|
My LP confession is that I have no regrets about my Bayonetta LP.  Except maybe for the fact that it was my first LP. and that it was the crappy PS3 version for most of it.
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 01:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 01:02 |
|
|
I've only done two so far. I don't regret much. For Ripley's Believe It or Not: The Riddle Of Master Lu, I regret jumping in with both feet without having a good technical grasp first. It was a pain in the butt to build that one in VirtualDub, even with the minimal amount of editing it needed. Also, I worked a little too hard on that one. To keep the weekly schedule for that one, it was basically a part-time job. No lie, it was like 10 hours a week: play through over the weekend in one big chunk, then Monday through Wednesday, three hours each night after work, fiddling with subtitles and researching facts. It was nice to have something to focus on, but it was a weird mix of "stressed for no reason, but that's preferable to being stressed for a reason" kind of feeling. I also somewhat regret using music to cover a sped-up sequence in Video 10 because that video would get tagged by YouTube now, despite that the song is in the public domain, because an unrelated song sampled that song. I still blame YouTube for that, but that's why it's on Daily Motion instead (and the Internet Archive). There are a few minor tech glitches, but the main one that bothers me is that video 9 has the intro text to video 8, and yes, I remembered which video it was without looking. That kind of thing drives me bananas. Otherwise, though I haven't watched it in years, I still feel overall good about it. For Silent Steel, there were more technical glitches. You can see some of the screenshots have huge window borders in them because I was literally scrubbing through the footage, hitting Print Screen and then cropping each screen shot manually. I guess for over 600 screenshots, I did okay, but it still looks sloppy. More broadly, I regret that I didn't have the idea for the main conceit of the LP until the second or third update, so I didn't plan as well as I could have. The original idea was to come up with different captain characters to shake it up, but then the Groundhog Day idea hit me, and I felt glad that I had lucked into what was probably the best comedic character for that idea. At the same point, I had to update whenever the voting got to a certain point, so I had to try and improvise jokes when I might not have felt particularly funny. I think I am more happy with Ripley, but at the same point, I am happy that I completed what could be described as possibly the only audience-participation narrative screenshot LP with live-commentary. The only other thing I ever really did was my trailer for LPWS. (I hope it's okay to link that, but it no longer exists on the LPWS youtube channel because of copyright stuff.) With a few small exceptions, I am still inordinately proud of that. I guess what I really regret is that I never got to my third actual LP. Maybe this summer I can rectify that...
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 01:52
|
|
|
Oh man, regret. Nobody regrets like I do. I regret everything I've ever done, however good or bad it may have turned out. My existence is regret. But I'm riding a depression high right now and can probably keep most of that between me and my therapist, so I believe I can be fairly objective, such as it is, about my opinions. The biggest problem I have with my older work is that every so often, I learn to do something new with my LP-making process, and everything I did before that change seems horrible without the extra step. It was only within the past few years that I started scrubbing my audio for those annoying saliva noises that I've never found a pop filter to do anything about, and they disgust me every time I listen to anything from before that. I regret the video quality from when I was still uploading XVid/DivX AVIs, before I discovered how easy Avisynth and MeGUI are to use. I sort of regret losing the original files from my first few LPs - although I've got flash downloads of most of them, the quality is so poor that they're almost unwatchable, particularly the subtitled ones. I regret leaning so heavily on musical gags early on, which prevents me from uploading the earlier LPs to Youtube. I really didn't know what I was doing when I started, especially in terms of entertainment. My first couple of LPs got a lot of useful criticism, particularly toward the end of the first one, and I didn't go back to fix the problems. I want to redo the Gobliiins games someday, particularly now that people recognize my name and watch my videos, and I'm no longer bound by the technical limitations in DOSBox that made those games a nightmare to record and edit, so I'd probably be able to do all four. Alone in the Dark 3 was pretty much a favor to Malorie's fans when she didn't want to finish the series, and I was doing three videos a week at the time, one subtitled and all three requiring me to capture the game music separately and edit it for time in post. (I skipped that for AITD3 and just ripped the soundtrack from the CD, which is why the music in the LP isn't always accurate to the game.) Doing King's Quest: Mask of Eternity live and blind was similarly inadvisable, but I felt it was the only way I'd be able to tolerate the game. I've done my best to avoid that style ever since - I'm definitely no good at live commentary, and doing it blind meant I missed a lot of stuff and needed people to fill in bonus videos of it. To be fair to myself, I rather like the running gag I did with footage from other games, and I still think the final bonus video in that thread was one of the best LP moments I've ever had, and while it's not perfect, I think it's worth checking out for anyone who knows King's Quest VI well enough. I also enjoyed doing guest commentary with Frankomatic on that one, but it didn't seem like he had much to say, and I didn't want to talk too much because he was the special guest, so it was a bit awkward. I think I got a lot better after that, although the contrast between the solo and guest commentary videos for