Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Hampooj
Jul 26, 2010

quote:

[COLOR="#FF0000"]Kamil:[/COLOR]
You missed some bbcode still, and otherwise there is still a huge wall of text right off the bat. I'd say it's fine, but if you can condense it and edit it down to half the size at least, I think people would be more inclined to check out the thread.

Tons and tons of :words: right at the start turn a lot of people off.

e: As well, you don't need the sandcastles approval to make your thread. You can go ahead and start it whenever. We're just trying to give you advice so people are hopefully more likely to read and enjoy your lp. But if you think it's good enough and ready to post, go hog wild.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Fionordequester
Dec 27, 2012

Actually, I respectfully disagree with you there. For as obviously flawed as this game is, there ARE a lot of really good things about it. The presentation and atmosphere, for example, are the most immediate things. No other Yu-Gi-Oh game goes out of the way to really make
Hmm...alright then. I made the intro about 3 Paragraphs shorter, and, I think that's about as short as I'm going to be able to get it down to while still sharing everything I wanted to. So here we go!

Explosionface
May 30, 2011

We can dance if we want to,
we can leave Marle behind.
'Cause your fiends don't dance,
and if they don't dance,
they'll get a Robo Fist of mine.


Fionordequester posted:

So basically, I just need to fix some technical stuff, such as getting rid of useless BB code, using the game cover as a header for the Intro post, unblurring some of the images, making the music links clickable, and also fixing the wall of text at the beginning. So, something like this?

http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=10582

I didn't bother with the "Hypothetical Chapter 1", since it may not even end up being the real thing, so this is just the Intro. So if the technical stuff is fixed, is there anything else I need to worry about? Or can I just go ahead and make the thread?

Definitely better as far as a quick once-over goes.

For links, this is pretty unappealing to the eye:

Using actual url tags produces something much nicer:
Intro Theme

I don't know if you actually did anything to your images (doesn't look like it), but for a couple of blurry examples:

[timg]http://lpix.org/1071013/7th%20Saga,%20The%20(U)%20!026.png]Character Select[/timg]

This gif is too big and blurry now that I look at it, too

For a Super Nintendo game, that short of a gif, and mostly static, you shouldn't be hitting a filesize over 500kB and you're at about 1.25MB. The reason it's so absurdly large is the (not as noticeable as one would expect) blurriness in it. Also, I just noticed that gif is on imgur. Just put it on lpix with everything else.

Fionordequester
Dec 27, 2012

Actually, I respectfully disagree with you there. For as obviously flawed as this game is, there ARE a lot of really good things about it. The presentation and atmosphere, for example, are the most immediate things. No other Yu-Gi-Oh game goes out of the way to really make

Explosionface posted:

Definitely better as far as a quick once-over goes.

For links, this is pretty unappealing to the eye:


Using actual url tags produces something much nicer:
Intro Theme

I don't know if you actually did anything to your images (doesn't look like it), but for a couple of blurry examples:

[timg]http://lpix.org/1071013/7th%20Saga,%20The%20(U)%20!026.png]Character Select[/timg]

This gif is too big and blurry now that I look at it, too

For a Super Nintendo game, that short of a gif, and mostly static, you shouldn't be hitting a filesize over 500kB and you're at about 1.25MB. The reason it's so absurdly large is the (not as noticeable as one would expect) blurriness in it. Also, I just noticed that gif is on imgur. Just put it on lpix with everything else.

I see. I'll look into shrinking that gif. But how do I use URL tags to make the links nicer on the eyes? I used "inspect element", but it just gave me this...

<a href="http://polsy.org.uk/play/yt/?vurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLsxo1lI_U6Y+" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Intro Theme</a>

EDIT: Wait, nevermind, I figured it out.

Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Feb 23, 2013

discworld is all I read
Apr 7, 2009

DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Fionordequester posted:

I see. I'll look into shrinking that gif. But how do I use URL tags to make the links nicer on the eyes? I used "inspect element", but it just gave me this...

