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DeathChicken posted:Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what's going on with the audio channel. As said, I kind of just threw up Fraps and winged it.
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Jul 16, 2012 19:26
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DeathChicken posted:Alright, so I am toying with running through X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse. Are you serious about this? If so listen to MeccaPrime, he knows what he's talking about. Here's what you did well: -Posted this in the LP Sandcastle -Commentary on the Sentinel fight described the boss mechanics well Here's what you should improve: Everyone's already mentioned the issues with your audio. Look at the Tech Fort Thread and find something to fix it. You seem to already be aware you shouldn't have been reading the intro text. Not only should you not read it, you might want to put the game intro in an entirely separate video from the first episode. Have you played this game before? This LP didn't seem blind but you didn't know what Training Mode was. Play through the entire game off-camera first, then you can do an LP of it. Like others have said, do post commentary not in-game commentary. If you find yourself saying "I don't know what this mode does" and "I don't know how to get that power-up," stop recording, look those things up and rerecord. A script is not necessary but you need to have talking points. Plan staring and stopping points and decide what you want to say before you start recording audio. On that note, what's the purpose of this LP? Are you trying to be informative or comedic or what? If you're trying to be informative you'll need to actually know what you're talking about. If you're trying to be comedic you'll have to be funny. Decide on what your goal is and write out the points you want to address in your commentary before you do anything on camera. Whether you're being informative or not you are doing an LP of a game and are therefore obligated to talk about the gameplay. That means knowing and being able to explain mechanics like the controls. From the very start of gameplay not only does it seem like you don't know what you're doing in-game, but you also don't know how to explain things. Here's a quote from the video: "Uhhh...okay, what this seems to do is...it does his little dragon punch super" What is the "this" in that sentence referring to? I assume it is either a button or combination of buttons but that's never specified. You should learn what all the controls do in advance and convey them in an understandable manner. Try watching other video LPs (and I don't mean Youtube LPs) to see how this is done. Good LPs are about the game, not the LPer. I lost track of how many times you used self-referential commentary. Avoid using "I," "me," "my" unless you're expressing something relevant to the game. MeccaPrime already pointed out the best example of this: "In my let's plays, you get to see me gently caress up." Do you understand how that's not relevant at all to the game in question? You shouldn't be making comments about your LPs in general during the LP, especially using the plural when this is your first video. As for your actual speaking assuming all the pauses were because you were focusing on the game just switching to post commentary should help you a lot. You should have the points you want to address planned out in advance, it will help you be more confident with what you say. Try not to just let sentences hang like: "There is another X thing over there that will give me extra life...but...I don't...quite know how to get it. I've never been able...I don't really know how...hmm, see I don't...really understand how to get around those. Oh well" You should not be talking constantly during an LP but pauses should not come in the middle of sentences. Again, this is something proper planning and post commentary should help out a lot with. Also your voice is pretty monotone most of the time which makes it sound weird when you try to emphasize words. When you want to emphasize something try making your tone higher instead of just dragging out the sound of the word. In any case, despite all of that this does seem like an interesting game and I'd be glad to see it LPed. I encourage you to fix the various issues and make another post in the Sandcastle when you have a better version.
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Jul 16, 2012 19:41
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Thanks for the feedback. I think overall, my goal was "Play this and record it for the hell of it". Watch me stumble and fumble through a game I beat several years ago, but now only vaguely remember. 
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Jul 16, 2012 19:49
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DeathChicken posted:Thanks for the feedback. I think overall, my goal was "Play this and record it for the hell of it". Watch me stumble and fumble through a game I beat several years ago, but now only vaguely remember. It's best to only lp a game either you are very familiar with or have no prior experience with. The former let's you talk about the game confidently while the latter can serve a humorous device. Most people prefer the former, so I'd recommend actually playing through the game once, then recording and adding commentary. No one likes it when people stumble around telling them half-remembered things.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:00
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If you really want to get serious about it, the guys over at the Tech Support Fort can get your process squared away and get your video technically sound, then all you'll have to do is work on your commentary.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:02
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Done. We'll see how that goes.