Rayman is pretty striking, I think. It's not a game I could say much about. Then I did Warrior Within, which is still pretty popular on Youtube thanks to the positive feedback loop (still no idea how it started, but people love parts 7 and 21), Torin's Passage was pretty bland but made me, as far as I know, the first person to publicly document an infamous Easter egg, and a couple of smaller projects that were purposefully low-quality, and I don't regret those at all. I strangely enjoyed the chance to look at Fable in a positive(ish) light. I kind of regret the sheer magnitude of the Folklore LP I just finished earlier this year, simply because of how long the whole thing took, but it was worth the time and I'm glad I did it as thoroughly as I did. And now I'm starting to regret taking on Psychonauts because it's one of those games that draws an audience, and I don't really know how to deal with a thread that people actually post stuff in. But I don't regret Space Quest a bit. If anything, I regret that Mufreesboro got probated before I got to deliver the punchline at the end of the entire LP making fun of him. And that I used Internet memes as jokes a couple of times. I did a couple of other adventure games after that, which were probably my best period. Still light on technique, but solid showings. So I think the takeaway, and the thing I hope people can learn from this thread in general if not from me, is to just keep doing what you enjoy, and you'll get better at it. Regretting the old stuff is inevitable, but it's better than regretting that you never did it to begin with.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:05
|
|
|
Screenshots LPs are ten different kinds of awful to create, and I'm never making another one unless you put a gun to my head. I kind of cheated my way through things while doing Shining Force 2 because it was a romhack. I had the privilege of skipping all the story stuff and got to cut straight to the mechanics instead, just the way I like it. Now that I'm most of the way through Shining Force 3, I couldn't hate the process of sniffing out all the plot-relevant NPCs and transcribing all the text any more. Even working off a transcription of the game, it's still incredibly tedious to sort through all my screenshots, copy and paste dozens if not hundreds of lines per update, and try to figure out which dialogue boxes merit a screenshot or not. I've also found that an SSLP has a much higher bar for interesting commentary than a VLP. With spoken commentary, it's just so much easier to communicate a joke. Setup, timing, tone of voice, and all that just flows so naturally when it's jawing off. Tangential commentary in VLPs is also perfectly fine, because every VLP is going to have slow parts, and jabbering about random junk does a great job of filling in that space. With an SSLP, you choose exactly which parts of the game are or aren't included, and each piece that gets put in needs a matching written line. As a result, your written lines have to be snappy, sharp, and relevant. There's simply no space for filler, so everything you write has to be top shelf material. Maybe I'm underselling VLPs because I came into the hobby with working knowledge of video editing and all my VLPs have been slapdash efforts that were excuses to goof around with my friends.  e: Also, the first LP I ever did was of Project Justice, a loving fighting game. It was a short affair, clocking in at about 3 hours, but to this day I have no idea how I managed to talk to myself for that long over the single player mode of a fighting game of all the god drat things. I may revisit the idea, because it is an interesting game that deserves some exposure, but it's a good thing that I torched it from the face of the earth. inthesto fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Apr 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:15
|
|
|
to this day people still don't leave me alone about an unfinished lp i did in the past. gently caress you if you bring it up. go to hell. you know who you are. god drat it stop thinking about that lp. STOP IT
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:17
|
|
|
Control Volume posted:to this day people still don't leave me alone about an unfinished lp i did in the past. gently caress you if you bring it up. go to hell. you know who you are. god drat it stop thinking about that lp. STOP IT haha yeah, that must suck by the way, are you ever going to finish your Roller Coaster Tycoon lp
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:23
|
|
|
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:23
|
|
|
I don't think I regret very much with my Sigma Star Saga LP. If anything, I regret my update schedule just because I was cranking out update after update with little time between. I think I also used a few too many smilies throughout the posts. You know you might have gone overboard when you hit the smiley limit for a post. Other than that though, I'm proud of the effort I put in to capturing, transcribing and customizing the updates for that quirky little game. It's a fun one and I feel like I did it justice. It's the only complete LP I've ever done. On that note, I kind of regret not getting more into LP. I did a few videos for the Clusterfuckathon thread where I tried post-commentary for the first time with EntranceJew and Waffleman_, and then a few videos of a Super Metroid romhack for the 2007 thread, but I didn't finish the game despite having footage and audio I never got around to editing. My problem is that I see the editing process as "not fun" and then I don't want to do it. It's probably why I tend to stick with streaming with friends these days.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:38
|
|
|