<a href="http://polsy.org.uk/play/yt/?vurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLsxo1lI_U6Y+" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Intro Theme</a>
[url][/url]; a lot of these codes are covered in the BBCode section for SomethingAwful.

Testekill
Nov 1, 2012

I demand to be taken seriously

:aronrex:

Hey everyone, I'm taking a stab at let's playing Zafehouse Diaries and would like to run it through with the sandcastle first. It was originally released in September of last year so it's out of the three month grace period but it received it's first major release earlier this month on GOG. Would that mean that it would be three months from that release or is it fine?


Opening: http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=10581

Hypothetical Introduction to the group: http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=10585


Are there any tips or suggestions for this that I should tweak first? I'm always happy to be told how to do something better.

KanaNetwork
Feb 21, 2013

Habermann posted:

I feel like everyone is dancing around the real issue with these girls: That they are doing LPs to become "YouTube-famous," and using every attention-grabbing tactic in the book to do so.

We can give these two all the technical advice in the world, and advise them against YouTube dumping and whatnot. We can even criticize them for their commentary and tell them it sucks. But these two obviously aren't going to change anything: The purpose of them posting these videos here in the first place was - more likely than not - for a few extra views on their videos, even if the critical response was going to be negative.

Take a look at all the stuff surrounding their actual LP. Their channel name ("Two Bitches Play Stupid Games") is clearly meant to evoke memories of / make viewers think of "Two Best Friends Play," while the commentary itself is also very reminiscent of them as well. Every video has an obnoxious thumbnail with some stupid attempt at a catchphrase in it. They created a Facebook page specifically for their channel, and aggressively advertise it in their video descriptions / on their Twitter accounts / wherever they can find a place to plug it.

My point is, there is only so much advice of ours that they will be willing to heed. Best case scenario, they maybe listen to one or two comments about format advice. But their commentary itself with the obnoxious over-use of "bitch" and attempts at appealing to teenage boys who don't know any better will remain forever unchanged. Because that's what YouTube gaming partners have pretty much devolved into at this point, and because they are already hitting every check-mark on the list of "things to do to become a partner channel."

Glad I could help!

Or maybe the issue is you're being presumptuous? Regardless of how people felt everyone else has been somewhat civil or constructive with their criticism, but you haven't...

As it's been stated multiple times I misunderstood what the youtube dumping rule meant. I thought it had meant "Do not post a completed LP" Seeing as Gabriel Knight is a large game and we're only 4 videos in I thought we weren't violating that rule, especially when it says "OP and the first update/OR future update" here and when I was told otherwise I apologized multiple times.

The name is very straightforward, and If I've seen an episode of "Two Best Friends Play" it certainly didn't affect our name choice or how we present ourselves. The obnoxious thumbnail catchphrases are actual snippets from each episode (though often taken out of context.) Of course we created a facebook page, because despite how wrong you are on every other level we DO want people to watch our videos, and you would be disengenuous to say anyone who makes videos and puts them up somewhere would NOT want people to watch them. As I said before we both come from a radio background where we've used facebook in the past to promote content, so it was common sense for us to do so with this. Facebook's also good for family and friends who might not have a youtube account or check it often for subscriber updates.

Your point is incorrect. We're taking into consideration every bit of actual constructive feedback we're getting in terms of how we make our LPs. Unfortunately, a lot of the advice we've been given applies more to planned informative LPs and as we've said we haven't done those yet (though we do plan to in the future.) We also DO enjoy reactionary commentary and blind LPs and will continue to make them in the future as well, as it seems more of a personal preference for informed LPs or blind LPs.

So once again, we would welcome all constructive feedback on how to make a better LP, be it advice on the reactionary style we're doing now, or advice for informed LPs in the future as we will be doing both whether we post them here or not (perhaps when we start on a planned LP that one of us has played before.) We've already got some precious few tidbits from people actually being constructive, and we thank everyone who actually gave that type of feedback.

It's not going to change who we are though. So informed or blind if it's not your cup of tea that's fine. We'll continue to strive for improvement and if it's a personal gripe someone has with our style then our LPs will likely never appeal to them.