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Jul 16, 2012 20:19
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A few weeks ago when you guys were talking about Bioshock and Pheonix Wright and other "un-LP-able" games, I knew that my favorite game of all time was in that list. But after a lot of thinking about how to actually make a presentable LP of this, I present: AN LP TOURNAMENT SpaceChem is a puzzle game very loosely based on basic chemistry. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUAL CHEMISTRY OR COMPUTER PROGRAMMING LIKE EVERYONE THINKS IT DOES. What makes it great is that while everyone has the same goal in a mission, there are countless ways of actually solving it. Competition is encouraged with online leaderboards that take your solution instead of your results and calculates things itself. This means it's possibly the only online leaderboard ever where dozens of jerks haven't cheated their way to the top via hacking or exploits. There's even a third party website to upload more detailed solutions for everyone to see. If you've never played SpaceChem before: Everything you need to know about SpaceChem is outlined here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8JwvtVs38 Your next best bet is to try the demo on steam. It has a ton of content that might take you days to get through, not because it's difficult, but because there's so much of it. It introduces symbols and concepts as slowly as possible. The first level has you moving a molecule, and that's it. The next level has you do simple bonding. Then simple unbonding. Then moving two different molecules at once. Eventually you're turning water into both hydrogen peroxide and uranium that you feed into a particle accelerator to shoot at an alien (but only when it opens its eye) and it all feels like a natural evolution of the level you did previously. If you really want to see a level in action, I slowly deconstruct a previous solution of mine, and then attempt to make it better. Introduction to SpaceChem - Quantum Decomposition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APHaNY0fmKg The solution I end up with in gif form I'm hoping to set up a 32-man single elimination tournament (maybe 16 single or double elim if there isn't enough interest). Don't sign up now, I'll make you email me when I start the thread which won't be until the end of the month. Two people will be given a custom assignment, a goal (least cycles or symbols) and a week to do it. When I present the results, I'll also show my solution and/or how to improve the solutions given by the competitors. Maybe even talk about some actual science and chemistry behind the assignment. I'm going to be humble for a minute - I'm one of the best SpaceChem players in the world. Like in the top 10. I'm one of six confirmed people to solve this level. One of four confirmed people who have solved every level in the game. There was a contest to design a thing with the game's sandbox mode that I won. And the videos the other winners made were awful in comparison to mine. So I feel very confident saying that I'm literally the best person in the entire world who can make a SpaceChem LP interesting. I hope. Since I don't have anyone signed up yet to do a video over, I did a test video using the tutorial solution. Improving the first level - low cycles and symbols Tricks learned - single line solutions, parking a waldo against a wall, "double pumping", and how to shave off the first and last cycle of a solution by using red input/blue grab and then red drop/blue output.  Least symbols - 115/1/6  Least cycles - 45/1/14 Once people give me solutions for the tournament, I'll show off their solutions in video and gif, how to make it better, and basically anything I think might be interesting about it. I'm choosing the custom assignments in such a way that there might be a neat gameplay trick I can show off so that I'll have something interesting to talk about. Did you play the game and get halfway through before giving up? Don't worry, you're in good company. I don't want people giving up, so in the first two rounds at least, solutions will be simple enough that you don't need days to solve them. But that said, this LP isn't for people who have never played the game before - it's for those who have and maybe want to get better. Or just love to compete for prizes. --- Now, is this a good idea? Did things go by too fast in the video? I'm worried that by slowing things down at all it would get boring, and fast. GuavaMoment fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 03:58
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GuavaMoment posted:SpaceChem I've never played this before and I have no idea what's going on. You're gonna have to slow waaaaaaay down. On the plus side, this goes on Steam's indie bundle sale tomorrow so I and others might pick it up.
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Jul 17, 2012 04:07
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Bellmaker posted:I've never played this before and I have no idea what's going on. You're gonna have to slow waaaaaaay down. Welcome to an actual chemistry lesson. 