Blind Sally posted:I've found it hilarious that Dash Rendar continues to plague me throughout different LPs: I always thought that was supposed to be Robert Downy Jr. Nidoking posted:The biggest problem I have with my older work is that every so often, I learn to do something new with my LP-making process, and everything I did before that change seems horrible without the extra step. It was only within the past few years that I started scrubbing my audio for those annoying saliva noises that I've never found a pop filter to do anything about, and they disgust me every time I listen to anything from before that. I hear that. I don't know how I got by before FadeIO() and I'm constantly scrubbing my audio of all the times my mic catches me breathing in since I sound like a beached whale gasping for air. And for the record, I still enjoy your KQ8 LP since I still have fond memories of 6 (and less-fond-than-they-used-to-be memories of 5 and 7) and seeing what that turd had to offer brought me a sense of closure.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:42
|
|
|
I regret that the one video LP I guest-starred in is no longer available because the only place it was hosted on was Google Video. Lurkdawg never did finish that Link Gets Laid LP. It's a shame, because a dick-and-drugs-filled ROM hack of a Zelda game is right up his alley.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 02:48
|
|
|
Bobbin Threadbare posted:I still don't fully understand what people see in my Thief LP's. Bobbin Threadbare posted:Shh, we're sneaking. I'll be honest, the speaking quietly gimmick goes a long way in those videos. I don't know what else to say, they were just fun to watch.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 03:15
|
|
|
I tried to do a screenshot LP of the roguelike IVAN, where winning is considered a "bug" in the game, forever ago. I also tried to incorporate audience participation (by allowing the viewers to name the character and pet dog you start with). I never finished it. I'd even considered secretly save-scumming just enough to reach the easiest ending. I'm not even really sure why I stopped working on it; I just sort of lost interest and abandoned it without a word. Which is bad. I shouldn't have even tried to attempt that, because I'm not even that good at roguelikes or doing the thinking-outside-the-box that's necessary to even complete that game, but two, because I actually used Photobucket as an image host for my screenshots. While there weren't any issues due to the small number of "viewers", it just wasn't a great idea to begin with. "Oh hey let's do a thing about this stupid game that's literally out to kill you every turn, what a fantastic idea and nothing can go wrong with this!  " That trainwreck was my first LP. I don't even remember when that was, and I regret every minute of that abomination.There was also a time when a user attempted an Armored Core LP, and I'd spoke to them about that since they were giving it up, and got permission to come in and take over in a narrative. I managed to successfully close-out that guy's thread while setting it up for my own, but it never happened. I didn't follow-through, because I felt like video was the only way it would work, and at that time I was running a PC that would rather crash and BSOD than do anything else. ArclightBorealis' current Armored Core series LP is proof that it doesn't have to be all-video all-the-time. Though he offers video as well, he provides screenshots of the highlights with relevant commentary, and following one, the other, or both is still coherent and enjoyable if you enjoy the games for what they are. Lately, I've considered making a real go at it again. There's a lot of games I enjoy on a deep enough level to share with others. Several of these, however, have been done, or are currently being done by people who can simply do it better. The aforementioned Armored Core being one of them, along with others such as Legend of Mana (a couple of people did this by now, I can't recall their usernames), a low-level run of Chrono Trigger (Quovak), Illusion of Gaia, Skies of Arcadia (ThornBrain), Evil Zone (retsupurae'd, and for good reason honestly), Broken Helix, and most of all, Lemmings (still not done, if I recall). Just to name a few. Most of these have been done by people who can showcase the games far better than myself. Though I've finally got me a wonderful PC that can actually handle running more than one thing at a time, I've realized that there are other hurdles, namely, that I wouldn't even know where to begin anymore. I have no recording software for doing videos, I don't have a method of taking screenshots, and on top of that it'd be my first real LP that I'd actually invest a lot of effort into making it good...which isn't something that meshes well with a full-time job that requires long hours and is very physically demanding at times. I used to think, when I first experienced LPs, that it also meant being inhumanly skilled at the game being demonstrated, and to show off to others a little bit. From my time reading, lurking, posting, and watching, I've long since abandoned that notion, and I know it's far more than a display of skill. I'm afraid that I'd be too exhausted from working, too clueless about the process of creation, and having my own free time to keep up with anything significant to make it a quality experience. I feel like I wouldn't be able to match the charisma, the fine-tuning, or the update schedule of other LPers, and the knowledge that I've never been that good at presenting things.  Quality is priority #1, and from a beginner's point-of-view, that goal is daunting, doubly so when you know little about the processes involved, and the editing necessary to improve quality. I have the resources, but I'd have to obtain the necessary software and learn how to work them like a third hand, which is effort I'm not ready to put forth yet. It feels like an insurmountable hurdle. I can still always enjoy being a viewer, and try to contribute to threads meaningfully through words on a screen! Maybe someday I'll break into making them. And speaking of that, even, I regret some posts I've made contributing to other people's LPs! I've posted around, and there are many games I've followed an LP of, posting here and there trying my little best to be as informative and thorough as possible on a given topic in a particular game I know like the back of my head, only to realize later (or be told outright in the thread) that I'm either completely wrong or a bit off with the information provided because my memory is recalling something different! Nothing could be more embarrassing to me than loving that up!
