Drifting

All my marks are in from school, so now all I need to do is put on a silly robe, pick up a couple of pieces of paper and wait around for three hours while I wait for other people with silly robes to pick up their slips of paper. In the meantime, I will continue making LPs and other videos for YouTube.

I will be gone for a month and a half this summer, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to start new LPs after I complete Dungeon Siege 3. I am estimating that I'm a little over half done DS3, but it's been a long time since I was last at the part I'm thinking of AND I never actually finished the game last time. I got very mad about this one battle, which I am sure will make me very mad again. I have a ton of ideas for new LPs however.

1) Single Player LPs:

I am thinking of LPs I can do on my own time in the next while. I may return to the Dungeon Siege series to complete additional quests or do a showcase of pets and recipes, but ultimately I want to move on to new games.

My top options for LPs at the moment are: Half Life 1 (the original, not the overhaul it got last year), Diablo 1 (of which I have only completed once), Baldur's Gate (of which I already have three videos) and Overlord 1 (of which I started a text LP and then promptly gave up on it).

2) Multiplayer LPs:

I have a lot more Left 4 Dead 2 videos I can post, which people seem less interested in watching. My brother and I play most of them, but I have some friends join us in other campaigns, including another LPer, IskatuMesk, which I unfortunately didn't get the entire recording of the campaign for. Shauna and I are still debating whether we will do an Amnesia: Machine for Pigs LP, but you can guarantee that we will be doing more LPs, probably horror survival related, in the future. We are also contemplating joining up with another friend of hers to do a Neverwinter LP, but we haven't got the details of that one worked out yet. I also have multiplayer videos of Dungeon Siege 1, but I'm not sure what videos of that one are going to be produced.

3) Reviews, Compilation videos and Music:

I currently have a review of Amnesia: The Dark Descent done by Shauna and myself encoding on my computer. I plan to upload it tonight (if it cooperates. It is an hour and 7 minutes long, and would probably only target a few people, but I feel we give an in-depth analysis of the game. It's the first time I've done a video review and I may move on to do reviews of the Dungeon Siege series and perhaps some Fire Emblem games. I am not sure how these reviews will work yet, or even if it's worth doing. I'll have to see if people are interested in seeing them. As for compilation videos, I have another Left 3 Dead 2 one planned that I need to review a lot of video for. I currently don't have enough footage for another "Five Years of Flails" type video yet, so that will be a long time coming. As for music, I plan on making some more continuous tracks for video games, but I am not sure which ones yet. Probably Dungeon Siege 2 or and extended version of the Dungeon Siege 1 version.


Overall, I have a lot to work on. I will be asking any viewers interested what they'd like to see as an LP. If no one really cares, I'll do whatever the hell I want and hope for the best.

11%

Is how much my free space my hard drives had IN TOTAL last night. Now, after the deletion of some raw video files that had been worked with already...I have a significant amount more. I am currently on my reading week which means I will probably be working late into the night and wake up late in the day (with the exception of some mornings). My plan is to get a significant amount of Broken World recording and videos uploaded, work on the third and final Left 4 Dead 2 Clip show, encode the last few full episodes of L4D2, organize all the random little clips I have on my hard drives and delete the ones I'm not going to use anymore, begin work on the larger video project I have going and prepare for recording Dungeon Siege 3, because that day is fast approaching.

This week I also hope to update this blog a little bit with screen shots from Dungeon Siege 2, because I haven't done that in a long while. Skyrim DLC is also out, which I purchased yesterday, so you can be sure that a lot of hours will be going into that. I also need to update my Dungeons and Dragons logs, do a little mid-winter cleaning, get some writing done...oh yeah and school work. I'm sure I have a little of that too.

In addition, I have posted it a few times on the YouTube page, but I've been starting to play a bit of Dungeon Siege multiplayer with some interested parties. If anyone is interested in trying it or joining, please send a message my YouTube account. That is all.

Tedious

While studying for an exam I don't particularly care about, I got bored enough to start reading one of the documents I need for the test out loud. This did not end well. Or turned out better than expected. I'll let you decide.

FaceDesk

Meanwhile in Dungeon Siege land...

Still working on Broken World. I've been busy with driver's ed, school, work and being lazy lately, so I'm having trouble finding a good time to just sit and record what I want. I also need a time period where people aren't constantly interrupting me every five seconds so my videos don't get chopped up into tiny segments. I may just be bitter about another, unrelated recording. Just a wee bit. I also have a ton of Left 4 Dead 2 videos lined up for upload once I'm done Broken World. This will give me a chance to prepare for Dungeon Siege 3 (mostly mentally as I'm sure my mind won't come out of this LP completely intact) and give me a chance to experiment with the audio a bit. I want to learn more video editing tricks as well, so I may be experimenting with Vegas and look at some new tutorials.