MeccaPrime
May 11, 2010

I think it would probably be best for you to just come back when you actually have something that you plan to post here. It seems a waste of our efforts to help you otherwise.

Also, Habermann is just making the same assumptions that others of us are (myself included) based on previous incidents. All the signs are there.

shinmai
Oct 9, 2007

CHK Instruction

Ehh... You kind of sidestepped Habermann's whole point. The argument was that however much constructive criticism you two get, your motivation for doing the videos is getting as many viewers as possible to your Youtube Partner channel. Many LPers on these forums make LPs because they want to show off a game (because they thought it was particularily cool or underrated or a lost gem or whatever) for the game, not to publizise their channel or to improve monetization returns.

Also, what Hampooj told Fionordequester also applies to you, if you feel that the criticism you've got has improved your LP to the point of being postable, you can post your thread whenever.
Most people here want to see good Let's Plays and will try to offer you advice to better your LPs, but tastes differ, and if you feel your quality is on par with what you yourself would want to see, go on ahead.

Cangelosi
Nov 17, 2004

"It's cute," he said to himself warily, "but it's not normal."

shinmai posted:

Many LPers on these forums make LPs because they want to show off a game (because they thought it was particularily cool or underrated or a lost gem or whatever) for the game, not to publizise their channel or to improve monetization returns.

Actually, if you're only doing LPs for the money, then I should suggest an intervention because that is totally wrong and needs professional help that we at the board are soundly lacking.

Habermann
Nov 3, 2007

by Lowtax

KanaNetwork posted:

It's not going to change who we are though. So informed or blind if it's not your cup of tea that's fine. We'll continue to strive for improvement and if it's a personal gripe someone has with our style then our LPs will likely never appeal to them.

In other words: You're going to refuse to change the things that need the most change. Which includes your horrible commentary, the disgusting end-of-video plugging of your Twitter and Facebook accounts, obnoxious attention-grabbing thumbnails, and everything else you're doing in your mission to get as many views as possible / make money off of these videos. While that "horrible commentary" bit may be a "personal gripe," the rest of it is undoubtedly, unarguably annoying.

Face the facts: You signed up for this forum for the sole purpose of posting your videos. And not because you necessarily wanted or felt you needed any "feedback" on them, but because you heard somewhere from someone that posting LPs here is a good way to build a base of subscribers, and that you are pretty much guaranteed a steady stream of video views.

Unfortunately, you neglected to do any research beyond that, and didn't discover that we don't give much of a poo poo for YouTube LPs, especially all the obnoxious partner-esque poo poo that surrounds them. It's one thing to choose to become a partner if YouTube affords you the opportunity. As a matter of fact, I just so happen to be a partner. But you know what I don't feel the need to do? Beg for more subscribers / more followers / more views in my videos, in some pitiful attempt at milking more cash out of them.

Like I said before: Your videos are already perfect for YouTube. I'm sure you'll get to 100K subscribers in no time if you continue to do all the obnoxious, soulless poo poo you're doing right now. But the rest of us here on this forum are going to continue to make fun of you for how hard you're trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator humor-wise, as well as how desperate you are for views.

Glad I could help again!

copy
Jul 26, 2007

KanaNetwork posted:

As it's been stated multiple times I misunderstood what the youtube dumping rule meant. I thought it had meant "Do not post a completed LP" Seeing as Gabriel Knight is a large game and we're only 4 videos in I thought we weren't violating that rule, especially when it says "OP and the first update/OR future update" here and when I was told otherwise I apologized multiple times.

If you had lurked for like a week or so before posting you probably would have seen somebody else do exactly the same thing you just did and get called out for it and then you would have gone "oh so that's what a youtube dump is," and we would have all nodded sagely. And unless I'm mistaken, when you buy an account here the screen used to say something to the tune of "hey you, lurk some and figure out what posting culture here is like so you don't break some form of our etiquette and then get all baby-time when somebody calls you out on it." I guess another good rule for the youtube dump, and for the sandcastle in general, is you should consider if you would completely redo your videos because of the advice you got here. So would you just completely remake your four gabriel knight videos under any conditions at all? Because if not then why would anybody here bother telling you how to make those videos better? The sandcastle isn't just where you dump videos and then you get to make a thread, it's for advice on making the videos.