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 03:20
|
|
|
18 (19, one's not in the archive yet) LPs should give me a lot of regrets, but not really. I've approached each LP as an experiment and used them as writing exercises and opportunities to push myself to finish games that I didn't when I was younger. It's made me a better gamer, and made games I'm playing on my own a lot more fun. The only games I've LPed and finished beforehand were Final Fantasy, Actraiser, Bahamut Lagoon, Final Fantasy Legend 1-3, Fallout 2, Final Fantasy Adventure, and the first two games in the Krynn series. That's slightly over half. That said, I wish I'd had a bit more experience before LPing Bahamut Lagoon and that I'd not actually named the main character in my Final Fantasy LP Solo. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 03:41
|
|
|
When I LP'd Everything or Nothing, I really, really didn't know what I was doing in Premiere; I didn't even know where the razor tool was, and cutting footage took a long time, as did putting commentary to the video, because I chose the most nightmarish way to line up my comments. Though despite how inefficient I was at producing the videos, I still had fun with the LP, I guess because there always seemed to be something to say or joke about with the game. I think the LP I regret the most of what I've done is Pid. I wanted to jump on the Hard Games bandwagon and I also really wanted to show off the game to everyone, because I didn't think it got enough attention at the time of release, but I didn't know it well enough, and so I wound up missing some stuff in initial recordings of the early game areas. The save system in Pid makes it impossible to go backwards without making backups of the actual save files (and when it's tied to Steam, it's even more of a headache), so I ended up needing to run through the entire game without recording to make sure I knew where the important stuff was, and I was also still halfway through LPing Everything or Nothing, so I ended up starting Pid and then dropping it for something like seven months. Having it be two LPs in one didn't help, either. I also should have edited the videos down more than I did, but for some reason I was adamant with myself about showing every single death. I LP'd Croc because I'd recorded all of the footage literally one week before the other LP of it was started a couple of years ago, and I didn't want to just throw the footage away. I also wanted to do something that wasn't as rigid and took as much work as Pid had, so I tried unscripted commentary with a guest for the first time, but I hadn't done anything like that, and I didn't really have anyone who I'd developed a rapport with, and I was losing steam at just how poor the game was as it went on, so I was noticeably unenthusiastic about it by the end. I am pretty pleased with how Fez turned out, though, even though it had a couple of the potential problems that Pid had; backing up saves was still a pain, and I'd only ever completely played Fez once, back when it came out, before LPing it, yet I think I was able to make it work. Maybe that's because I just finished it, but I felt like I did a good job with unscripted commentary, and I learned some cool tricks with Premiere and Audition for it that I think really enhanced things. I don't think I really hate any of the LPs I've done. Plenty of things have gone poorly, but they've gone better than I've expected each time, so I dunno.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 04:05
|
|
|
I've had my share of regrets about Shadows of the Empire myself. It was my first VLP, so I felt a lot of pressure to get stuff right and I'm happy with the reception it got, and the written posts by Blind Sally were phenomenal, but holy gently caress I would love going back and redoing all those videos. The video and audio quality on a lot of the videos wasn't that great, and a lot of that is my fault because I was essentially learning how to use Adobe Premiere as I was doing the videos. I put in too many visual gags in places that were really only there to amuse myself with and kind of interrupted the videos in some places, so I'd probably strip those out if I did it again... or do all new ones, who knows. My rationale at the time was that I figured most people who would be watching this LP had already played Shadows of the Empire in some capacity, so if I threw in a joke here or there I wouldn't be encroaching too much on things because I was making a largely nostalgic experience more interesting, for better or worse. Though, to this day, I still don't really consider Shadows to be "my" LP, despite the work I put into it. Aside from a supplementary episode, I didn't play the game, I didn't write 90% of the actual posts for it, and I was only one half of the commentary team. All I just did was put the footage together. That one always seemed like it was Blind Sally's baby, not unlike how I feel about Killzone in many ways. Killzone (Killzone 1, anyway), is another I have a lot of regrets over. It didn't really help matters that I wasn't a fan of the first Killzone to begin with, so Sally had a real hard sell getting me to go along with him into what's now shaping up to the four entire games in the series. I had a profound disinterest in doing the first game for a number of reasons. It was a boring slough for much of its run, a dull, stiff, emotionless, tryhard Halo mimic that didn't have any of the heart the Halo did to make it interesting, and thankfully, Guerrilla realized this and course corrected in the subsequent games in the series. Also, the computer I had at the time took forever to render 1080p videos of each chapter/stage, and my internet upload rates are still tortuously slow, taking up to 4 hours or more to get a single video online at the worst. Killzone 1 also came at a very bad time in my life personally, so I had to fight off a depressive funk about actual issues in my life to work up the energy to get a new chapter of it edited and exported, even though we'd recorded the commentary for it weeks or even months prior to that point. Another sticking point was wrangling up guest commentators. The guests we had on for the most part were great, but a lot of the people we wanted to get on just couldn't do it for one reason or another. So we were also being held up by other peoples' availability too. It just got to the point where I pushed the final few videos out in a mad rush just to be done with them. I also made the mistake of thinking "more, smaller videos=quicker uploads" allowing me to space out things, when that prooved to be anything but the case. The bottom line was, Killzone 1 just wasn't a good game to LP, or at least a game to LP well. It probably could be done well, but I just wasn't the right