Flailing Around at the Speed of Sound: Let's Race!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Flailing Around at the Speed of Sound: Let's Race!

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The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

Newest Race: Aladdin (SNES)
:siren:

Join the Super Mario 3D World race! See Next Post! :siren:

Hello everyone, I'm The T! And welcome to... Let's Race!

What the heck are Goon Races?

A bunch of goons get together on Skype, all play the same game at once, ostensibly to finish the game and arguably to do so quickly.

How do I be in a goonrace?

Well, first find some friends you want to race with, and figure out which of them has enough AviSynth knowledge (or some other video tool, but I can only really offer advice for AviSynth) to put it all together.
Get everyone in a call together, have everyone start recording their audio and gameplay. Have one person say "1, 2, 3, Sync", and on the Sync, everyone should say Sync at the same time. Don't worry if it sounds like some people were later than others; when the audio is mixed, still line it up so all the syncs are the same, and everything will be fine.
Record the gameplay; try to ensure your recording is consistent to whatever the organizer wants it to be; the right resolution, framerate, etc. However, usually wonky things can be worked around, and any recording is better than no recording at all. DO A TEST RECORDING BEFORE THE RACE ITSELF.
Introduce yourselves (before or after the "go", doesn't matter, but seriously, do it. Nothing's more confusing than not knowing who's who.) and then have the same person who said sync count down "3, 2, 1, Go" and everyone mash whatever button will make the game go on "Go".
Race! Have fun! Don't take this poo poo seriously!

My friends have decided to push me under a bus and make me produce the race. NOW WHAT?

Get this Basic rear end Sample Script.
Collect everyone's video and audio files. Throw all the audio files in Audacity.
Clean them up: Normalize, Noise Reduction, Noise Gate, Compressor. Learn how to properly use all of these, and experiment with them. Spot test sections of audio; check to make sure you aren't noise gating things too hard: if you hear the audio start to fade out at the end of some sentences, you're doing it too hard. Sometimes people's controller noises are louder than their quietest talking; at that point, just leave it in.
Line up all the audio so that all the "Sync"s match up. I usually do this by finding the "y" sound in sync, writing down what time it appears in each, and using math to create silence at the videos that aren't the furthest one out.
Figure out where you want the audio to begin, and remove all the audio prior to that.
Find the second where someone says "Go", and convert it to a frame number: ie, if it was at 1 minute and 30.256 seconds, multiply 1*60, plus 30.256 to get 120.256, then if you're doing a 30 FPS video, multiply by 30 to get 3607.68. Round either way, because 1/30th of a second's not gonna matter that much.
Plug that number into the GoFrame slot in AviSynth, plug all the videos in, and then go through each video 1 by 1 (by loading them at the end of the script, ie clip1) and find the frame where the "go" begins. This should usually be right when the fade out starts to happen, but remember some games might be weirder and need adjusting. ALSO: make sure there isn't a trim being applied to the video already, and comment it out if it is for this step.
After the audio is all synced up, I also usually export individual racer's audio and check the sync to their video to make sure everything looks right!
Add any fancy additions: Time displays when someone finishes, music display, etc. This is all up to you! Use the AviSynth wiki!
Add music to the video! I usually do this by going through the video and seeing what level each person is on at the end of each song, and finding a song for that level, but there's no need to be this rigid about it if you don't want to! Just find stuff that works, and don't make it too loud or drown out the racers.

What Will I need?

A way to talk to each other:
- Skype: By far the most common option.
- TeamSpeak: Typically better audio quality with less lag, but requires someone to host a server locally.
- Mumble: Similar to TeamSpeak, you have to set up your own server? I haven't actually used it.
Audacity: To record your own voice audio.
A video capture program:
- Open Broadcast Software: The most common streaming software, but can also be used to record locally. Tends to be easy to use and switch between multiple games on the fly without interrupting recording, but quality settings and resolution may need to be tweaked.
- Fraps ( PAID): High quality recording, but may ocassionally have issues seeing some programs, and spits out very large files that WILL need to be compressed before sending them off. T uses this.
- Camtasia ( PAID) and HyperCam: People use these? Frequently can offer pretty iffy recordings with framerate issues, but if somehow Fraps and OBS aren't working for you, try them out. Just... do some test recordings first.
AviSynth: Script-based video editor. For basic stuff, check the Tech Support fort.
FFmpegSource2: Plugin for AviSynth for loading videos. Better than the default plugins. Put it in the plugins folder.
MeGUI: Used to render AviSynth scripts.
Call Graph: Backup skype call recorder. The T never uses this, because he's an idiot.
VirtualDub: Useful tool for previewing AviSynth scripts, can also be used to capture.
Avisynth Wiki: Wiki for all things AviSynth. If you're ever unsure about a command, look it up here.

