The Sandcastle - Let's Play Discussion and Drama (Archive info in OP!)

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ricdesi: Mar 18, 2014; Does it really need saying?

Same here, my Super Mario Odyssey thread's a few days behind on OP updates, it keeps 504'ing on me when I try to edit the post.

# ? Mar 30, 2018 17:02

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 21:08

POOL IS CLOSED: Jul 14, 2011; I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.; Pillbug

Also had trouble, couldn't successfully use preview for my latest updates.

# ? Mar 30, 2018 17:11

Arist: Feb 13, 2012; _{who, me?}

When's the earliest this occurred? I had no trouble a week ago with my previous update, but had to use the test poster for the one I posted today.

# ? Mar 30, 2018 17:13

Lotus Aura: Aug 16, 2009; KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

I didn't have any issues with it on Tuesday, but when trying to edit something yesterday it was a no-go then.

# ? Mar 30, 2018 18:49

ricdesi: Mar 18, 2014; Does it really need saying?

The last two days for me, I wasn't able to update on Wednesday.

# ? Mar 30, 2018 19:21

Fedule: Mar 27, 2010; No one left uncured.
I got you.

Have raised this with zen death robot, who acknowledges that "something" isn't right with all this.

# ? Mar 30, 2018 19:56

Mraagvpeine: Nov 4, 2014; I won this avatar on a technicality this thick.

Fedule posted:

Have raised this with zen death robot, who acknowledges that "something" isn't right with all this.

Would you say that something is quite wrong?

# ? Mar 30, 2018 20:34

Dolash: Oct 23, 2008; aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,

I don't know if post-mortems are appropriate for the Sandcastle, but my Legacy of Dragonholt LP ended up attracting very little interest after I posted it, to the point that I couldn't get six character ideas for a party - in my experience, any LP that opens with "hey submit a character!" usually has no problem at least getting that far, so I feel like I must've failed somewhere here.

I've gone ahead and closed the thread, since the format I chose was heavily dependent on audience participation even beyond picking the party, but if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it. Maybe I buried the lede on audience participation, or I threw too much text at the readers up-front, I'm not sure. Here's the thread.

# ? Mar 31, 2018 18:49

IGgy IGsen: Apr 11, 2013; "If I lose I will set myself on fire."

Dolash posted:

I don't know if post-mortems are appropriate for the Sandcastle, but my Legacy of Dragonholt LP ended up attracting very little interest after I posted it, to the point that I couldn't get six character ideas for a party - in my experience, any LP that opens with "hey submit a character!" usually has no problem at least getting that far, so I feel like I must've failed somewhere here.

I've gone ahead and closed the thread, since the format I chose was heavily dependent on audience participation even beyond picking the party, but if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it. Maybe I buried the lede on audience participation, or I threw too much text at the readers up-front, I'm not sure. Here's the thread.

The thread wasn't even six hours old, man. You gotta give it some time, especially now that there's probably some weirdos who are visiting people for easter.

# ? Mar 31, 2018 19:16

Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

Yeah, gonna go ahead and say that you closed it too soon and that posting during the long weekend is going to affect immediate traffic. Leave it up for the weekend. Advertise in the New LP thread. Give it some time.

# ? Mar 31, 2018 19:24

Dolash: Oct 23, 2008; aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,

IGgy IGsen posted:

The thread wasn't even six hours old, man. You gotta give it some time, especially now that there's probably some weirdos who are visiting people for easter.

To be fair, the thread's two days old and I'd already bumped it back from page 2/3 a couple times, I felt like bumping it yet again might've started to sound desperate and once it was on page 3 I figured nobody'd find it at that point.

I didn't think to advertise in the New LP thread though, that might've helped, yeah.

# ? Mar 31, 2018 19:36

HerpicleOmnicron5: May 31, 2013; How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?

Dolash posted:

I don't know if post-mortems are appropriate for the Sandcastle, but my Legacy of Dragonholt LP ended up attracting very little interest after I posted it, to the point that I couldn't get six character ideas for a party - in my experience, any LP that opens with "hey submit a character!" usually has no problem at least getting that far, so I feel like I must've failed somewhere here.

I've gone ahead and closed the thread, since the format I chose was heavily dependent on audience participation even beyond picking the party, but if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it. Maybe I buried the lede on audience participation, or I threw too much text at the readers up-front, I'm not sure. Here's the thread.

You either need a good establishing hook, a setting/system people are really into and patience to get people submitting stuff. You dropped a wall of text, initially went PMs only for submission and didnt edit that out, and gave up within a day. Also the aforementioned lack of post in New LPs meant you only got the people who checked the subforum on that exact day.

