospective LP. I await your critique.


OP

Part 1

Part 2

The general format looks pretty good. I have some things to mention, but they are mostly personal nitpicks:

-Spacing/Distinction: You've got things broken up fairly well, but it's a bit difficult to follow along because of the heavy narration mixed together with your personal commentary. I don't think Italics alone will cut it in terms of drawing the line between your own commentary and the character's/story's narration. You also have some stuff randomly in bold.

I think a better format would be to reserve bold for your own personal commentary. Narration is a bit trickier. Is there some way you can link the narration/soliloquies to the character that's doing them? I'm working on a VN as well that is also going to involve a lot of narrating from the main character and I had planned on doing up a distinct icon/portrait to use specifically for the times when she is narrating and not actually speaking.

Making the narration into italics might also work, but that could also make it hard to read if there are any extended moments of it.

-Resolution: What is the original resolution on the PC version that you're playing? The game first came out in 2008, so I'm kind of thinking that it was 720p at most.

The reason I ask is because if the game is 720 native then I think that's perfectly fine for your screenshots. Setting the resolution to 720 and just leaving the screenshots as is would be easier. Just because the Archive max is 900 wide doesn't mean that's what it has to be.

-Trigger Warnings: I remember a little bit about this game (I only played about half of it though). I remember a couple of pretty bloody CGs, but not much about the other stuff you have listed.

If that kind of thing pops up in CGs, then you may want to consider linking to the CG in order to give people the option. I know goons aren't a prudish or squeamish bunch, but I know that (personally speaking) LP's are a great way to pass downtime at work or school, so it's nice not to get surprised with sexy/gory/offensive stuff (which VNs tend to do, since the CGs are limited and tend to get sprung on you with little warning) in a place where prying eyes may be watching.

It's just a suggestion though. You give fair warning in the OP and there's a lot of games being LP'ed that have that kind of stuff right out in the open (i.e. almost all horror games). I just think that VN's are in a bit of a unique position where the blood and gore and sex stuff tends to jump out at you seemingly at random, due to their style of "gameplay".


Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

Ah, I didn't think about that, yeah if you can up the internal render resolution in PPSSPP then by all means do that, and that also explains why the image is bigger since it actually does have more information.

And I think you misunderstood my last statement, the 2x PPSSPP downscaled image looks fine to me.

The only issue I'm having with upping the render resolution in PPSSPP is that it seems to only go based on multiples (like x1, x2, x3, x4). x1 seems to be a bit too small from how people are reacting to my first screenshot, but switching to x2 results in 960 width, which means I then have to shrink it back down. I might still be able to make the 2x downscaled image a little nicer if I went a little higher with the allowable file size. I've normally tried to keep screenshot sizes down to 100-150kb, but that's because my previous LP's have usually involved 50-70 screenshots in an update. I think this LP's updates will generally be shorter, so maybe I can let the screenshots go to 200kb or so.

Oh, sorry. I took it to mean that the third screenshot was in need of fixing.

Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Apr 26, 2020

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.
With my current LP starting to wind down, I want to have another one waiting in the wings. I want to do a video LP with a bit more audience interaction than my previous one (though with no commentary on the videos since I don't have anything to record it with).

I have the OP

a primer for the main units

and the first update

I'd love any criticism or critiques on the posts, the videos, the concept itself, or anything else.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Have you thought about trying subtitles? Mechanicus can get really repetitive, I honestly can't see too many people watching it commentary-less.

OddHaberdasher
Jan 21, 2016

Psycho Knight posted:

-Spacing/Distinction: You've got things broken up fairly well, but it's a bit difficult to follow along because of the heavy narration mixed together with your personal commentary. I don't think Italics alone will cut it in terms of drawing the line between your own commentary and the character's/story's narration. You also have some stuff randomly in bold.

I think a better format would be to reserve bold for your own personal commentary. Narration is a bit trickier. Is there some way you can link the narration/soliloquies to the character that's doing them? I'm working on a VN as well that is also going to involve a lot of narrating from the main character and I had planned on doing up a distinct icon/portrait to use specifically for the times when she is narrating and not actually speaking.

Making the narration into italics might also work, but that could also make it hard to read if there are any extended moments of it.

My Bolding was to indicate when there were TIPS in the narration that were not in screencaps, hence them being followed by quotes. In hindsight, I should probably have explained that. Like, at all. I feel that the commentary will be an important part of keeping things as coherent and understandable, so using bold as narration is definitely best if you felt italics were unsuitable. This does leave the problem of identifying TIPS, unless I just screencap any and all TIPS.

I do have two separate icons for the MC (more really, but the rest are mainly for one-off jokes at certain parts), so the problem is deciding which to use for what. As for italics, this is a heavily psychological work, delving deeply into the MC's mind. There is narration for days. Extended italics will indeed be a problem. Though by that same token, long paragraphs of bolded text could have it's own problems.

EDIT: Disregard much of this, I somehow read this as suggesting I should use Bold for narration, and not just my own asides. On further consideration, I believe that the benefits of 'italics as narration' will outweigh it's negatives.

Psycho Knight posted:

-Resolution: What is the original resolution on the PC version that you're playing? The game first came out in 2008, so I'm kind of thinking that it was 720p at most.

The reason I ask is because if the game is 720 native then I think that's perfectly fine for your screenshots. Setting the resolution to 720 and just leaving the screenshots as is would be easier. Just because the Archive max is 900 wide doesn't mean that's what it has to be.

800x600. This, by the way, led me down a rabbit hole that resulted in me figuring out how to snap my screencaps at the exact resolution needed, instead of having to rescale from an upscaled recording. Thank you.