The T fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Aug 26, 2015

# ? Jun 13, 2015 22:25

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 18:44

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

CURRENT EVENT: Super Mario 3D World Race! :siren:

Anyone can join! Just post here that you're interested, with your Skype name, and I'll toss you into the group. You will need a capture card (even a cheap SD one is fine).

THE RULES:
1. Before the first round, you will start a new save file; go into the first level, and then save and quit. This is to ensure you don't have to watch the intro cutscene during the first race. Nothing may be collected prior to the first round, and you may not play on a save file in between rounds.
2. Each round, 1 world will be completed.
3. You may collect as many or as few Green Stars as you want. If a World ends in a Castle gated by Green Stars, you must have enough Green Stars to pass the gate. Required gates to be aware of:
World 1-Castle: 10 Green Stars
World 4-Castle: 50 Green Stars
World Castle-Castle: 130 Green Stars
World Bowser-Castle: 170 Green Stars
4. For the purposes of planning what Green Stars you collect during the race, you will only need to concern yourself with completing World Bowser. In the event that we race the later worlds, only then will you be able to (and expected to) go back and collect the required Green Stars between those race rounds. For worlds before World Bowser, you cannot collect Green Stars between rounds.
5. Time in a round begins after you select a file on the data select screen, and ends upon touching the flag pole after the last boss of a world. After each race, you may travel to the next world and view it's cutscene and save in that world, so you will start in that world next round.
6. You may not travel beyond the current world. However, you may travel to prior worlds to collect Green Stars, prior to beating the boss of the current world.
7. Scoring will be based on a Mario Kart-esque system; the fastest player will earn a set amount of points, and each place below will earn consecutively fewer points. Point values will be based on the number of entrants.
8. Will you sacrifice points in one round by going for more green stars, so you have less to collect in future rounds? INTRIGUE.
SUPER SPECIAL MOST IMPORTANT RULE: Each level, your character must be randomly selected. If you do not, you will receive a time penalty.
SUPER SPECIAL SECOND MOST IMPORTANT RULE: For god's sake, have fun! This is not a serious competition.

THE RACES

Sonic 3D Blast: Do Not Eat the Chaos Lozenge
Robust Laser, GameBoyHero, Jacobus Spades, CarpetCrawler, The T, majormonotone

Sonic Blast: How's the Blue Marine, Fox?
FlamingRok, Heavy Sigh, GameboyHero, The T, Jacobus Spades, majormonotone (sorta)

------------------------

Metroid: Zero Mission: Chilling in Kraid's Central Hole
Jacobus Spades, heytallman, FlamingRok, majormonotone, The T

Aladdin (SNES): Big Buff Sexy Genie
Starring FlamingRok, GameboyHero, Manic X, Jacobus Spades, majormonotone, The T

------------------------

Spyro: Year of the Dragon

Ballistic Clipboard, Bebuva, Manic X, RJWaters2, Robust Laser, SuccinctAndPunchy

------------------------

Let's Race Sonic: Season One
(Note: Early ones are a little wonky and I'm not much of a fan of them anymore. Enjoy!)

Smite's original Let's Race thread
I don't want to repost a bunch of people's races without their permission, so if you want to see a bunch of old stuff, it's here!

The T fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Aug 26, 2015

# ? Jun 13, 2015 22:25

Slur: Mar 6, 2013; It's the Final Countdown.

Well, I'm down to race some games later. I wish I had SM3DW to race, though.

# ? Jun 13, 2015 23:37

majormonotone: Jan 25, 2013

when are we racing sonic labyrinth

# ? Jun 14, 2015 03:09

frozentreasure: Nov 13, 2012; ~

Alternative method of producing a race: give it to RJWaters2. Result times may vary. And by "vary" I mean "take two months".

# ? Jun 14, 2015 06:32

RJWaters2: Dec 16, 2011; It was not not not so great

Hey we raced Spyro 3 just 2 weeks ago and I've almost considered beginning editing several times already

# ? Jun 14, 2015 11:08

SuccinctAndPunchy: Mar 29, 2013; People are supposed to get hurt by things. It's fucked up to not. It's not good for you.