If you don't want the advice or if you only think you want the advice but don't actually intend to change your videos, then just post the thread already. You paid your ten dollars, so go crazy with it. Sink or swim!

melodicwaffle
Oct 9, 2012

Call or fold?

So I have a question about whether my pictures look acceptable. Things were going fine until, well, the second post :downs:

There's this weird decrease in quality from the screenshots of the first part into the next one. Here's my tentative second update.

It looks fine up until around this picture when there starts to be noticeable interlacing, despite the fact that I am using a Yadif deinterlacer in Avisynth. The whole video doesn't appear interlaced, just in very specific colors like here (the red around his chain). Then there's just plain bad-looking shots like these two.

I'm not recording any differently than I was for the first post, so I don't really understand why it's doing this, and I get that this is technically more something for TSF, but this has been something I've been trying to fix for the past few days, to no avail. I've even tried alternate recording programs, but they all have a very noticeable input lag that is very difficult to work with for this game in particular.

Thread's here for reference to the first post.

Honestly, I just want to know if I'm fretting over nothing, that these pictures are actually acceptable, or if I really should look a little harder for a new recording solution.

Pizzatime
Apr 1, 2011

KanaNetwork posted:

you're trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator humor-wise

Here. This is the problem with you, Two Bitches Play Stupid Games. (See how ridiculous it is to just address you with a name like that?)
Your video made me want to turn off my laptop and go sit at a pond or something to, you know, feed some ducks. But that's just my opinion. I'm sure there are people who can watch this without cringing so much that their faces hurt!
You are being annoying in the same way that pewdiepie is. You are using the games you lp as something to run in the background while you're trying to fill every last second of that youtube timelimit with irrelevant "jokes" and generally trying to be as wacky as possible. When I'm watching one of your videos, I feel like I could just grab a friend and a microphone, play the game, and instantly have a less annoying take on the game than you do. You know what I'm getting at? Stop entering loving GaMeRgUrLz wacky mode the second you hit record. Just stay a normal person. People might actually want to listen to you that way.

Pizzatime fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Feb 23, 2013

That Irish Gal
Jul 8, 2012

Your existence amounts to nothing more than a goldfish swimming upriver.

PS: We are all actually cats

Testekill posted:

Opening: http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=10581

Hypothetical Introduction to the group: http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=10585


Are there any tips or suggestions for this that I should tweak first? I'm always happy to be told how to do something better.

I would say flesh out the OP more and separate the "So enough about why you're doing this, tell us about the game itself" section into a second post, maybe call it like, Update 0 or something since it feels more like an update than explaining the game to me. That's a bit of a personal taste thing for me really, I think it would help organize the thread a bit more since it sort of clutters up the OP.

I like how you're tackling the game though. The thread interactivity is going to be a blast.

your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."

Testekill posted:

Hey everyone, I'm taking a stab at let's playing Zafehouse Diaries and would like to run it through with the sandcastle first. It was originally released in September of last year so it's out of the three month grace period but it received it's first major release earlier this month on GOG. Would that mean that it would be three months from that release or is it fine?


Opening: http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=10581

Hypothetical Introduction to the group: http://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=10585


Are there any tips or suggestions for this that I should tweak first? I'm always happy to be told how to do something better.

The written diary-style text is perhaps a little on the small side, might want to have the screenshots be slightly larger? They were readable, but I've got a 27 inch monitor, I imagine if someone has a smaller monitor they might be tricky to read.

That said, as a test I just tried copying the URL of one of the images to here:



And for me the image is now larger than it was but a bit blurry, the smaller crisper image was actually easier to read. I've noticed that happen with my own LPs, the images in my thread are always stretched a bit larger than they are on my computer and on other websites.

