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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Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

This is a test post of a level from the game I'm planning to Let's Play, Shenzhen I/O. This is going to be a screenshot LP, and it's written in-character from the point of the game's protagonist, the Engineer (the premise is it's their blog about their job).

https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=151776

In addition to levels, I'm going to have posts where I explain the game mechanics, as well, seeing as this is a Zachlike (i.e. programming game). I might also have the Engineer respond to reader posts if they have something interesting to say.

Thoughts?

# ¿ Aug 12, 2018 08:33

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 21:57

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Carbon dioxide posted:

I like this game.

About your test post: Right now it feels very disjointed. Like we're only seeing flashes of a story. Is it supposed to be like that?

That's the entirety of the in-game story for this level. I realized, however, that I should show the blank spec and goal text in there as well.

quote:

Also, please do not ever use [timg]s or thumbnail screenshots in an SSLP. Use full size images, shrink overview images before posting them on the forum, or crop the relevant parts when you want to show the programming you did in a chip.
Having to click on timgs/thumbnails to see them full size takes you right out of the flow of reading the LP and makes it so annoying that I won't follow an LP at all no matter how good it is otherwise.

Yeah, I wasn't quite sure about that. The play area is about 1200px wide. Shrinking it to 800px makes the chip text unreadable, but ideally I wanted the reader to be able to follow along with the solutions. Thus, [timg]s.
If I do shrink the full solution and put it in, it'll still look bad, though - even if I add insets of each chip.

Maybe I could make sort of a fake [timg] - a custom [img] (600px, 800px, whatever) with a [url] around it? So it is half size, but if you click on it it links to the full size image...?

# ¿ Aug 12, 2018 21:01

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I'm not gonna read an LP where I have to click on every image to understand what it's telling me. If resizing on its own doesn't give useful images, then you should look into cropping and/or multi-image approaches. Like, you could have a full-size image of the chip along with a smaller image of the play area.

You're the second person to suggest that (edit: and now there's a third person), so I guess that's how it's gonna be...

quote:

Also, doesn't the game let you choose a different resolution? Plenty of games these days can use resolutions anywhere from 800x600 through to 3800xwhatever while retaining legible text at every scale. You may not enjoy playing the game at a smaller resolution, but it'd give you better screenshots.

The game does, but the absolute smallest resolution it will run at is 1440 x 900. All screenshots in the test post were taken in that mode. On top of that, making the resolution bigger/smaller doesn't make the text in the design area bigger, it just shows more/less of the background. :P

Quackles fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Aug 12, 2018

# ¿ Aug 12, 2018 21:35

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

OK, so I realized that part of the problem (aside from the whole business with the [timg]s) was that:

[1] The test post I presented the first time was for the fourth mission, not the first. Zachlikes really need you to experience the game in order, or you will be at sea.
[2A] I didn't post any examples of the additional explaining I was going to be doing, giving the thing no context.
[2B] I also hadn't focused on explaining what each solution is actually doing, as Carbon dioxide pointed out.

So, here's a new test post. This is for the first mission (now [timg] free!), and includes the first 'Engineer's Corner' explanation post attached to it.

https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=151781

It should be noted that the first part of this post is still not as well commented, though it's explained in Engineer's Corner afterwards� that's on purpose. The way I'm writing it is, the Engineer doesn't realize they need to explain to everyone until they get the comments back, and that's why they start the Corner series.

From there, future mission posts will explain what each chip is doing in a straightforward way...
("This job only needs one MC [microcontroller]. It's getting the value from the input, storing it in the accumulator, multiplying it by 2, and pushing that to the output.")

...which is going to be really important in later levels when you're stringing multiple chips together.
("This MC handles the input. If it's sound data, it pipes it out x1 to the sound-handling chip.")

I do feel more confident about the LP than I did before. Thank you all for your excellent advice!

# ¿ Aug 13, 2018 11:20

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Hey! I've got something special in the works: An interactive LP of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?... the 1991 gamebook, that is.

I just figured I'd run it by all of you first.

OP and Supplemental Materials Test Post: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=154297

Sample Entry: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=154298

Let me know what you think!

Please note that the content in the supplemental materials part is reproduced from the book with only a few typo fixes, so yes, I am aware of the anachronisms.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2019 12:22

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

I found a Paper Mario romhack called Master Quest I plan to LP; here's my test post for the OP and introduction. (The big '=====' denotes where the end of the first post would be.)

https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=154714

Thoughts? Questions? Requests for refund?

# ¿ Jul 19, 2019 02:50

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

This was a test post of forum MP4 embedding. Please ignore it.