RJWaters2 posted:

Hey we raced Spyro 3 just 2 weeks ago and I've almost considered beginning editing several times already

I apparently live in a fantasy universe where that already got uploaded and I went to try and find it and was surprised when I couldn't.

# ? Jun 16, 2015 06:11

Manic X: Jul 1, 2015

I'm down for these races;

Skype: Manicx97

Manic X fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jul 1, 2015

# ? Jul 1, 2015 16:38

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

Sonic 3D Blast: Do Not Eat the Chaos Lozenge
Starring Robust Laser, GameBoyHero, Jacobus Spades, CarpetCrawler, The T and majormonotone

# ? Jul 1, 2015 17:17

morallyobjected: Nov 3, 2012

I was really confused for a while because I mixed Zero Mission up with Fusion. Tallman absolutely destroyed that though.

# ? Jul 2, 2015 20:57

RJWaters2: Dec 16, 2011; It was not not not so great

Let's Race Spyro: Year of the Dragon!

Ballistic Clipboard, Bebuva, Manic X, RJWaters2, Robust Laser, and SuccinctAndPunchy

It's been nearly two years since the genius trainwreck Spyro 2: Ripto's Race so we brought nearly the whole cast back to wreck the sequel!

# ? Jul 21, 2015 10:00

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

Sonic Blast: How's the Blue Marine, Fox?
Starring FlamingRok, Heavy Sigh, GameboyHero, The T, Jacobus Spades, and majormonotone (sorta)

# ? Jul 26, 2015 22:49

majormonotone: Jan 25, 2013

Blue Marine Zone is probably the worst level in the Sonic series, and is at least definitely the worst in the 2D games. It's horrendous

# ? Jul 26, 2015 22:53

Scaly Haylie: Dec 25, 2004

majormonotone posted:

Blue Marine Zone is probably the worst level in the Sonic series, and is at least definitely the worst in the 2D games.

It's technically not. Remember, even though it's 16-bit, Sonic 3D Blast DOES have three axes of movement.

# ? Jul 26, 2015 23:35

Daerc: Sep 23, 2007; Look! A door! This must mean something!

Lizard Wizard posted:

It's technically not. Remember, even though it's 16-bit, Sonic 3D Blast DOES have three axes of movement.

Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Blast don't have much in common beyond the name though, and Blue Marine Zone is from the latter.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 00:05

Scaly Haylie: Dec 25, 2004

Daerc posted:

Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Blast don't have much in common beyond the name though, and Blue Marine Zone is from the latter.

Oh, whoops. Somehow I thought that most recent video was a second part of a Sonic 3D Blast race.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 00:08

morallyobjected: Nov 3, 2012

Lizard Wizard posted:

Oh, whoops. Somehow I thought that most recent video was a second part of a Sonic 3D Blast race.

From everything I hear about later Sonics, 3D Blast is far from the worst 3D Sonic, anyway.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 16:02

majormonotone: Jan 25, 2013

morallyobjected posted:

From everything I hear about later Sonics, 3D Blast is far from the worst 3D Sonic, anyway.

At least some enjoyment can be derived from games like Sonic 06. 3D Blast is just Bad and not even in an entertaining way.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 16:14

Shady Amish Terror: Oct 11, 2007; I'm not Amish by choice. 8(

I would actually go so far as to say that it comes down to a matter of opinion. As Godawful Just Bad as it is, I somewhat enjoyed playing 3d Blast on occasion, which puts it probably about on par with Heroes and '06 in my mind as bottom of the 3d barrel. Shadow probably belongs down there as well, but I found it somewhat more playable and it's laughably bad, which is basically the same quality that props up '06 for some people. I actually hate Heroes the most of the 3d games I've played, because beyond being unaccountably obnoxious, it's unplayably buggy, and trying to show it off to a friend recently I Game Over'ed pretty much entirely from being ejected during loops and scripted sequences or falling through floors. 3D Blast is at least mercifully shortish by comparison.

All that aside, it's hard to beat the Game Gear for having a truly awful library. Maybe I just had poor luck with it, but I don't remember playing a single decent game on that handheld.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 19:38

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Shady Amish Terror posted:

All that aside, it's hard to beat the Game Gear for having a truly awful library. Maybe I just had poor luck with it, but I don't remember playing a single decent game on that handheld.

