Hi

It's been a long time since I've written anything here. I haven't posted anything on YouTube for a good chunk of time either. I'm kind of in the middle of an unofficial break. I need to step back for awhile because my focus for projects and priorities have shifted some. I'm not quitting because I plan to finish LPs that are not yet complete and I am actually working on recording some other projects, but I have no set schedule or idea when I'll release that. I have videos in reserve, but I may wait until I can actually commit to a regular schedule again.

I also may release something for the holidays/New Year, but I make no promises.

Basically came back to say I'm not completely dead. Only mostly dead. When I do return, I'll have the rest of Diablo 3, Sonic 2006, and RE7. Currently also recording a couple new things, but I won't reveal those until I know a little more about what's going on.

On a semi-related note, I'm a little sad I didn't record/stream Assassin's Creed 4. Been playing it off and on in tiny bursts. It is so amazingly buggy/broken and the pacing is all over the place. I honestly haven't laughed so hard playing a game in ages.

Soon

Working on starting up posting videos again. I needed a break. Start looking for uploads starting again early September.

Cadence

OH HI THERE. I'M ALIVE I SWEAR.

I've been back for a couple weeks now, but I need to set up a video schedule again. I've just had zero motivation to do...well a lot of things. Vacation was all right, but the lake is even worse this year than it was last year health-wise. The zebra mussels have spread and there's just millions upon millions of razor-sharp shells all over the beaches and in the water attached to the rocks. These things have apparently been in the Great Lakes for a number of years, but they've finally reached Lake Winnipeg and started multiplying like crazy. They've been clogging up pipes and ruining swimming areas. They suck all the nutrients and healthy algae out of the water, killing everything but the dangerous blue-green algae which is caused by extra phosphorus in the water from farmland run off. Two people cut their feet on these while I was out there. I had a close call but I have a lot of experience in those waters with the rocks, so I've learned to step lightly.

It's just hard seeing the lake and place I love slowly change for the worse. The lake is dying and currently there's not much the people who live and vacation around the lake can do about it other than scream into the void or try to take matters into their own hands and cause more damage as evidenced with the destruction of a shoreline due to an illegal, improper sea wall.

Other than my father nearly lighting the cottage on fire by leaving the stove element on and placing a wooden cutting board on top of it, the week went well. The weather was mostly good other than one unbearably hot night. No power outages while I was out there for once and I got through the majority of Sacred Stones in one week (playing it for like...the third time or something).

Oh and I think my Great Aunt was the catalyst for the construction of a $55,000 staircase down to the water due to her being stubborn. I...don't have all the details on that one yet.

Now I'm back home and it's back to the grind. One of the locks on our house broke due to metal fatigue so we were getting that fixed over the past week. My dog's skin is finally healing (he had some sort of allergic reaction likely due to him rolling in a disgusting mud puddle) and he's found new items to steal when he's bored including books now. My neighbour didn't call bylaw services on anyone while I was gone so...I suppose that's a bonus.

Now I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do with video and recording. I want to continue things, but part of it is finding time and part of it is just...wanting to do it. I've been more antisocial and feeling...off the past few weeks. Months if I'm honest. Then it gets worse and I feel guilty for not being around more. One bright side is I've picked up my writing again, and made the mistake of reading a bunch of it instead of just finishing it, and now I want to "fix" everything. Honestly I just need to commit myself to trying to finish projects/checking if people want to continue games on the same nights each week. That way even if people are busy some days, at least there's a higher chance of actually getting things done again.

It'll probably help with the mental block in the long run.

Hiatus to the Boonies

I'll be heading out on my yearly trip to visit family out in the boonies. I'll only be gone a week this time, so if there's a lapse in video, it should be a short one. I've finished uploading Commander Keen 4 and am continuing to upload Diablo 3 and Sonic 2006 as I complete them. Trying to determine how I want to prioritize video in the future as recording has become a lot more difficult with less time and an increase in background noise. I may have a way around this if I cheat and record audio separately. I'll have to run some tests and see if it's realistic.

