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

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Psycho Knight: Jan 19, 2017; "Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

Commander Keene posted:

If you're playing a console game via emulator, I'd recommend going with the emulator's built-in recording, if at all possible. At the very least, I haven't ever had any video or audio problems going from that.

As for other screen recorders, I don't have a whole lot of experience, but OBS didn't gently caress up the sound quality the two times I used it (to record footage from Wild Arms and Devil Survivor).

I figured it out after some fiddling. I forgot that my headset audio is managed by proprietary software, and it was set to virtual surround sound for things not in 7.1/5.1. It was taking stereo audio and trying to make it surround.

So with that nonsense figured out, as well as all the loving around I had to do to make the game work with my DS4 controller, I'm all set on the recording front. I have enough footage recorded to be able to set up an intro and an update that shows off dialog/cutscenes/battles. So now begins the process of figuring out the best way to get screencaps and all the coding fun. On my way to a test post.

# ? Sep 21, 2018 23:30

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 12:38

vilkacis: Feb 16, 2011

Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

It's probably some real dumb validation somewhere and the substring 'err', a common programmer shorthand for 'error'.

Huh.

I experimented and it seems the problem is the string "erri" - err.png uploaded, as did ferr.png but it refused ferri.png and erri.png/erris.png.

Something to keep in mind if you want to use a word like "terrible" in the file name, I guess :v:

# ? Sep 22, 2018 00:08

Hwurmp: May 20, 2005

my narrative LP about Italian author Erri De Luca being sucked into a time-warp and becoming a Blood Ravens Force Commander was dead before it was even born :smith:

e: I was going to call it "The Day Before Chainswords"

Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Sep 22, 2018

# ? Sep 22, 2018 00:30

baldurk: Jun 21, 2005; If you won't try to find coherence in the world, have the courtesy of becoming apathetic.

Works for me uploading on the site itself and via sharex. Maybe a bug with the rightload response parsing but screw fixing that, the solution is don't use rightload.

# ? Sep 22, 2018 01:50

vilkacis: Feb 16, 2011

Yes, definitely a rightload thing, then.

# ? Sep 22, 2018 13:19

TheMcD: May 4, 2013; Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

FPzero posted:

In a technical sense the LP looks fine but I have a few suggestions. Screens feel big but that's probably because I'm used to my 640x360 images. Probably not an issue though.

I went with 900px width because I had it in my Root Double LP, and it worked well there. Should also help a bit with higher resolution displays. Dunno if mobile devices would have difficulties, though. Never really had to consider that.

FPzero posted:

The "Meeting Byakuya Togami" video didn't start playing video until a few seconds in, though the audio did start. It might be a bit of a hassle to record but might I suggest turning on subtitles for the videos? Or just making sure that the voice volume is set higher than you might normally play with it at just so that everything comes across clearly without the music and sound effects drowning out the speech.

Also, I think you have the Byakuya video a little too low down in the update considering it starts when Komaru is running to the elevator but you put the link after he's already shot the Monokuma. Makes the viewer re-watch part of what they've already read.

I can't find a subtitle option in the game. I don't think it exists. If somebody knows if there are subtitles for the cutscenes in this game, let me know, because they'd help a lot.

I've already recorded all of the prologue, so the audio would be a bit soft on the voices for the rest of that part, but I'll make sure to turn down the music and sound a bit more. I also re-cut and re-uploaded the Meeting Byakuya clip and made it start at the point where I put it, so that should fit now as well.

vilkacis posted:

Maybe get rid of the piece of... hair? floating in the upper right corner? Its existence bothers me.

I went ahead and edited all of Komaru's headshots to remove the little blip of her Ahoge of Protagonistness.

The post I made is now edited to take those changes into account.

Anything else?

# ? Sep 22, 2018 14:40

SoundwaveAU: Apr 17, 2018

The only subtitles Ultra Despair Girls has in cutscenes are if you play the game in Japanese. So if for example a character says a line that you just can't make out or transcribe accurately, you can give that a go.

