IT'S FINALLY OVER

I could cry. Over two years, and Evil Within is finally, FINALLY, finished. I have it all edited and uploaded (need to publish still), and now it is primed for deletion. Over two years this game has been struggled through and sitting on the backlog. It was fun at times to edit, but manually resyncing all that audio nearly killed it. I think after I suffered through that I should be able to manage finishing Bioshock Infinite.

I will be doing a proper send-off to the game. I have a plan, and it will probably be a lot less epic than I picture it in my head. Honestly, I'd light it on fire if I could, but it's digital and lives in Shauna's Steam library and I don't think she'd appreciate her laptop being on fire.

Speaking of Shauna, she has a lot of videos for her Dragon Age 1 LP if you're interested. It lives here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol1t2XaHD2k&list=PLIKU-yiuEWNybafHXm6ARqcKEHY2s4PAg

I should probably tell her the deleted video is still sitting in the playlist...

So now I just have SOMA, VTM, Bioshock Infinite, Gauntlet, Dungeon Siege Revival, War for the Overworld, Dishonored 2, Resident Evil 7 and Sonic 2006 to work my way through! Not to mention the RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, Extra Life and 2k videos.

Crap that's still a lot.

How do I get myself in these messes?

Did I Have a Weekend?

What actually happened this weekend? Lordy, it's a black hole of vagueness. I remember Friday afternoon I finished all the important stuff at work so I helped build some of our LEGO Simpson's house at work (70% of it has been sitting in a box for like 3 years). I think Friday night I stayed home, worked on Evil Within and just hung around home. Saturday I remember joining a games night with Shauna and I confirmed how terrible of a singer I am by playing Rockband for the first time. Yesterday took Locke to the dog park for a bit and I worked more on Evil Within. Meant to finish editing that game last night, but I got home around 9 and literally don't remember anything other than falling asleep on the couch and being vaguely pissed at Locke when I didn't let him go upstairs and he bit me in the face.

So it's Monday again and I'm still tired. I've got ALL the dodgeball tonight too so I won't be home until 10 or so. I really really really want to finish Evil Within. I tried so hard over the weekend. I have about an hour of editing left. I finished the first part (of three parts) of Chapter 15 and 14 is ready to go. Putting a little extra effort into my final Oddities video, so hopefully that will be enjoyed.

Resident Evil 7 is really high on my priority list for next series. It's fairly easy to edit, but I have to come up with a way to make our voices a little clearer. That one was tough to record sans headphones and playing on the TV. Normally when I record console games now I play directly in OBS vs routing it to an external display. The mic position is difficult too since it's located on the table in front of Shauna's couch, which we play on. Normally I actually record a separate audio track with our mic audio. The mic usually picks up game audio, but if I sync it right, it lines up with game recording and you can't tell the difference. If I don't line it up right (like when Evil Within's game audio desyncs) then you get a weird echo and sometimes I can't fix it due to what's being said at the time (it's hard to break up sentences we're speaking). We normally use Fraps to record PC games, but for the console you need something like OBS or PTBI to assist in running. For whatever reason, I can't get PTBI to work for me (which would be great cause then I could Fraps it), so I use OBS whose files don't tend to play well with Vegas (i.e. it chain-crashes Vegas and sometimes corrupts the entire project to the point where it will refuse to open). So I have to record everything with OBS, which means integrated, balanced sound and I THOUGHT I had it balanced well, but it seems like the game audio was still a bit on the loud side. Also I'm an idiot and the resolution got screwed up. Thankfully I can fix that easily.

I've always had issues making my voice loud enough in the majority of my LPs. I've never lived in a household alone, so I need to be mindful of how loud I'm being. I also get quieter when I'm tired. The mix sits about a foot away from me on my desk and I have the mic boost up to 100%, so that helps, but I still encounter issues when the game audio is too loud (sometimes it's fine until I hit a particularly loud fight or music sequence). This is something I have yet to perfect, and keep trying to fix.