Meanwhile, exposure to sick children gave me a head cold, so I've been sitting on a recliner for the majority of the past week. Had to make a hasty exit near the end of our D&D session this past weekend because I was nearly choking to death. It was great. I got back to see we had found something nasty to fight. Right after I accidentally navigated myself into navigation.

Other than that, my life has been pretty dull. I need a new park with street racers or something to entertain me. All I have here are people who call the police when my dog barks and passive aggressively tell my brother that one of our cars is parked wrong on the street and it would be a shame if someone called bylaw on it.

You know. Petty stuff vs semi-terrifying action.

Oh and crows. There are a lot of crows here.

AFK

Pretty much describes me most of the time these days. At least D&D is typically scheduled a few days in advance so I can ensure I'm available for those times. This past month has been a little chaotic as work has changed, I'm still not feeling 100% and a lot of random family crap has come up. Long story short, my household has new people in it and that has been an adjustment. The good news is I have a semi-regular video release schedule going and I'm currently working on Sonic 2006 when I can.

If I can, I'm going to try and sit down and just finish the Diablo 3 run with Mesk and HKS cause that really needs to get done. We also haven't played Divinity either since last year. Heh.

More recording with Shauna coming up soon hopefully. I may have mentioned it before, but she's going to be producing the LP we're currently working on (Lucius) as I have like video projects to keep me busy for the next million years.

Or until we all die in a nuclear holocaust in the near future. Either one.

(I definitely mentioned Lucius before because I have a tag for it...too lazy to look it up now)

Missing Out

Due to health related issues and other things happening this weekend, I unfortunately won't be attending Comic Con this year in Calgary. I'm a little sad to be giving up my ticket, but I think it would have been tiring for me overall. I also just, don't have the money this year. There's a couple of the media guests I wouldn't have minded seeing and I'll miss my browsing and costume spotting, but I'll just have to leave that fun for someone else this year...

Dishonored 2 is almost fully released as well as Pillars of Eternity. I'll probably start releasing Diablo 3 and Commander Keen 4 after this (both of which aren't actually done and I really need to make the push to do that). If I have the time and motivation as well, I would like to marathon the rest of RE7 editing and just finish that series. I know I've been really slow on it, and I apologize on that front.

As for what I've been doing the past couple weeks, see above health issues comment. I may not need to leave after all early May as plans are changing in light of recent events. Either way, I'll do my best to keep up with recording, D&D and editing. I have some background things I'm working on as well, but I'll keep these a secret for now as I have enough long over due already.

I have videos prepped on YT up until May 3. Until then I might not do much as I'm a little bummed out by a few things. There may be a break after May 3 depending on how I'm doing at the time, but new series will be starting likely mid-May.

Literally the Last Roll

Started a D&D one-shot over the past couple of weeks and it's going well despite not being able to kill goblins. Oh and this:

Mesk broke rule 1 and tempted fate. I already used my inspire to avoid a trap sooooo now we're wandering around in a snowstorm. It was literally the last roll to get us back to town and end that day's quest. Now we're probably going to get eaten by wolves or something.

Been making a significant effort to get two projects that should have finished months ago uploaded and released. I'm also teasing a couple new series over the next couple weeks, including Diablo 3 and Divinity OS 2. LIS Before the Storm is fully uploaded (aside from the Farewell episode which I didn't get because apparently I didn't get the deluxe version of the game and you can't just buy the episode on its own...).

In addition I am one level away from completing Commander Keen 4 and having that ready for upload. I may be missing for a couple weeks at the beginning of May as I might not have access to computer/internet for awhile. I may schedule video for this time or just start up again when I return.

Uh...What YT?

I mass uploaded a bunch of Pillars of Eternity videos only to realized I double encoded an entire session. They weren't even the same lengths. Same content, two different iterations. This is why I need to stop getting distracted in the middle of projects, especially ones that are supposed to be SIMPLE AND STRAIGHT FORWARD.