Does anyone know why that is, why the forum makes the images look larger? Is there some way of disabling that?

shinmai
Oct 9, 2007

CHK Instruction

Testekill posted:

Zafehouse Diaries
While you do flesh out most of the textual content in your commentary, I'd love to be able to read the text in the screenshots, but for my eyesight at least they're a bit too small and a bit too blurry for that. I'm assuming you're resizing them down, so maybe have the resized images link to the original? Other than that, it's nice and readable, I dig your style, and ZD seems like an interesting game. Kudos for linking the Greenlight entry, drat decent thing to do for a niche-appeal indie title that this seems to be.

e: slow fingers, but yeah, what your evil twin said. I have a 24" fullHD screen and it's practically impossible to read the text.

Pizzatime posted:

while you're trying to fill every last second of that youtube timelimit with irrelevant "jokes"
Which for partners (and other account in good standing, I guess) has been raised to ten hours :stonk:

shinmai fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Feb 23, 2013

your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."

shinmai posted:

Which for partners (and other account in good standing, I guess) has been raised to ten hours :stonk:

I've actually considered doing an LP that is just one giant video of a whole game. There are already "Longplays" of games on youtube that have games split into big 2 or 3 hour chunks, they are pretty cool for getting an experience of playing the game, but lack commentary.

Of course if you actually did one giant video for a whole game then all the comments on in the thread and on youtube would be like "well done, thanks for showing the game" rather than about actual individual bits of the game, so it's probably not a good idea if you want to have a lively thread full of discussion.

TheOneAndOnlyT
Dec 18, 2005

Well well, mister fancy-pants, I hope you're wearing your matching sweater today, or you'll be cut down like the ugly tree you are.

your evil twin posted:

Does anyone know why that is, why the forum makes the images look larger? Is there some way of disabling that?
It's probably a browser setting. If you're using Firefox, try holding Ctrl and scrolling the mousewheel up and down. That changes the text/image zoom. It's possible at some point you accidentally made it bigger and that's why all your images look large and blurry to you.

For the record, I don't really see any blurriness, which is why I think it's just your browser.

Spiffo
Nov 24, 2005

your evil twin posted:

I've actually considered doing an LP that is just one giant video of a whole game. There are already "Longplays" of games on youtube that have games split into big 2 or 3 hour chunks, they are pretty cool for getting an experience of playing the game, but lack commentary.

Well there's no rule saying they can't have commentary. I've done a few of them and thrown them on YouTube for shits, but yeah you can't really make a thread for something like that (and I'm not sure why anyone would want to). Hell, I'm not sure why anyone would even watch gameplay without commentary unless it was like a speed run or something.

discworld is all I read
Apr 7, 2009

DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Spiffo posted:

Well there's no rule saying they can't have commentary. I've done a few of them and thrown them on YouTube for shits, but yeah you can't really make a thread for something like that (and I'm not sure why anyone would want to). Hell, I'm not sure why anyone would even watch gameplay without commentary unless it was like a speed run or something.
I think it depends on the game; there was a Bastion LP done on here that was completely without commentary and I still do think that Miami Hotline could work with no commentary (as the game's music and visuals speak volumes).

Hampooj
Jul 26, 2010

Spiffo posted:

Well there's no rule saying they can't have commentary. I've done a few of them and thrown them on YouTube for shits, but yeah you can't really make a thread for something like that (and I'm not sure why anyone would want to). Hell, I'm not sure why anyone would even watch gameplay without commentary unless it was like a speed run or something.

It's been done and is pretty awesome. It really only works for certain types of games, in my opinion. On the lp archive Grim Fangango: The Movie

shinmai
Oct 9, 2007

CHK Instruction

your evil twin posted:

Of course if you actually did one giant video for a whole game then all the comments on in the thread and on youtube would be like "well done, thanks for showing the game" rather than about actual individual bits of the game, so it's probably not a good idea if you want to have a lively thread full of discussion.
You could do the LP in regular, old-fashioned smaller updates, and then archive it as one long video. You could then edit the OP to link to all the updates starting points with &t=-parameterized links, kind of like chapter selection on DVDs. It'd help unclutter your Youtube account in the long run, I guess, and allow people like me who, binge on Let's Plays when there's time to watch them, view the whole thing in one sitting without playlist-hassles.

