Lets Play!

[Grimmie]

I re-installed Spore a short while back and thought it might make a good first Lets Play! game.

I also invested a little bit of money on an After Effects guy, who produced a lovely 1080p video intro for us to use.


[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbVWuCa14qk[/media]

[Dog Pants]

Awesome stuff Grimmie! Looks like they've made quite a few improvements to Spore since it came out.

A bit of feedback on the video itself, although I'm not a frequenter of Lets Plays (short on time and live in a noisy house). First thing was the intro, which was fantastic. Hit exactly the right mark, so kudos for going the extra step and getting a professional one done. It's surprising how much more credible it makes the video. I also only found myself waiting for the next bit once, which was the loading screen when you went on land, and was actually justified as I was having the thought by your explaining how the other creatures populated your world. Shame none of my Bollock Ants are there. The only real criticism I can think of, and you've probably spotted it yourself, is the Steam friends popups

Looking forward to part two!

[Mr. Johnson]

Yesss.

This is excellent Grimmie, and good job on getting us an intro, it's lovely!

I do have a point of criticism though.
-It's very long. Most youtube viewers (including myself) can't focus for more than 15 minutes, so personally I think it's a bit too long. Some people prefer that though, so yeah. I don't think any of us are particularly good at editing video footage though so there's that, too.

And lastly, what do you use to record sound? I use fraps itself but I'm too quiet without the mic boost on, and I pick up background noise with the mic boost on.

Other than that, well done Grimmie! I'm glad we're finally getting our brand out there.

[friznit]

Great vid Grimmie and love the intro - that's a keeper! I would suggest outlining a script before embarking though, even if it's just a few headers. Also better if you can embed the explanatory stuff into the less exciting parts (e.g. the intro bit about why this game was a flop). It would really help the video to flow better - as it stands, the spectacular 5punky intro launches us into a full 3 mins of you explaining why the game was bad and only briefly skips over some of the more cool bits (like shared content). Also I know it's not a tutorial guide, but occasionally it's not clear what you're doing and why.

All that said, it's a good vid and has actually made me want to play Spore again, though it does leave one question not fully answered - has it improved enough with patching that it's worth it?

[Dog Pants]

All that said, it's a good vid and has actually made me want to play Spore again, though it does leave one question not fully answered - has it improved enough with patching that it's worth it?

Haha, very this. The thought of using Origin put the idea in the realms of "probably won't happen" but it's to your credit that I considered it.

[HereComesPete]

Love the intro, I shall buy you a drink or send monies your way.

However like Friz I would suggest scripting yourself and treating it like a voice only presentation. Save facts for the loading screens and cut down on the 'er' moments.

I too genuinely feel like playing spore again, which I thought I would never say, so that's a definite thumbs up for the vidja.

[tandino]

I re-installed Spore a short while back and thought it might make a good first Lets Play! game.

I also invested a little bit of money on an After Effects guy, who produced a lovely 1080p video intro for us to use.

Love it Grimmie! A third "I might reinstall Spore" here. I like the pace of it - I've watched some Direwolf20 stuff recently and find, that whilst his vids are good he's a little too quick at times. This feels very "5punky" to me, it just needs more chaos.

As you know I'm well up for a bit of Let's Play recording. If I can contribute in any way, shape or form, I will!

[deject]

I still hate that they totally stripped out all the procedurally generated aspects of Spore. It would have been so fucking amazing.

[Grimmie]

Thanks for the feedback, guys :D Really appreciated.

The only real criticism I can think of, and you've probably spotted it yourself, is the Steam friends popups

Yeah, I thought it wouldn't grab that but apparently it did. I also had Thunderbird in the background making silly noises for calendar reminders. Gotta make sure stuff's turned off next time!

-It's very long. Most youtube viewers (including myself) can't focus for more than 15 minutes, so personally I think it's a bit too long. Some people prefer that though, so yeah. I don't think any of us are particularly good at editing video footage though so there's that, too.

And lastly, what do you use to record sound? I use fraps itself but I'm too quiet without the mic boost on, and I pick up background noise with the mic boost on.

Hopefully the others will be 10/15 minute chunks. I got a bit carried away with the cell phase and the introduction, but I might have a stopwatch in front of me next time. Personally I don't like lets play videos that stop just when they're getting good - but it's personal preference I guess.

I recorded game audio with Fraps and used Audacity to record microphone audio, so I could load the two sound files in and lower the game audio when I was speaking (you'll notice the meteor cutscene has louder game audio). I might look at that thing that Deject got, as it apparently automatically separates audio in to different channels in an AVI file automatically.

I would suggest outlining a script before embarking though, even if it's just a few headers. Also better if you can embed the explanatory stuff into the less exciting parts (e.g. the intro bit about why this game was a flop).

Also I know it's not a tutorial guide, but occasionally it's not clear what you're doing and why.

