Mecha and Demons: Messing With History Since 1923. Let's Play Sakura Wars!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Mecha and Demons: Messing With History Since 1923. Let's Play Sakura Wars!

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

I am enjoying this, but for the love of all that is holy, could you please use medium or lower quality jpgs? PNGs get huge when using a varied color palette, and yours are about 200k each. That makes every one of your updates over 20 megs each, and this page is at about 70 megs with 35 posts yet before the next page. Even on broadband, that's just brutal.

Less importantly, the 3D moving around pictures have some fairly obvious interlacing artifacts. Are you taking pictures with a capture card, or using an emulator? It's not really a big deal, but you can probably find a way to take pictures without all the interlacing.

JPGs come first, though. I can read updates to three other threads in the time it takes me to even load one of yours. That hurts, man

# ¿ Jul 23, 2007 06:26

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:37

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Ahh, thank you. That is much better now

This is one of those games that I would play in a heartbeat if I could understand Japanese. It's just so bizarre, and on top of that I love tactical RPGs. I'm really glad you're doing this so I can at least read about it.

As for the capturing stuff, most people recommend the Adaptec Gamebridge. I have no experience with it, using a cheapo TV capture card myself, but you can find a ton of recommendations and information about it in a thread kicking around here somewhere called the Tech Support Fort. I believe it's $20 and works via USB.

If you're just pulling screenshots from uncompressed movies, though, it's pretty easy to run a deinterlace filter on the movie file (if VirtualDub can't do it directly I know AviSynth can). You'd want to do that anyway if you're going to post up cut sections of the movies themselves. I'm far from the most experienced video editor in this forum, but I'd be happy to help however I can. I've at least done a fair amount of videos.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2007 18:00

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

... hmm, thumbnails might work a bit better. The only obstacle (aside from the ones I'd mentioned above) is that my screenshots are coming off of .mov files, so the portraits are already small. Shrinking them any smaller or cropping them any further might make them unrecognizable smudges of color in the vague shape of a face. Thanks for the tip, though- I'm still running through ideas.

I might suggest going the route of the Yo-Jin-Bo thread. That thread uses massive portraits and it's still very good looking and readable. My image editing is a little sloppy, but here's an example (credit goes to kethryveris for pioneering this style, of course):

[Ogami]
By using both the character name and a portrait, it more easily helps readers to associate names to characters.

Silly comments can use a completely separate text style, so in-game dialogue and external commentary are easy to distinguish apart.

[Ogami]
Unless a character's portrait changes, there's no need to post it a second time. In such cases, a bolded name will do just fine.

[Sakura]
I think that about covers the basics of how kethryveris is doing it.

[Iris]
At this point, I'm just being silly because I made several portraits and I want to use them.

[Ogami]
That is one really creepy little girl, though.

[Iris]
I heard that.

[Ogami]
Did I say creepy? Cute. I meant cute.

[Maria]
She may be nine years old, but even she's not going to fall for that one.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2007 18:14

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

Hot drat, now THAT'S a great way of doing it. I've adapted the look for my next updates (with a few tweaks here and there)...

Glad to be of help

It looks good! I can't wait until the next update.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2007 18:22

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

This LP keeps getting better and better. I'm really impressed with how you're doing this

The only further suggestion I would make, and it's a really, really tiny nitpick, is to have screenshots of the videos for when video watching is not possible (i.e. people reading at work). Also, if Google continues being a pain, try uploading to DailyMotion or FileFront. The latter tends to have a really good quality anyway (though they will delete your videos after awhile if you don't follow the directions on their "we're going to delete your videos" e-mail).

Anyway, you're doing a great job on this and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite LPs active right now.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2007 07:25

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Hey, guys, it might help Spirit Armor a lot if we could make, say, ten more posts... at some point.

So, who is everybody interested in so far? I think it would be hilarious to see Ogami end up with Sumire, but I like watching him suffer. Not voting until we get a little farther, though.

_{Though I'll be happy as long as we don't end up with Iris.} :pedo:

# ¿ Jul 27, 2007 19:07

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

Thanks a lot for the help, man. You've pretty much helped keep this thread afloat since the beginning.

