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

Elder Scrolls Online Beta

Got my email to the stress test this weekend. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited about this game. I'm not big into MMOs, but I will occasionally play them (and I usually get bored quite quickly, especially if I don't have people to play with). At any rate, I love Elder Scrolls, probably a bit too much with multiple hundreds of hours clocked in on Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Not sure why, but I really like the games. So I am slightly concerned that I will like this one as well, especially since it will be pay to play.

At any rate, if you have a beta key as well, keep an eye out for me on the weekend. My username will be DrSchwa and chances are I'll be online tomorrow evening, Saturday in the daytime and Sunday. I'll post a character name if that ends up being required tomorrow.

Overlord 2 LP is now fully uploaded in case you haven't already seen it on YT. Alice: Madness Returns will be the next LP to pop up there. I believe I am half finished the game. I've freed up a little space for it (I had a about 5% of my total hard drive space free over all 5 of my drives) and will be continuing recording after the weekend. I will start uploading sometime next week. Over the weekend when I'm not playing, I will upload other videos I have sitting around.

Also, because I can, I would like to say that BBC Sherlock Season 3 is amazing. That is all.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-01-08/sherlock-weve-plotted-out-the-whole-of-series-4-and-5-reveals-steven-moffat

Happy Holidays

I've been writing emails about the holidays all morning so I thought I'd take a break and pop over here...to write more about well wishes for the holidays....

At any rate, I hope whatever you celebrate is full of sweets and joy...and joyness. 

The next uploading stint for Overlord 2 will be on the 28th, then again on the 30th. I may upload other random videos in between, but I have no concrete plans. I really want to take the next couple of days and just relax. I will probably record more Alice (which I have a good start on). There is much death, but not too much rage...yet. 

I feel like a Charlie the Unicorn reference kind of dates me...but it's not that old!

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?

Torpedo Puppies

I am still in awe of what I experienced at the end of Overlord 2. I played this once before, and memories of the final boss came rushing back to me like the mess of a creature the Overlord needs to take down. There are no words to describe what I witnessed, and if you haven't played/seen the game, I'm not going to ruin the effect this magnificent beast has on someone's mind. Meanwhile, torpedo puppies end up shooting out of holes in the ground. It makes me giggle. Maybe I'll upload a sneak peak of that one.

The videos created from Overlord 2 are...very large. I should have encoded at a lower resolution for these ones, but the raw files are deleted at this point, so there's not much I can do about it. This means that the LP will take a long time to upload, and will probably be done in bursts of 1-4 videos at a time depending on the connection speed I have available. I intend to use this upcoming weekend to begin recording Alice: Madness Returns on Nightmare difficulty as requested, and to make some other specials to celebrated the holidays. I will start Dark Souls early in the new year.

Good Questions

Thought this was an interesting article and decided to share. It's an issue that's always been floating around and reoccurring on the internet. It's also one I don't believe I've been directly influenced by. I do remember when I did my text LPs on my old account, people automatically assumed I was a male gamer, which is fair as that's the stereotype. I just didn't tend to correct them. People can think what they want to. I'm not going to go crusading around starting fights and trying to prove girls and women play video games. I just figured that it was implied. If it's not, than it should be. The intelligent people know this, so I figure there's no need to shove it down people's throats. I play games and record them simply to exist in the medium. I show that I play games (with varying degrees of success)  and I have fun, so I'm not too concerned about what anyone has to say about that.

Overlord 1 is completely uploaded and I will be moving on to Overlord 2 shortly. I have about 1/3 of Overlord 2 recorded and nearly that much encoded. The only problem is that the files are rather large, so I will be uploading in 20-30min segments and no larger. After this is completed, I will be moving on to Dark Souls and Alice: Madness Returns, as I have had requests to play those games. I had a God of War request as well, but I do not own a capture card at this time.

(And yes, I am aware that Half Life and Penumbra remain unfinished. I will get to those. Promise =D)

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...

New Environment

New (possibly) temporary blog style. I was getting tired of the mustard yellow. I figure it fits the style on my YouTube channel a little better anyway. I'm still thinking of using custom backgrounds and other art on here, but I have been preoccupied with other projects lately.

Speaking of projects, Overlord continues to be uploaded. I meant to bring my hard drive with me today to upload more Overlord, but I was in a hurry and forgot. I will upload at least one segment per night at the very least (each segment takes around 300 minutes to upload on my home network). The LP is almost finished, with what I believe to be a little over an hour left in gameplay. Depending on what access I have to other networks, I should have the LP uploaded completely by next Saturday. Then, I think I'm going to LP Overlord 2. It's that or Lost Kingdoms. We shall see.

Lots to Upload

For once. I guess that's what happens when you only have a couple of shifts a week. The frequency of uploads may change when I get a full time job, but for now I just have to worry about flooding people's feeds.

Hit 200 subscribers yesterday, which is a pretty awesome feeling. I make and post videos as a hobby, but I put a lot of effort into it, and the fact that people are actually interested in watching, as small as it is, is a real honour and makes every minute spent playing, recording, editing, encoding and uploading worth it. I've never been interested in making money off of my channel or attracting a huge amount of subscribers, so having a small viewer group is all I could really ask for. As for joining groups or partnerships, I will only do so if it is a group of people I know, have worked with them in the past, and share a lot of the same interests. Anyhow, I want to thank everyone who watches my videos!

On that note, I should be done uploading Outlast by Monday or Tuesday depending on my connection. I have everything encoded and ready to upload, and I've had Billy Joel's "Piano Man" stuck in my head on loop for the last three days because of this LP, but it's done. I was much more freaked out during this game than I was playing Amnesia. As for A Machine for Pigs, I'm not sure what the plan is for that LP. Shauna and I looked at it the day it came out, and there's this strange blue filter on it that wasn't present on any of the trailers or gameplay previews. I wasn't too concerned about it, though I must admit it doesn't look that great. Regardless, I believe we plan on making an LP of that in the future.

Diablo 1 and Half Life 1 will continue to alternate in uploads until they are finished. I expect Diablo 1 to be fully uploaded by the end of next week (unless I take a day or two off to give my network a break) and Half Life 1 will be finished and completely uploaded probably the week after. I still haven't finished Half Life 1, but I will say that there are some incredibly silly moments ahead concerning some soldiers and the ninja assassin fellows.

As for future LPs, I have had requests to play through Diablo 2 and Black Mesa. I will probably leave Black Mesa to just before the New Year as I want a bit of a break after Half Life 1. I don't know how similar the two are, but it would be weird playing essentially the same game back to back. What would be interesting would be to compare the two. As for Diablo 2, I have my reservations about it. I may do this LP as with 1 to 2 other people who have expressed interest in playing. My first worry is that the game will not record well as I've had problems with that in the past. Fraps and the quality of my computer, however, have been improved in the last 5 years. My second issue is that I have had...bad experiences with the game in the past, partially of my doing and I am not eager to repeat that experience. My greatest fear is that there will be conflict of interest and the LP will fall apart, but these people seem like decent fellows, and I'm much more mature than I was 5 years ago.

I also plan on maybe LPing Overlord and Overlord 2, working my way down the list of my favourite games to play. Another few options would be games I have never played before: Miasmata, the Thief series, Bastion, Torchlight, Torchlight 2 and Deus Ex. If there are any other suggestions of games you would like to see me LP, leave a comment here or on my channel and I'll do my best to fulfill those requests. There are very few games I will refuse to record/LP.