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Jul 17, 2012 04:09
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I'm going to be honest. I love Spacechem and would gladly participate, but holy poo poo dude, that's going to go way over 90% of people's heads. I'd highly suggest some of sort of "Wait, what the gently caress did you just do?" section where you explain exactly how some of this stuff works unless you're planning on shutting out literally everyone who has never played the game before.
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Jul 17, 2012 04:20
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Yeah, I actually finally installed Spacechem a couple of days ago and removed it after half an hour, because it just didn't make sense or "click," mentally. I'd really appreciate a more thorough, basic explanation of some fundamentals. Because seriously. That game made me feel like an absolute moron 
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Jul 17, 2012 04:25
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Artix74 posted:I'm going to be honest. I love Spacechem and would gladly participate, but holy poo poo dude, that's going to go way over 90% of people's heads. I'd highly suggest some of sort of "Wait, what the gently caress did you just do?" section where you explain exactly how some of this stuff works unless you're planning on shutting out literally everyone who has never played the game before.
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Jul 17, 2012 04:25
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Geop posted:Yeah, I actually finally installed Spacechem a couple of days ago and removed it after half an hour, because it just didn't make sense or "click," mentally. I'd really appreciate a more thorough, basic explanation of some fundamentals. I'm in the same camp. This game makes you feel like a genius when you solve a puzzle, but immediately humbles you again with the next puzzle. I couldn't take it anymore after a point.
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Jul 17, 2012 04:29
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Well that's a worst fear confirmed. Newbie's guide to spacechem video is going to be in the works, despite how boring I think it might be. Any other suggestions? Edit: This should clear things up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvN_eENLqsw
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Jul 17, 2012 04:30
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The game does a good job explaining the concepts itself, but I think that having a simple video where you go over each mechanism of the game as it's introduced in the tournament would be good. I'd also expose some creative ways that you can use the mechanic that the game doesn't tell you about. This seems like it's "OK, you guys were good with the WALDOs, but there's this trick that I came up with that makes this the fastest thing ever  ".I'd just show off the level (or a set of levels) itself, and complete/beat it but in an inefficient way, showing off the thought process as well, and encourage the audience to do better. At the end of every tournament, you'd collect the solutions into a prologue showing off the creative things that everybody did, explaining their tricks, before showing off some more tricks, and your final solution. Basically, I think you should approach this to be interesting to watch for people who don't know about much about the game. There were a few commentary mistakes in the video that tripped me up — "6 cycles, 115 symbols. This is the fastest, low-symbol solution". It took me a while to realize that you mixed up cycles and symbols the first time, but not the second time.  Also, this game has a loving amazing soundtrack by Evan LE NY, and it's available for free (CC-licensed) at the artist's Jamendo.
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Jul 17, 2012 04:32
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GuavaMoment posted:Well that's a worst fear confirmed. Newbie's guide to spacechem video is going to be in the works, despite how boring I think it might be. Any other suggestions? A video in Japanese probably isn't going to help clear things up, no matter how visual the actual material is.
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Jul 17, 2012 04:35
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^^^^^^ Pretty sure it was a joke.Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Welcome to an actual chemistry lesson.