person to do it, and I'm more disappointing in myself that I couldn't make something more of it, despite Blind Sally's valiant efforts at analyzing it. I'm also disappointed that my refusal to work on it over the summer of last year essentially killed all the interest and momentum we had initially built up for it which we're only now earning back with Killzone 2 and Killzone: Liberation. Panzer Dragoon was quick, it was dirty, and it really kind of shows. I recorded the footage in one night, then recorded the commentary with Sally and TravelLog in one afternoon like three days later. But I had, and still have a fond place in my heart for the entire Panzer Dragoon series, so while it was a quick and dirty shitfest, it was a quick and dirty shitfest of love. The thread barely squeeked out two pages, but it always amuses that Geop actually posted in it unprompted. That felt like an accomplishment right there. God willing, though, anything and everything I do in Let's Plays will forever be filtered through the lens of White Knight Chronicles. That one there is the one I feel will be MY LP. It came out of a place of just disappointment and frustration with a game I wanted to be good, but slowly realized over the course of playing it was a shoddily made piece of poo poo with a dumb story and dumb characters, and incompletely made gameplay. I had a fuckton of fun LPing it even if I was unaplogetically aping The Dark Id's style of tearing a game apart for even the smallest of flaws. A some of it was feigned outrage for comedy's sake (think: Lewis Black-style comedy), and it still kind of surprised me that people thought I was as angry with the game as I was playing up I was in the LP itself. I probably could have taken it easier on the game, but it always felt funnier to me personally to go into the red zone with it as hard as I could. And I'm not sorry one bit for all the hackneyed shoehorned narrative jokes I forced into it too, that poo poo was great  .WKC was the only game I felt the need to LP, and I sometimes felt like Shadows was my warm up act for the main event. My only real regret about WKC was probably using too many still screenshots and not enough animated gifs to convey things, even though the things being conveyed weren't all that well animated to begin with. Now, onto in-progress poo poo: Prince of Persia (2008) is a gleeful rolling disastrafuck of memes, puns, terrible jokes, and inside baseball references to other LPs, but I love it regardless because I'm in the center of it in zero G and just sort of watching as it spirals out of control like a loving Katamari ball. But then again, I'm not really doing a 100% serious LP of it. It's a very breezy and casual game, so I want the LP and commentary to be as breezy and casual as I can get it, while still putting in the effort to show off the game, and for what it is, I'm quite pleased with it. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Apr 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 04:43
|
|
|
I wish I finished my Ring of Reds LP because it's a cool game, but dumb computer erased my save file right when I was at the end. I wish I didn't do the fad Fire Emblem thing of taking votes for party members and having 90% of the writing be about the fighting for Awakening, because that was my least favorite thing to do and what burned me out. Which is a shame, too since the DLC is really good and I basically finished the game. Also, I wish capture text existed years ago because that would've been useful on my wrists.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 05:17
|
|
|
The only good thing to come out of my FF12 VLP was that 8bit went on to do Barbie Race & Ride. And possibly Zackcat doing Resident Evil 1 GBC. I had a lot of fun doing FF12 but man that had a niche audience being a VLP for a JRPG.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 05:20
|
|
|
I don't think I've posted in LP in ages, but I really wish I didn't attempt that Lord of the Rings for SNES LP. I had fond memories of it as a kid but man that game did not age well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 05:26
|
|
|
Huh, let's see. My first LP was a video one that wasn't even on the forums, and it was an absolute clusterfuck. It's a hidden object game, I left the ads in because it was the free version, I roped my poor friend into commentating, and looking back I can only cringe. Actually on SA, I started in Charkie's Summer Spooktacular thread last year or so. I did Vorago, which Retsupurae would later do better and remember to crop the drat screen, and Mad Father, which was a lot of fun, and one of the ones I'm really satisfied with, aside from some weird sound desync on a few episodes and a few appearances of a wild mouse cursor. Then I tried doing Diablo 3, and that got a great response to the OP...but then I actually tried recording. My computer couldn't handle D3 and hypercam at once, or the audio was desynced to hell, or any other number of stupid things, so I never even got to do an update. Still feel dumb about that one. Lego Marvel Super Heroes was one I wish I still had the files for. It wasn't a super active thread, but I like the game, and I enjoyed it. Sadly, I had a death in the family and that kinda threw my life off track for a few months, meaning talking about digital plastic superheroes for the internet wasn't something I could fit in. Maybe someday I'll go back to it. I'm doing Fire Emblem 12 right now, it's my first Screenshot LP, and honestly? I really was surprised by the reaction. People actually got into it and are enjoying it, and that feels really drat cool. It's kinda tiring putting the updates together, because some of the longer chapters are full of images, but I really like looking back at the finished product. I'm glad people are enjoying the adventures of Steve the blind
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 05:37
|
|
|
My story is kind of stupid. Basically, I used to post entirely on a different site. LPing wasn't much of a thing there but sometimes people did it and I thought it would be a fun way to spend some time. I really enjoyed playing Dwarf Fortress and wanted to introduce more people to it, so I tried to do an LP of it. It went...uh I dunno, I'd say terribly but lots of people seemed to enjoy it and followed it. It was my first time doing any sort of writing over a long period though, and it shows. Namely because I never finished it. The thing went on for over a year before I stopped updating. It was partly due to me having issues with the site I was posting on itself, but mainly because I hated it and hated my writing and hated the fact that I felt like I'd somehow tricked people into enjoying it. Which is stupid, but I've never been a rational person when it comes to writing. I followed the DF LPs on this site as well and tried to participate in them but felt I was loving them up as well, so I stopped. That's my experience with LP other than following the ones you competent people post here.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 05:37