I remember enjoying The GG Shinobi, but then again this was a couple of decades ago. :shrug:

# ? Jul 27, 2015 20:24

Zanzibar Ham: Mar 17, 2009; You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.; Grimey Drawer

Wonder Boy 3 The Dragon's Trap was awesome.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 20:27

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

The T posted:

CURRENT EVENT: Super Mario 3D World Race!
Anyone can join! Just post here that you're interested, with your Skype name, and I'll toss you into the group. You will need a capture card (even a cheap SD one is fine).

THE RULES:
1. Before the first round, you will start a new save file; go into the first level, and then save and quit. This is to ensure you don't have to watch the intro cutscene during the first race. Nothing may be collected prior to the first round, and you may not play on a save file in between rounds.
2. Each round, 1 world will be completed.
3. You may collect as many or as few Green Stars as you want. If a World ends in a Castle gated by Green Stars, you must have enough Green Stars to pass the gate. Required gates to be aware of:
World 1-Castle: 10 Green Stars
World 4-Castle: 50 Green Stars
World Castle-Castle: 130 Green Stars
World Bowser-Castle: 170 Green Stars
4. For the purposes of planning what Green Stars you collect during the race, you will only need to concern yourself with completing World Bowser. In the event that we race the later worlds, only then will you be able to (and expected to) go back and collect the required Green Stars between those race rounds. For worlds before World Bowser, you cannot collect Green Stars between rounds.
5. Time in a round begins after you select a file on the data select screen, and ends upon touching the flag pole after the last boss of a world. After each race, you may travel to the next world and view it's cutscene and save in that world, so you will start in that world next round.
6. You may not travel beyond the current world. However, you may travel to prior worlds to collect Green Stars, prior to beating the boss of the current world.
7. Scoring will be based on a Mario Kart-esque system; the fastest player will earn a set amount of points, and each place below will earn consecutively fewer points. Point values will be based on the number of entrants.
8. Will you sacrifice points in one round by going for more green stars, so you have less to collect in future rounds? INTRIGUE.
SUPER SPECIAL MOST IMPORTANT RULE: Each level, your character must be randomly selected. If you do not, you will receive a time penalty.
SUPER SPECIAL SECOND MOST IMPORTANT RULE: For god's sake, have fun! This is not a serious competition.

Heya everyone! Just throwing out that I'm gonna start planning this soon, so this is sort of a last call for anyone interested!! Just post here with your Skype and I'll add you to the group.

# ? Aug 2, 2015 18:58

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

^--- welp that's still in "it's gonna happen eventually" territory.

In the mean time, here's another race that happened!

Aladdin (SNES): Big Buff Sexy Genie
Starring FlamingRok, GameboyHero, Manic X, Jacobus Spades, majormonotone, and The T

# ? Aug 26, 2015 17:28

Shady Amish Terror: Oct 11, 2007; I'm not Amish by choice. 8(

I'm pleasantly surprised content filters haven't flagged this video into the dirt.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 19:17

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

Shady Amish Terror posted:

I'm pleasantly surprised content filters haven't flagged this video into the dirt.

Hey, I did my research! There are plenty of uploads of Aladdin songs on YouTube, and they're just marked as "hey, buy Aladdin soundtrack". Luckily mine have so much talking over them that they didn't even get picked up at all, but past races have and it's usually no big deal. (Except for that one time that Spinball race was banned in Germany. I think the record companies eventually lightened up though.)

# ? Aug 26, 2015 19:43

Shady Amish Terror: Oct 11, 2007; I'm not Amish by choice. 8(

Ah, well that's good at least.

Also because I hate everything and today is a slow/off day, have a dumb thing based on stupid conversations.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 19:58

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

Shady Amish Terror posted:

Ah, well that's good at least.

Also because I hate everything and today is a slow/off day, have a dumb thing based on stupid conversations.

I love you.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:00

Manic X: Jul 1, 2015

The T posted:

Hey, I did my research! There are plenty of uploads of Aladdin songs on YouTube, and they're just marked as "hey, buy Aladdin soundtrack". Luckily mine have so much talking over them that they didn't even get picked up at all, but past races have and it's usually no big deal. (Except for that one time that Spinball race was banned in Germany. I think the record companies eventually lightened up though.)

yeah I seem to only ever be flagged by Germany.

# ? Sep 1, 2015 17:31

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

Hey everyone. Figured I'd post this out there since this race doesn't have a huge amount of demand (although we can race with what we've got, adding up to 2 more in would be fun), so. Anyone out there interested in joining the Sonic R race? It would be starting from a fresh save file, racing to unlock everything (all characters + beat Radiant Emerald). You must play on either the PC version or the Gamecube version. Just post on here with your Skype ID and I'll get you added if you think you'd be down for it.