Happy Apocalypse!

THE END IS NIGH

If I survive this one, I can officially say that I've survived about 4 or 5 apocalypses. Man I must be Superwoman or something.

So while all this BS dies down I'll be uploading the next few segments of Broken World. I also have about 10 hours worth of Left 4 Dead 2 videos that I played with my brother (lamax42) that I plan on uploading in the near future as well.

I'm not going to get Broken World done by the 25th unfortunately, but I will try my hardest to keep uploading videos in a timely manner. In the meantime, here's some screenshots I found on my hard drive. Enjoy:

What the What?

This has been an interesting weekend. To start off with, my beloved laptop, Gary, aged 5 and a half, tragically died of a fried hard drive on Friday evening. He had just finished allowing me to play an exciting game of Age of Empires III when he suddenly came down with the Blue Screen of Death. Never have I seen BSOD like this as white lines shot through the blue and random text and numbers flashed rapidly. I tried to save him, but unfortunately, through repeated tries at booting, he would not respond. If he fails to boot from an external hard drive, Gary will be laid to rest in the local Staples recycling bin sometime in the near future.

In all seriousness though, I'm going to try and save my laptop, as it has sentimental value, but I think Gary is way past his prime. It's almost not worth saving, though, I really lament the loss. It was me first personal computer (having used a family computer the years before) and it got me through most of my university career. I wrote 175 pages of WMRR on it, stayed on all through the night as I wrote my papers at the last minute, traveled with me to places including London, Lake Winnipeg, Hawaii and Florida, uploaded all of my videos diligently while I slept, helped me play hundreds of hours of games, and helped me to produce my very first videos. Gary will be missed. <3


In other news, I have been working on making Murphy a high-use computer. Before I mostly used him to play games and encode video, but now he will be taking on many other roles. In the meantime, I will be borrowing a laptop to use for my writing and school work. I am just glad I didn't start Broken World on Gary, which I was debating doing on Murphy anyways. That sounds...awkwardly sexual.

Speaking of Broken World, I have installed it on Murphy and am now ready to start the LP. I will be doing some sound tests in the next couple of days here, and will probably start the LP on the 11th (which is the last day of my exams). The game was...strange to install though. I installed DS2 with no trouble, but when I went to install Broken World, the installer froze, which then proceeded to freeze windows explorer. Pissed off (and quite tired as I have been working all weekend) I waited about five minutes before forcing a restart. I tried again when it had booted up again and the same thing happened. Fed up I figured I would just work on it tomorrow after I got home and just ignored the failing programs to talk on msn before I went to bed.

Suddenly, after about 10 minutes, Broken World just decided to...work, and it installed in about 30 seconds after I put in the CD key (which I had to dig around for as it was on the booklet...and the booklet was not in the case). Then about 8 windows popped up from when I was trying to get ANYTHING to work in windows explorer. Whatever. Broken World is installed and it works.

Guess this is what happens when you call your computer Murphy.

Finally, as Gary died and I don't have a recent enough back-up, I will be playing a new set of characters for Broken World. I kind of wanted to do it that way anyways. We shall make this silly.

Big Plans

I'm officially finished my Dungeon Siege 2 LP and am almost ready to start Broken World. I may still add Dungeon Siege 2 videos in the future (ie quests I've missed or need other characters for, and the secret quest), but I have no idea when I'll do that. As for Broken World, I plan to start the game early December and then really get into it by December 12 (day after my final exams). I will not have any time to make videos between now and the 26th though, because I have a 15 page paper due next week that I haven't started and a few assignments that I need 100% on because of my...less than adequate midterm mark...

In the meantime, I have something entirely random, but super fun to post while you wait for the new videos. I mainly played the game to test out recording and audio on the computer I'll be using from now on for LPs (well...apart from Broken World maybe...haven't decided yet). The audio...was tricky. My voice ended up drowned out in a lot of segments, so I apologise for the bad audio. I may consider recording audio separately (ie not with FRAPS), but I'm worried about audio syncing as a friend of mine has had countless issues with that in his LPs in the past. In addition, I'm not an expert at this. I still have a lot to learn to make these videos higher quality.