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

For the record, I don't really see any blurriness, which is why I think it's just your browser.
Just checked the picture your evil twin used as an example; I opened two Chrome windows, opened just the image in one, and this thread in the other, the picture is clearly larger. Not much larger, but 5% maybe. Both windows had zoom at 100%. This Mac I'm currently browsing from is less than two hours in use, I've not changed any settings yet, so if it is in the browser and not the forums stylesheet, it's something that's enabled by default.

Vapor Moon
Feb 24, 2010

Neato!
The Human Font

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

It's probably a browser setting. If you're using Firefox, try holding Ctrl and scrolling the mousewheel up and down. That changes the text/image zoom. It's possible at some point you accidentally made it bigger and that's why all your images look large and blurry to you.

For the record, I don't really see any blurriness, which is why I think it's just your browser.

CTRL+0 will reset the zoom level to normal.

RasputinVarez
Nov 12, 2012
I irrationally support inferior conflict CPU's and refute any benchmarks presented to me because of "reasons".

If I'm giving PC advice, you should probably just ignore me.
Hello, here is my first legitimate let's play.

I'm being taken over by the F.E.A.R.

F.E.A.R is a First Person Shooter released in 2005, It was made by Monolith Productions.

The game-play is very Half Life 2 esque, but with a horror "theme" that doesn't just rely on cheap jump scares and has some real horror elements inspired by japanese horror movies.

I'd really appreciate some constructive criticism, and have already ordered a better microphone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpJPjmslos

Zarah
Sep 30, 2010

SUCCESS
There's only one way to go from the top.

I watched 10 seconds and immediately shut it off. That intro needs to go, dude.

JetGrind
Apr 5, 2012

Tagging the streets and humming the bassline.
Scrap the intro, no one cares about that and just wants to see the game, and get rid of the text on the top and bottom of the screen, we know who you are because we clicked on your thread, this isn't the regular youtube crowd you're trying to entertain here.

Also, please don't talk over cutscenes or leave you fiddling around with things while you sit still in the game.

discworld is all I read
Apr 7, 2009

DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

JetGrind posted:

Scrap the intro, no one cares about that and just wants to see the game, and get rid of the text on the top and bottom of the screen, we know who you are because we clicked on your thread, this isn't the regular youtube crowd you're trying to entertain here.

Also, please don't talk over cutscenes or leave you fiddling around with things while you sit still in the game.
Bah, look at you being so hard on the guy.

But really you should look into auto-ducking or turning down the game audio as you are completely unintelligible over the game. Also why didn't you play and record this at 720p? I'm pretty sure FEAR could run in those resolutions.

RasputinVarez
Nov 12, 2012
I irrationally support inferior conflict CPU's and refute any benchmarks presented to me because of "reasons".

If I'm giving PC advice, you should probably just ignore me.

Niggurath posted:

why didn't you play and record this at 720p? I'm pretty sure FEAR could run in those resolutions.

I did, it's the editing software that's the problem. need to fix that

Zarah posted:

I watched 10 seconds and immediately shut it off. That intro needs to go, dude.



JetGrind posted:

Scrap the intro, no one cares about that and just wants to see the game, and get rid of the text on the top and bottom of the screen, we know who you are because we clicked on your thread, this isn't the regular youtube crowd you're trying to entertain here.

Also, please don't talk over cutscenes or leave you fiddling around with things while you sit still in the game.

OK, i shouldn't talk over cut scenes. would it be better if i only rarely spoke, such as to explain a new weapon?


The text is just filling in a gap caused by the aspect ratio. i really need sew editing software


Would it be a good idea for me to fix these technical issues, then redo this or just move on to level 3?

Pizzatime
Apr 1, 2011

RasputinVarez posted:

Hello, here is my first legitimate let's play.