# ? Sep 17, 2015 15:26

Slur: Mar 6, 2013; It's the Final Countdown.

The T posted:

Hey everyone. Figured I'd post this out there since this race doesn't have a huge amount of demand (although we can race with what we've got, adding up to 2 more in would be fun), so. Anyone out there interested in joining the Sonic R race? It would be starting from a fresh save file, racing to unlock everything (all characters + beat Radiant Emerald). You must play on either the PC version or the Gamecube version. Just post on here with your Skype ID and I'll get you added if you think you'd be down for it.

There was a Gamecube version of the game?

Slur fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 17, 2015

# ? Sep 17, 2015 15:31

SilverSupernova: Feb 1, 2013

Slur posted:

There was a Gamecube version of the game?

It was part of Sonic Gems Collection, being completely overshadowed by Vectorman.

# ? Oct 13, 2015 17:19

Manic X: Jul 1, 2015

Sup,

T said it'd be cool to post races I do on here to help keep G00N Racing Alive.

It's a shame then that the first race I post is not the best in terms of quality - just bad luck that the 4th racer didn't send their audio after a few months of waiting so I had to just use a universal OBS Audio.

Let's Race Aladdin Sega Genesis - ft. Manic X, SuccinctAndPunchy, Ultigonio, and the voice of: Pat? Cody? Whatever.

# ? Nov 29, 2015 23:00

Synrey: Feb 2, 2016

Is this thread still alive? I can never tell with Something Awful, if it is I'll have to wait for a race that doesn't involve buying a DS/3DS capture card to join in. Even if a good 75% of the games I'd actually be half decent at racing have already been done, hooray.

# ? Feb 2, 2016 12:00

Manic X: Jul 1, 2015

This thread is pretty dead since Goon Racing in general is dieing a slow and painful death...

# ? Feb 2, 2016 23:04

SuccinctAndPunchy: Mar 29, 2013; People are supposed to get hurt by things. It's fucked up to not. It's not good for you.

Synrey posted:

Is this thread still alive? I can never tell with Something Awful, if it is I'll have to wait for a race that doesn't involve buying a DS/3DS capture card to join in. Even if a good 75% of the games I'd actually be half decent at racing have already been done, hooray.

It's pretty dead and I don't think the super mario world 3d race ever actually happened so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

goon races don't really happen much anymore

# ? Feb 3, 2016 03:10

The T: May 29, 2010; A sufficiently chaotic system is maximally fair.

I definitely WANT to do Sonic races again at some point in the future, but yeah, 3D World is definitely dead in the water.

Just busy with so many other things. But if you wanna find out about those, check out my other threads or my YouTube in general.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 03:13

Synrey: Feb 2, 2016

Yeah the Sonic races were the ones I was most butthurt about missing, the Spyro ones being a close second. I'll keep checking in to see if anything comes up, mostly because I really have nothing else to do with my spare time.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 09:05

Jacobus Spades: Oct 29, 2004

At this point if you're really itching to race something (and don't feel like you can't re-race a game if you can pull a group together, its happened before) you might try producing your own. Everything from this thread and the first one is really being produced using just a few free open-source tools (mainly AviSynth) and the hardest part is really just syncing everything and making sure that the video and audio is in the correct format (racers should be pre-compressing their video to MP4 before sending it over anyway). The AVS template in the OP is pretty well annotated and all you really have to do is slot in your own stuff. AVS also has the benefit of opening as a video file in any reputable media player (albeit with very poor playback performance) so you can test that your layouts are working correctly if you need to switch things up for the number of players or the resolution of each person's video.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 20:29

Synrey: Feb 2, 2016

I'm not really itching to race as of now (not that I wouldn't jump in if something popped up), I'm also too busy to be producing something like that at the minute anyway, not to mention hopelessly inexperienced with any sort of editing.
I just figured in I'd pop in and introduce myself instead of only showing up when a race I'm interested in shows up, I'll be getting a new computer in soonish so maybe I'll try pulling something together then.

# ? Feb 4, 2016 08:10

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 18:44

Synrey: Feb 2, 2016

Did that Sonic R race end up happening?

# ? Feb 4, 2016 08:26

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Flailing Around at the Speed of Sound: Let's Race!

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