SupSuper fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 04:35
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^^^^^ To agree with others who posted as I was making this, I will say that someone who hasn't played this game will want you to explain more at the base level of what's going on. I can tell in your videos of the tough levels that you're trying to make a shape, and get things lines up in an exact order (I think... if this is not true then yeah you need more explanation) but I can't really follow what you're doing. Maybe start at the basic 'move' and show everything you can do step by step (or at least what you need to do to be successful). Sorry to draw attention but I have an LP intro too. Some LP Sandcastle info: After having an SD capture card for a few months and a PS2 again for a while, I want to try doing a Let’s Play. In this post, I have an OP and the first draft of the first video. This video is done with post-commentary. I say that now because that seems to be one of my big weak points. I’m ok with the sound of my own voice, but while attempting audio, I’d just fumble over and over and never seemed to be relaxed and fluid. This was my 12th take or something like that. Maybe I have too high standards but I just couldn’t get relaxed as well. Anyways, I’ll leave the rest of my comments after the OP so I don’t bias you too much. *********** Extreme Sports Games of the 2000s part 1: Done with pro skating? Let’s Play Sean Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder  What is this game? Shaun Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder is a snowboarding game released in late 2001 and published by Activision. It is an attempt to bring the style (and popularity) of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games to snowboarding,. In part because the format simply doesn’t work as well as in the Tony Hawk games, and in part because lightning didn’t strike twice for Activision, the game never achieved much of a following, and this remains the only entry in the series. Are you a big fan of the game? Not a huge fan, but I like it, and it has some nostalgia for me. I played it a lot in the early 2000s, and when I got a refurbished Playstation 2 a few months ago and went looking for old games, I saw it for 5 dollars. It’s fun, and I’m a big sucker for extreme sports games of this era. They were about all I played when I owned a PS2. Can you really LP a game without a story? Maybe. I like to think of an LP as a fun run through a game with informative commentary, but if you really say it can’t be LPed, then fine, it’s a video walkthrough. I’m posting this to Something Awful because I want to do more recordings of more games. If this thing tanks, I’ll just put a quick and effortless guide up on youtube, but I want to show off these games that I had so much fun playing as a kid. So what will the LP be like? I’ll go through Career mode with a character, collecting every ‘sponsor’ on every level. If at any point in the future someone needs help on the many obtuse goals in this game, my guide will (hopefully) be there for them. Alright. I’ll watch some of these. EPISODE GUIDE: Episode 0: Intro and tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ovVXfi2SMc ********** Alright. So yeah, my style will be informative, and once I get into career mode, I think I’ll have enough to talk about by following what’s on screen. This was sort of the “preparation” video of the game, where I have to just generally talk about it. For the capture card, I use a DVC 100 but have to record in MPEG-2 since AVI chugs my laptop while recording so much it goes to 3 frames per second. For voice audio, I use a microphone one of my friends lent me, but he’s used it in a game reviews project a while back and it seemed fine. Now, this is also sort of an interest check (I know, but I provided content). If I’m fit to do an LP, I kind of want to do one where there are multiple games in one thread and it’s a retrospective, of sorts, of older extreme sports games that were in the PS2-Xbox era. I have multiple games already that I can use (Downhill Domination, Freekstyle, Jet X20, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2) so there wouldn’t be a big wait. However, if I can’t make a good LP, then ok. I won’t spend a forum thread on them but I might record them for youtube anyways, since there’s not much footage of many of those on the internet. So, watch and offer advice, help me revise if I need to, and hopefully I can Insetik fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 04:39
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Ovues posted:Done with pro skating? Let’s Play Sean Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder I know you said you were using a SD capture card and had some problems, but are you stretching the video to be 16:9 when it's supposed to be 4:3? If so, that's gonna make the screen a whole lot more blurry. So if that's the case, can you try rendering it at its native resolution? The commentary doesn't seem to have any problems to me, but I sadly am not a snowboard type of dude and it wouldn't appeal to me.