Also in other news...I uh, somehow managed to get a video preview thumbnail from someone else's video. It's not even the same game. I think this is that Fortnite game. 

Apparently it's a known bug but not sure how this one happened. I was very confused for a minute or two as I thought I uploaded a completely different video, then realized that I've never played this game at all.

Bleh

Noticed I hadn't posted an update, again, in awhile. That's not to say I haven't been doing video-related work, but I've certainly let it drop off in favour of other things such as D&D campaigns, catching up on some data entry work and being lazy by binge watching a few series. I've just lacked the motivation to sit for a few hours and edit video. My general health hasn't been too great with mood issues, anxiety and back pain.

The piece of good news is that Lucius is still being recorded by Shauna and I (and will be posted when she gets around to editing it) and I have an almost complete run of Commander Keen 4 for you that will likely go up after I take some time to regularly schedule the rest of Pillars of Eternity. My other goal is just to finish the Dishonored 2 and RE7 videos and get those out as well.

I'll try just taking an hour at lunch today and just schedule the rest of Pillars of Eternity so I don't go for many days with no new content.

Condensed Aggravated Schwa

So I finished one of my projects for work and I decided that I had a couple of hours to spare for a new game. There's a number of options on my list at the moment, so I decided to start at the top and give it a go.

Shadow the Hedgehog is one of the titles at the top of the list, but I definitely want to steam this for Mesk and HKS, one of which I knew was sleeping at the time, so I went to the next one.

Lost Kingdoms 2 was next on the list. Also a Gamecube title, I spent about 20-30 minutes futzing around with the capture cards before I got annoyed that I was wasting my time and decided to dedicate the effort to getting it working again to another day.

After that, I decided Finding Paradise was next on the list. I forgot that RPG maker games need some...special recording settings, so I decided I didn't feel like futzing with that/recording my desktop, especially since I couldn't monitor the recording through OBS on the second monitor due to the windows being juggled around on launch. So I'm saving this for a day I have the patience to do something with it.

So I was down to Age of Empires 2 vs Gothic. I have said for a long time I'd give the Gothic series a try, so I set up the first one. Boy I was not prepared for this.

Let me take you through my Gothic 1 experience. It's apparently a 2001 game. Basically, it looked like an early 90's 3D game to me. Half Life 1 looked better than this and that game came out 3 years earlier. It had so much promise too. The opening cinematic was genuinely the most hilarious thing I've watched in awhile, mostly because it was so chaotic and easy to riff on. After that, things rapidly went downhill.

I can handle terrible graphics and issues with textures and animations. I'll make fun of them, yes, but they aren't a deal breaker for me. This is what happened in the first let's say...10 minutes of gameplay.

1) The initial person you talk to had a hula torso in that the bottom half of his body didn't move as the rest of it gyrated around as he talked. The camera got jammed in his shoulder 4 times and his bow was sticking right through his shoulder. Not only that, but the loading screen, which is just a picture, had the dude's bow going through his shoulder. Like...come on.

2) The controls were ridiculous. The default controls had me moving with the arrow keys. None of my settings had been saved because I didn't realize I had to press "enter" to lock them in (obvious in retrospect tbh).

3) When I quit the game to check the sound balancing (you couldn't alt-tab), I realized it recorded the cinematic and the load screen, but then the rest of the video was stuck on the load screen while the audio continued in the background. At this point, I concluded that I needed to stop and start the recording after every load screen to get it to work, or switch to OBS.

4) I relaunched the game and tried to change the resolution as the default was fairly small. This caused the game to fail to display at all. I could hear the game, do stuff in the game, but all I could see was either my desktop or a blank screen. I couldn't alt-tab still, but thankfully I could click anywhere on the desktop to get out of it and force quit the game. I tried to change the resolution back in the config file, but whatever had happened had irreversibly screwed over the display. I have a feeling this is Windows 10's fault, but I decided to just reinstall the game as it takes about 10 seconds to do so.