# ? Apr 1, 2018 00:22

Siegkrow: Oct 11, 2013; Arguing about Lore for 5 years and counting

HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

You either need a good establishing hook, a setting/system people are really into and patience to get people submitting stuff. You dropped a wall of text, initially went PMs only for submission and didnt edit that out, and gave up within a day. Also the aforementioned lack of post in New LPs meant you only got the people who checked the subforum on that exact day.

Yeah I came in, was interested in reading, saw the audience participation thing and my interest was piqued, the I saw it was PM only and I noped out of the thread (what with me not being plat) and told myself I would come back once there was one or two updates.

# ? Apr 1, 2018 00:27

Siegkrow: Oct 11, 2013; Arguing about Lore for 5 years and counting

Hey since this is the general chat for the LP subforum, I'd like to bring up Leal, who temporally closed his Thread due to IRL stuff and I would like to voice moral support.

# ? Apr 1, 2018 00:49

Dolash: Oct 23, 2008; aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,

Ahhh I did forget to edit the post to say submissions could be in-thread also, drat. And I guess the Easter long-weekend might've worked against it rather than for it like I figured. Okay, yeah, I bungled this one.

# ? Apr 1, 2018 06:01

Leal: Oct 2, 2009

Siegkrow posted:

Hey since this is the general chat for the LP subforum, I'd like to bring up Leal, who temporally closed his Thread due to IRL stuff and I would like to voice moral support.

Thanks, I really appreciate it :unsmith:

Its really hitting hard cause not only did it happen in a new household, its barely been a year since my last break in.

# ? Apr 1, 2018 23:14

Siegkrow: Oct 11, 2013; Arguing about Lore for 5 years and counting

Jesus Christ. That is terrible luck.
Is there anything you could do? I'd recommend a guard dog, but back when my family had one, the assholes just threw a poisoned egg sammich in our front yard. RIP Urko, he was the sweetest dog, he only looked intimidating.

Sorry that ran away from me. Maybe an alarm system?

# ? Apr 2, 2018 03:26

BioEnchanted: Aug 9, 2011; He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.

Or a shotgun attached to the front door that is disarmed by turning the key, like in Saw.

# ? Apr 2, 2018 08:02

Supeerme: Sep 13, 2010

Ok, I am restarting my Digimon World Next Order LP but in a video format instead. How do you make the videos show up as a clickable link? I have been trying to use URL but it doesn't seem to work.

Here is the OP:
Welcome to Digimon World Next Order.

What is this Game?
Digimon World: Next Order is a sequel/remake of the PSX game Digimon World. It has been released as a Japan-only product on the PSP only coming on to the PS4 in March 2017. Many of the features of
Digimon World still remains here but with a wonderful modern twist and much-needed quality of life features such as easy access to devolution charts and even a building designed to help the player directly choose which Digimon to digiolve into.
Some of the old areas still exist but it is mostly new zones/areas. File City becomes Flotilla City and so on.

How many Digimon are there? Are you going to 100% this game?
There is 231 Partner Digimon to get and no I will not be getting them all as it will take me literal months or even years to get. I will be getting all of the city Digimon however as that is much easier to do.

How will you be LP�ing this game?
I will be doing a video with Voice Commentary. The first video doesn�t have any commentary as the tutorial will be explaining how to play without any problems. I will also be making videos that will explain some of the game mechanics in detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inhZWElAHFQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdEQvAtZlBk

# ? Apr 2, 2018 11:26

Leal: Oct 2, 2009

Siegkrow posted:

Jesus Christ. That is terrible luck.
Is there anything you could do? I'd recommend a guard dog, but back when my family had one, the assholes just threw a poisoned egg sammich in our front yard. RIP Urko, he was the sweetest dog, he only looked intimidating.

Sorry that ran away from me. Maybe an alarm system?

Sadly no pets allowed here. All I can do is put some cameras and make the house a pain to break into, and if they do manage it to make it a trial to actually get to anything valuable. Ideally long enough for me to hop into my car and race home.

BioEnchanted posted:

Or a shotgun attached to the front door that is disarmed by turning the key, like in Saw.

I live in California, guns aren't legal.

# ? Apr 2, 2018 20:42

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Supeerme posted:

Ok, I am restarting my Digimon World Next Order LP but in a video format instead. How do you make the videos show up as a clickable link? I have been trying to use URL but it doesn't seem to work.

Use the [ video ] tag to embed a Youtube video into a post. Otherwise, you could make an image and then use that to link to the video.