Absolute next level would be overlaying English audio over the Japanese video so it has the subtitles, but I don't think that's necessary.

By the way, very happy to see a LP of Ultra Despair Girls. I like it a lot. It has a bad reputation, definitely partly earned, but a lot of people seem to ignore the good. Unfortunately its reputation precedes it to such an extent that I've talked to a lot of people who were adamant about its low quality, only for them to reveal that they've actually never played it.

Not sure how you're planning to tackle sprites but I'd recommend giving us a full screenshot for any new sprites that show up? Obviously not all the time such as in situations like that Byakuya/Komaru conversation or it'd be full screenshots for all the dialogue as the characters are having a conversation in the overworld for the first time and thus all their sprites are fresh.

Screenshots overall are good. Especially for the anime portion, which is the hardest to capture in screenshots. I don't know if this is in the cards but I think you should also include an icon or something to highlight new music tracks that haven't played before. In addition, don't be afraid to interject with your thoughts on certain tracks or anything else. It's your LP after all.

SoundwaveAU fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Sep 22, 2018

# ? Sep 22, 2018 19:09

Level 1 Thief: Dec 17, 2007; I'm busy, and I'm having fun.

Speaking of Danganronpa, I'd been preparing to do an LP for DRV3 for a while now, and I was actually finished with a draft of the prologue post and just about ready to kick it off for real before I decided not to go through with it after all.

Rather than leaving all the setup I did to go nowhere, if anyone happens to have a use for about 650 transparent 85x85 DRV3 character portraits, here you go. (some spoilers in there)

# ? Sep 22, 2018 22:48

Psycho Knight: Jan 19, 2017; "Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

Doc M posted:

Here's my workflow for SSLPs:

- Record a couple of hours of gameplay video (enough for several updates)

- Open the recording in Premiere and use the screenshot function to capture the frames I want as PNGs (every line of dialogue so you can transcribe it, every slightly interesting thing that happens even if you end up not showing it off in the actual update)

- Batch resize images to 900px wide in Irfanview, convert from PNG to JPG if necessary (if the LP requires using PNGs, optimize those at this point)

- Make and upload any new character portraits that may be required

- Upload images to LPix using ShareX or Rightload, preferably ShareX because the LPix plugin for Rightload is outdated

- Write the text of the update (I use Notepad++), include relevant BBcode tags, and link to the images. You can use something like RightloadURLAutoReplace to cut your workload by quite a large amount when it comes to linking your uploaded pics. For transcribing, you can find a script of the game or use some sort of OCR software like Capture2Text... or you can type it out manually, but I do not recommend that if you're playing something like The Witcher! (Incidentally, The Witcher's script doesn't seem to be available online, and the game does not play nice with Capture2Text )

- Once you're done, copy-paste your update into the SSLP Test Poster to see that everything looks okay and there are no duplicate images (it's pretty easy to accidentally put in the wrong filename for the autoreplace plugin) or any other huge obvious mistakes. This is also the point I'd add any music links or such.

- When everything looks decent-ish, copy-paste your update from the test poster to your thread

As you might imagine, all of this eats up a lot of time, even when you don't count the initial gameplay recording. My updates would regularly take up to 8 hours in total to put together, you may be able to do it faster if you're better at coming up with entertaining or interesting commentary than I am but you are still looking at several hours of work for each update that covers maybe 30 minutes of gameplay. And you have to do all of this 40 or 50 times per LP, maybe more than a hundred times if you're playing something really long.

Just spent like 3 hours transcribing dialog and only made it 18 minutes in. :gonk:

The introduction on this game is so much drat longer when you have to type it out. Still haven't reached any solid gameplay sections where I can introduce the battle system, stopped taking screenshots like 3 minutes in because it's getting ridiculous. I'll just get the dialog first, then fill in parts with screenshots afterward. Starting to wonder if the introduction dialog and scenes are going to have to be made into their own update. Why did I zero in on a JRPG.