Psycho Knight posted:

-Trigger Warnings: I remember a little bit about this game (I only played about half of it though). I remember a couple of pretty bloody CGs, but not much about the other stuff you have listed.

If that kind of thing pops up in CGs, then you may want to consider linking to the CG in order to give people the option. I know goons aren't a prudish or squeamish bunch, but I know that (personally speaking) LP's are a great way to pass downtime at work or school, so it's nice not to get surprised with sexy/gory/offensive stuff (which VNs tend to do, since the CGs are limited and tend to get sprung on you with little warning) in a place where prying eyes may be watching.

It's just a suggestion though. You give fair warning in the OP and there's a lot of games being LP'ed that have that kind of stuff right out in the open (i.e. almost all horror games). I just think that VN's are in a bit of a unique position where the blood and gore and sex stuff tends to jump out at you seemingly at random, due to their style of "gameplay".

A fair point. Most of the stuff mentioned is vaguely 'offscreen' in that nothing is shown but the narration describes the events, but there are a few moments that could pop up on someone. I'll try to remember this advice.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Apr 26, 2020

Psycho Knight
Jan 19, 2017

"Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

OddHaberdasher posted:

My Bolding was to indicate when there were TIPS in the narration that were not in screencaps, hence them being followed by quotes. In hindsight, I should probably have explained that. Like, at all. I feel that the commentary will be an important part of keeping things as coherent and understandable, so using bold as narration is definitely best if you felt italics were unsuitable. This does leave the problem of identifying TIPS, unless I just screencap any and all TIPS.

You could also just highlight TIPS by tagging it with TIPS, either in parentheses, brackets, or something like that. If you have some skills with Paint/Photoshop/GIMP then you could also make a simple (small) icon for it that can follow the text, although I admit that the icon idea could be more work than it's worth if there are a lot of TIPS.

OddHaberdasher posted:

I do have two separate icons for the MC (more really, but the rest are mainly for one-off jokes at certain parts), so the problem is deciding which to use for what. As for italics, this is a heavily psychological work, delving deeply into the MC's mind. There is narration for days. Extended italics will indeed be a problem. Though by that same token, long paragraphs of bolded text could have it's own problems.

EDIT: Disregard much of this, I somehow read this as suggesting I should use Bold for narration, and not just my own asides. On further consideration, I believe that the benefits of 'italics as narration' will outweigh it's negatives.

It's your call. However you choose to do it, my suggestion is simply that you create a clear and easily visible divide between character dialogue/narration and your own commentary. This is easy to do when it's just characters talking to each other, because the dialogue is clearly being attributed to a particular character (as noted by either a portrait icon or some kind of tag like [Old Man]:). But when you don't have that clear link between dialogue and source (and you're also mixing in your own commentary) then it gets confusing for readers. Italics stand out fairly well on a big desktop monitor when someone is reading fairly slow, but they tend to blur together when reading a bit faster or on a smaller screen (like a phone, tablet, or laptop).



This is what I came up with for my particular situation, just as an example of possible solutions to the narration issue. Unfortunately, I have very little access to art assets for the main character because she's rarely seen on screen, so this is the best I could do. But at the very least it serves as an easy indicator that the dialogue the reader is seeing is just the narration of the character.

OddHaberdasher posted:

800x600. This, by the way, led me down a rabbit hole that resulted in me figuring out how to snap my screencaps at the exact resolution needed, instead of having to rescale from an upscaled recording. Thank you.

Good to hear. Capturing at native just makes life easier on you (no resizing) and helps prevent loss of quality from scaling. Although, depending on the file size of the screencaps, you may have to do some compression or something.

For more detailed games (like 3D stuff), having a larger screenshot is nice. But VN's are largely artwork and character sprites, so you don't need the images to be 900 wide. So long as the text can be easily read, then you're good.

OddHaberdasher posted:

A fair point. Most of the stuff mentioned is vaguely 'offscreen' in that nothing is shown but the narration describes the events, but there are a few moments that could pop up on someone. I'll try to remember this advice.

Again, it's just a suggestion. I've mostly done censoring and keeping the unedited CGs in a separate link for people that really don't mind seeing it, but in my case the CGs have mostly been fanservice oriented, which people are more sensitive to than blood and gore stuff.

I think the big thing about it is that VNs are typically anime styled, which makes everything look kind of cutesy and unassuming. So when you're scrolling through and suddenly half the screen is plastered with blood or guts then it tends to hit a bit harder.

If the darker stuff you mentioned is kept largely off-screen and only mentioned in dialogue, then I think the upfront warning is enough. Maybe repeat the warning at the start of an update if there's some seriously messed up poo poo mentioned in it.

OddHaberdasher
Jan 21, 2016
Ok. After having taken your ideas into account, a revised version:

OP

Part 1

Part 2

It's about time for to sleep where I'm at, so I will not be able to respond as quickly as I have been.

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.

anilEhilated posted:

Have you thought about trying subtitles? Mechanicus can get really repetitive, I honestly can't see too many people watching it commentary-less.

Ah, that's a fair point.

I was hoping to not need to do that much editing, but you're right that it'd almost certainly be more interesting to watch with something added. I think I might try out making some subtitles for the first video and see if I can scrounge up something to record with before I finish the other LP.

Metis of the Chat Thread
Aug 1, 2014


I'd like to try my hand at an LP of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy during this time of quarantine, so I wanted to post a few screenshots to get opinions on how they look.

Test post

From doing this I've noticed a couple things myself, like the black border that must come from the emulator I'm using. I'll have to crop those out.

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vilkacis
Feb 16, 2011

professor metis posted:

I'd like to try my hand at an LP of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy during this time of quarantine, so I wanted to post a few screenshots to get opinions on how they look.

Blurry. And weirdly bright compared to what i'm getting.

How are you getting those shots

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