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Jul 17, 2012 04:46
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Hey, new user here, sorry for any mistakes. Advice or suggestions? ------------------------------------ Let's Remember the Age of Shareware with Lords of Doom (SSLP)  What is this? Lords of Doom is a CRPG that was released in 1996 by amateur game designer Bartek Dzik. It was a shareware release at first, which prevented you from saving about 30% of the way through the game. Being the goon kid that I was, I ironmanned through the rest of the game to see the ending. (Sorry, Mr. Dzik!) It wasn't really that influential or groundbreaking, having been released after the Ultima series had come and gone, but it really got me into RPGs. It has been released as freeware, and you can get it here: http://www.dzikosoft.com/games/lod.html How will this LP work? It took me over two dozen attempts to ironman this game, and as a result I have the optimum min/max route burned into my kinetic memory. So, for your amusement, this will be a dumb play-through as I stumble through the game as a first timer might. I'll occasionally ask for advice from the thread as to what I should do.  Let's check out the introduction.  ... Huh. The first line of the README.DOC posted:I live in Poland and I know that my English is not excellent. Well, it's not that bad. I'll try to fix up the text when I'm transcribing.  What could possibly go wrong?  Oh.     Nine days to defeat a demi-god? Far too easy! (Seriously, you can do it in six. This is mostly an anti-grinding feature.)  Always have to check with the wise old mentor before any quest. So, let's go back and create our hero:  These stats all do what you think they do. Strength lets you hit harder, Willpower lets you magic harder, Thief helps you with traps, and so on. We can put one point into two on the left column and two on the right. We also need a name, a handedness, and our choice of our ugly character design. Just wait until you see the women. How should I start on my path to doom?
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Jul 17, 2012 05:06
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Edit: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I admit I only skimmed that, but two things: 1: Use the SSLP test poster 2: Post an entire update, not just an OP and intro. Invent a test party, invent a post and give us something to work with. Artix74 posted:A video in Japanese probably isn't going to help clear things up, no matter how visual the actual material is. Guava did link the English version of the same trailer in the OP. Since that's doesn't cover enough detail I'm not really sure what should be done instead. Maybe a no-optimization runthrough of some relevant single reactor mission, just to show how the basic stuff works? Then the same could be done with a different mission for each new concept the game introduces. The idea for the thread itself sounds like a great way of presenting the game, but dropouts will probably be inevitable in a 32-player tournament. Doing some sort of league where people submit their best efforts and the top placements get points like the Trackmania threads might be more robust. It might also be more work and less fun, though. Xerophyte fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 05:09
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Xerophyte posted:Guava did link the English version of the same trailer in the OP. So he did, I didn't check that first trailer. My bad. Still, SpaceChem is a game that you have to play to really understand. Knowing how the individual pieces work doesn't really help until you bring it all together.
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Jul 17, 2012 05:14
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Xerophyte posted:Edit: Ah, sorry, will do.
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Jul 17, 2012 05:15
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Hey, I'm back, had to really rework my videos and thought I better repost the new version before posting a thread. Wait, this isn't about drugs? Let's play LSD: Dream emulator  LSD (aka lovely sweet dream ) Dream Emulator is a Japanese PS1 “game” based around a dream journal (parts of which were shipped with select versions of the game). I say “game” because there is no plot,story objective or any sort of goal, you just wander around and look at stuff. That’s the game. What makes the game interesting is that the things you can look at are WEIRD:    Game Mechanics The game is pure free-roam, you can go anywhere and touching most objects will teleport you to a random spot. Most dreams are set on a time limit of ten minutes, but you can exit a dream earlier than that if you get “killed” by a nightmare, falling off a cliff etc. Some dreams are short films (basically cut-scenes) or blocks of Japanese text. After every dream you will see this graph:  This shows up even if you get a film or text dream. I think the upper/downer axis marks if you had a good dream or nightmare, and static and dynamic tracks the number of random stuff you encountered (or maybe the different places you visited?). In practice, where the dream gets marked is mostly random. I have not played this game before, and will be trying to understand the game more as I go. So far I know that the controls are move, quick look behind, and look up and down, strafe, and run. Because of the time limit for each dream I will be moving as fast as possible during the dream. This mean if I end up in an area I think might be empty or we have seen a lot before I will just bump into a wall to go somewhere else.  