I'm being taken over by the F.E.A.R.

F.E.A.R is a First Person Shooter released in 2005, It was made by Monolith Productions.

The game-play is very Half Life 2 esque, but with a horror "theme" that doesn't just rely on cheap jump scares and has some real horror elements inspired by japanese horror movies.

I'd really appreciate some constructive criticism, and have already ordered a better microphone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpJPjmslos

There's so many bad things about this that I'm just going to tell you to not lp in general. Think of all the things you could be doing instead! But let me list a few of the reasons for that statement anyway: 2 minutes of intro screen followed by a loading screens. Really really tiny text, really really bad humor. RASPUTINREVIEWS.COM. Am I supposed to listen to you or to the characters in the game? who knows! The reading of text that's on screen. Incredibly bland and uninteresting commentary, matching gameplay. It's really dark, everything's really small.
Things might be repeating, but so do the issues while watching the video. Glad to help.

RasputinVarez
Nov 12, 2012
I irrationally support inferior conflict CPU's and refute any benchmarks presented to me because of "reasons".

If I'm giving PC advice, you should probably just ignore me.

Pizzatime posted:

There's so many bad things about this that I'm just going to tell you to not lp in general. Think of all the things you could be doing instead! But let me list a few of the reasons for that statement anyway: 2 minutes of intro screen followed by a loading screens. Really really tiny text, really really bad humor. RASPUTINREVIEWS.COM. Am I supposed to listen to you or to the characters in the game? who knows! The reading of text that's on screen. Incredibly bland and uninteresting commentary, matching gameplay. It's really dark, everything's really small.
Things might be repeating, but so do the issues while watching the video. Glad to help.

Sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something

would it be better if I just played the game, with no commentary?

discworld is all I read
Apr 7, 2009

DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

RasputinVarez posted:

I did, it's the editing software that's the problem. need to fix that



OK, i shouldn't talk over cut scenes. would it be better if i only rarely spoke, such as to explain a new weapon?


The text is just filling in a gap caused by the aspect ratio. i really need sew editing software


Would it be a good idea for me to fix these technical issues, then redo this or just move on to level 3?
It's best to approach commentary with how you feel comfortable; speak like a person rather than a constructed personality. Also the tech fort is pretty super helpful with most common editing and recording softwares; I'm sure they'd be up for helping you with your issues. Especially looking at the weird aspect ratio on some of those Super Mario videos, you seem to just post things with very obvious issues; there's no harm in asking for help. And it's best to solve your issues before starting a thread; if people see your first video as the one you posted, it's doubtful many will stick around.

RasputinVarez
Nov 12, 2012
I irrationally support inferior conflict CPU's and refute any benchmarks presented to me because of "reasons".

If I'm giving PC advice, you should probably just ignore me.
OK, so i'm going to redo the F.E.A.R LP without lovely live commentary, on the hardest difficulty

Vifs
Jan 13, 2010

Plllllllaydies :heysexy:

RasputinVarez posted:

OK, so i'm going to redo the F.E.A.R LP without lovely live commentary, on the hardest difficulty

It's not really a matter of live commentary or post, just don't talk over people in the game, and if you do at least have subtitles turned on. But if doing post helps your do better commentary, then go for it. Also like others have said, just talk like your having a conversation with someone, you are not on TV.

your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."

shinmai posted:

Just checked the picture your evil twin used as an example; I opened two Chrome windows, opened just the image in one, and this thread in the other, the picture is clearly larger. Not much larger, but 5% maybe. Both windows had zoom at 100%. This Mac I'm currently browsing from is less than two hours in use, I've not changed any settings yet, so if it is in the browser and not the forums stylesheet, it's something that's enabled by default.

Yeah, if I link to an image on another website, the version here on the forums will always look very slightly larger, so it seems to be something specific to the forums rather than a browser setting. I use firefox. Pressing CTRL to shrink everything would put the images at the correct size here, but smaller than usual on other sites.

