A Good Place to Be

Where I have a ton of videos available to upload. There is one thing I need to be careful of though, and that is my bandwidth limit. I also don't want to flood people's feeds with videos, so I am trying to space uploads out every two-three days unless something like Outlast Whistleblower pops up (it was requested and I wanted to ensure it went up quickly like the last Outlast game). The LPs I post and the order in which I do it are based off of: requests, personal interest and viewer interest. I still have a small audience (which I actually prefer to be honest), so most of the choices I make in terms of what to record and post are based almost solely on my own interest. This is why Outlast Whistleblower and Half Life 2 have jumped to the top of the list.

So what about my other projects? In case you do not want to read all the details and want the bottom line...

Production order:
Half Life 2 (should be complete before May 15)
Outlast Whistleblower (uploaded and produced on-the-go)
Dishonored (is (mostly) recorded and ready to be posted. Should start showing up May 16/17)
Half Life Episode 1, Episode 2 (beginning - mid June)
Dark Souls - Early Summer

Dishonored is actually not fully recorded. That is...the DLC is not fully recorded. I am waiting until I have all of Half Life 2 posted (which should be VERY soon) and then I will begin the process of uploading that LP. I have a good 30+ segments, so this will give me loads of time to catch up on other projects, organize my drives and play some other games that I will not be recording (ie PS3/PS4 games). Because it's nice to just play a game sometimes and not worry about whether I'm running out of space or how loud I'm speaking in the dead of night. I have a small segment of Brigmore Witches left. I love this game, but other things came up and I ended up leaving that portion for later. I need to return to it quick though, because it's been a LONG time since I last touched it, and I don't want to risk having to relearn all the controls etc.

The Penumbra series really didn't interest me much. I enjoyed playing them enough at the time (though the third one was difficult to get through in terms of engagement) and we DID finish all three games (we would have quit if they were terrible...we have done that in the past *cough cough Haunted Memories*), but they were all just...meh. I was only really tense/scared at one point in Black Plague, and the rest of the gameplay couldn't seem to find a good balance between the elements. Basically it seemed that they were just throwing everything (puzzles, horror, mystery, storytelling etc.) at the wall to see what would stick. I think that's why Amnesia was so much more successful, because they figured out what worked from previous experience. Puzzles were downplayed, horror was accelerated and the environments were a hell of a lot more interesting (ie not just hallways upon hallways leading to hallways with an ice room and a lab thrown in). I like puzzle games, but you need variation or more atmosphere to get them to be engaging. When it's just boxes and jumping, it gets a little old fast. When there was variation, it was difficult to do what you wanted to with the interface provided. Anyhow, this is pretty much at the bottom of my list for getting out on YouTube, even though I have it fully recorded.

Bioshock Infinite is on hold, especially since Shauna's TV is still doing strange things. Outlast Whistleblower has taken priority over this, mainly because we've been looking forward to seeing what the DLC was all about. It is being recorded playing with a computer screen. We will likely return to Bioshock Infinite after this. This is why I have not been editing the last couple of segments from the game (though I REALLY need to get it off my drives like Penumbra).

Half Life Episode 1 is going to be posted after Dishonored. I already started to record it, and will likely finish recording and editing it so it is ready to be uploaded immediately after. My main goal is a more consistent uploading schedule. The game runs fine. It has the same problems as Half Life 2 in recording. Nothing really new there.

Still working on figuring out future collaborative LPs with Voyeur. I will update when we actually figure something out. I had the question of whether I would be "showing myself" and not just being a disembodied voice. I may be working on something like that with Voyeur. If that never comes about, I am not promising anything, but I MIGHT do a single-player LP of either F.E.A.R. or Amnesia: The Dark Descent (with the aims of playing alone on Hard and trying to get the "good" ending) with a reaction cam. Maybe. Possibly. I will decide.

Soundtrack Thursday 11

Not sure what I wanted to do today for music, so I decided to go through the list of soundtracks recommended/shared with me that I haven't gotten around to yet. So today we have:

NeiR - I must admit, it was a lot better than I anticipated. Lots of good tracks.

Chrono trigger - A game I've never played, but want to try.

Earthbound - Actually watched a full LP twice. But I want to play it anyway.

LP News!