# ? Sep 23, 2018 00:51

FPzero: Oct 20, 2008; Game Over
Return of Mido

Level 1 Thief posted:

Speaking of Danganronpa, I'd been preparing to do an LP for DRV3 for a while now, and I was actually finished with a draft of the prologue post and just about ready to kick it off for real before I decided not to go through with it after all.

Rather than leaving all the setup I did to go nowhere, if anyone happens to have a use for about 650 transparent 85x85 DRV3 character portraits, here you go. (some spoilers in there)

Thanks. I grabbed these on the off chance I go crazy and decide to do V3 eventually. Would save me the effort of doing them myself.

# ? Sep 23, 2018 05:21

TheMcD: May 4, 2013; Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

SoundwaveAU posted:

The only subtitles Ultra Despair Girls has in cutscenes are if you play the game in Japanese. So if for example a character says a line that you just can't make out or transcribe accurately, you can give that a go.

Absolute next level would be overlaying English audio over the Japanese video so it has the subtitles, but I don't think that's necessary.

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to go that far, but I'll keep it in mind if I run into a line I can't figure out, thanks!

SoundwaveAU posted:

By the way, very happy to see a LP of Ultra Despair Girls. I like it a lot. It has a bad reputation, definitely partly earned, but a lot of people seem to ignore the good. Unfortunately its reputation precedes it to such an extent that I've talked to a lot of people who were adamant about its low quality, only for them to reveal that they've actually never played it.

Hey, at least that makes two of us! One more than I thought I'd have!

SoundwaveAU posted:

Not sure how you're planning to tackle sprites but I'd recommend giving us a full screenshot for any new sprites that show up? Obviously not all the time such as in situations like that Byakuya/Komaru conversation or it'd be full screenshots for all the dialogue as the characters are having a conversation in the overworld for the first time and thus all their sprites are fresh.

I'll have to see how I want to do this, because yeah, early conversations would just turn into a total screenshot-fest that way. I think I'll just have to play this by ear, fly by the seat of my pants, all that good stuff. Not that that would be a change from my usual LPing modus operandi.

SoundwaveAU posted:

Screenshots overall are good. Especially for the anime portion, which is the hardest to capture in screenshots. I don't know if this is in the cards but I think you should also include an icon or something to highlight new music tracks that haven't played before. In addition, don't be afraid to interject with your thoughts on certain tracks or anything else. It's your LP after all.

I did find this nice thing in the sprite rips from Spriters Resource:

So I'll be using that to designate new music now. I edited the post with that in mind, and also gave some additional thoughts on the music which I wanted to add originally but somehow just forgot. I edited all that stuff into the test post.

I'll leave the test post sit there for a few more days before I'll post the thread. One last thing I need to figure out is the thread title. Current tendency: This IT Startup Is Making A Killing - Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls

# ? Sep 23, 2018 14:06

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

People often forget: we mods are happy to change thread titles. If you've got more than one contender PM us when you want a change.

# ? Sep 23, 2018 17:55

Lacedaemonius: Jan 18, 2015; Rub a dub dub

Doc M posted:

- Open the recording in Premiere and use the screenshot function to capture the frames I want as PNGs (every line of dialogue so you can transcribe it, every slightly interesting thing that happens even if you end up not showing it off in the actual update)

Unless you're big on :filez:

there's no reason to get premiere just for that. Shift + s in VLC does the exact same thing, as does the s key in mpv.

# ? Sep 23, 2018 19:27

Rea: Apr 5, 2011; Komi-san won.

AvsPmod is also good for that.

# ? Sep 23, 2018 19:38

DMorbid: Jan 6, 2011; Hello! I see you.

Lacedaemonius posted:

Unless you're big on there's no reason to get premiere just for that.

Of course not. I use Premiere for a lot of other stuff, and I just like to use it to grab my screenshots as well.

# ? Sep 23, 2018 21:20

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

Lacedaemonius posted:

Unless you're big on there's no reason to get premiere just for that. Shift + s in VLC does the exact same thing, as does the s key in mpv.