600 Page Epic

Sent some of my writing to two people last night and nearly puked from anxiety. I promised that I'd give them regular updates, so I guess this is going to be a priority for awhile. My rewrites of the first bit are a lot better than what was there before, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's any good still. I like what I've written for the most part, but I'm a terrible judge of what other people are interested in so I have no idea how it will go over. I don't take myself too seriously, so that has probably spilled out a lot into my writing (and I'm aware of how much silly made its way in there). In the end, the writing is mostly for me and for fun (and to get this damn story out of my head), but it's still nerve-wracking.

Also Kristy mentioned that my first draft is a little...long. It'll be closing in on 600 typed pages when it's done, but I think it's because I like to add a lot of small details into my work. I'll need to pair down and go broader, but I have no idea how I'm going to do that yet. Gives me hope that people write these massive fantasy and science fiction novels, so my friends might actually be interested in reading. Either way, I guess now that I think about it, that's probably why it's taken me so long to get this segment done. There's still two more parts to write...and I have a lot of it in my head. Hopefully it won't take another 10 years to write. 

Speaking of which, I never gave the update on Kathleen, who raised all the money she needed for her editor. She's going to be self-publishing that book, so I'll let you all know when it's on the market. She is an incredibly talented and intelligent writer and storyteller, so I'm excited for her to get this story out. In other news, Amy sent me her material and it's been fun to see how much she has improved with her writing, even over the last year. And she's having fun with it, which is the point in my opinion. 

Anyway this should all be going on the other blog which is mostly abandoned, but not forgotten. 

Soundtrack Thursday!

Far Cry 4 - Suggested by Shauna. I've only played the co-op in Far Cry, which was so buggy, rushed and hilarious. Apparently it doesn't do the game justice. Michael has played 3 and 4. All I've really seen of 4 is Michael getting accosted by a honey badger.  

Guess it's an Ubisoft day. Somewhere Shauna is squealing with glee. Somewhere else, Mesk is puking rainbows. I'm stuck in the middle giggling about this. Excuse the quality. I was playing this on the PS3, saw that thing going somewhere it shouldn't be, so I picked up my camera and then something...unexpected happened. You can always hear my thought process in my voice/noises I make: curiosity to confusion to disbelief to tired acceptance. I've been sighing like that all too much lately.

Assassin's Creed Revelations - I actually did like this ending quite a bit. As much as Ezio's story was dragged out because of his popularity, at least they made a decent ending for him. I still plan on playing AC 4 and 5 because I actually own them, but I need some time to sit down and do that. I really do love the soundtrack from the second game (and it's uh...sequels? Expansions? bah). 

Rayman - Cause...I have no idea. I needed something a little more random/upbeat for 4pm in the afternoon. I'm not sick and doped up on meds this time I swear. Did I even post that? I should at least put it in unreleased if nowhere else. Oh, I did! 

Dead Space 2 is ALMOST complete. I'm a little bit stuck and angry with the final boss. If the death animation didn't take so long it would probably be much better but NO I have to watch myself get ripped apart for 8 seconds every single time. Everything, but chapter 15 going up in the next couple days here. 

I keep thinking we're almost done SOMA and it continues to drag on.

Evil Within and Murdered continue to be edited. Evil Within is going to be a masterpiece of awful, but I was recently shown a full review of Ultima 9 and I have to say that tops even EW. I was actually personally offended by Ultima 9 and I haven't even played any of the games. 

Fire Emblem will be continued after I've finished up with Dead Space 2. 

I've Had Coffee

The coffee helped. I'm feeling a bit better and I've been listening to soundtracks anyway so here you go:

Legend of Korra - playlist. Beautiful music in this. I really need to watch seasons 3 and 4.
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Love the music in this. The series finale music is top-notch. Sad about the quality in this video though.

Editing update:
-I have one session of Gauntlet left (a few hours) to produce. Still recording.
-Sorting out Evil Within. Found out I had two copies of session 1, so a little miffed by that since I've been low on space. It exists on 4 different drives at the moment. Edited Chapter 11 first cause...reasons. I think I'm going to re-edit/encode that for higher resolution and to check the spelling of mannikin/mannequin/manikin. I have no idea which one I used but apparently all are correct.
-Saints Row 4 - Just...sitting there for a moment cause it's a little more time-intensive to edit.
-I swear I did something else...oh yes, Murdered. Slowly working away on that.