# ? Apr 3, 2018 00:24

Lotus Aura: Aug 16, 2009; KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

Don't embed in an OP. It'll either be useless for sensible people who turn embeds off, or it'll very quickly lag threads to poo poo for anyone that has it on.

code:

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inhZWElAHFQ]Episode 01. Digidive[/url]

Or, yeah, use an image in the middle. Whatever you think works there.

# ? Apr 3, 2018 00:51

Supeerme: Sep 13, 2010

Ok, thank you. As I haven't heard anything about the videos themselves I presume that it is fine to start the LP. I guess my Url attempts was just being blocked by the auto video BBcode. I will be uploading a whole bunch of videos during the LP so putting images will just clog up the OP.

# ? Apr 3, 2018 10:31

that ivy guy: May 20, 2015

If you do Ctrl+Shift+V or just right click paste as plain text, it should bypass the automatic feature that creates a video embed for you.

# ? Apr 3, 2018 18:14

Epicmissingno: Jul 1, 2017; Thank gooness we all get along so well!

Can I get some feedback on this enemy bio design? The test poster doesn't work well with tabs or just multiple spaces in a row in general, so I can't put it on there.

#002 Cruelcumber posted:

Plant Family
HP: 10 MP: 2
Attack: 12 Defence: 9 Agility: 10
Exp: 3 Gold:5
Resistances
Fire: 125 Ice: 125 Wind: 125 Blast: 125
Earth: 125 Dark: 125 Light: 125
Dazzle: 100 Sleep: 100 Death: 100 Drain Magic: 100
Confuse: 100 Fizzle: 0 Inaction: 100 Poison: 100
Paralyse: 100 Charm: 100 Blunt: 100
Sap: 100 Decelerate: 100 Divine Intervention: 100

Common Drop: Antidotal Herb (1/8)
Rare Drop: Moonwort Bulb (1/128)

Poky little vegetables that often trouble travellers, but are terribly sour losers.
The violent vestiges of veggies vetoed by anadventurous eaters. They fight for the favour they didn't find as food.

It's going to be in the quote box in the LP, too. Any suggestions?

Edit: Oh, the forums don't work well with multiple spaces in a row either. That's good to know.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 01:38

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

If you want to align things using spaces, use a [ code ] block or the [ fixed ] tag, both of which force a monospaced font.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 01:41

Arist: Feb 13, 2012; _{who, me?}

I have no idea what kind of LP you're doing but that just kinda feels like too much information for me. I'd totally tune most of that out, maybe excepting the description, because as a viewer I have no reason to read any of those numbers unless there's something particularly notable about one of them. If there is, it's your job as the LPer to point that out.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 01:46

Jamesman: Nov 19, 2004; "First off, let me start by saying curly light blond hair does not suit Hyomin at all. Furthermore,"; Fun Shoe

Epicmissingno posted:

Can I get some feedback on this enemy bio design? The test poster doesn't work well with tabs or just multiple spaces in a row in general, so I can't put it on there.

It's going to be in the quote box in the LP, too. Any suggestions?

Edit: Oh, the forums don't work well with multiple spaces in a row either. That's good to know.

I think you're better off making an image template for all the information, where you can edit the text depending on the monster. That way you can more efficiently deliver that information without it being a huge text dump.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 02:02

Epicmissingno: Jul 1, 2017; Thank gooness we all get along so well!

Arist posted:

I have no idea what kind of LP you're doing but that just kinda feels like too much information for me. I'd totally tune most of that out, maybe excepting the description, because as a viewer I have no reason to read any of those numbers unless there's something particularly notable about one of them. If there is, it's your job as the LPer to point that out.

Yeah, that's understandable. I was going to do a short breakdown of the salient points anyway, but I just didn't put it here because this was more about the stat block than what it's actually about.

This is the "improved" version, although it still might not be all that great. It's also got my notes on the thing, so judge those as you will.

#002 Cruelcumber posted:

code:

Plant Family
HP: 10         MP: 2
Attack: 12     Defence: 9    Agility: 10
Exp: 3         Gold:5

Resistances
Fire: 125      Ice: 125      Wind: 125       Blast: 125
Earth: 125     Dark: 125     Light: 125

Dazzle: 100    Sleep: 100    Poison: 100     Drain Magic: 100
Confuse: 100   Fizzle: 0     Paralyse: 100   Inaction: 100
Charm: 100     Death: 100    Blunt: 100      Sap: 100
Decelerate: 100              Divine Intervention: 100

Common Drop: Antidotal Herb (1/8)
Rare Drop: Moonwort Bulb (1/128)

Poky little vegetables that often trouble travellers, but are terribly sour losers.
The violent vestiges of veggies vetoed by unadventurous eaters. They fight for the favour they didn't find as food.