VLC does have a few issues with screenshots. I had an issue at one point that turned all the screenshots I grabbed with it blue for some reason and I couldn't find a solution. I find that Irfanview has a good screenshotting function as well as its batch processing capabilities, though.

# ? Sep 23, 2018 22:33

corn in the bible: Jun 5, 2004; Oh no oh god it's all true!

if you're pulling screens from a video already virtualdub can just copy whatever the output is and you can paste it somewhere, i guess

# ? Sep 23, 2018 22:55

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

corn in the bible posted:

if you're pulling screens from a video already virtualdub can just copy whatever the output is and you can paste it somewhere, i guess

This. It's how I do things and it's as simple as copy the output, alt-tab over to Irfanview, paste, save, rinse, repeat. If all you're doing is taking screenshots, you can get quite a few in a short period. Handy if VLC doesn't want to save snapshots for whatever contrived reason it's come up with this time.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 00:15

Geemer: Nov 4, 2010

corn in the bible posted:

if you're pulling screens from a video already virtualdub can just copy whatever the output is and you can paste it somewhere, i guess

If you can open it with virtualdub, you can probably also open it with AvsPmod (or write a quick wrapper to do so). And then set up the hotkey to save the current frame. This cuts out having to swap back and forth between your video editor and your image editor.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 00:28

Mega64: May 23, 2008; I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.

Geemer posted:

If you can open it with virtualdub, you can probably also open it with AvsPmod (or write a quick wrapper to do so). And then set up the hotkey to save the current frame. This cuts out having to swap back and forth between your video editor and your image editor.

This plus you can do your cropping and resizing in the script, so all you�d have to do is batch convert to JPG if necessary.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 01:23

Psycho Knight: Jan 19, 2017; "Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

@Doc M - By the way, how well has Capture2Text worked for you? When it does work of course.

Going to continue with transcribing tonight, but while I was doing it last time I thought about what kind of work would still be required in terms of editing if I used Capture software. Just in terms of spelling errors and having to go back and match dialog to characters.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 15:42

DMorbid: Jan 6, 2011; Hello! I see you.

Psycho Knight posted:

@Doc M - By the way, how well has Capture2Text worked for you? When it does work of course.

Going to continue with transcribing tonight, but while I was doing it last time I thought about what kind of work would still be required in terms of editing if I used Capture software. Just in terms of spelling errors and having to go back and match dialog to characters.

My experience has been that when the game has white or light-colored text on a a solid black or dark background, such as Jade Empire or Persona, C2T works quite well. It occasionally interprets a comma as a period or vice versa and might have some issues with capital letters and such, but as a whole it works very nicely for that kind of text and most of the time you can just copy-paste its results straight into your update.

On the other hand, if you're playing something like The Witcher where the text is simply laid over the game graphics, C2T barely works most of the time and interprets the text as a garbled mess of characters if there's anything going on in the background. Maybe there's some way to mitigate this, but I never figured it out myself.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 16:11

FPzero: Oct 20, 2008; Game Over
Return of Mido

My screenshot grabbing and processing process was to record the video as mp4 with OBS, then open it in MPC-HC. I bound "Screen Capture" to the + key on my numpad and so I'd just let the video go through and capture images that way. Then I'd use IrfanView to batch process them all when finished.

There are obviously a million ways to capture images from a video. It just comes down to finding one that you like.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 17:33

Psycho Knight: Jan 19, 2017; "Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

Doc M posted:

My experience has been that when the game has white or light-colored text on a a solid black or dark background, such as Jade Empire or Persona, C2T works quite well. It occasionally interprets a comma as a period or vice versa and might have some issues with capital letters and such, but as a whole it works very nicely for that kind of text and most of the time you can just copy-paste its results straight into your update.

On the other hand, if you're playing something like The Witcher where the text is simply laid over the game graphics, C2T barely works most of the time and interprets the text as a garbled mess of characters if there's anything going on in the background. Maybe there's some way to mitigate this, but I never figured it out myself.