-I've been busy/lazy in editing Bioshock Infinite and Penumbra (no surprise there), so I posted a couple other videos in the meantime. Shauna has been wanting me to post the Haunted Memories video, so I have done so. It's pretty awful. I get that it was made by very few people, but I have seen MUCH better games (and mods) made by only one person, so really it's not an excuse.

-I have way more Dishonored videos than Half Life 2 ones prepared. How did that happen when I'm planning on posting Half Life 2 first?

-Co-Op Magicka is finished and should be uploaded starting today. I think Voyeur is posting one segment a day for the next little while, so I will link to that once he has started uploading them.

Quick Update

Item 1: I've decided to alternate posting Penumbra and Bioshock Infinite, mostly because that is taking up the majority of the space on my drives, and they are cooperative projects with Shauna, meaning I want to get them posted quicker.

Item 2: I have not moved Half Life 2 footage off the computer I recorded it on yet. I am not done recording, but I think I will finish recording the entire LP before I post it, giving me time to upload the other content. This actually ties in with...

Item 3: I have a new hard drive. I caved yesterday at the store and purchased a 3tb hard drive, which should finally resolve my space issues. Though...I said that when I purchased the 2tb...

Item 4: I am terrible at Dishonored, but I am loving it. This will be the last LP posted out of the 4, and it is completely blind. I'll let that sink in. Yes...it is MESSY.

Time to Slay the Dragon

Which is Penumbra. Going through this footage will take me many hours, especially since I am making occasional comments and ensuring the audio is in its proper place (otherwise there will be a lot of voice commentary that makes even less sense than usual).

Something catastrophic happened to the audio in the middle of Penumbra: Black Plague, which is unfortunate as it was the best out of the three. As I'm watching though, I'm realizing this wasn't one of my favourite LPs. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't overly good either. We did have some entertaining commentary though. Best LP Shauna and I have done so far appears to be Outlast, and I think it's partially because it was a GOOD horror game. Which was bad for me incidentally as it left me a little on edge before, during and after we played.

Anyhow, two segments complete...estimated 18 to 20 left. Damn. Yeah, there's over 16 hours of footage to watch.

Another Milestone

More like a stepping stone as it's really not that big a deal, but I hit 300 subscribers on YouTube today. It's kind of neat having people interested in the videos I make, both on my own and with friends. One thing I realized while making this video was I really am pretty awful at games...and I find that hilarious. I've had a lot of fun the past 3 ish years making LPs (including the LPs on my old channel) and I plan on continuing my video recording and producing, hopefully getting better at it as I go.

The video I will be uploading today contains about 80% new footage (in that I haven't uploaded it to YouTube). Some of these video clips are part of longer LP videos already on the channel, but a lot of the material has been sitting on my drives collecting dust, and I figured I should remedy that. The video is over an hour long, so I'll be posting markers to each segment of it if you'd like to skip over some of the parts. This is (mostly) footage from 2013, so I might make a 2014 edition next year should I encounter enough silly things to make it. Which is likely.

Also, I have the first Penumbra video encoded. Hooray.

I'll have those going up fairly soon. I also need to start recording Alice again because I, uh, ran out of videos of it. Heh. I'll have my drives cleansed over the weekend so I can start that next week. Maybe.


EDITOR'S NOTES FOR DR.SCHWA'S 10 FAVOURITE WTF MOMENTS

Penumbra - Currently the only footage (aside from the 16 second dog video where I sound like Mr. Hanky) from Penumbra released. As mentioned above, I am working on that. That entire dream sequence section was really messed up. We were both incredibly confused. Also, Tommy Wiseau makes an appearance.

Skyrim/Oblivion - I had a lot of random footage from the game on here. I basically start recording when I find silly things, or there is a potential for silly things. And yes, I really did start choking on bread when I was trying to make a joke at the end there.

Left 4 Dead 2 - I had so much unused footage and unreleased mods/campaigns of this game. The first section was the fun little random clips from more recent runs of the game.The second was when we managed to break the game and tanks just continued to spawn. I apologize for the poor audio balancing and blurry quality. These were processed ages ago. The third instance of L4D2 in this video is basically me failing horribly. That and being tormented by my friends. The usual.

Outlast - Barely had to do anything editing-wise. It was inane on its own. I was the one at the controls in all the clips shown there, so no surprise that it's ridiculous(ly bad).