Oh, and thanks for the advice berryjon and brainamp regarding my Inversion video, made some changes, it now has only a brief introductory bit, I don't bother to show off the menu options, and I messed the audio. (I didn't reckon the actual footage itself needed changing so there are still bits where I hold up to look at stuff, I might try to do that less in future videos.) Thread is now up: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3535265

Spiffo
Nov 24, 2005

RasputinVarez posted:

Sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something

would it be better if I just played the game, with no commentary?

You have to think about, "What's the best way to present this game for people to see?"

The LP isn't about you. Generally, yeah you want commentary. The commentary has to actually be interesting and informative. It can also be exciting, or anything else that you think would add to the game. Boring reactionary commentary isn't. Intros and menus aren't. Links to your other sites aren't. You loving dancing is not. Distracting people when the game is trying to speak isn't. (note: the game doesn't literally have to be speaking with words, sometimes it speaks with atmosphere)

Basically, if this were some kind of production that were to show off the game in the best possible way, how would it be done? What would you say, and when would you say it? What do you cut out, what do you keep? These are questions that you should an answering as you go (or even before you start) but it seems like you haven't considered them. Let's Play is more than watching someone make sounds while there is a video game on (and the game is surrounded by links like a loving commercial seriously what were you thinking??)

RasputinVarez
Nov 12, 2012
I irrationally support inferior conflict CPU's and refute any benchmarks presented to me because of "reasons".

If I'm giving PC advice, you should probably just ignore me.

Spiffo posted:

Let's Play is more than watching someone make sounds while there is a video game on


I think most people would disagree with that, not me, but it seems screaming reactions and rape "jokes" make for a really popular series. the fact that people make 100's of "happy wheels" videos which is literally noise while a game is playing shows that a let's play can be anything. i should set up a scare cam as well, then I could be really popular!

In all seriousness, I think I'll just do the game with no commentary, and edit out my deaths so it fits together like a narrative.

Vifs
Jan 13, 2010

Plllllllaydies :heysexy:

RasputinVarez posted:

I think most people would disagree with that, not me, but it seems screaming reactions and rape "jokes" make for a really popular series. the fact that people make 100's of "happy wheels" videos which is literally noise while a game is playing shows that a let's play can be anything. i should set up a scare cam as well, then I could be really popular!


I don't think you could find a single person of this subforum who would agree with that. Wait, I take it back, make that video and post a thread.

Edit: Yes I know you were being sarcastic.

Testekill
Nov 1, 2012

I demand to be taken seriously

:aronrex:

your evil twin posted:

The written diary-style text is perhaps a little on the small side, might want to have the screenshots be slightly larger? They were readable, but I've got a 27 inch monitor, I imagine if someone has a smaller monitor they might be tricky to read.

That said, as a test I just tried copying the URL of one of the images to here:



And for me the image is now larger than it was but a bit blurry, the smaller crisper image was actually easier to read. I've noticed that happen with my own LPs, the images in my thread are always stretched a bit larger than they are on my computer and on other websites.


shinmai posted:

While you do flesh out most of the textual content in your commentary, I'd love to be able to read the text in the screenshots, but for my eyesight at least they're a bit too small and a bit too blurry for that. I'm assuming you're resizing them down, so maybe have the resized images link to the original? Other than that, it's nice and readable, I dig your style, and ZD seems like an interesting game. Kudos for linking the Greenlight entry, drat decent thing to do for a niche-appeal indie title that this seems to be.


So have larger images but with thumbnails in the updates? That's actually a better idea then what I was thinking of as I was considering writing down and expanding upon what happened that turn.


Edit:

I've changed the screenshots to be slightly larger. The writing seems to be clearer then the image that your evil twin posted. However, I'm a horrible judge of clarity in images since I have a relatively decent sized monitor so I'll need a second opinion if someone would be nice enough to give one.

Testekill fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Feb 24, 2013

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle

RasputinVarez posted:

OK, so i'm going to redo the F.E.A.R LP without lovely live commentary, on the hardest difficulty

You've been registered here for over 3 months, so I'm curious. Which LPs on this subforum have you watched?

  • Locked thread