Dungeon Siege 3 Complete

I have finished and uploaded all of the Dungeon Siege 3 LP. The playlist is complete if you are looking for a specific video or are interested in watching them in order. I'm planning on doing a review of the whole series, comparing 1 through 3 to each other in terms of graphics, style, music, playability and more. Not sure what format I will do this in. I'm still interested in reviewing and critiquing games. It's too bad there are many people out there more entertaining than myself!

I have finished the Diablo 1 LP, which will begin uploading in a few days time. I am currently working on my next LP, but am unsure of how long it will take to finish it, especially since I have terrible aim (there's a hint for you). I will continue to produce LPs because I am enjoying it and because I really need to keep myself busy while I find work. I will go insane otherwise.

Coming Up:

Diablo 1 LP - Uploading every 1 - 2 days (LP is just over 10 hours long meaning there will be around 20 parts, which means that the LP should be fully uploaded within a week and a half)

Current LP - In the recording stage. Waiting until Diablo 1 is rendered and encoded before editing begins.

Machine for Pigs with Shauna - Videos will be produced and edited the week of September 10

Outlast with Shauna - Tentative - Not sure if that will be an LP, but it will probably be recorded week of September 4 if that's the case

I also have more Left 4 Dead 2 videos, but people haven't seemed too interested in those. I will upload those when I run out of LP material in this case.

*In terms of Amnesia, I will probably be equally scared as the first. I really don't know much about the game though, so a lot of it should be a surprise. I just know that enemies are supposed to be...unpredictable.

**In terms of Outlast, it has the potential to scare me the most as its set in an insane asylum. Bad shit happened to people in those places. They are not good places. Too many movies and TV shows freaked me out. This will be either silly or terrifying.

Phew

Just had a massive scare on account of my external hard drive. This drive has been a little flaky lately anyways, but currently it's the only one that has enough space to do any significant recording. My 3 hour encode was 97% complete and I think I tripped something up by disconnecting another hard drive. My hard drive for some reason, had something go wrong and then I got error messages about the video files, which made frameserver crash, which made Vegas crash and suddenly the drive was no longer on, yet it was still registering on my computer. I open the drive, and nothing is in it. So I start to panic. I go to the drive, unplug it from everything, and then plug it back in. It made no noise when it turned on, so I looked in the folder and everything was back. That said, I may want to look into backing up a few more of my files, though, thankfully uploading to YouTube provides a back-up copy for a lot of video.

That adventure over, I am re-encoding the last few hours of Dungeon Siege 3 right now. The LP will probably be fully uploaded by Friday or Saturday this week depending on how reliable encoding and my internet connection is. Meanwhile, I have started my next LP, Diablo 1.

The last time I played Diablo 1 in full was when I was in high school. Like Dungeon Siege, this was one of the games that made up my childhood along with Dungeon Keeper 2, Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 2 (lol sequels) and a bunch of much more obscure games. As I've mentioned before, I never owned a console until I was 16, so all of my games were on the PC. I played this game A LOT between the ages of 7 to 9, which is hilarious because I was terrified of Disney villains, even at this age. That said, the furthest I ever got when I was a kid was probably around the start of the Hell levels, if that. I watched my father play the harder parts, but even he never finished the game.

I will be playing a Sorcerer, which should be interesting as I've heard it's difficult to start the game as one. I have no idea how long the LP will be, but I'm already to the third level of the catacombs so, we'll see. Also, the files take up hardly any space at all on my drive. I will be LPing another game at the same time, but I will leave that a surprise.

I'm Back!

And ready to get back into writing and video production. I'll be beginning videos today, including more video game recording and to get back into Dungeon Siege 3 to beat that stupid multi-armed boss. I am not going to sleep tonight until that statue is no more. I have had a request to play Diablo 1 after this LP, so I shall do that. I also decided while I was away that I would LP Half Life 1 and Overlord 1. I feel like I have unfinished business with both. I'm also debating uploading the Baldur's Gate video footage that I have, but I'm not sure if it would be interesting enough. We'll see. I certainly get mad in it because of some of the fights.

I will also be posting updates here from my trip with video and pictures. I journalled the entire time (though I have yet to finish the last 9 days or so of the trip). I figure I can hit two birds with one stone by sharing what we did and edit them up in the process. My only fear is that I can't read my own writing. I shall start now. After all, what else is one to do at 5am when they can't sleep?