By the New Year, I'd like to begin Dungeon Siege 3 (which is what I'm doing most the tests for) and start thinking about what sort of series I could LP next. I did Dungeon Siege because a) I love the games and b) because I've had a degree of past experience with them. Nothing like looking like a total spaz in front of an audience, which has happened in failed videos. Regardless, I may just play a few random games as I have a ton on Steam that I've purchased on sales...and the after-Christmas sales (boxing day/week for us Canadian and British folk), I may have more.

Anyway, stay tuned, I got a lot of inanity coming your way.

Future Recording Plans

Man I watched Iron Man and now I have about 3 parodies of the theme song stuck in my head...

So I thought about recording quite a bit and I've decided that I would like to continue making Let's Plays, starting with finishing Dungeon Siege 2 of course. I will do Broken World and Dungeon Siege 3 before I move on to other series, but I'm not sure what I'd like to do yet. I'm thinking it's between Half Life, Torchlight (Blind) and Diablo 1. I'm leaning mostly towards Torchlight because I haven't done a completely blind LP. I'm not counting Legends of Aranna, Broken World or Dungeon Keeper 1 (another YouTube account) because each one of those was done with a great deal of knowledge of the game beforehand or I had played a bit. All I know about Torchlight is it's a lot like Diablo (which makes sense because it's made by the same people who worked on the first two Diablo games). Regardless, if there are any suggestions on what I should do or which games to look at next, I'm all ears. There's always new ways for me to fail at gaming!

Anyway, recording and video editing can be a lot of work, but I enjoy it and I need an excuse not to do my work at school...I mean...

Break

So, two weeks since my last video post. I am having a great deal of difficulty with recording as of late. I explain it a bit on the WMRR blog, but I will restate it here. 

1) My laptop is not cooperating. The CD drive is not working again. I fixed it once, but I'm not sure if I can do it again. At this point I have two options: no CDpatch/iso or move the entire operation to my fully functioning computer. Downside to the former is that the laptop is unpredictable and random components tend to break. Downside to the latter is the sound and settings are completely different on the other machine.

2) I have no time. I am balancing 2 jobs and editing, writing, family commitments and having a decent social life with my hobbies including playing video games and recording. I need a pocket of time during the week were I can record in silence, uninterrupted and at a time where I'm not waking up my entire household by swearing at armour regenerating trees.

3) I'm having a tough time getting motivated to record and encode. I love making videos. I love playing video games. Naturally, I love recording video games that I play. The problem is I also love a lot of other activities and I just don't have the time for it. I feel terrible if I haven't produced a video in weeks, but that's mostly because I know that some people are waiting to watch the next instalment. I can't take my time when life gets busy or when I feel like doing something else for a bit. I haven't written much in months. I haven't read a book in god knows how long. I miss activities like that.

Conclusions? I may delay the production of Broken World and DS3. I know I was excited about these, but I need a little time to just...get everything sorted out on my end. I will finish Dungeon Siege 2 as soon as I can. Maybe in producing the last Act (and the last bits of Act II) will spark my addiction to making more videos, but the truth is I'm just tired at the moment. These problems coupled by the few people who have given rather irritating feedback on my videos (mostly the Carmen San Diego one) indicating nothing beyond how much I "suck," have really killed my desire to continue for the time being. I have yet to decide on this, but I know that I need to give something up for awhile. So I will think about it and come up with an answer soon.

Graphics Upgrade

I mention it in the video I will be posting, but I have a new graphics card for my encoding computer. The card on the left is the old and the card on the right is the new, so significant size change.

This means that I can now play games on it without shadows flipping out or having pieces of the floor missing. My laptop is getting old, and its really beginning to show. After DS2, Broken World and maybe the Half Life text LP, I will be retiring the laptop from LPs. I just don't think it can handle it anymore. I'll still use the machine until it completely dies, but it has served me well these past five years.

Thena's Serenity Set

Another low level set I found: Thena's Serenity

Far Left - Staff

Thena's Companion - Shillelah
DAMAGE: 9 to 15
CHARACTER LEVEL: 8
+3 Intelligence
+12 Health
+10% Nature Magic Damage
+10% Chance to Find Magic Items

Middle Left - Boots

Thena's Tranquil Path
ARMOUR: 8
CHARACTER: Nature Magic 4
+5% Mana Regeneration
+5 Armour

+10% Ice Resistance
+10% Fire Resistance

Middle Right - Gloves
Thena's Soothing Touch
ARMOUR: 6
CHARACTER: Nature Magic 12
+22 Mana
Restores 2 Mana Per Hit
+12% Death Resistance
+1 to Nurturing Gift, Enveloping Embrace, and Feral Wrath

