So, as I may have mentioned to a few 5punkers, I'm planning on recording some Lets Play! videos using my new meaty gaming rig some time in the near future. I've already installed a bunch of new games on Steam that I'm planning on playing at Ultra settings, but I'm also interested in filming some older or more obscure games. I figured I should probably compile a library of all the games I own. Thus the following monstrosity came about - Part Xfire history, part Steam catalogue, part bookshelf rummage.
Act of War: Direct Action
Age of Empires
Age of Empires II
Age of Empires III
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties
Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs
Age of Empires Online
Age of Mythology
Age of Mythology - The Titans Expansion
Alien Swarm
Aliens vs. Predator
Alpha Protocol
Anno 1404: Dawn of Discovery
Anno 2070
Anomaly Warzone Earth
Aquaria
Armies of Exigo
Audiosurf
Avadon: The Black Fortress
Bastion
Battle for Middle-earth II
Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
Battlefield Heroes
BattleForge
Beach Life
Beat Hazard
BioShock
BioShock 2
Black & White
Black Prophecy
Borderlands
Braid
Breath of Death VII
Bulletstorm
Burnout Paradise
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Champions Online
Cities XL
Cities XL 2012
City of Heroes
Cogs
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Commander Keen Complete Pack
Cortex Command
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes
Counter-Strike: Source
Crazy Machines 2
Crysis
Crysis Warhead
Crysis Wars
Cthulhu Saves the World
Dark Messiah Might and Magic
Darwinia
Dawn of War
Dawn of War Dark Crusade
Dawn of War: Soulstorm
Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat: Source
Dead Rising 2
Deathmatch Classic
DEFCON
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Demigod
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Diablo III
DOOM 3
DOOM 3: Resurrection of Evil
DOOM II: Hell on Earth
Dota 2
Dragon Age: Origins
Dungeon Defenders
Dungeon Keeper
Dungeon Siege
Dungeon Siege II
Dungeons of Dredmor
Eve Online
Evil Genius
F.E.A.R.
Fable III
Fallout
Fallout 2
Fallout 3
Far Cry 2
Final DOOM
From Dust
Garry's Mod
Gish
Global Agenda
Grand Theft Auto 2
Grand Theft Auto 3
Gratuitous Space Battles
Gratuitous Tank Battles
Greed Corp
Guild Wars
Gunbound
Hacker Evolution - Untold
Hacker Evolution Duality
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Half-Life Deathmatch: Source
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life: Opposing horse
Half-Life: Source
Halo
Hard Reset
Harvest: Massive Encounter
Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
HeXen II
HeXen: Beyond Heretic
HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel
Homeworld
Homeworld 2
inMomentum
Just Cause 2
Killing Floor
L.A. Noire
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Lugaru HD
Machinarium
Magicka
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Master Levels for DOOM II
Medieval II Total War
Midnight Club II
Minecraft
Monday Night Combat
Natural Selection 2
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights 2
Nuclear Dawn
OpenTTD
Opposing horse
Orcs Must Die!
Osmos
Painkiller
Pangya
PAYDAY: The Heist
Peggle Deluxe
Peggle Extreme
Peggle Nights
Penumbra: Overture
Perimeter
Pharaoh
PlanetSide 2
Portal
Portal 2
Prey
Puzzle Quest 2
Quake
Quake 4
Quake II
Quake II: Ground Zero
Quake II: The Reckoning
Quake III Arena
Quake III: Team Arena
Ragnarok Online
Realm of the Mad God
Red Faction
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Revenge of the Titans
Ricochet
RIFT
Rise of Nations
Rise of Nations - Thrones & Patriots
Rock of Ages
Rollercoaster Tycoon
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3
ROSE Online
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
Saints Row: The Third
Saira
Sam & Max 101: Culture Shock
Sam & Max 102: Situation: Comedy
Sam & Max 103: The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball
Sam & Max 105: Reality 2.0
Sam & Max 106: Bright Side of the Moon
Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa
Sam & Max 202: Moai Better Blues
Sam & Max 203: Night of the Raving Dead
Sam & Max 204: Chariots of the Dogs
Sam & Max 205: What's New Beelzebub?
Sam & Max 301: The Penal Zone
Sam & Max 302: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak
Sam & Max 303: They Stole Max's Brain!
Sam & Max 304: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls
Sam & Max 305: The City that Dares not Sleep
Samorost 2
Sanctum
Serious Sam 3: BFE
Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter
Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter
Shadowgrounds
Shadowgrounds: Survivor
Sid Meier's Civilization V
SimCity 3000
SimCity 4
Sins of a Solar Empire
Sniper Elite V2
Snuggle Truck
Soldat
Space Pirates and Zombies
SPORE
Star Wars Empire at War
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Single Player
Star Wars: Droid Works
StarCraft
StarCraft Brood War
StarCraft II
Startopia
Submarine Titans
Super Monday Night Combat
Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander 2
Sven Co-op
SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate
Swords and Soldiers HD
System Shock 2
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress Classic
Terraria
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The Lord of the Rings - The Battle for Middle-Earth
The Lord of the Rings - The Battle for Middle-Earth II
The Lord of the Rings Online
The Movies
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
The Settlers II - 10th Anniversary
The Ship
The Sims 2
The Sims 3
The Ultimate DOOM
Theme Hospital
Titan Attacks
Titan Quest
Titan Quest Immortal Throne
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.
Torchlight
Torchlight II
Towns
Trackmania Nations Forever
Trackmania United Forever
Train Simulator 2013
Tribes: Ascend
Trickster Online
Trine
Universe At War: Earth Assault
Universe Sandbox
Unreal II: The Awakening SP
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 3: Black Edition
Uplink
Vampire - The Masquerade Bloodlines
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising
Wolfenstein 3D
World of Goo
World of Warcraft
Worms Armageddon
Worms Reloaded
X3: Reunion
X3: Terran Conflict
Your Doodles Are Bugged!