|
|
|
My first LP was Red Faction Guerrilla, and I wish I'd rethought some of the decisions I'd made in making those videos. They were alright for their time, I guess, which was the age of Viddler and Mediacoder, but it and most of the videos I've done since then might as well never have happened since their original hosts have gone the way of the dodo, and there's not much point in rehosting them in this brave new world of content matching, region blocking and developer monetization. If I hadn't gotten used to just slapping MP3s of commercial music over my videos to cover a fast-forwarded section in that LP, I might be able to repost the rest of my video LPs more readily. If one were familiar with my body of work, they might suspect Stuntman was my biggest regret. After all, trying to 100% a precision driving game where the driving isn't very precise is probably a bad idea no matter how you slice it, right? Well, yes and no. Sure, it was frustrating, but at the time it was more cathartic to struggle at a video game than to struggle at my university studies. Maybe I regret not finishing Stuntman Ignition, but let's be honest here: catharsis or no, there are limits to human endurance, and I'd long since met mine in that one. Actually, the LP I regret most was Infinite Space, in the regard of never finishing it but also of starting it half-cocked to begin with. I don't feel like I ever had a particularly sound gimmick to begin with in it, the voice I developed was pretty inconsistent with the tone of the game at times, the writing of the updates was brutally slow and tedious, and (most critically) I hadn't ever finished the game to begin with, so I was going into the mid- and endgame with no idea of what the plot's actual result would be. Not a formula for success. Saboteur, despite being a deeply flawed game, was probably my favorite LP to work on. There was just some anarchic fun to be had in devastating Paris and not giving a gently caress about the game's story by and large, it was a fun challenge trying to stealth as many of those missions as possible, mocking terrible accents and stereotypes was jolly good fun, and there were some great bugs that just made the LP at times. (Remember Sean catching the train?) Ace Combat 6 was a game I really liked, but for some reason it didn't translate into a good LP at all. At some point you just run out of things to talk about after the thousandth fighter you shoot down, and while I didn't show off all of the features of the game, I also got so tired of working on the LP that it was all I could do to finish the drat thing.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 05:49
|
|
|
My problem is that an LP spoiled me. A year-ish ago, Panzer and I LPed Saints Row 2. It took a couple episodes to find the groove, but once it did it was firing on all cylinders. The episodes practically made themselves; they were so drat easy to edit together. It was an amazing trainwreck, everybody loved it, and it really cemented my friendship with Panzer. Since then it's been rough. Both her and I want to LP something else together but we are completely unable to come up with anything to play. It's hard to not compare potential projects to SR2 and everything else just feels so dry in comparison. It's crushing our balls. Meanwhile I have other solo LP ideas that I'd like to tackle. I know I'm capable of them-- my first ever LP was Half-Minute Hero which went over way better than I feel like it ever had any right to. Just goddamn it is so much more work than SR2. I have to plan my commentary, play the game in solid timing with my commentary, re-record my commentary because I am a stuttery mess when flying solo... It's hard to find the willpower to want to work on even just getting it off the ground with how much more effort it is compared to how brain dead the editing was for SR2. On top of that I end up beating myself up a lot, convincing myself that people just watched SR2 for Panzer so there's no point in trying something solo again because people will just wonder why I'm going solo. I dunno. I can probably get into the swing of things if I can just muster up the energy to get a thread going and seeing feedback. Last LP was too fun to make. Sorry if that comes off as full of myself. I wouldn't undo the LP but man has it made it way harder on me to follow it up with anything else.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 06:00
|
|
|
Geop posted:Even if you were to delete it, some things are eternal! At this point they're probably going to play that over my funeral. I have wanted for a long time to make a sort of informative / educational LP in the style of your Assassins' Creed or maybe Zorak's Fish Learnin' one, but I get pretty nervous talking outside my field. I just know I'll overlook something and it'll set off a chain of folks correcting me and each other, ending in a nuclear thread gassing. ... hm that doesn't sound quite so bad after all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 06:06
|
|
|
I slowly have grown as an LPer, with each game being a new learning experience for me. First and foremost I choose to do a game because I feel like it's under-represented and needs attention. The first LP I did was of the trilogy of Silent Hill games for 9-key phones made the last decade. Everyone is gaga over Silent Hill, but those rare games get no exposure. I was totally green about it but I was excited that anyone participated in the thread. Then I got to dip my toes in the video world by joining the Disney megathread with Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, which was a small hit, but apparently half-assed and researched enough that some guy tried to recruit me for a monitized youtube network he was trying to get off the ground. And now I'm working on Gargoyle's Quest, one of my all time favorite games, as a kinda rough hybrid, and it's going better than I could ever imagine, with even fan art submissions. My only real regret is my failed attempt at Godzilla for the NES a year ago. The game is probably my all time favorite NES game, and is simply massive in scope for the system, but I over-reached with it and quickly quit it. I had big ambitions of detailed breakdowns of the details they put into it, including even having breakdowns on the army vehicles included. The problem is the game is slow as dirt and needs a lot more color commentary than I could provide alone, and I am not exactly the strongest at getting people to get on board projects with me. I ran out of things to talk about while recording my second video, and there would be like, six more levels to burn through plus in-game bonus challenges to try. Hell, I had hoped for a megathread to spring up, but it just quickly fizzled out. I'd love to find someone to liven things up and try again some day. The Super Godzilla thread currently going by TieTuesday isn't exactly curbing my wish for a kaiju megathread either.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 06:53