Far Right - Hood
Thena's Calming Gaze
ARMOUR: 18
CHARACTER: Nature Magic 16
+6 Intelligence
6% Mana Steal
+80% Armour
+1 to Summon Fortitude, Summon Might, and Summon Bond

Set Bonus - 4 Items
+8 Intelligence
+40 Mana

+10% Magic Damage Resistance
+2 to Summon Fortitude, Summon Might, and Summon Bond
+2 to Nurturing Gift, Enveloping Embrace, and Feral Wrath
+5 Armor

Trolls

I find them hilarious. I have not encountered anyone who has insulted me properly. It disappoints me. Of course I am not looking for people to actively make fun of me, but honestly, if you are going to insult me, comments like "you suck" and "losergamer" only encourage me to mock the poster relentlessly. I will never satisfy a troll by getting angry, so it's funny to watch them try. If you are going to insult me, do it right. Get creative or something. You won't get much out of me otherwise. I don't have feelings to hurt. Not for you.

Besides that, I am totally open to criticism. I can't get any better if I don't have any feedback. If I "suck", at least tell me why (and watch more than a minute of the video or you'll look stupid as hell) and what I could do to be better. This is a lot to ask of YouTube where half the posters are 13 year-old pricks who have nothing better to do than vent their flaccid, teenage frustration on a stranger, but I digress.

Act 2, Chapter 4 will be posted in a few hours. Chapter 5 is still in the making...I have a feeling this is going to be one of the last LPs I do on my laptop. I have a new graphics card for my other computer (Murphy, the Jet Engine), which should arrive Wednesday...ish. I may do Half Life 1 on the computer as a text LP before that happens (for my other YT channel). I plan on just marathoning it when I have a day off.

Cool Consistency Bro

All the other portraits for merchants I have seen/noticed so far have been the same...aside from this one:

 

Someone forgot to make his face fit in the little circle as well. Minor slip up of the developers...but it still made me do a double take.

List of Challenges: Super Masochistic Edition

I originally wanted to use a list of 20 challenges for Dungeon Siege 2, but I narrowed it down to 12 to keep it simple and realistic for an LP. However, for anyone that wants it...

List of Challenges: 

SUPER MASOCHISTIC EDITION

1 Ridin' Solo (Have your main character solo all bosses, minor and major)

2 Brawl (All Melee)

3 Sober Up (No Potions) 

4 Sniper (All Ranged)

5 Silenced (No Spells)

6 Feelin' Blue (No Mana Potions)

7 Diversify (Multi-classed characters fight with non-dominant weapon)

8 Granola (All Nature Magic)

9 Power Down (No Magic Weapons - does not include spells)

10 Buzz Kill (No Powers)

11 Lost Mojo (No Magic Armour)

12 Bad Medicine (No Health Potions) 

13 Punch Cat (One character has no weapon/spell equipped)

14 Naked (No armour)

15 Cut Off (Do Not Spend Money/Sell Items)

16 Disco Inferno (All Combat Magic) 

17 A Little "Special" (equip all owned quest-related or special items)

18 Medieval (No Magic Items - of any sort including jewlery)

19 Cocktail (Must use a different mysterious chant every time you encounter an alter)

20 No Effect!

Some of these may need to be tailored to fit the skill sets of the player or based on the difficulty of gameplay. These may be more difficult on the first playable level. 

Eternal Grace Set

The eternal struggle.

Another one of the first sets that drops in the game. Not sure if this format is better than typing everything out...testing a few different options here.

Nature's Vigilance

The first set acquired in the game to introduce players to the idea of set items. Sorry I don't have the screenshots of the specs. I don't have individual shots of the earlier pieces because...I dunno the world was thrown out of orbit for a split second and my mind suffered a bout of dangerous inertia that altered my thinking capacities beyond recognizable levels. IT'S OKAY! That didn't even make sense to me. Nature's Vigilance!

Top Right - Boots
Vigilant Boots - Dryad Boots
ARMOUR: 11
CHARACTER LEVEL: 6
+4 Dexterity
+5% Health Regeneration
+4 Armour

 Bottom Left - Gloves
Vigilant Gloves - Dryad Gloves
ARMOUR: 5
CHARACTER LEVEL: 3
+4% Nature Magic Damage
+5% Mana Regeneration
+4% Lightning Resistance

 Bottom Middle - Armour
Vigilant Hauberk - Dryad Armour (I love the word "Hauberk." Sounds so bliddy regal)
ARMOUR: 20
CHARACTER LEVEL: 4
+4 Strength
+12 Health Bottom Right - Helm

Vigilant Crest - Dryad Helm
ARMOUR: 11
CHARACTER LEVEL: 8
+4 Intelligence
+20 Mana
+5% Death Resistance

 Set Bonus - Four Items
+20 Health
+15 Armour
+10% Lightning Resistance


 ...I always liked the bonus called "Death Resistance." I know it means "Death Magic," but I often think "well yeah...I sure as hell hope it helps me resist death or we'll have another Zed on our hands."