Yeah, I originally made one recording, and 5 minutes in realised I hadn't hit record on Audacity, so I was just chatting to myself about the game's history. I tried to remember what I said and wrote it out. In hindsight I should have also cut it down a bit - but now I'm in to the meat of things it should be pure gameplay and less rambling. I'll see what I can do about explaining some of the game concepts too, the creature stage covers most of them though.

Love the intro, I shall buy you a drink or send monies your way.

However like Friz I would suggest scripting yourself and treating it like a voice only presentation. Save facts for the loading screens and cut down on the 'er' moments.

No need for monies, just grab me a pack of waffles in Belgium or something :D Mmm, waffles.
The guy who made it was actually really cool, I got the After Effects template from Videohive and then looked around PeoplePerHour for someone to commission and found someone from Bulgaria who had good feedback and replied to my query quickly. He was a big help in giving me some advice on rendering the final video and tweaking the Intro.

Would you believe that I had to cut about 10 "er"s from the audio in the first few minutes? I didn't really know what I was meant to be saying to introduce a long-running series of videos, so it was all a bit off the top of my head. Still, three minutes of rambling isn't too bad, I think. (Anyone who watches Mack from Mack & Mesh do lets plays knows he can ramble on for about 10 minutes before actually touching the game).

This feels very "5punky" to me, it just needs more chaos.

I'll dick around the creature stage for a while, I think it has the most potential for chaos in my opinion. Changing my bendy-legged marsh walker into a horrendous fifty-eyed shark-faced blob should be fun.

[HereComesPete]

Ah yes, Belgium. I guess I 'd better book a flight for that.

[FatherJack]

Yay, nice one Grimmie!

We all need to install Spore again, so any future vids contain our creations - I played it again about a year ago and found they had culled all the 5punky ones from the server, but I found a few of them in a backup. I've uploaded a few to keep you company.

[spoodie]

I started watching after having a bit of a drink last night. But you whirling the galaxy round and round made me feel sick, so I had to stop. There's some micro-critique for you. Will try again later.

[Roman Totale]

This inspired me to re-install Spore. I'd forgotten that the first two levels are actually quite fun. We'll see if the later levels are still rubbish though.

Look out for my jolly little Glibberigs in your world!

[tandino]

I've been thinking about doing some Let's Plays for a while now. I have many, many games, almost none of which I've completed, or made it to whatever defined "end game" (for example in Skyrim where it goes on ad infinitum, but there is a main quest) point there is. I'm thinking that a "Let's Finish" could be a slightly different take on the Let's Play, which undoubtedly is owned by the like of Yogscast et al. It'd give me motivation to finish all of the games and for others that never got that far. There might be some appeal (albeit a bit spoilery) to others who've had these games and not finished them too. What do you think 5punkizens? Yay? Nay?

Also sorry for horrible wordings etc. I'm MAD hungover, dawg.

[Grimmie]

Sounds good to me!

[Mr. Johnson]

That does sound good to me, since if we're going to do this we're going to need several people making several videos if we want a steady output of stuff for our channel.

I'll probably have a go at some point as I own all the things for making it, just need to do editing. Or we could split the bill and co-op something, as our frigames sessions are way too chaotic to put online.

[FatherJack]

Moar is better, certainly, but I just noticed Grimmie didn't actually say who he was at the start of his video, which could be confusing when a lot of us do them.

I fancy having a go at an Agricultural Simulator one, but I think I'll edit clips of gameplay into something watchable and a suitable length, then record a voice track over the top, but I'm not sure how to handle the scene cuts. I want to make it seem like I'm recording myself playing it, and will record some audio of that, but I don't want to hold up the gameplay while I'm ranting about something. I guess I need to not talk over the scene transistions and kind of explain what has happened during the break.

Also some assets would be good for budding movie-makers - the intro of course, and maybe a few different snippets of the music which could be faded in over transitions.

[Grimmie]

I've compressed the 900mb raw render of the 5punk intro into a nice 13mb 1080p .mp4 file.
Prod me if you want it, otherwise for those that have it, it's in the 5punkyBeards dropbox.

The music was from ReclusiveLemming's chiptune subscriber pack, which has 12 hours worth of publicly released chiptune modules available for download. Seeing as we're not profiting from the videos (yet) I figured I could use these under fair use. Download links in the playlist below.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD1E0E6972211E1CB

Edit
I figured that we could all use the same intro, but change the music depending on who the narrator was. I love my chiptune, so I'm gonna use that, but if anyone else wants to use a (fair use) metal track, or whatevs, that's also fine.

[Grimmie]

Also stickying this thread, as it seems to be something people are up for doing as a community :D

[deject]

I can try to put together a quick audio track with ACID to go with the intro video. It'd be a nice distraction to work in ACID again after basically ignoring it for so long.