Lets Play!

[tandino]

Part 6/7/8 (Delete as applicable as I forget quite early on what part I'm up to).

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLeXGMnqgMA[/media]

I track and kill a Chimera, pop over to Yanov and meet Russian Premier Vladimir Putin. Also Matt Parkman of Heroes tells me a story. Exciting stuff! Watch in glorious HD for full night time hunting effect!

[Grimmie]

Cripes, it's a bit dark. Are there any YouTube post-processing effects you can slap on it?

[Shada]

A lot of waiting around for stuff to happen there, Tandy, but man when it does happen it's cool. Like with Grimmie's videos this is another game that I've played and played and played, so watching you take ages to realise the minimap had a downward pointing arrow telling you to go to the basement to complete that quest was hella frustrating.

But damn that Chimera hunt was atmospheric. I'm sure I saw its silhouette dart across your screen and you don't seem to notice it, and I wanted to be like "TANDY LOOK OUT!" but then you just maimed the fuck out of it with your SPAS anyway. Also that shiny-ass boar jumping out of the bushes and dying instantly was excellent.

[tandino]

Cripes, it's a bit dark. Are there any YouTube post-processing effects you can slap on it?

I worried that might be a problem actually, it's a particularly dark episode at first but then goes very light at Yanov so I was worried the YouTube "fixer" might wash everything out. Maybe I'll apply the fix and see how it looks. I like the darkness of the Chimera hunt with the flashes of lightning though so it's a tricky one.

But damn that Chimera hunt was atmospheric. I'm sure I saw its silhouette dart across your screen and you don't seem to notice it, and I wanted to be like "TANDY LOOK OUT!" but then you just maimed the fuck out of it with your SPAS anyway. Also that shiny-ass boar jumping out of the bushes and dying instantly was excellent.

You did see a silhouette darting in front of me a couple of times. I was roughly tracking it by noise, rather than site. When I was editing and I spotted that I had to watch it in slow motion a few times, even hit it by chance a couple of times - very cool!

[Edit] to add...

Applied YouTube's "HDRish" felcher to the video and upped the fill light by 2 points. If it ends up looking much better I might go back and do the same to the others. Episode 8 up on Thurs or Friday where some things happen, but one of the things takes ages.

[deject]

Wahey! You've slain a Chimera, well done. Also, if you have under 100 bandages, you don't have a lot.

[Shada]

pfft, mandatory self-imposed inventory limit of 4 antirads, 20 bandages and 5 medkits is the only way to play.

[deject]

Dungeons of Dredmor!

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJLv_4jxi3M[/media]

[FatherJack]

I've impatiently and excitedly tried to watch this straight away at 720p, but it's not getting beyond 12min as I guess there's some Youtube processing still going on, so I'll come back later calmly and respectfully. I liked what I saw and heard - at first I was a bit overwhelmed that you were selecting stuff so quickly, but I rather like that you went back and explained key skills you always went for when they became important, rather than delivering a boring description of every skill you were picking in the menu.

This isn't a game I've taken a second glance at in all honesty, but it's clear there's a lot more depth to it than initially apparent, and I really welcome the opportunity to see it played by an enthusiast rather than download it myself and give up in confusion after 30 seconds.

Nice work.

[deject]

I've impatiently and excitedly tried to watch this straight away at 720p, but it's not getting beyond 12min as I guess there's some Youtube processing still going on, so I'll come back later calmly and respectfully. I liked what I saw and heard - at first I was a bit overwhelmed that you were selecting stuff so quickly, but I rather like that you went back and explained key skills you always went for when they became important, rather than delivering a boring description of every skill you were picking in the menu.

This isn't a game I've taken a second glance at in all honesty, but it's clear there's a lot more depth to it than initially apparent, and I really welcome the opportunity to see it played by an enthusiast rather than download it myself and give up in confusion after 30 seconds.

Nice work.

Thanks! A lot of that is just habit as I've played so much of this game. There are just far too many skills, items, enemies, etc. in the game to really give a good explanation of them up front. If I tried that, I'd spend half an hour just explaining everything without actually doing anything which I would think would be quite boring. Personally, I think it's moving pretty slowly even now, but there are just so many things that I take for granted that I don't want to miss but I'm inevitably going to miss things so if you ever want clarification on anything I don't mention just ask.

I'm not sure why it would still be processing, but it was a pretty large file that took a really, really long time (over 6 hours) to upload so who knows.

[Mr. Johnson]

Pretty good there Deej, the only real criticism I can give is that there's a couple of uhm's in there but you keep the narrative at a pretty decent pace so it's hardly noticable. Good work!

As for myself; I've recorded a bit of driver: San Francisco and I'm trying to edit it in windows movie maker but holy shit it is wank. You so much as look at it and it freezes up and it cannot open it's own files.

[deject]

Pretty good there Deej, the only real criticism I can give is that there's a couple of uhm's in there but you keep the narrative at a pretty decent pace so it's hardly noticable. Good work!

As for myself; I've recorded a bit of driver: San Francisco and I'm trying to edit it in windows movie maker but holy shit it is wank. You so much as look at it and it freezes up and it cannot open it's own files.

LOL WAT can't open its own files? Excellent work* Microsoft.

*This is not true.

Yeah I tried to not say um but I was totally winging it and it's just natural. I shall definitely keep working on that.

[tandino]

This isn't a game I've taken a second glance at in all honesty, but it's clear there's a lot more depth to it than initially apparent, and I really welcome the opportunity to see it played by an enthusiast rather than download it myself and give up in confusion after 30 seconds.