Quackles fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Nov 28, 2019

# ¿ Nov 28, 2019 10:04

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Mega64 posted:

Good luck finding another host besides those two that will stick around, though.

I'm hosting on my own server. It's not going anywhere.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2019 23:58

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Speed 2 was a bit fast for me, but I could probably put up with it.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2020 22:30

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

One of these days I was going to finish my own image replacer tool, for character portraits and such...

# ¿ Dec 28, 2020 21:54

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

I just want to say that that LP idea sounds dope. I'm in.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2020 22:55

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

We made it! :dance:

# ¿ Jan 1, 2021 10:49

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

It looks really nice! You have one broken img tag - "[imghttps://lpix.org/4009851/image072.jpg[/img]" - but the game looks interesting, and I like your commentary.

Looking forward to your thread! :justpost:

# ¿ Apr 30, 2021 01:27

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

That Italian Guy posted:

Consider that editing every single screnshot of a sslp could be daunting. You mentioned doing it in batches, consider also creating a repeatable action (not sure what they would be called in GIMP) so that the file gets automagically "corrected" before moving to the next one.

GIMP has a batch processing functionality, but you need to write your batch processing functions in Python. Still, it's remarkably powerful.

# ¿ May 3, 2021 00:45

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Part of the purpose of making a test post is that it's as much a test to your process of episode creation and presentation as anything else. If there are any obvious pitfalls to LPing your game, you'll probably realize them while putting the test update together.

# ¿ May 7, 2021 18:27

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

It really depends on the game. Ideally scaling the entire game area down will work (this is important when designing switch games to still be readable in tablet mode), but there's a lot of dubious game design out there.

In practice, I try to go between 600 px wide to 800 px wide, unless the game is naturally smaller.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2021 18:22

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

OMG! Are you LPing Chroma Squad? That's super cool. I'll definitely follow when it goes live.

Anyway, I like the smaller size.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2021 02:55

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Jossar posted:

I kind of am having the opposite problem - a lot of people popped in at the beginning of my LP to signify interest or nostalgia and now I'm getting maybe 1-2 regular posters in the thread.

Am I allowed to just keep posting even if it turns into a complete ghost town apart from myself?

That's pretty common.

If you can stand it - sure.

*I'm not a mod, grain of salt etc.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2021 02:22

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

The Internet never forgets, unless it forgets that it never forgets.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2021 20:40

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Anaxite posted:

Ooh, can't wait for the LP! Hand of Fate (and its sequel) are two of my favorites.

:justpost:

# ¿ Oct 14, 2021 06:41

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

BoldFrankensteinMir posted:

Cool, thank you very much for clarifying. I'll see what my co-author wants to do.

Out of curiosity, technical specs of archival aside is it really significantly difficult to just read a thread with 1920 width images? I assumed any device would auto scale it but now I'm wondering what the costs of doing full HD would be just to ease of access.

My web browser on my laptop sure won't scale it, so I'll have to scroll from side to side.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2021 23:17

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Commander Keene posted:

(a bunch of stuff)

Additionally, I'd like to add one more thing, that I'd like to be as clear about as possible.

The reason the forum currently considers you dubious is that your initial suggestion was of a game that can be described as creepy, in a 'go to jail for sex offenses' sort of way. This, plus your later suggestions of other 'edgy' games, has gotten people thinking ill of you.

Before you move forward on a game, think very carefully about whether the game would be too horny, perverted, edgy, or otherwise unsuitable for (say) a PG-13 viewing audience at worst.

Otherwise, you risk people refusing to engage with you or take you seriously.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2021 09:38

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Remember, your virality was attracted by who 'you' are in the first place.
Don't change who 'you' are because you get popular, or you'll risk abandoning what drew people in the first place.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2021 07:32

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

I have to squint. Is there a larger text size option?

# ¿ Jan 5, 2022 03:14

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Eldsluft posted:

I may need some advice... how to make records of old style turn-based combat interesting? Previously I skipped the details and simply post some comment instead but... I dunno. I feel like it was too close to something like walkthrough guide this way.

For my Paper Mario Master Quest LP, I showed parts of a battle whenever I wanted to talk about a new enemy, or new move, or cheap shot etc... though Paper Mario is a lot more visually variegated than classic Final Fantasy.

This usually meant that I'd spend a lot of time on an area's enemies up front, and then note "Unfortunately, the Pokeys are still here. We KO them with Spin Smash" when getting into battles later (but not go into detail).

# ¿ Feb 1, 2022 17:50

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Artix posted:

If you mean just slap some subtitles up on a screen for a couple seconds, Premiere updated last(?) Year with a system that is apparently pretty good. If you mean in general for a subbed video the answer is that they are all tedious at best.