I guess I'll just have to download and give it a shot myself. The game has white text on a black background, but said background is semi-transparent (I cannot adjust transparency in the options as far as I can tell). The game uses that Live2D style that causes character portraits to move slightly at all times, which of course means that you can see stuff like hands moving around behind the dialog boxes. From your description, it's hard to tell if that will screw with Capture2Text or not.

FPzero posted:

My screenshot grabbing and processing process was to record the video as mp4 with OBS, then open it in MPC-HC. I bound "Screen Capture" to the + key on my numpad and so I'd just let the video go through and capture images that way. Then I'd use IrfanView to batch process them all when finished.

There are obviously a million ways to capture images from a video. It just comes down to finding one that you like.

I used the VLC method and it seems to work fine for me. It worked a little too well though, as I started out taking screenshots of every line of dialog while transcribing. I'm going to try just transcribing first, then doing the BBcode to make it forum ready, then I'll replace bits of the dialog with screenshots to fill things in.

I just wrapped up the bulk of my current assignment work, so when I get back tonight I'm going to try messing around with the images for a while. I shouldn't have any trouble getting head portraits for all of the characters (including different expressions for each of them), but I'm not looking forward to trying to edit out the backgrounds. There's no artwork viewer or assets in the game files for me to grab for the characters that would easily give me the different expressions.

Another quick question. I started infusing my own commentary or 'character dialog' (whatever you want to call it) as I was transcribing, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. I know LP posters usually put that stuff in italics, but would you recommend separating the actual dialog with :airquote:

funny dialog :airquote:

using a line break? Or is it fine to leave it all in one line as long as the stuff I add in is italicized?

Edit: Here's an example-

[Ruby]: Let me add that your Ether Count is 60. Male Disciples average around 50, so it is rather impressive.

[Ruby]: Mm, there may be hope for you yet.

[Chlotz]: Really? Hear that Wake!? 60! Beat that.

[Wake]: Yes Chlotz, we're all proud of you for being above average.

Actual dialog is followed by dialog I added. Should I keep this as is and have the character portrait repeat? Or is it acceptable to just do this:

[Ruby]: Let me add that your Ether Count is 60. Male Disciples average around 50, so it is rather impressive. Mm, there may be hope for you yet.

[Chlotz]: Really? Hear that Wake!? 60! Beat that.

[Wake]: Yes Chlotz, we're all proud of you for being above average.

Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Sep 24, 2018

# ? Sep 24, 2018 18:22

Artix: Apr 26, 2010; He's finally back, to kick some tail! And this time, he's goin' to jail!

Separate them with another portrait. Having them on the same line gets confusing very quickly.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 19:05

HenryEx: Mar 25, 2009; ...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...; Grimey Drawer

Hey so, just apropos of nothing, can i mention really quick that Chlotz is bar none the worst name i've ever heard

# ? Sep 24, 2018 19:50

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

Why would you play Conception 2? Why?

# ? Sep 24, 2018 19:54

TheMcD: May 4, 2013; Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Epicmissingno posted:

Why would you play Conception 2? Why?

Because the LP subforum is filled with people making very bad decisions.

In entirely unrelated news, the Ultra Despair Girls thread is now live.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 20:13

Leal: Oct 2, 2009

TheMcD posted:

Because the LP subforum is filled with people making very bad decisions.

I'll say!

# ? Sep 24, 2018 20:25

Psycho Knight: Jan 19, 2017; "Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

Epicmissingno posted:

Why would you play Conception 2? Why?

I'll fully explain in the eventual intro.

Summing it up though:
1. All the games I love have been LP'd to death. I sure as hell wouldn't be adding any new perspective.
2. I can stick through anything that has transformation sequences. I played both WKC games and read both LP's.
3. Come on, it's not that horrible. I mean, if you ignore the insultingly easy gameplay, tedious Persona dungeons, Disgaea-esque levelling... some of the characters are kind of charming? I lost where I was going with this.
4. If there is one thing I'm good at, it's finding new and creative ways to beat myself up. :v:

Why else would I choose a Visual Novel/JRPG as my entry to LP'ing.