5) I get back in the game again, switch all the keybindings to something logical and attempt to play.

6) I get stuck in the water at the beginning and drown 3 times before I figure out how to get out of the water (as I saved while I was in there). Turns out I had to use the arrow keys even though WASD was bound to the EXACT SAME CONTROLS.

7) I never ACTUALLY figured out how to jump, pick up items, open chests, equip weapons or talk to people. I just kind of mashed buttons until something I wanted to happen, happened despite me knowing the bound keys for the actions I wanted to take. I even reset to the default to see if something got messed up along the way. For instance, picking up an item required me not to have a "weapon" ready (i.e. my fists since I never actually figured out how to equip a pickaxe), had to have the item highlighted at the EXACT proper distance, had to hold down the action button and aggressively click until the item got shlupped into my back pocket.

8) Finally figured out some magic combination to open a chest and couldn't figure out how to take the items from the chest.

9) Quit the game in rage because I couldn't take it anymore.

At the end of this multi-hour adventure I was like "well, at least I have some hilarious footage of my model freaking out, getting stuck, having the camera jammed in the world space and a lot of Schwa rage. I checked the recordings and saw, despite my efforts to start/stop the recordings, all I had was an image of a load screen with the game's audio in the background.

I promptly uninstalled the game and went upstairs to eat.

I'll try Gothic 2 and see if it fares any better. All it needs to do is have controls that actually function and records with little issue. I'm setting the bar low here.

I want to say that this game must have performed better on older versions of windows, but, I have a feeling all the controls and such were exactly the same. How...how did anyone get through this? Changing the keybindings should have solved the issues, but it didn't. This game has super high ratings on...virtually everything. Is it nostalgia? Is there something I don't know? Are people trolling me?

Likely all of the above. Either way, I'm too frustrated to try again, so...I'll be moving on to greener pastures. Keep in mind: I MADE IT THROUGH SONIC 2006. The difference was, even though Sonic 2006 was a pile of shit and controlled like a yacht sliding down a greasy mountain slope, I could adapt to it. This? I could barely interact with it.

Speaking of games that didn't make the cut...

I tried Cry of Fear last week and posted the two video's worth of footage I got out of it. For a game made by a handful of people, it wasn't THAT bad, but it definitely wasn't for me. In retrospect, the controls were at least FUNCTIONAL. It wasn't particularly scary. It had a few cheap jumpscares ands some flailing balloon head mimes wearing sweaters, but that's about it. I didn't appreciate having to do a tango with every enemy I encountered just to survive. I shouldn't have played on the "difficult" setting as I should have known it would only increase HP of enemies and damage done to you, but I'm stupid and now I've abandoned that endeavour.

In other news, Shauna and I started Lucius. It is hilarious. She'll be editing that one I believe. She's a little concerned about how quickly I think up ways to kill the house staff. Even if it isn't the right answer.

Lastly, continuing Diablo 3 and Divinity 2: OS with Mesk and HKS, although, that may be up in the air for awhile as they have some stuff going on on their end.

Snowed In

Pretty much been snowing here all night. There's got to be another two feet on top of the snow we already had on the ground. I elected to stay home today and thank goodness I did because...

I accidentally streamed a blank VLC logo for 10+ hours overnight. I had OBS running and I guess I hit the hotkey for stream. So for the first hour or so anyone who dropped in saw some Resident Evil 7 I was re-recording due to me initially recording in a format Vegas doesn't like. The rest of the time was just dead silence, staring at the logo. Thankfully most notifications are turned off, otherwise you would have gotten a running commentary on pressure cookers and puppies. Big shout out to Gwen who actually informed me that I was streaming and could hear me in the background. I have since removed the hotkeys for streaming from OBS to prevent this from happening again. I have also purged my mistake from Twitch.