Camtasia has good annotation/subtitle support, as well as an integrated screen recorder and video editor. It's a tad expensive, but it's been in the Humble Bundle before.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2022 22:39

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

This works, but my experience is that it produces very large files, at worse quality, compared to an MP4.

You need to set Bayer dithering (FFMPEG's default will look bad), and then recompress the file afterwards with Gifsicle.

Here's my script. It does everything automatically:

code:

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $3 == "" ]]
then
        echo
        echo "Usage: $0 <filename> <pad_hundredths> <output filename.gif>"
        echo
exit
fi

last_frame=$((7+$2))

rm intermed.gif

ffmpeg -i $1 -vf "palettegen=max_colors=255:reserve_transparent=0:stats_mode=diff" -y palette_temp.png
ffmpeg -i $1 -i palette_temp.png -lavfi "fps=15,paletteuse=dither=bayer:bayer_scale=5:diff_mode=rectangle" intermed.gif

gifsicle -O3 --lossy "#0-" -d${last_frame} "#-1" < intermed.gif > $3

The value of "pad_hundredths" is how long to stretch out the last frame of the GIF, in hundredths of a second. (+7/100 of a second for a 15fps frame).

Here's an example of a GIF made by it:

Quackles fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Feb 16, 2022

# ¿ Feb 16, 2022 06:44

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

My Face When posted:

Something interesting happened as I was editing a video.

The raw footage I had recorded was normal with the audio and video syncing perfectly. When I put it in Premiere, it was off by 18 ms. I've edited the sound and video so it would sync, but is that normal for premiere?

What was the frame rate of the video and the premiere project?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2022 21:24

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

What are you trying to censor?

Camtasia has strong annotation support, which includes putting black rectangles over anything you fancy, but it's expensive.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 00:36

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Pungry posted:

This month is the 15 year anniversary of the LP Archive. Thanks again to Baldurk and all the wonderful LPers who've made it possible.

As someone who's benefited wildly from Baldurk's services to the community for years, I say: Thank you for your great help.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 17:43

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

PurpleXVI posted:

You know, one thing I wish LPix would do, would be to have an option to just copy an entire gallery's worth of URL's into your paste and then slap them into a post, then just adding text, spacing and formatting between them afterwards, because at this point the most tedious thing for me is pasting all the URL's over.

Someone please let me know if this is actually a function that LPix allows for.

My uploader Megasend has a function that generates a text file of these.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2022 22:55

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Rea posted:

Also helps prevent weird expression frames, like MegaMan Battle Network LPs used to get a lot of.

Alternately, if you prefer, you can do all the weird expression frames this way. :haw:

Quackles fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 16, 2022

# ¿ Mar 16, 2022 18:59

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

joke is on you, I do a linear game with no backlog :v:

# ¿ Mar 23, 2022 09:06

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

You want this server: https://discord.com/invite/EupwCA9

It's also linked in the OP.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2022 09:10

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

That Little Demon posted:

yeah I did, its 143796 items and excel crashes when I open the document

then don't play those games; play Microsoft Excel

# ¿ Jul 13, 2022 02:08

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Kal-L posted:

I'm popping in just to ask if someone can point me in the direction of an LP: it was about a PC, maybe DOS game, since it had a very basic interface with the main window showing a world map. The premise is that you're an emerging AI, and during the game you gotta do research to improve yourself, set-up server farms to expand your capabilities, discover new tecnologies, all while trying to not be noticed by human governments. Endgame was going into space and using all your tech to go into a new level of reality.

This being 2022, all my google searches just return articles about robots stocking warehouses.

I had that game! It's called "Endgame Singularity".

No idea about LPs, though.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2022 11:44

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

Recommend uploading to LPix, as Imgur might remove your images down the line.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2022 04:43

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

e: .

# ¿ Aug 30, 2022 06:33

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

OOrochi posted:

Gracias. Glad I decided to check.

The original resolution was 1920 x 1080 and I was just using the resizing function on Rightload to bring them down to at most 900 wide, since that's what I remember being told was the max size for an image on the archives when I started a previous LP. I guess that for that previous one, since it wasn't pixelated, the jankiness wasn't quite as noticeable.

Apologies if this isn't the right spot for it, but any suggestions as to what to use/what resolutions to scale it down to to not look terrible?

I'd scale them to 40% (768px) using an image editor like GIMP. Image editors have scaling algorithms that give a cleaner picture, and the round-number percentage makes it more likely you'll get a good result.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2022 06:17

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 21:57

Quackles: Aug 11, 2018; Pixels of Light.

I can read the text, so I'd say it's good. :justpost:

# ¿ Oct 22, 2022 22:05

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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