Travel

As of Thursday, I will be gone for a month and a half. I'm trying to get a lot of videos uploaded before then, but I won't have Dungeon Siege 3 fully recorded, encoded and uploaded before I go unfortunately. I won't be taking my laptop or external drives with me as they are too heavy and I don't want to risk them getting broken, lost or stolen (I can't really afford to let that happen). And so, I will try and post some updates here and perhaps have some videos prepared for when I return at the beginning of August.

I am done school, graduated and ready to work full time for the rest of my life. Good news is, I will probably have MORE time to record with no homework or papers to worry about. I'm actually going to miss school though. I'm a nerd.

So, I will be around for a few more days. After that, if you never hear from me again, I probably fell victim to one of the following:

-kidnapped by trolls
-got hopelessly lost and starved to death
-got eaten by a bear or a giant rabid moose or a grue
-got assaulted by a killer rabbit or beaver or a combination of the two
-executed my leap of faith incorrectly and missed the haystack
-got hit by a runaway scooter
-sacrificed myself to disarm a bomb that would have been sent to the earth's core in a desperate attempt to destroy the world
-choked on a crepe
-went crazy after being bitten by a cave spider
-got run over by a street cleaner
-got slapped in the face with a cod
-got trapped in an invisible box by mimes
-engaged in an epic battle with one of my many doppelgangers, eventually destroying us both
-encountered a giant robot minotaur in a labyrinth where I became lost after being kidnapped and taken there by trolls

Or something along those lines.

Nostalgia Wins

So after thinking a long time on what I'd like to do next after Dungeon Siege 3, I realized that most people watching my videos seem to like watching content from the old games a lot more than the new games. I'm not sure if that's because there are more videos of the new games out there, or people just like watching older games for nostalgic reasons. That or there are reasons I don't quite comprehend or haven't thought of, which is probably the case.

My point here is that I know what I will be doing an LP of next. I will leave it a surprise. In the meantime, I will finish Dungeon Siege 3 and continue to post a series of micro videos highlighting my adventures playing an MMO. I don't play MMOs very often. When I do, I get bored fast. I have two great people to play with, and I find having them play is motivation enough to keep up in levels and look for better items. We've been playing the Neverwinter open beta, as mentioned in another post I believe, and it has been decent all around. So far, the difficult dungeons and PvP have been the most fun for me. I don't really care about items or getting my hands on the best stuff. The only reason I want decent items is so I can take on more challenging opponents. The best are those equally matched with myself. That way I don't feel bad about winning and I don't get frustrated for losing.

Anyhow, I picked out some of the clips that amused me the most, and hopefully they'll amuse you too. I worry sometimes that my humour is too strange or stupid for anyone to care for the jokes. And in some cases...they're really awful.

Like REALLY awful.

Like so awful that you want to rip out your own eyeballs with your bare hands and offer up your soul to the highest bidder because you have no use for its tattered remains.

That bad.

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.

Minor Set-back

So I went to physio today to get my wrist and hand looked at. I have something called "de Quervain's Syndrome." All I know is that it's an inflammation of the "sheath" that my thumb's tendon moves in and that the name of what I have is impossible for me to pronounce without some difficulty. So, for the next while, I need to wear this when working on my computers:

This will...make playing and typing difficult, but I can manage. Regardless, Dungeon Siege 3 may be a bit slower in production. Still going ahead with it though.

Ironically enough, this condition is also nick-named "Gamer's Thumb." You can guess what helped injure it.

Revised Video Schedule

Because I realized that I'd be flooding people's inboxes with videos they are probably not as interested in. Left 4 Dead Campaigns are going to essentially be filler as they take a long time to upload (especially when my computer decides to restart in the middle of the night). Expect Amnesia and Dungeon Siege 3 videos on the dates in between.

Left 4 Dead 2 - The Parish - Normal - March 21-22 

Amnesia Part 6 - ? - March 23

Left 4 Dead 2 - Clip Show 2 - March 24 (out of all the videos I've made, this is one of my favourites) 

Left 4 Dead 2 - No Mercy - Normal - March 27
Left 4 Dead 2 - Crash Course - Normal - March 30

First segments of Dungeon Siege 3 - March 31

Something completely different? - April 1

Left 4 Dead 2 - Death Toll - Normal - April 3
Left 4 Dead 2 - Dead Air - Normal - April 6
Left 4 Dead 2 - Blood Harvest - Normal - April 10

Left 4 Dead 2 - Clip Show 3 (not yet produced) - My plan is to work on this and have it  completed after my presentation and paper is complete. Tentative date: April 13