I know all that is a lot to take in, but the main thing to take away from that wall of text is that Cruelcumbers are weak to all elements and immune to Fizzle, the muting ailment. That's almost certainly not going to matter because they're so weak, though.

Cruelcumbers can either attack or flee, but they'll only try to do the latter if they're faced with an opponent far stronger than themselves.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 02:05

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

I personally like the information provided, but I've beaten DQ9 and know what that stuff means. Dr. Fetus is providing similarly in-depth monster bios in his 7th Dragon LP, as well, and I've seen other RPG LPs provide "full" monster bios, so it's not like there's no precedent, either.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 02:21

Arist: Feb 13, 2012; _{who, me?}

All right then. That was just me projecting because I find it weird including even the token amount of enemy information I do in my own LP.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 02:22

DoubleNegative: Jan 27, 2010; The most virtuous child in the entire world.

Jamesman posted:

I think you're better off making an image template for all the information, where you can edit the text depending on the monster. That way you can more efficiently deliver that information without it being a huge text dump.

Doing things as an image can actually be kinda difficult. When you're working with a template, you have to be judicious in cutting out any useless information to keep stuff as clean as possible.

Honestly, I don't recommend doing bestiary stuff for a RPG LP. Not unless you have a strategy guide you can screengrab from.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 02:27

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Epicmissingno posted:

Edit: Oh, the forums don't work well with multiple spaces in a row either. That's good to know.

It's your browser, not any particular website. That's actually part of the HTML display specification. It's a holdover from when people actually used to edit webpages by hand.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 02:37

Araxxor: Oct 20, 2012; My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

I wouldn't bother with bestiary entries if the RPG isn't significantly gameplay based. I did it for Etrian Odyssey 2 and 3 because the random encounters in that series can be utterly vicious compared to most other RPGs, and actually knowing how to defuse them is a very important part of the gameplay. And even then I still point out the important stuff because I genuinely do not expect everyone to read everything on there. I especially wouldn't bother if it's heavily story based, because that's likely not what your audience is there for. (Granted in your case, it's Dragon Quest, and that's not exactly a series known for being doorstopper novels.)

Araxxor fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Apr 4, 2018

# ? Apr 4, 2018 03:13

Jamesman: Nov 19, 2004; "First off, let me start by saying curly light blond hair does not suit Hyomin at all. Furthermore,"; Fun Shoe

DoubleNegative posted:

Doing things as an image can actually be kinda difficult. When you're working with a template, you have to be judicious in cutting out any useless information to keep stuff as clean as possible.

vs

Honestly, I don't recommend doing bestiary stuff for a RPG LP. Not unless you have a strategy guide you can screengrab from.

Those both look fine to me?

# ? Apr 4, 2018 05:57

Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

it looks like a tonne of extra work to me :/

# ? Apr 4, 2018 06:58

ivantod: Mar 27, 2010; Mahalo, fuckers.

Hey guys, I was just wondering if there are any updates regarding the Cloudflare timeout error when posting longer posts? As far as I can see, it's still an ongoing problem.

Does anybody have any workarounds--it makes posting SSLPs a bit annoying (I know I can use the test poster for now, but...)?

Thanks.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 07:58

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

So, I'm looking at starting up an LP of the PSX version of Wild Arms. How does this look?

quote:

Laying It All On The Ray Line - Let's Play Wild Arms!

What is Wild Arms?
Wild Arms is a JRPG released in 1996 in Japan, 1997 in North America, and 1998 in Europe for the PlayStation. It's known for being one of the few JRPGs to adopt a fantasy-Western setting, with genuine gunslingers showing up alongside the usual assortment of wizards and warriors common to the genre. Despite releasing the same year as Final Fantasy VII, it sold well enough that it spawned a franchise spanning five mainline games, one spin-off, and a remake of the first game on PS2 (which already has an excellent LP by Krysmphoenix). It was re-released as a PSOne Classic for PS3 and PSP in 2007 (or 2012 if you live in Europe).

What about this LP?
This will be a screenshot LP, with videos for boss battles. Since it's my first LP, I'm not going to guarantee any sort of update schedule, but I'll be aiming for once a week. I'm also not going to promise to 100% the game, but it's fairly short by-the-numbers, so I'll see about it as we near the end of the game.