Zen Bound 2
Zeno Clash
Zombie Shooter
Zombie Shooter 2
Seeing as I plan to whack it up on the 5punky YouTube account I figured I should ask here first as to what games you might want to see played. I know the format's not for everyone, but I like watching them, and there's quite a bit of an audience out there we could be tapping (and hauling back to 5punk to play games with us!).
AvP could be good for screams
MP Bumout is always fun and vocal (as is strip crashcam)
City of Heroes you might struggle with
Defcon could be a nice little starter
I'd like to see a 5punky take on Fable III
Towns is unknown enough to benefit from a LP
There are a few suggestions from a cursory glance. Happy to help if I can.
The best LPs are informative without being dull, entertaining without being overly jokey, and usually involve two or more people. You also need to be either good at the game or very, very, very bad to the point of your futile attempts being hilarious. NO AVERAGE PLAYERS HERE.
The Sims is always funny if you plan a good story or make some good characters, but they're usually better suited to screenshot LPs as a lot of the storytelling is lost in video. It's much funnier to have a screenshot of your character with a thoughtbubble with a yeti in it and say "John stops everything and thinks about yetis for an hour" than it is to actually watch John thinking about yetis for an hour, for example.
I think for a solo LP you'd do best to showcase games no one else has played. Real old ones. But for 5punk, and for drawing in new members, we need an LP of us playing a game and yelling and having fun - which Natural Selection might be best for.
Startopia! that game was all kinds of amazing, its also available on GOG for a few quid these days. i think it also had a multiplayer mode too which i would happily get on if you wanted some multispazz LP's
Trine could be interesting too, especially with 3 5punkers.
shot2bits wrote:Startopia! that game was all kinds of amazing, its also available on GOG for a few quid these days. i think it also had a multiplayer mode too which i would happily get on if you wanted some multispazz LP's
Totally! Gameranger supports it too, so no messy Hamachi'ing needed.
shot2bits wrote:Trine could be interesting too, especially with 3 5punkers.
My favourite LPs are ones pretty much how Shada describes - informative stuff about games I haven't played, hilarious attempts to battle with ludicrously-broken game mechanics, first steps in getting to grips with titles that end up quickly being a lot deeper than they appear and meticulously-prepared set-pieces which showcase particular aspects of games. Spontaneity is great when it happens, but consistent quality has to be edited in, which is why most in-game videos are less than a minute long.
The Sims is a good way to include 5punkers (as characters) without having all the editing hassle of trimming down three hours of TS hilarity, but it's a tough one to make a video out of. That said, even single-player games can be made into group events with a bit of trickery: you could record some in-game video, then record a commentary and reaction live as 5punkers watch the video together. Even something like the Sims could be made to look like a multiplayer experience if the participants "played" themselves with maybe half a script or some prompts about what was coming up. "Who's that in bedroom? What I am doing with that?"
Broadcasting (and recording the video+audio of) an SP+TS play session could achieve the same results, too of course.
Multiplayer games work too, but the "story" would be told from your perspective unless we had mulitple people recording their video. It'd need a bit of narrative or a running commentary about what you were doing/thinking to make it absorbing - things people were talking about that weren't present on your screen (so in the video) might be confusing, so scenes where everyone is present and reacting to the same thing work best, unless you set the video up to record some sort of "observer" mode.
I'm just thinking out loud about things I like to watch, and all the planning/setup insn't really representative of what 5punk is - so perhaps something utterly confusing where you don't know what people are talking about is actually a better advert for us, after all.
Okay, so ideally I want to record audio in these two ways so I can duck sound for voiceovers in editing:
Single player: [Game video and audio] [microphone audio] on separate tracks/files.
Multiplayer: [Game video and audio] [skype audio] on separate tracks/files.
I gather you can use something called a "Virtual Audio Cable" to do this, but I can't get my head around it. I don't suppose anybody can take a look and brain for me, as my brain isn't up to understanding it apparently.
I think it's half about the VAC and half about having a recording program that will let you record from two devices independently.
The VAC can split the output from specific programs to virtual devices, but you need to be able to record each of those devices at the same time. I don't know what you use for recording, but Audacity which I just tried, doesn't let you - if you change the 'Recording device' it changes it for all tracks and even instances of itself.
The VAC thing seems to work for the splitting though - it creates virtual devices which you can set as outputs in compatible programs. In Winamp that's under Options, Prefs, Plugins, Output, Configure. In Media Player it's Organize, Options, Devices, Speakers, Properties.
This may be a silly suggestion, but do you not now have two computers right next to each other now? Record gaem sound on one, talky sound on the other? Seems easier than futzing about with audio software.
Dxtory does exactly that, no VAC stuff needed. It's by far the most powerful recording program, but it needs caressing and knowledge of codecs (try lagarith) for best results (proprietary codec has terrible compression in the reds unless it records at a really high bitrate). My system is good enough for it, even tried recording to SSD, but could never get a totally smooth recording. Definitely worth looking at though.
That website reads like it's written in Engrish, Thompy!
I might indeed just do what I had originally planned and record microphone on my laptop. Just need to get some extension wires wibbled around so that all the cables reach the appropriate machines from my headphones.
Grimmie wrote:That website reads like it's written in Engrish, Thompy!
I might indeed just do what I had originally planned and record microphone on my laptop. Just need to get some extension wires wibbled around so that all the cables reach the appropriate machines from my headphones.
Yeah DXTory is made by some Japanese dude. Still, it works really well. Definitely worth the money.
Memories. I might need to get the new one to be truly scared again.