|
|
|
Bobbin Threadbare posted:I hear that. I don't know how I got by before FadeIO() and I'm constantly scrubbing my audio of all the times my mic catches me breathing in since I sound like a beached whale gasping for air. Hah, good to know I'm not the only one going through my commentary audio with a fine-toothed comb to take out all extra noises. Any sentence with lipsmacking, saliva noises, mumbling or excessive breathing needs to go. Meaning that I usually have around 500 small audio clips hanging around in my Premiere projects folder for every update. Quite a contrast to how I used to make videos with just one take while I was playing the game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 08:13
|
|
|
Looking back on my popular Planet Alcatraz LP, I wish I had known ahead of time that the upload process to the lp archive would make all of the text unreadable. Also I wish that the game didn't become boring enough that I had to fill in the gaps by writing what was essentially Planet Alcatraz fan fiction. All in all in spite of these regrets, I have no regrets. The massive popularity of the LP allowed me to go on to executive produce The Angry Joe Show. I also wish I had done a full LP of Xenus II because as amazing as it is I'm never playing that loving thing ever again
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 09:30
|
|
|
I made way too many videos for the Let's Fail thread around the time the LP forum started. They were recorded with my laptop mic and sounded like poo poo, plus I was trying way too hard to be funny and came off as an insufferable dork. That was a really fun idea, though (attempts at retro games you've never before played or even seen until you start recording), and I wish we'd do something like that again. I had dibs on Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (we used to have a list where we reserved games for future LPs), but I never ended up going through with it, or LPing anything else for that matter.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 10:11
|
|
|
People talk about audio scrubbing, if anything that's something I should probably do and lately I've started editing out dumb comments I make while commenting live. I've not gone as far as shutting out any noise while I'm not commentating on though but I feel like it's going to get to that stage. I spend about five minutes before recording setting up my mic so my breathing isn't heard, or soft enough that the game audio will blank it out. After thinking some more I do have a kind of regret with my Papers, Please LP. I started out with a zero tolerance policy but at one part of the story I went lenient on someone as I liked a character, people reacted negatively too it as I went out of character. But shortly afterwards I wasn't quick enough and the character died. That's pretty much the only thing that has stuck in my mind. I'm also terrible at SSLP's, one I started and didn't even have the patience or confidence to even make a second update. There are games I want to LP which are pretty much only suited to screenshots, but I know with my abilities I'll never be able to show them off in the way I'd like too. Also relying on walkthrough's for games, they're great for being direct in solving the game but crap when it comes to anything other than solving puzzles. But ultimately every update is a regret for me. The things I didn't comment on, the things I could explain better, the things I miss completely, doing things that haven't been hinted at in game which breaks the story a little... The list goes on.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 10:20
|
|
|
Oh goodness I haven't even finished my LP and I feel this so hard. Looking back on the first couple of episodes, I get really embarrassed at how I did basically everything. This is really my first VLP (I do not count the ill-fated Normality LP I did because it was literally two videos and they were awful) and I learned a lot doing it. That means though, that I started knowing nothing and it shows. My commentary was bland and rambly because I was nervous and didn't really know what I was doing, the audio sounds bad because I wasn't used to editing and processing that yet either, and it was my first time playing a 3D Zelda game. I had to learn a lot of stuff as I went and I like to think that its gotten better as time has gone on but those first few episodes will always make me cringe.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 10:32
|
|
|
There's a video in my LP where someone leaves to poop and I call them while they're pooping and I don't regret it at all
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 10:48
|
|
|
ITT I learned that most LPers are actually humans.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 12:53
|
|
|
More ramblings from me: I feel sliiightly bad about not being fully awake for maybe 2 videos of the 007 Legends LP, but I don't really think that game really deserves an LP with high production values so I guess I don't feel as bad about that. I do feel bad about putting the LP on hold for like a month after the final non-DLC mission though because we could only play the DLC mission through a Wii U copy since that game has been delisted from all online sources and the Wii U version has it on disk so I could just play through it and record the final mission. Admittedly, I didn't really look for 007 Legends for most of that month because gently caress that game and that final mission is loving garbage
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 13:11
|
|
|
I regret not getting to 100% on The Warriors. It was my first LP and I got burnt out with the game itself and some real life things got in the way. I tried to keep to about two updates a week but I think by end the I was getting to an update every three weeks. It doesn't help that I was editing with VirtualDub, if I remember it right. And man, it stinks I really like the Warriors. It's on my list of GAMES I LIKE which was a reason I got into doing the LP, I figured it wouldn't be a huge slog. I don't regret starting back up about a year and a half ago because Monaco was fun, and it was funny because before that I'd never even finished the game. I've learned a lot and maybe now I can make the LP I really want. Maybe! If I get more recording equipment!
