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.

It Is Finished

Last night I accomplished the impossible.

I have finally, after over a year of anguish playing off and on, finished Sonic 2006. I have a lot of editing ahead of me, but I can safely say I will never have to touch the game itself again.

Unless there's interesting science to perform of course.

I won't have a final death count for awhile, but I have 67GB of video on my hard drive and approx 52.5 hours logged towards it.

Of that I want to say a good 5 hours was logged each to the Beach at the start and 5 hours to Kingdom Valley at the end. 3 or 4 was spent on Shadow's Desert level alone.

I'll have better stats once I go through it all, but this game...this game has taken a significant chunk of my 2017 year.

The point is, it's over.

Now people want me to do Sonic Boom, which I thankfully do not own a console for. I am safe for now.

The next Sonic game I will likely delve into is Shadow the Hedgehog, which is at least playable if not the corniest, most-cringe inducing Sonic game (aside from Sonic 2006) that I am aware of. It will not take me 52 hours to complete.