DS2 Enchanting

An interesting idea...if it hadn't already been used by Diablo 2. If I were to sit here and point out similarities with the Diablo series, we'd be here all night. Regardless, it's a fun aspect of the game and it allows you to make some interesting pieces of armour and weaponry. Yet, you always want to go for those legendary pieces for the maximum amount of slots available, which means that anything less is practically useless. I also tend to want to try and BREAK enchanting rather than create kick-ass items.

Started out innocent enough, trying to create pieces of armour and weapons useful for my characters. The two 35% physical damage reflectors got me wondering how far I could go with some of the enchantments. After all, this was 70% physical damage reflection...so what if I could achieve 100%? So far, I don't believe it is possible. I haven't finished the game on champion yet, so I technically could find an item that could work. The only problem is the reagents appear to be getting BIGGER. Since I only have a 16 square (4x4) space to work with, playing tetris with reagents becomes difficult. Yet...I manage to pull off stuff like this:

With 8 15% chances to find magic items (120%), I am more than guaranteed to find magic items. Excessive, but I felt it needed to be done. I also wonder if percentages over 100 mean you find more unique and rare items. I should look it up (or if someone knows please comment and tell me!) and see if I can break it more. Considering my human character has a base chance of 10% for finding magic items...that's 130%, not including what other characters have. I also wonder if the magic item drops are for the whole party or just the character that kills them. Considering I haven't seen a "normal" item in quite some time, that tells me it may just be party-based. That said, enchantable items technically count as "normal" items so... I also tried this:

I wondered what would happen if the combined reagents raised the minimum damage above the maximum damage on an item. Turns out the overall damage is increased. Down side is that no additional benefits can be added to the weapon (unless the damage range is fairly narrow to begin with, which would be another interesting experiment). I am sure there are tons of ways to exploit this feature in the game...more than my limited creative capacity can imagine. I'll see if I can come up with anything else. In the meantime, I'd love to hear about other combinations and exploits, so feel free to share here or on YouTube. Meanwhile...some other items I've created...including one that Vix is currently using:

Doing another recording session tomorrow.

List of Challenges

Here is the current (now edited) list of challenges.

1 "Batter Up" (Boss fights with sticks (the torches) - includes mini-bosses) - Change to "Going Solo" (Main char soloing bosses)
2 "Going Sober" (No Potions)
3 "Silenced" (No Spells)
4 "Feelin' Blue" (No Mana Potions)
5 "Diversify" (Fight with non-dominent weapon)- Change to "Diversify" (Chars that have Multi-classed fight with non-dominent weapon)
6 "Buzz Kill" (No Powers)
7 "Bad Medicine" (No Health Potions)
8 "Punch Cat" (One character has no weapon/spell equipped)
9 "Cut Off" (Do Not Spend Money/Sell Items)
10 "Power Down" (No magic weapons - does not include spells)
11 "Cocktail" (Must use a different mysterious chant every time I see an alter)
12 No effect!

Act 1 = 1 Challenge
Act 2 = 2 Challenges
Act 3 = 3 Challenges

Roll of the die every chapter.

Exceptions:

I reserve the right to eliminate challenges at Zaramoth's horns...because it can be quite difficult

Cannot roll the same challenge in a row (shouldn't happen too often with a D12)

Beginnings

As of now I have posted the videos for Act 1, Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 6 will be posted by Monday (rendering at this very moment). Was looking back through all the screenshots I've taken and found this:



This is Wynter when I first created her soooo long ago. One aspect you didn't see at the beginning of my videos was the character creation process. Each race gives a bonus to the character (note the 10% chance to find magic items I totally forgot about...which means with that character alone I have a 100% chance of finding magic items with the amulet I made). Just thought it was interesting.

Also shows that I'm terrible with naming my characters since I remember just staring at this screen for a few minutes trying to decide.

A Spot for Games

Needed a place to post the pictures and challenges for my Dungeon Siege 2 LP. Thought I'd just make a quick blog as I had another two under this account for writing and ranting. I may also use this place for game reviews and other random stuff I feel like posting at the time. This should hopefully save space on my YouTube pages as well.