Thankfully, I have a long history of making a fool of myself. No harm done, so I figure we can all laugh about it...after I spend the rest of the day hating myself for doing something so dumb.

So yeah...more RE7 is coming! Been getting a lot of video work done, from RE7 to Divinity to Dishonored 2. I have cleared off multiple hard drives and actually have room to record again.

Here's hoping I don't do anything else dumb before the end of the week (oops, just tempted fate).

Still Alive

I just realized I haven't posted anything since the New Years post. I'm not even sure why since January has been fairly quiet for me. I think it's just I've been enjoying the first real slow-down I've had in a long time by being lazy.

And I've been doing a lot of writing. I'm not sure why, but I've written over 50 pages worth of content, and one has been a spontaneous project I just...started randomly. Good news with that one is I have pretty much zero attachment to it. I just started it as an exercise with fantasy elements I pull out of my ass, so my focus is still trying to get the project I ACTUALLY want to finish done. Someday.

I have been working on video, however, as I've posted two episodes of Before the Storm (in all it's  transitional animation glitches and rubber newspaper glory) as well as continued to upload Pillars of Eternity. I still have about 30 episodes to go, so that will keep me running for a bit. Other than that, my other current projects are going through the Divinity 2 OS footage (which I am going to hold in reserve until we either get far along in it or completely finish it). I need to process Divinity footage as it takes up a lot of space. It's slow work though as I need to splice in audio provided by Mesk as I had a few issues on my end with my mic (mostly self-inflicted as I didn't check the things I was supposed to). Resident Evil 7 is my other priority project since I'm halfway through it and a lot of people seem to be actually interested in it/have been waiting for it...

Heh.

I need to find a good few chunks of time for Diablo 3 this week as there's an event that will be done by the end of the month. Apparently it's something I HAVE to experience, so I may do that with Mesk and HKS on Wednesday this week.

I also cleared some ancient Gauntlet footage off my drives, which I'm unsure if/when I'll be releasing.

Other than the above, been continuing with the Starsworn D&D campaign. Also revived the 4th Edition campaigns I've been playing with Nick and Shauna, only on a less frequent schedule. I'm glad they've continued regardless. It's been like...a 4 or 5 year series of campaigns. I really need to get around to the highlights videos for these. I'm also planning on making a master document for our Starsworn chat logs since it's now a massive document and impossible to find things in decent time. Hopefully this will be useful to the others, or at least a foundation for something better that they can devise.

2018

First post of the new year. Sonic 2006 recording and Bioshock Infinite editing, two massive undertakings, are now behind me. Now, I'm just looking to the future.

For now, the new year just means that everything is changing. A lot of things have turned my life upside-down in the past couple of years, and I'm not sure I'm the same as when I went in. I still take a lot of joy in video work, writing and working on other personal projects, but it seems that no matter what I take on or leave behind, I seem to have less and less time. Part of that is a personal thing where I just need to be lazy and hide from everything for a time, and part of it is that I really am a lot busier. And I've been doing this for about a decade now.

I laughed the other day when someone said I don't have a lot of variety (I assumed it was referring to my channel) and I retorted that I had completed over 60 LPs ranging multiple genres and styles. That is...way more than I thought I had and definitely more than I ever thought I'd have. I can see the improvement over the years of my casting, my recordings, my editing and my quality, but I kind of wonder what the next step is.

I fully intend to continue my LPs, but I may wind down how much I record and how often I post. It's just not fair to promise a certain level of releases or that I will definitely do a title, or edit recordings in a reasonable amount of time, and having that stress on me isn't helping with daily activities.

So my plan for this year, is to catch up on existing projects, and simply wind down how many new projects I actually do. The ratio will likely be 1 solo LP from me for every 3 I do with someone else...until I catch up or decide to do something else. For my 2018 preview, I've decided to start a new playlist of teasers and clips I find amusing as an easy to consume section that will range from a few seconds to a few minutes in length.

And, we'll see how the year goes.