Overlord 2 - I still have no words for this. I can't comprehend, even watching it multiple times. I truly love the last little clip I added though.

Garry's Mod - Little to clarify. My terrible Prop Hunt skills speak for themselves. BUT I need to defend myself in the video where I killed myself. Both me and my brother had no idea how that grenade missed, Oliver had tossed the barrel down the stairs, Michael nudged the barrel into standing position when he said "is this you Oliver?" and when I shot the barrel, Michael screamed "oh god" so I thought it was him. I cannot justify the orange clip.

Haunted Memories - Horrible, horrible indie game. Granted it was free and made by a handful of people. Still, that's barely an excuse.

Just Cause 2 - The clip with the race car and the plane makes me laugh every single time.

Penumbra

The problem child of recording. Almost as bad as Half Life 1...which I really should finish....

Yes, so Penumbra is a little bit of a mess. I was going through the files last night and here's a rundown of what happened:

-Audio for all of Overture and about 1/3 of Black Plague is desynced and needs to be manually fixed, which is more irritating than difficult
-Audio for a session of Black Plague is tinny and poor quality, probably because I didn't double check the settings
-Audio for the last session we did of Black Plague is beautiful...but at some point I bumped the USB connected to my external and we lost the last 10 mins of recording
-10 minutes of video is missing right, smack in the middle of the second session of Overture. The files became corrupted and I got to see segment of Diablo 2 that I had deleted a month before. Thankfully the footage isn't important as it is just me being confused about how to get a heavy box on top of another box
-10 minutes of video is missing near the end of that same segment because I bumped the USB again (going to do some rearranging next time). Unfortunately, there was more interesting stuff going on, but I managed to notice that time and fix it before the problem got worse
-Sony Vegas crashed three times while editing last night, so I just gave up until today

In other words, this LP might not be the most complete or of the same quality as others we have done. I'll see if I can come up with a solution to fixing a few of the more glaring problems. My idea for the missing footage of Black Plague is just to record it again as the problem was RIGHT at the end and we still have a save to revert to. I just have to deal with the annoying cameras and doors again.

Penumbra has been a mixed bag in my opinion so far. Some of the puzzles have been good, and others completely ridiculous. It's not as scary as other games we've played, but it has tense and frightening moments, which usually get diffused by some silly event that you could play Benny Hill over (seriously, you really get desensitized by the dongle). That and there's freaking Red and Gilbert Godfrey to deal with. We do not like them. The place is massive and full of hallways with Dongle Men in them as well, which gets a little repetitive. Something they improved upon in Amnesia: Dark Descent.

Anyhow, the fight goes on. I will continue to work on the LP, and I swear it'll be done. Eventually. Sometime. In the future.

The Madness Returns

Uploaded the first segment of Alice: Madness Returns last night. It had three copyright notifications attached to it simply by virtue of being an EA game. I just sighed and promptly ignored acknowledging any of them. I am not done recording the LP yet (mostly due to a severe lack of hard drive space as mentioned before), but I plan on finishing it completely by the end of the month. I'm using this LP to learn how to improve my video and audio quality. You should see the audio improve after the 5th (ish) segment as I balance it better, and the video around segment 11 as I realized I was an idiot and forgot to turn off resampling in Vegas.

In other news:
-The Overlord 2 LP is now completely uploaded and organized into a playlist if anyone is interested.
-I have the bones of my Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Review video laid out in Vegas. I just need filler video and better timing on some of the segments
-Recording more Penumbra today. No that project will never be finished. Hell, it may never be started. It is a lost cause. A false dream. Abandon all hope. Despair! Despair!
-The cheese in my mac and cheese has mutated and expanded, consuming the few noodles left in the cup. It might take over my desk within the hour
-I might have to murder my workplace's internet provider
-The death blizzard continues outside. I may need a legion armed with pick-axes and hair dryers to extract me from the building. That or jump off the roof into the massive drifts that are no doubt forming below me. I shall tunnel my way home
-My lunch hour is over, but I'm having a lot more fun being melodramatic

Forgetful

It's only going to get worse. I forgot that I said I'd also be looking into playing the Bioshock series as well. This will be another LP series that will appear in 2014.