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 14:46
|
|
|
My first LP was an amazing disaster that I loved from start to finish. I'm referring, of course, to my part in Xander77's Live-a-Live LP. As a guy with only a vague idea how to take good screenshots and no idea how to make GIF's, movies, or decent portraits, I was basically setting myself up for failure from the word go. As much as I love to go back and kick myself for my idiotic jokes and constant excuses, I've come to realize that everyone needs a starting point. I guess what I've mostly done with LPing is go in half-cocked and just figure out things as I go. I barely remembered half the stuff that happens in Final Fantasy VI and Fire Emblem 8 when I started, but I jumped right in regardless. No practice runs or anything. And you know what? I like doing it that way. Keeps things fresh and exciting, since I can be just as surprised as everyone else when something unexpected happens. Much as I'd love to go back and do a more polished run of Final Fantasy VI, I think I'd lose something in doing so, since there'd be no surprise in it anymore. Besides, my LP has an amazing low-level run by Nakar attached to it. That's more than worth my own clumsy approach, if you ask me. Honestly, that seems to be a trend with my LP's, and I still don't know why. My FF6 LP had the aforementioned low-level run and part of Elephantgun's fantastic Let's Break, my FE8 LP had Artix's romhack LP, and so on. I feel really blessed that people were willing to take the time to add extra content to my LP's, since I know for a fact that I couldn't have kept the show going on my own. Especially everyone who made all that amazing fanart for my FE8 LP. You guys made that LP a treat to come back to every day.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 16:16
|
|
|
Blastinus posted:My first LP was an amazing disaster that I loved from start to finish. I'm referring, of course, to my part in Xander77's Live-a-Live LP. As a guy with only a vague idea how to take good screenshots and no idea how to make GIF's, movies, or decent portraits, I was basically setting myself up for failure from the word go. As much as I love to go back and kick myself for my idiotic jokes and constant excuses, I've come to realize that everyone needs a starting point. Oh jesus, I forgot I contributed to that. I'm still not sure how I feel about my chapter. Sometimes I think I oversold it and butchered some translations with my half-assed Chinese, other times I think it provided a nice contrast to the sheer goofiness of White Dragon's chapter. On the one hand, it's one of the easiest chapters of the game so it's not like there was much to talk about on the crunchy end of things; on the other hand I basically wrote fanfiction. It doesn't help that I haven't read enough Classical Chinese to do a proper job of imitating it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 16:24
|
|
|
I really wish that I had recorded the boss fights in my Low Level FFV LP. The entire point of it was to showcase a challenge run and I only had one video. Of course, my process for making that LP was a mess. I took screenshots with VBA as I played, that was it. It wasn't until much later with my current LP that I realized that I can record the entire play-through and take screenshots from it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 17:21
|
|
|
Dr Pepper posted:I really wish that I had recorded the boss fights in my Low Level FFV LP. The entire point of it was to showcase a challenge run and I only had one video. not recording gameplay is like, the ur-SSLP mistake
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 17:58
|
|
|
I mean technically I'm still on the same thread but I've finished one game, so I suppose that counts. Looking back on Xenosaga I, I'm fairly happy with what it turned out to be especially with such an ambitious first LP (A VLP of a long-winded JRPG). One thing I would change, even now, is to have good judgement with who I click with, commentary wise. The biggest reason I started the trilogy in the first place is because the other LP got abandoned like halfway into the third game, and I wanted to finish the job so to speak. All in all this is still a learning process for me, figuring out what works and what doesnt. One thing I'm very happy with is my decision to edit the hell out of the videos, cutting out almost all the filler fights.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 19:19
|
|
|
Like Kaubocks with Saints Row 2, playing through The Void has pretty much spoiled me on all other games. I cut my teeth on Return to Zork and Zork Nemesis, and looking back I've no clue why as I'd no prior experience or desire and was hit with technical limitations from the start. But at least there I had no expectations, the threads were good natured and it was something to do. I've certainly some regrets with The Void - the first episode is pretty much the weakest one for a start. My graphics card caused ugly glitches throughout and soon after posting the final episode I had an idea for a much better approach to wrapping it up. But everything else - the thread speculation and artwork, input from developers, the sheer infinite well of imagination it inspired in me allowed for a balanced playthrough and endless jabbering filled with genuine interest and wonder. I'm still delighted to see comments from people and I can revisit it myself to some extent, and overall it really seems that so long as I'd let the game speak for itself I couldn't have gone wrong. And nothing has had the same effect since. I found a game that remains my favourite to this day at a time in my life I could devote to it, the only one that has compelled me to show it off, so anything else I'd do would have to be inferior. I'm currently gearing up to get back into The Talos Principle, which hit just enough similar notes to convince me to have another go after over five years. For a start, wow, I appreciate how busy I am now that my responsibilities are greater than getting up in time for lectures. I had a fuzzy dream of evolving my 'style' into something sleekly edited with informative asides allowing me to delve into history, mythology and science and bring back my valuable findings, but there's just no time to attempt that and expect to stay motivated for a whole 20-30 hours! If I'm not recording it feels like a waste, and as a result a lot of the topics I feel I've done a disservice. It would have benefited from a year's worth of research beforehand. Also, I can't really bring myself to record with someone in the house, so this week I had all of a 30 minute window which I squandered. Otherwise, yeah, I love to speculate. Talking about things that already exist simply doesn't interest me as much as learning about them. So in future I hope to be more open to games that don't bowl me over but allow room to interpret. In other words: I don't have regrets, I've just learnt some stuff. Also Nidoking reminded me that I contributed to a Rayman video. I forced myself to watch just to experience a bit of shame, but it really wasn't that bad. I was far too confrontational, because a lot of the time it was the only way to phrase what I was saying as something conversational, but Nidoking was great at bringing points back to the game and I believe that given more practice and time to grow a rapport (and maybe if I was the font of knowledge so as not to rely on my hopeless verbal reactions) something like that would be fun to do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 21:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 01:02 |
|
|
I honestly can't watch any LPs we did before, like, 2012 because I was a dumb loving teen and, as you would expect, said dumb teen poo poo that I don't want to hear coming out of my mouth. We honestly went back and put a line in the description of all our older videos saying "hey, just so you know we were a lot younger when we made these and probably said some poo poo we wouldn't say now." Occasionally folks still tell us they're funny and I'm sure they're not wrong but maaaaaaan I sure can't go back and see it. Also: my first LP is recorded in the most unimaginably inefficient way and has genuinely the worst video quality I've ever seen on this forum. I guess it sort of make sense when I was one of the very first people to do an LP of a PSP game but holy moly it looks hideous. My eternal shame.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2015 22:00
|
|