HenryEx posted:

Hey so, just apropos of nothing, can i mention really quick that Chlotz is bar none the worst name i've ever heard

Yes, yes it is. Still haven't researched who is to blame on that one. I'll get around to it.

TheMcD posted:

Because the LP subforum is filled with people making very bad decisions.

Basically this. Case in point, I'm planning on leaving certain choices to the thread. I'm even thinking of letting the thread have reign over one of the team slots. Refer to point 4 above.

Artix posted:

Separate them with another portrait. Having them on the same line gets confusing very quickly.

Thanks. I kind of thought this, but I was also thinking that it would increase the size of the post too much.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 21:28

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."

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life, I'm planning on LPing original Half-Life, its expansions (Blue Shift, Decay, and Opposing Force) as well as number of notable mods.

I'd like to show Half-Life off as it originally was when released in 1998. Over the years, Half-Life had many patches to fix/improve things in multiplayer, but which inadvertently broke cool features in singleplayer. Also, old versions of Half-Life supported EAX audio for echo/reverb sound effects, something that's no longer supported on Steam. (While EAX supposedly doesn't work on modern versions of Windows, I've been able to get it working in old original Half-Life using a tool called Creative Alchemy.)

To give an idea of some of the things that changed over the years...

Your weapon model would bob up and down when you moved, and when you strafed left or right the view would 'roll' or 'lean' slightly, similar to the Quake games. This was removed in a patch, perhaps because it made some people feel motion sick.
It was possible to enable some crude shadows with the r_shadows 1 console command. This was removed by a patch.
Originally the Crowbar was powerful enough to instantly kill a headcrab, or to smash certain boxes in one hit. Holding down the fire button to rapidly swing the crowbar would cause subsequent hits to do half damage, to represent that the player isn't able to repeatedly hit an enemy with as much force. Then a patch changed it so the crowbar did only 10 damage on its first hit. (Still enough to instantly kill a headcrab, but making it less effective in general.) And then another patch that introduced client-side lag compensation accidentally made it so that the crowbar ALWAYS did half damage. Ever since, killing headcrabs and zombies and smashing boxes has been far more tedious.
While the pistol would normally have 17 bullets per magazine, if you reloaded the pistol before it was empty, you'd get 18 bullets. This was to represent there still being a bullet left in the chamber. A patch removed that, because people kept wrongfully reporting it as a bug.
A patch reduced the rate-of-fire of the submachine gun, making the player's gun fire slower than the bursts fired by enemy soldiers. Presumably this was done because the weapon was considered overpowered in multiplayer. (Recently, the Steam version of the game was patched to return the submachine gun's rate-of-fire to its original speed, 19 years after they nerfed it! Yay!)
The Tau Cannon / Gauss Gun used to fire a transparent orange beam in its primary fire mode (rapid fire), while its charged-up secondary fire would fire a yellow beam if charged briefly, but a whiter beam when the weapon was charged up to fire a more powerful blast. A patch changed this so that the beam was fully opaque yellow in primary fire, and fully opaque white in secondary fire, no matter how much or how little it was charged. (Presumably this was done to make beams more visible and noticable in multiplayer, since it is a dangerously powerful weapon. Or perhaps it was done for performance reasons.)
The Gluon Gun used to fire a transparent blue beam with a cloud-like impact effect. A patch changed it to an opaque white and purple beam, with no impact effect.
You used to be able to stand on laser tripmines, and use them to create a set of 'stairs' that would allow you to climb high walls and skip parts of the game.

Many Half-Life players are probably unaware of these features, having come to the game a few years (or even decades) after the game's release.