Hey, I'm glad to help out however I can. We need more LPs for obscure games that most people won't ever get to play. Considering you're translating this as you go, this qualifies tenfold. On top of that, you really are doing a great job. This is one of the most amusing LPs I've seen, I really love your sense of humor.

To take an idea from slowbeef's Sprung previews, and somewhat from my Arcanum thread, maybe it would help get more comments if you let people make requests? I honestly don't know how much work it would be, so if it would be too much work just ignore me, but as an example maybe we could ask "What would've happened if you chose 'Get Lovey-Dovey with Sakura?'" and you could just post the immediate followup to that.

I have no idea how the saving works in the game, though, so that might be completely impractical. However you might manage to work it, feedback / voting is pretty much hands down the best way to bump up thread responses, and thus slide things to the next page to avoid breaking other pages after this one. Then again, I've only ever seen thread-breaking happen on page 1, maybe future pages won't have that problem? We can hope

# ¿ Jul 27, 2007 22:31

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

It'd be more doable if the game allowed me to save more than twice per episode, and at places other than the set-in-stone eyecatches. :/ As it is, exploring a different outcome or asking how I should answer a minor question would require some amount of starting over from a prior savepoint.

Ick, yeah, that's pretty harsh. I was hoping there would at least be save points... I've been blessed that in 2 of the 3 threads I've done, I could save anywhere (and the third had save points). If I think of another way to add some more interactivity, I'll let you know.

Rose wood posted:

Edit: Wow, update torrent! Maybe you should try to space out posting them a little? Seorin does one a day and that seems to work pretty well...

I try anyway :unsmith:

Perhaps that'll help Spirit Armor avoid burnout and also the page-breaking troubles. It probably also helps, though, that my biggest updates have been ~70 images (which usually gets cut down to ~65ish, depending on how many I feel I can throw away without losing anything).

# ¿ Jul 28, 2007 03:03

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

Of course, a Kanna is fine too. A Kanna is ALWAYS fine too.

If this is a reference to "A cat is fine, too" then the circle will be complete.

Also, I can't believe Sumire is wielding a giant loving naginata :hellyeah:

My vote for her is that much less likely to change. ~~Besides, she shows the most cleavage.~~

This game looks bad rear end, and I love steampunk besides. Never before have I more desperately wanted to understand Japanese.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2007 05:22

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

Most definitely. I traversed around 4chan for a while before I signed up for the SA forums.

That amuses me, mostly because the original comic just came up in my Tsukihime thread. We haven't seen the last of it, either.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2007 17:07

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

... I'm horribly tempted to read your thread, but I'm equally tempted to actually play Tsukihime sometime (admittedly, mostly after having my brains turned to mush by this possibly spoiler-ish AMV(?)), so I might wait a bit first. ONE OF THESE DAYS

I'd like to think I'm doing a decent job with the thread, at any rate. Even if you started reading it now, though, there's a pretty good chance it'll be over before you reach the end (unless you read a LOT in a short timespan).

That video does have some very brief and vague spoilers that you probably won't realize are spoilery until you actually get to them in the game (Tsukihime is great like that). It is also, in the grand tradition of the game itself, a fine example of pure, unadulterated :wtc:

Anyway, if you do want to play the game (and you do, believe me), AxeManiac gave me permission awhile back to toss up a download link. Either sneak to the end of the thread and grab the game links from there (I just re-posted them before checking this thread) or PM/IM me sometime. I'll hook you up

Spirit Armor posted:

The video of the first battle is here.

Good goddamn, why does this game have to look so awesome?

# ¿ Jul 31, 2007 08:24

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Is it just me, or does Ogami look kind of :downs:

from this angle?

Yay, the battle is over! Now we get to ~~see more of Sumire's cleavage~~ ~~hit on Iris some more~~ make an rear end out of ourselves in the theatre! Maybe we'll even change clothes, if we can manage it.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2007 06:16

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

One Legged Cat posted:

There are undoubtedly plenty of us here that would follow you into the Sakura Taisen sequel LPs if the motivation is there.