Intros: the main intro comes up every time you start the game, but if you wait a few seconds, a random intro will play, each with a set theme. These extra intros seem to corispond to the main areas you can explore in the dreams Main Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1IIKlQijlE&feature=youtu.be Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ-5G_knrAE Laughter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVpZFXTdP9k Limbo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVGzwnWvH4I Lunacy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2cBqtu2i8E Leisure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2He3YDA2DAA (reminds me of Simcopter) Dreams: Day 1 and 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiHizn0Hu1Q&feature=youtu.be LSD:CSI Extras: Day1Test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqbrALasQ2I&feature=related Lime Jello and Elton John's castle (warning: low FPS and game audio desync) blip mirrors to be added later
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Jul 17, 2012 05:24
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Ovues posted:Extreme Sports Games LP This sounds like a fine idea for a thread, however let me quote a comment from your post: "I lik to think of an LP as a fun run through a game with informative commentary, but if you really say it can’t be LPed, then fine, it’s a video walkthrough. I’m posting this to Something Awful because I want to do more recordings of more games. If this thing tanks, I’ll just put a quick and effortless guide up on youtube" First that "lik" should be like, try to run your posts through a spellchecker. Secondly in the video you give a special thanks to a Gamefaqs post and call your own video a walkthrough no less than 3 times. Finally the SSX videos on your Youtube page are you giving a step-by-step guide on how to beat levels. If you want to make a video version of a Gamefaqs walkthrough I don't see any problem with that but I don't know if it's appropriate to post as an LP. Added Space posted:Let's Remember the Age of Shareware with Lords of Doom (SSLP) Have never heard of this game but it seems neat, and it's always good to see an audience participation LP. However if that is what you plan on doing in your introduction you should set out some guidelines on how you plan to handle things. And generally things concerning votes are bolded for emphasis, so you might want to reformat your ending there to something like "Righthanded/Lefthanded" and "[b]2 out of Fighter/Ranger/Thief/Wizard/Merchant" and so forth and so on. Also how blind do you want your players to be? "These stats do pretty much what you think they do" is not a very good explanation. I have no idea what the heck right or left handedness would affect, for instance. Even if we have a general idea from similar games every game handles mechanics different. Now if you want the thread to be mostly blind then that's fine, and you should keep if the same for future choices. Otherwise if you want people making informed votes you should explain the mechanics and repercussions of the choices. You really ought to make a test character and show off gameplay to give the first post more meat as well. Otherwise for the most part the intro and such looks good. Edit: Thanks for pointing out the SSLP test poster Xerophyte Heren fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 05:29
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Mezurya posted:I know you said you were using a SD capture card and had some problems, but are you stretching the video to be 16:9 when it's supposed to be 4:3? If so, that's gonna make the screen a whole lot more blurry. So if that's the case, can you try rendering it at its native resolution? I do have to crop and zoom in a bit since it's in PS2 widescreen, but I did pick the "HD" option so it scaled up from its original size. I'll render it out in the same screen size and upload that. It'll have the same commentary though.
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Jul 17, 2012 05:30
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GuavaMoment posted:
What fresh hell is this? I was looking at picking this up, but now I'm kind of glad I didn't. This is utterly beyond me - maybe a brief explanation of the mechanics is in order?
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Jul 17, 2012 05:51
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Skippy Granola posted:What fresh hell is this? It's a really good game. GuavaMoment was just showing off advanced optimization techniques that you don't ever need, ever, to complete the game.
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Jul 17, 2012 06:05
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Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the game is to play it. There is a demo of Spacechem available here Give it a try, the first few levels give you a really good handle on the basics, and the download is small enough.