Nice work.

Exactly this. I'd almost written it off as the kind of game other people played, but wasn't a game I'd enjoy (I did the same with FTL then played it and loved it). After watching this though, I might have to pick this up. Seemed like you were finding your feet (with recording, rather than the game) and becoming more relaxed towards the end of it - I like when that happens as it becomes a lot more fun after this point. Good stuff mate, keep 'em coming!

[deject]

This isn't a game I've taken a second glance at in all honesty, but it's clear there's a lot more depth to it than initially apparent, and I really welcome the opportunity to see it played by an enthusiast rather than download it myself and give up in confusion after 30 seconds.

Nice work.

Exactly this. I'd almost written it off as the kind of game other people played, but wasn't a game I'd enjoy (I did the same with FTL then played it and loved it). After watching this though, I might have to pick this up. Seemed like you were finding your feet (with recording, rather than the game) and becoming more relaxed towards the end of it - I like when that happens as it becomes a lot more fun after this point. Good stuff mate, keep 'em coming!

Yeah I really wasn't very sure of how much in-depth I should go with it, just because there are so many things I could be talking about (i.e.: I could explain each section of the map and how it works at this point, and there are a lot of game mechanics that aren't at all apparent from the start). Things like those sparkly gems to pop out a vending machine right away, I was not expecting that to appear right off the bat at all, and it's not a big part of the game, but at the same time I feel like I have to explain what the hell I am doing at least somewhat. I was going to try the full random skills but dealing with a shitty random build while trying to explain game mechanics would be too difficult.

[FatherJack]

Managed to see it all now, and am liking the pacing and on-the-fly explanations as it makes us feel like we're playing though the game with you as experts, knowing what's going on at the moment without getting bogged down having every detail explained. Good stuff.

[FatherJack]

Applied YouTube's "HDRish" felcher to the video and upped the fill light by 2 points. If it ends up looking much better I might go back and do the same to the others. Episode 8 up on Thurs or Friday where some things happen, but one of the things takes ages.

I dunno if it's what you did, or Youtube, but it looks horrible now - even the 5punk logo has squares all around the fade-to-black areas and dark areas in the game just look too distractingly-pixelly to watch.

I typically do everything on my computer in an utterly blacked-out room (which is why I need an illuminated keyboard) so dark videos aren't a problem for me, my environment has perhaps increased my intolerance towards lack of definition in near-black areas.

Sorry mate, but that HDR-ish feature looks like it's royally fucked up your vid.

[Mr. Johnson]

Right, here's my first real let's play video. I ended up having to do another voice-over because I messed up my initial recording and my editing is shoddy. Also, I mumble terribly and am pretty unintelligible in places so sorry about that.

Anyway, here it is:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE615AGYwyc[/media]

[tandino]

Applied YouTube's "HDRish" felcher to the video and upped the fill light by 2 points. If it ends up looking much better I might go back and do the same to the others. Episode 8 up on Thurs or Friday where some things happen, but one of the things takes ages.

I dunno if it's what you did, or Youtube, but it looks horrible now - even the 5punk logo has squares all around the fade-to-black areas and dark areas in the game just look too distractingly-pixelly to watch.

I typically do everything on my computer in an utterly blacked-out room (which is why I need an illuminated keyboard) so dark videos aren't a problem for me, my environment has perhaps increased my intolerance towards lack of definition in near-black areas.

Sorry mate, but that HDR-ish feature looks like it's royally fucked up your vid.

I don't know. It is better in parts, worse in others. The nature of STALKER is that it's a very dark game anyway. Until I get some kind of night vision addon for my suit I might have to save my adventuring for the day. or early evening. I've reverted it back to the original for now anyway. I could lighten it a bit, re-encode it and then re-upload it but that'll have to be a job for the weekend I think. Two more episodes incoming anyway.

Mr J - Just about to watch your vid now. Seen about 5 mins so far and I like the look of the game - very cool.

[tandino]

Driver vid looking good Mr J. Don't beat yourself up too much about the edits, it could be much worse. I would suggest getting rid of the loading screens but you said that yourself already.

YouTube seems to be struggling a little with the playback - not sure why that would be, but I doubt it's anything to do with your video in particular. Might be worth finding out some trivia about the game for your next one, it's good filler for the times when you can't think of anything interesting to say. Did you enjoy doing it?

[Shada]

I would've left it dark, tandy. STALKER is meant to be pitch black, with things darting across your vision making you think "oh shit what the fuck was that" and chittering and clawing sounds happening in your ears. It wasn't even particularly dark except for the night hunt which, well, it was a night hunt, so...

[FatherJack]

Nice stuff, both of you.

Tandino's vid is now much more viewable now with those horrid post-processing tweaks removed - sure, it's dark, but that's how night is. Not a lot happens after the Chimera hunt, but sometimes it's good to set the scene for the next bit although I'd have liked to carry on watching straight away.

I also loved Mr J's crappy driving skills and despite him "knowing nothing about cars" he was pretty spot-on with how yes, an overpowered Dodge handles like shit in the corners, and no, a prison van couldn't keep up with it on in a straight line. The twisty road was Lombard Street (and you can't drive up it in RL) and the sort-of-stepped streets where you did the jump are also real and featured heavily in GTA3's Italian quarter (oddly, as Liberty City is based on NY) and of course feature in the film Bullitt - which is a clear inspiration for the Driver series whole.