Hell yeah. I can't get enough of this series and he's only just started on the first one. I'm amazed something this awesome exists and depressed I can't play it

# ¿ Aug 1, 2007 18:24

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

This is why my vote is still with Sumire. She's ~~got cleavage~~ up front with her psychoses. I'm against Maria purely because that's being too nice to Ogami, and we can't have that.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2007 01:35

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Grunduggerer posted:

Sumire, definitely. Refined for public display and then after a few drinks she's ready for night duty.

Yes, Yes! Sumire army, come forth! For love! For polearms! For ~~cleavage~~ love!

# ¿ Aug 14, 2007 07:44

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Yay!

For all that I despise ongoing computer troubles, on the rare occasion I can actually catch up on my favorite LPs there's a whole LOT of content to read.

That Sumire update was full of ~~cleavage~~ awesome. I can only imagine what would happen if Ogami hooks up with her. She'll be all lovey and doe-eyed until Ogami forgets their first anniversary, then she'll use her immense wealth and savagely cruel temperament to construct an elaborate situation that will leave Ogami with the inability to walk unassisted.

[Ogami]

I... I thought you loved me...

[Sumire]

Just remember my birthday if you want to keep those testicles of yours!

# ¿ Aug 21, 2007 23:09

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Although the bath picture is most certainly full of cleavage, I'm partial to this one:

# ¿ Sep 19, 2007 19:44

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Sindai posted:

Oh look, Kohran flashed a little skin. Maybe now all the mindless drones will throw their votes her way instantly.

I voted for Sumire before she showed off :colbert:

...I just happened to like what I see when the show started!

# ¿ Sep 21, 2007 06:56

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

You know, whatever I was expecting Kanna to be, butch lesbian was not it.

Morgenthau posted:

I never really did any effort to end with Kanna. She scares me. Also despite public consensus, Kanna actually has bigger tits than Sumire.

"It's not the size that matters" can go both ways, ya know. Vote unswayed :colbert:

# ¿ Sep 26, 2007 23:05

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

You... you were uploading them individually!? :suicide:

# ¿ Oct 20, 2007 03:50

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

Yeah.

I didn't actually learn how to use WaffleUpload until your post in that How To thread. What's even worse is that I might've tried to install it before, but couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do afterwards.

HURR.

EDIT: Updated the Table of Contents in the thread's very first post. It actually looks like a Table of Contents now!

It actually took me awhile to figure out what it did after I installed it, too. We can be brothers in downs. :downs:

I'm glad my post over there helped somebody, at least

The thread seemed to think awful fast after I wrote it and I was worried not a lot of people who could really benefit from it would see it.

Also, if you couldn't tell, I'm still reading and enjoying. I just don't think to post that often :sweatdrop:

# ¿ Oct 20, 2007 04:10

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

At the risk of saying something kind about Iristhulu, I thought the アイリすス / あいりす thing was really cute. :keke:

Also, I'm perpetually behind in all the threads I love, so you better give me enough time to catch up when you hold the vote. Sumire shall not lose :argh:

# ¿ Jan 30, 2008 07:54

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

At the risk of quoting the same picture twice...

Spirit Armor posted:

What happened to her arm?! :froggonk:

# ¿ Apr 6, 2008 07:32

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

Bizarre likenesses aside, I'll have to vote for Sumire.

# ¿ May 4, 2008 21:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 06:37

seorin: May 23, 2005; 2 Sun's Dusk (Day 78)
Of the Seven Visions of Seven Trials of the Incarnate, I have now fulfilled the Fifth Trial.

Spirit Armor posted:

"These hot summer days just keep stretching on... are you staying healthy?"
"You're not breaking your stomach by eating only cold foods, are you?"
"You were always eating nothing but cold watermelon slices and breaking your stomach back then."

FUN FACT: Between this and the manga, it's hinted pretty strongly that Ogami has or will have a stomach ulcer.

I have a feeling you know better and did this intentionally, but for the sake of random trivia, おなかが壊す is just the Japanese way of saying 'stomachache'. I also find it particularly hilarious that they use the word 'break'. It leads to such fun phrases like, "Remember that time you cooked for me and my stomach broke?" Also, the above phrases.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2008 04:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Mecha and Demons: Messing With History Since 1923. Let's Play Sakura Wars!