RPG Update:
-Zones and maps partially planned out. Written dialogue filtered into respective maps and zones.
-Map 1 zone planning started
-Green Triggers complete and tested
-Demo of Mesk's Captain Planet RPG for ideas/lulz
-Building assets: music, graphics, sounds

Writing Update:
o.0

Turn the Crank

One of the levels in Evil Within was literally just turning cranks and fighting pyramid head ripoffs. We played 6 ish hours yesterday and we're still only 2/3 done. We have five more chapters and we STILL have no idea what's going on. It's hilarious and so very disheartening at the same time. If it's not cameras being shoved up our rear ends, or statues glued to crows, it's confusing plots and awful texturing. We'll get there some day.

Good news! I am now officially a fulltime employee at the place I was doing contract work for! This means I might be able to drop some of the other things I'm doing and have more time for faffing about in games and video production. Likely I will work at the library job I have as well for a time and see if it will work for me. If not and I end up a nervous wreck again, I will have a clear answer.

Almost complete Awesome Possum. I'm on the final gauntlet run of bosses. I'm stuck on the loser with the skates, monkey wrench and kabuki mask. I think he's supposed to be a hockey player? Regardless, he's annoying because he reads input and there's no corner I can wedge him in to kill him in seconds. I started working on a Tera video. It's actually almost done, I just need to do final edits and an encode. I just want to get the footage off my drives as it has been sitting there for months. Oh and people finally convinced me to start Mass Effect. I made an extremely pissed off Shepard with the most tragic backstory I could muster. I was giggling cause all I could think of was Calhoun from Wreck It Ralph.

Going to try and get more Gauntlet time in this weekend. Mesk and HKS have been complaining that I'm constantly dead, so it may be time to pick this back up. That or play more Guild Wars. I'll leave that up to them.

Lastly, Delta was wanting to play some games this weekend. I'll likely be joining in a stream of theirs at some point (late Friday night for me is the most likely). I will regret it in the morning, but sacrifices must be made (I work an 8 hour shift starting at 9am ughhhhhh).

Evil Within is Awful

That is all.

Okay that's not all. It's really that bad. Poor Shauna had such high hopes for the game. I think she was expecting scary and instead we got blurry graphics, poor performance, terrible controls and all around bad gameplay. All it has going for it at this point is a few intuitive game mechanics. I think this is the first game we have changed the difficulty on to make it easier. And that's saying something when we played all of Alien Isolation on HARD.

I actually had to take a break from fighting the butcher boss. He's the one with the chainsaw in the barn on chapter 3. I was so angry and stressed out it mixed with my upset stomach and the heat, and I literally ended up needing a 10 minute break from the game as I sat on Shauna's couch with a bag of frozen hashbrowns on my face. So we have now coined the term "Hashbrowns-on-face bad" to describe a game. Might just shorten that to "hashbrown bad," but that would suggest that hashbrowns are anything but delicious.

Before this boss you have to wander around this town area using the "stealth" mode because your weapons and fighting skills are shit. You can't see half the traps. You can't see half of everything. We had to reduce the resolution and graphics quality just to get the game to run at 25-30fps. Anything higher than the reduced settings gives us 10-11fps. This is all BEFORE Fraps is a factor. Actually we had so many issues even getting the game to run at all. I had to upgrade drivers, turn off settings, edit some files and FINALLY it ran. Even before we reduced the graphics quality, the character moves in this lurching, drunken gait. We had to turn off motion blur because we were getting nauseous. It was even bad during the cinematics, which feature all these plastic looking people.

Then the controls. After playing a good 2-3 hours last night, I finally got the controls to work in my favour, but seriously, I keep hammering the R3 button to crouch or run because muscle memory dictates it. I keep accidentally turning on my ass light and alerting all the zombie dudes because it's bound to L3. I pull out my gun to shoot, but then I want to switch to my fists to pummel a guy and end up shooting with my melee button because the melee button (R2) switches when you have a gun out (becomes Y...as in WHY DOES IT DO THIS?) and then L2 lets you aim and shoot, but the hip fire ends up being more accurate half the time. The inventory system lets you bind items to the D pad (figured that out last night), which helped greatly (though not with the melee issue) and sometimes when you try to use a pistol you whip out your crossbow and UGH. Then you're sprinting away from dudes, have a limited sprint, and when you run out you stand in place and catch your breath for three seconds which is long enough for a zombie to catch up and ram a pickaxe up your ass.