Left 4 Dead 2 - Cold Stream - Normal - April 17

Left 4 Dead 2 - Dead Centre - Advanced (with MaxGrief) - April 20
Left 4 Dead 2 - Hard Rain - Advanced - April 24
Left 4 Dead 2 - Cold Stream - Advanced - April 27
Left 4 Dead 2 - Crash Course - Advanced - May 1
Left 4 Dead 2 - Dead Air - Advanced - May 4
Left 4 Dead 2 - Blood Harvest - Partial Campaign Advanced (with Malkor/Iskatumesk) - May 8
Left 4 Dead 2 - The Passing - May 11
Left 4 Dead 2 - The Sacrifice - May 15

OHI MARCH

It's going to chew me up and spit me out.

I have a plan for March (wow when does that happen) to put out as many videos as I can that have been clogging up my drives for the past 6 months (and up to 3 or 4 years in some cases). This is my attempt to free up space and get as much semi-entertaining stuff out there as I can. I figure the more videos I can work on, the better my editing skills will get. So here is the line up for the next month (ish).

Left 4 Dead 2 - Dead Centre - Normal - March 5
Left 4 Dead 2 - Dark Carnival - Normal - March 7
Left 4 Dead 2 - Swamp Fever - Normal - March 7 (I'm gone for the weekend so I'll post two videos Thursday)
Left 4 Dead 2 - Hard Rain - Normal - March 11
Left 4 Dead 2 - The Parish - Normal - March 14 (One day later as I want to ensure I have a solid, quick connection as I have a paper due March 14 and I know I will need to use the internet.)

Left 4 Dead 2 - Clip Show 2 - March 16

Begin the Recording and Production of Dungeon Siege 3 (depends on Hard Drive Space and my exhaustion level after a really busy week)

Left 4 Dead 2 - No Mercy - Normal - March 18
Left 4 Dead 2 - Crash Course - Normal - March 20
Left 4 Dead 2 - Death Toll - Normal - March 22
Left 4 Dead 2 - Dead Air - Normal - March 24
Left 4 Dead 2 - Blood Harvest - Normal - March 26

Left 4 Dead 2 - Clip Show 3 (not yet produced) - My plan is to work on this and have it  completed after my presentation and paper is complete. Tentative date: March 28

Left 4 Dead 2 - Cold Stream - Normal - March 30

Something completely different? - April 1

Left 4 Dead 2 - Dead Centre - Advanced (with MaxGrief) - April 3
Left 4 Dead 2 - Hard Rain - Advanced - April 5
Left 4 Dead 2 - Cold Stream - Advanced - April 7
Left 4 Dead 2 - Crash Course - Advanced - April 9
Left 4 Dead 2 - Dead Air - Advanced - April 11
Left 4 Dead 2 - Blood Harvest - Partial Campaign Advanced (with Malkor/Iskatumesk) - April 13
Left 4 Dead 2 - The Passing - April 15
Left 4 Dead 2 - The Sacrifice - April 17

Hopefully, but April 20, I will have my larger video game blooper reel completed from the last 4-5 years of gameplay. Expect random Age of Empires 3 matches, Amnesia updates and any bits of Dungeon Siege 3 that I can get done on the days in between. This is a rough schedule subject to change, but there's lots coming up so stay tuned!

Also, I may do something special for Comic Con in Calgary on April 26-28 and I may try my hand at some reviews.

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.

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.

Prep for Dungeon Siege 3

Installing it on my computer as we speak. The Dungeon Siege 3 LP is a long way off yet, but I'm prepping for it now because I'm going to have some problems trying to determine what the right levels of audio are, what mic settings to use and how well it records with Fraps. Different computer = completely different settings. All I know is that my laptop can't handle it. If can barely handle Dungeon Siege 2 at the moment. I am now backing up after every session to ensure that if anything stupid happens, I can still recover it somewhat. At any rate, I was cruising through some old posts of mine and found this:

http://drschwa.blogspot.ca/2011/06/my-aura-has-never-been-pinker.html

This was my initial opinions on the game, which have since changed. It'll be interesting to see how the LP goes and what I think about these opinions by the time I'm done. I never actually finished the game, though I know I was close. The controls were just too infuriating. Apparently, the controls have been tweaked since then because the GAME DEVELOPERS, realized they sucked. That's right, they figured out AFTER release that the controls were complete shit. Good job guys.