There are a couple of stumbling blocks, however. Firstly, original retail Half-Life does not support widescreen resolutions. So if I play original unpatched Half-Life, it'll be in 1024x768 resolution with black bars on either side of the YouTube video. Also, the retail version's CD audio is slightly glitchy when played on my PC's Blu-Ray/DVD/CD drive. It's bizarre how a CD drive in the year 2000 could play CD audio better than a modern Blu-Ray drive.

There is a hexedit hack to allow the old retail CD version of Half-Life to do widescreeen resolutions, but it only works for OpenGL mode. And unfortunately I can only play the old unpatched version of Half-Life in Direct3D mode or Software mode. (The game thinks that OpenGL isn't supported on my PC, probably my modern graphics card isn't on some ancient list of compatible videocards.)

Also, Houndeyes - a minor type of enemy that only shows up a few times - do a shockwave attack, which is normally white, blue or purple depending on the damage of the attack, for some reason is completely invisible in Direct3D mode. So if play the old 1998 version of the game, I'll be showing off an old bug as well as old features.

So I'm considering two ways of going about it:

1) Play the original, unpatched 1998 retail release of Half-Life, with cool EAX echo effects, a more effective crowbar, and a bunch of other small features that are no longer in modern versions of the game... but in a 4:3 resolution, with black bars on the side of the video, and music occasionally stuttering slightly. There will also be no Houndeye shockwaves, unless I play in Software mode, which makes everything pixellated, and very retro indeed!

2) Play the modern Steam version of Half-Life, in OpenGL mode, in widescreen. Where appropriate, I'd occasionally splice in clips of the old unpatched retail version of Half-Life, to show off the differences.

3) Play a modded version of Steam Half-Life, that patches back in a few of the features of original retro CD Half-Life, such as weapon model bobbing and strafe leaning, and the gluon gun impact effect. (But which doesn't fix the wrong crowbar damage, tau cannon beam colour, etc.)

So, what do you think? Play the modern Steam version that most people are familiar with, and just show of some clips of features from old retro Half-Life? Or go full 1998 retro?

If use the modded version of modern Steam Half-Life (option 3), then for 95% of the time Steam Half-Life and original Half-Life will be indistinguishable. So I'm not sure if it's worth making viewers sit through a ten hour game in a 4:3 resolution rather than widescreen purely for the sake of the 5% of the time when the older version of the game is a little bit different.

your evil twin fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Sep 24, 2018

# ? Sep 24, 2018 21:40

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

i say go full retro

# ? Sep 24, 2018 22:12

Admiral H. Curtiss: May 11, 2010; I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.

I agree, show the game off as it originally was.

Maybe see if you can do something about the audio skipping (Windows 10 has built-in CD drive emulation that might just work if you dump an ISO), though.

# ? Sep 24, 2018 23:35

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Psycho Knight posted:

I'll fully explain in the eventual intro.

Summing it up though:
1. All the games I love have been LP'd to death. I sure as hell wouldn't be adding any new perspective.
2. I can stick through anything that has transformation sequences. I played both WKC games and read both LP's.
3. Come on, it's not that horrible. I mean, if you ignore the insultingly easy gameplay, tedious Persona dungeons, Disgaea-esque levelling... some of the characters are kind of charming? I lost where I was going with this.
4. If there is one thing I'm good at, it's finding new and creative ways to beat myself up. Why else would I choose a Visual Novel/JRPG as my entry to LP'ing.

Oh hey I found the other person on the planet who's played this game. Looking forward to the LP! The gameplay was so bad I quit despite my high tolerance for dungeoning, but I always regretted that as I was curious about how some of the storylines went. They were cute.

# ? Sep 25, 2018 00:51

Psycho Knight: Jan 19, 2017; "Being a fangame and not bound to a rating, Pokemon Reborn is able to expand more on topics such as death and the extreme dangers Pokemon could pose. These topics...are treated with the respect such a subject deserves."

Let's throw a Medicham into a volcano and make it give the T2 thumbs up!

StrixNebulosa posted:

Oh hey I found the other person on the planet who's played this game. Looking forward to the LP! The gameplay was so bad I quit despite my high tolerance for dungeoning, but I always regretted that as I was curious about how some of the storylines went. They were cute.