Realism. It's great. Except when it's not. IF the game had ways to compensate for the stamina feature, the slow-down on the stairs, the jittery and ineffective crouch system (seriously, you'll exit stealth randomly after performing certain actions), the lurching walk/run and the terrible camera (IF!), then yes, maybe we could work with this. But it doesn't. Combat is just as cumbersome (as mentioned above), the enemies arbitrarily see you when you sneak up on them, the enemies suddenly have weapons like shotguns (actually one cool aspect of the game I liked is that the AI will actually find and pick up weapons, so you often need to sneak or get to those weapons first) and they all do shit tons of damage. The traps are BS. I like the variety and they do catch me off guard and they are useful for killing unsuspecting enemies as you can lead them through trap areas, but disarming is awful. The bombs for instance. I assumed you'd get multiple turns of the needle to try and land the blue area. Nope. You get one shot to land it and if not, you explode when the needle hits the 12 0' clock position. Which, is incidentally hilarious as when you die to explosions your body just falls apart like a bloody, gooey mannequin. Your head just comically rolls off. Another great one (and quite satisfying), is when you land a headshot with a melee weapon and the zombie's head explodes you are showered with radioactive pink jam.

So yeah. Melee with weapons, when it works, is great. AI going for weapons is great. Needing to burn bodies and make sure things stay dead is great (though you can only carry FIVE MATCHES at the beginning of the game...and don't ask about where Shauna thinks he stores them). Having effects like fire and melee damage carry to other enemies and do splash damage is great. The variety of traps is cool. Everything else is disgusting. I'm to angry while playing to even pay attention to the atmosphere (or lack of) or the story while playing. All I know is that some detective dude was investigating an asylum and there's this undead ripoff Assassin's Creed assassin running around trying to be creepy, murdering random dudes and sticking knives in things and suddenly we're getting in car crashes and falling off cliffs and there's this mental patient that's important for some reason and an upgrade area with a doctor lady and...just what?

Man I'm sorry for all the typos you're going to find in there. That rant wasn't supposed to happen. Honestly, I'm more angry with this game than Awesome Possum. Yeah. You heard right. At least I expect that game to be awful. I expect the anger. When I need to run around for 30 mins trying to kill a guy cause I ran out of ammo and my only option is a spike trap (which was hard to time because Butcher McIdiot Face can't make up his mind whether he wants to get lost and confused or run at us at light speed) and need to stop to put frozen hashbrowns on my face, you know there's a problem.

Forgot a Title

This is the final week of my contract job. I'll be sad to leave this place, but I have a summer of part-time work, catch-up with LPs and writing ahead. July approaches and I'll be around for most of it. This is what you can expect for the next couple of weeks:

Solo LPs

Transistor - Finish uploading by the end of June.

Half Life Episode 1 - Begin uploading this week (probably starting June 25 or 26)

Dishonored DLC - Alternate with Half Life Episode 1

Dark Souls - IT BEGINS EARLY JULY. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR RAGE.

Co-op LPs/videos

Really up in the air to be honest. 

Unreal Tournament 3 will be delayed until the people I plan on playing with get some personal affairs sorted out. 

Borderlands 1 - Might be an LP

Neverwinter - Not really an LP, but I'm recording enough of it that it theoretically COULD be.

Magicka DLC - Probably going to do this with Voyeur

Evil Within - Late Summer/Early Fall (whenever it's released) with Shauna

Just Cause 2 - Multiplayer MOD has apparently been "updated." Max potential for silliness.

EDIT - Offer still stands to join us on the Dragon server in Neverwinter. Rins@drschwa, SvetlanaMcnature@drschwa. If you join, I shall make you pants.