To finish 2013:
Half Life 1
Penumbra - Overture, Black Plague - with Shauna
Overlord 2 (just need to upload the segments (35 total)

Coming in 2014:
Alice: Madness Returns (will record and maybe put out a couple videos before the new year)
Dark Souls
Bioshock - 1, 2, Infinite
Penumbra: Requiem - with Shauna

Co-op or Multiplayer 2014:
Magicka (will be posted on GameVoyeur's YouTube)
Unreal Tournament 3 - Tentative
Diablo 2 Expansion - Tenative
Age of Empires 3 (I have about 20 games recorded that I played with my brother...I may post a few of those if there's interest)


Is it bad that the lists here are probably going to end up being mostly for me?

Twilight Days of my Hard Drive

So, here's the scoop. My hard drive is probably going to die in the near future. This is bad because a) it is my largest hard drive that I use to record all my raw files and b) because I have a lot of unproduced videos and projects stored on that drive. I have made archive copies of all the important old videos on my other drive for now, but I have an entire LP of Penumbra: Overture, the first 40 minutes of Penumbra: Black Plague, a ton of Neverwinter footage I never finished sifting through, two chapters of Half Life that are in the middle of being edited (and fixed as I had some problems with the recording) and all of the Amnesia: Machine for Pigs videos, which I am still using to produce a...special video. 

This means a couple of things. I no longer have the luxury of storing videos on this drive and working on them when I feel up to the task. These videos must be produced as soon as possible, so I cannot give them the attention they need. I was planning inserting text comments and jokes into Half Life and the Penumbra videos. This takes time as I have to watch the whole LP. I also need to resync some of the audio in Penumbra because apparently these videos want to make me miserable. I'm certain now that it's the lag in the games doing it, and since the voice audio and game are recorded in two separate places...this causes problems. Then on top of that, 25-45 minute videos take 2-3 hours to encode. I can only produce one video at a time unless I get creative (which will require the use of other hard drives anyway). 

What's worse is I no longer have a lot of storage space to work with. I currently cannot afford to buy myself new hard drives because I need the money I have for the holidays. I will have to wait until the new year. This drive is my 2TB. The others are all 600GB and lower. This is fine for some games, but the problem is my drives are full of OTHER footage. I am currently recording Overlord 2, which takes up a lot of space. An hour, thirty minutes takes 300GB of space. That's 3.3GB per minute. Yay Fraps. 

So, the point of this post, essentially, is to say that my video production schedule will slow significantly until I get this sorted out. The good news is, I still have Overlord 1 to upload, so you will continue to have a running LP. The bad news is, plans may change, footage may be lost and I cannot realistically start or continue a new LP without great difficulty. 

Last news is, regardless of whether or not the hard drive survives until the new year, I am working on some special projects for the holidays. I have a lot of...amusing unused footage lurking in the depths of my computer. Keep your eyes out in mid-December for new non-LP videos.

Also, it's not relevant, but, I have my drivers license now. It's kind of a big deal. Well...for me. Now I must attain a chariot worthy of my reign of terror on the road. I mean...that's a nice safe buggy to go on lovely Sunday afternoon drives around town. Yes...safe...

Dolphin

I have been thinking of LPing Gamecube games for quite some time now in addition to my PC games. I think it would be a nice mix up from the usual and I already have a list of about 5 games I'd like to LP. The only problem is that I do not have a capture card. This poses a problem. Thankfully I can use Dolphin emulator, but my main recording computer isn't quite up to snuff. The game works, but the lag is significant. It's actually a little painful to watch let alone play. Therefore, I will be trying it on a gaming laptop when I get it back.

Meanwhile, the Diablo 2 Co-op LP should be done uploading tonight and I assume we will be moving on to the expansion soon. Half life 1 is almost complete. I have most of it recorded on my hard drive. I just need to edit and encode the segments. There has been much silliness in my recent recording sessions including me not realizing that I wasn't recording for an hour and a half. I was quite angry. Lastly, I have a Penumbra: Overture LP almost complete that I have been working on with Shauna. That should be uploaded late next week.

So in summary:
Diablo 2 Act 4 - Nov. 10
Half Life 1 videos - Nov. 12-15
Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction: TBA
GameCube LPs: Lost Kingdoms - TBA

If anyone has a request for a PC LP, please let me know. If not, I probably will move on to games that I feel like playing (right now the forerunners are F.E.A.R. 1, Overlord and Thief 1)