Spoilers
I'm going to adopt a no spoiler policy on this game. No black bars, no "nudge, nudge, wink, wink", no nothing. If we haven't seen it yet, don't talk about it! Additionally, while I'm not currently planning to LP the entire series, LPs of at least two other Wild Arms games are a possibility in the future, so no spoilers on other games in the series, either. The one exception I'll allow is discussion on the differences between this version of the game and Alter Code F, as long as no discussion goes beyond what we've seen in the LP.

Part 0 - Prologue

# ? Apr 4, 2018 08:56

vilkacis: Feb 16, 2011

Commander Keene posted:

So, I'm looking at starting up an LP of the PSX version of Wild Arms. How does this look?

Oh hey, Wild Arms is Good.

Anyway. There's some blurring in the screenshots.

How are you capturing this? If it's from video, make sure it's lossless.

Definitely crop out those black borders. (Irfanview can do batch cropping.)

Recommend a blank line between any/all commentary, screenshots, dialogue, etc for better readability.

Al's single-sized portrait looks odd next to the double-sized humans. I'd just make everything 1x-sized, personally.

Don't be afraid to include shots of things happening, like the king getting nuked. It feels like something's missing if we just go straight from him being there to... not being there.

That stamp-sized gif is kind of funny, but it's way too small. You can definitely get away with reducing the number of frames a bit in exchange for making it bigger - this is half the frames and four times the size, not terribly heavy, still smooth, and actually big enough to make out what's happening.

Generally you shouldn't need to crop down the gifs so much; even full screen images generally won't get that big (provided you're, again, using lossless video to capture them). Some things work cut down (small personal stuff like

) but for the most part they'd probably look better uncropped.

# ? Apr 4, 2018 10:16

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 21:08

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

vilkacis posted:

Oh hey, Wild Arms is Good.

Anyway. There's some blurring in the screenshots.

How are you capturing this? If it's from video, make sure it's lossless.

Capturing by recording footage from ePSXe using OBS. I'm pretty sure that blurring is coming from the video codec I'm using in OBS (utvideo) but it's the best option I've found so far; all the others either produced absolutely gigantic file sizes (and weren't readable by the editing software) or even blurrier video. I even posted in the Tech Support Fort a few days ago for help, but I only got a couple of responses. If you have any good recommendations as to video codecs, or if OBS isn't the way to go with this and there's a better (freeware) screen recorder I'm all ears; I'll even re-record that update.

vilkacis posted:

Definitely crop out those black borders. (Irfanview can do batch cropping.)

The black borders are in-game; they only appear in the prologue. The dialogue even appears within the bottom "border". And I think if I crop the screens in the prologue, once I get to the main game the prologue will look off comparatively, due to all the screens being different sizes. If it really looks bad, I suppose I could crop them, but I'd prefer to leave them as-is.

vilkacis posted:

Recommend a blank line between any/all commentary, screenshots, dialogue, etc for better readability.

Will do. I'd figured it might be better for readability to have my comments next to the shot they're referencing, but if it's better the other way, it's an easy fix.

vilkacis posted:

Al's single-sized portrait looks odd next to the double-sized humans. I'd just make everything 1x-sized, personally.

Yeah, I was a bit worried about that. But the single-sized sprites for the humans make everything too tiny, and I'm planning to use official art portraits for the characters that have some to use. I could size Al up to match, though.

vilkacis posted:

Don't be afraid to include shots of things happening, like the king getting nuked. It feels like something's missing if we just go straight from him being there to... not being there.

OK, I was going to gif that, but I decided it might be too similar to Ryan, so I left it out. Would a gif be better, or should I just include a screen mid-nuke?

vilkacis posted:

That stamp-sized gif is kind of funny, but it's way too small. You can definitely get away with reducing the number of frames a bit in exchange for making it bigger - this is half the frames and four times the size, not terribly heavy, still smooth, and actually big enough to make out what's happening.

I'll readily admit I'm a complete newbie when it comes to video and gifs; I'm not really sure how to remove frames and still keep it looking smooth. I'm using VirtualDub to pull the gif from the footage, and Gimp to optimize. If there's a better way, or if you know a good guide or tutorial, I'm all ears.

vilkacis posted:

Generally you shouldn't need to crop down the gifs so much; even full screen images generally won't get that big (provided you're, again, using lossless video to capture them). Some things work cut down (small personal stuff like ) but for the most part they'd probably look better uncropped.

So I should keep the whole screen when I make gifs unless it's something very small and localized? Fine by me. I was trying to minimize file sizes in order to decrease the load on browsers (and slower Internet connections).

# ? Apr 4, 2018 11:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > The Sandcastle - Let's Play Discussion and Drama (Archive info in OP!)

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