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Jul 17, 2012 06:48
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Skippy Granola posted:What fresh hell is this? Or, for those who are too lazy, here's the Jaysnotes version: Spacechem is not a game about chemistry. Nor is it a game about paranoia and the black comedy of corporate fuckups, as the framing story would have you believe. No, it's a puzzle game about optimising code. See those circles? they shows your program's current point, with two "threads". You have a start point, and you have to set up an infinite loop which fills the conditions. Each square is basically an operation. You can have symbols of two threads in the same squares (steps), but you can't have two symbols of the same thread (Red or Blue) in the same square. You can obviously change the direction of the program to make it longer or shorter, but it has to make a loop. That's all you have to do just to finish the game, although it doesn't make it easy for you. Now, for extra e-peen, you can optimise that poo poo. See that starting solution the tutorial gives you? It's a sucky piece of code. It goes through too many steps to do the thing you want it to do once, and you want it to do that thing much faster. Make it faster using some wonderfully silly tricks, like the fact that, just because you need a loop, doesn't mean it needs to be a square or rectangle! EDIT: Although Guava has stated that it's *not* about computer programming, believe me, that's one of the best ways to visualise how to solve that poo poo. Each square = 1 step, some actions add steps, and, in his tournament, you want the least amount of steps for the least amount of symbols. EDIT THE SECOND: Part of the reason Guava mentions it's not about programming is that the whole code optimisation isn't necessary, and experienced players (like Guava) found it too drat easy to optimise the processes of the puzzles, and decided "Hey, let's try some different things". This doesn't change my opinion it's about code, as you can have programs do things in many weird and wonderful ways. Seriously, go ask a coder, and they'll tell you about the strange ways they got around problems, or randomised numbers, or deliberately made the code kludgy as gently caress (and adjustably so) to run at a certain speed, all the time. JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 07:22
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GuavaMoment posted:A few weeks ago when you guys were talking about Bioshock and Pheonix Wright and other "un-LP-able" games, I knew that my favorite game of all time was in that list. But after a lot of thinking about how to actually make a presentable LP of this, I present: Honestly, I think this is pretty cool. SpaceChem is a super neat game. The problem I'm seeing is you're not going to get a very large audience. The game isn't very exciting to watch to an outsider so you're basically left with an audience that consists of people who know how to play the game and want to watch other people's solutions to puzzles. That being said, I'm interested to see where this goes.
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Jul 17, 2012 07:25
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GuavaMoment posted:I'm going to be humble for a minute - I'm one of the best SpaceChem players in the world. Like in the top 10. I'm one of six confirmed people to solve this level. One of four confirmed people who have solved every level in the game. There was a contest to design a thing with the game's sandbox mode that I won. And the videos the other winners made were awful in comparison to mine. So I feel very confident saying that I'm literally the best person in the entire world who can make a SpaceChem LP interesting. I hope. If your goal is as you state, then you're okay. I say that having played through the first two worlds or so. If you expect it to be enjoyable for all, then I'm inclined to say your knowledge of the game will make it much harder to LP. SpaceChem works because you figure out how to do things as you play. A lot of the time, you don't realize how you're intuitively learning to use the tools you're given. You, as someone that's already figured this out, have to dumb your LP the gently caress down, at least to start, because so many of the things you take for granted aren't obvious in the least to newcomers. I remember trying your challenge to make the longest solution in that level, but never managed to come close to your "score". I'd watch, but as TwoDayLife mentioned, I'm not sure how many others will.