The visual novel part of it is not that bad. The main story is a bit formulaic, but none of the characters are aggressively annoying or bad. Some routes are better than others, but I won't say anything about which ones since I kind of want the thread to steer the LP towards what they want. The gameplay is the nail driven into your foot. The only reasons I beat it are because it came out during a dry spell for games (for me anyway) and it was on the Vita. Portable RPG's are so much easier to beat when you can just pick it up here and there for a few minutes and grind out a level or two as a time waster.

I know it will be a lot of tedious gameplay, especially since this is the Steam version and I can't just grind off and on whenever I have some time :suicide:

. I'm looking forward to this though. I love reading screenshot LP's and I've gotten so much enjoyment out of stuff like the Pokemon fan game LP's, Final Fantasy, and White Knight Chronicles. Would be nice to be able to create one for other people. Plus, I've been "advised" to get a hobby before I burn myself out with stress. :v:

Edit: drat it on these character heads. Does anyone have any tips for getting transparent character portraits? The game doesn't have a viewer and the art assets don't have a folder in the game files (it's just an executable). So I'm trying to cut out various color/textured background elements, but it isn't going so great. The few heads I have are pretty jagged looking. Paint 3D isn't doing a great job.

Psycho Knight fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Sep 25, 2018

# ? Sep 25, 2018 01:25

Lacedaemonius: Jan 18, 2015; Rub a dub dub

your evil twin posted:

1) Play the original, unpatched 1998 retail release of Half-Life, with cool EAX echo effects, a more effective crowbar, and a bunch of other small features that are no longer in modern versions of the game... but in a 4:3 resolution, with black bars on the side of the video, and music occasionally stuttering slightly. There will also be no Houndeye shockwaves, unless I play in Software mode, which makes everything pixellated, and very retro indeed!

Do this; it's a trivial matter to load up and play modern half-life whereas just finding pre-steam copiesーnevermind pre-won copies is a game in and of itself. There're also a lot more steam HL LPs out there already. Case-in-point I'm actually (kinda) doing one myself.

About the D3D/OpenGL issues, have you tried running the game on Xash3D? It may just be the compatibility layer you need.

Once you finish the main game, have you decided what additional mods you intend to run?

# ? Sep 25, 2018 07:47

Explosions: Apr 20, 2015

So, I've been enjoying a lot of Let's Plays lately, and I thought maybe I should try to contribute back and make one of my own, and after writing a whole thing I am feeling kind of embarrassed? But here's my test post. Is it formatted OK? Are the pictures too big/big enough to be legible?

edit: The game is Starcrawlers! It's an Etrian Odyssey-type dungeon crawler.

# ? Sep 25, 2018 22:00

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

Explosions posted:

So, I've been enjoying a lot of Let's Plays lately, and I thought maybe I should try to contribute back and make one of my own, and after writing a whole thing I am feeling kind of embarrassed? But here's my test post. Is it formatted OK? Are the pictures too big/big enough to be legible?

edit: The game is Starcrawlers! It's an Etrian Odyssey-type dungeon crawler.

It mostly looks fine. You should split the OP and the update, and be more explicit if you don't want spoilers (cause goons). I'm having a little bit of trouble reading the text in the images, so please consider making them a bit larger.

# ? Sep 26, 2018 00:08

Explosions: Apr 20, 2015

I got the feeling that 900px, which I'm using there, was a sort of unofficial maximum width. Are people going to complain if I bump it up to 1000?

# ? Sep 26, 2018 17:12

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 12:38

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

Explosions posted:

I got the feeling that 900px, which I'm using there, was a sort of unofficial maximum width. Are people going to complain if I bump it up to 1000?

It's not unofficial, it's the widest the archives can fit. It's probably fine to bump it up if you're not planning on archiving your LP afterwards, but otherwise it should really be at 900px.

# ? Sep 26, 2018 17:16

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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