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Jul 17, 2012 07:32
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Ok so I messed that up a little bit. I guess some people didn't get the joke that the game looks like it's in Japanese if you've never played it before. The thread's honestly not for those people but I don't want to straight up shun them. If Skippy's afraid to even play the game then I have failed, hard. If you've never played SpaceChem before: Everything you need to know about SpaceChem is outlined here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8JwvtVs38 Your next best bet is to try the demo on steam. It has a ton of content that might take you days to get through, not because it's difficult, but because there's so much of it. It introduces symbols and concepts as slowly as possible. The first level has you moving a molecule, and that's it. The next level has you do simple bonding. Then simple unbonding. Then moving two different molecules at once. Eventually you're turning water into both hydrogen peroxide and uranium that you feed into a particle accelerator to shoot at an alien (but only when it opens its eye) and it all feels like a natural evolution of the level you did previously. If you really want to see a level in action, I slowly deconstruct a previous solution of mine, and then attempt to make it better. Introduction to SpaceChem - Quantum Decomposition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APHaNY0fmKg The solution I end up with in gif form It's a 20 minute video, and I'm sure I still go too fast for those who have never played, and way too slow for those who have. I wasn't kidding earlier when I thought SpaceChem might be an un-LP-able game, but I'm willing to keep trying until I get something that works. Xerophyte posted:The idea for the thread itself sounds like a great way of presenting the game, but dropouts will probably be inevitable in a 32-player tournament. Doing some sort of league where people submit their best efforts and the top placements get points like the Trackmania threads might be more robust. It might also be more work and less fun, though. This is actually something I might consider. It'll be more work, but for a game I love I don't mind. But there's always the worry of the Dectilons and Maxxims of the world showing up and ruling the leaderboard from day 1. Hell, if I get enough interest maybe I could do both - an open tournament and a smaller 16 man single elim bracket. I am getting a lot of feedback for a sandcastle post, so maybe it'll work. GuavaMoment fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 08:15
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Heren posted:Also how blind do you want your players to be? "These stats do pretty much what you think they do" is not a very good explanation. I have no idea what the heck right or left handedness would affect, for instance. I want the thread to have no idea what exactly is going on. I'll throw in some gimmes that would be obvious if you have the game in front of you, but strategically they'll be in the dark. Revised OP: http://lpix.org/sslptest/?id=2363 Notional first update: http://lpix.org/sslptest/?id=2366 Updates will be on the shorter side to keep things moving.
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Jul 17, 2012 09:39
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I like Spacechem, although as it stands I'm still stuck on the Atropos Station boss. It is a game that requires a huge amount of concentration and abstraction (although next-to-nothing in the way of reflexes) to wrap your head around it, though. On the other hand, the thrill of beating a puzzle, or finding an optimised solution that's faster, cheaper or more elegant than your old one, makes it well worth that. As a result, it's an incredibly polarising game.
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Jul 17, 2012 11:20
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Oh God. SpaceChem. I like where the competition idea is going, but I think that should be shelved for the first few updates while the basics are covered in tutorial videos, up until everyone's comfortable with (say) multi-reactor setups and such. The idea about going back and redoing the tutorial bits to be more efficient is good, too. This time will be good for recruiting people for the competition. As you're discovering, handling SpaceChem with anything less than maximum caution is going to result in people being scared off. Presenting this thing properly might be almost as hard as learning to play the drat game...
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Jul 17, 2012 12:47
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GuavaMoment posted:SpaceChem stuff I'm just going to come out and say it, I hate the idea that you express. Maybe you were not expressing exactly what you meant, but it sounds to me like you ave a tournament, take the best solution, then say, "Yeah, good job, retard, here's the best way to do it, because I am here to make your solutions better." Maybe I am confused, but this is not looking like a contest so much as a chance for you to show off that you are better than anyone else that may post.
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Jul 17, 2012 13:08
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Brassherald posted:I'm just going to come out and say it, I hate the idea that you express. Maybe you were not expressing exactly what you meant, but it sounds to me like you ave a tournament, take the best solution, then say, "Yeah, good job, retard, here's the best way to do it, because I am here to make your solutions better." This is pretty much the definition of the Trackmania threads, which are up to their 6th league. There's plenty of examples of competitions where someone takes in a bunch of entries then goes 'this is the most interesting one, this is the best one of the lot, this one's kind of neat because X and Y, but here's the optimum solution.' I'm not sure where you're getting the 'good job retard' part from.
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Jul 17, 2012 13:31
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I don't see any problem with someone skilled finding the optimum setup of a giving method. It's less "Good job retard" and more "That's interesting but here's a way to improve that" kind of thing. Unless you're honestly mad at him having a great amount of skill at SpaceChem. And no one's to say someone isn't smart enough to figure out the least cycles and least symbols solutions on their own and post them for the tourney.
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Jul 17, 2012 13:37
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Guava, I really liked the video you just posted of optimising an existing solution. I could give or take the tournament format but I'd watch more of that. I like SpaceChem but am terrible at it and this might up my game.
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Jul 17, 2012 13:55
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