Tuesday 28 February 2012

Good Old Games are awesome!

So, nothing much has happened so here's a short post. I've begun uploading HD videos, starting with a 720p walkthrough of Thief: Deadly Shadows, which, despite what I claimed in the description of the first part can't be considered to be too good of a quality because of the occasional texture flickering. The flickering is caused by my AMD HD graphics card with it's updated drivers and whatever, as apparently new AMD stuff doesn't mesh well with older games made with NVIDIA in mind. I could potentially fix the flickering by downgrading something specific related to the drivers but considering how dumb I am and what problems I created for myself in the past when I started tweaking stuff with the first two Thief games, I better just leave things be. I did try to remove and/or resize some of the intrusive HUD elements to make the walkthrough a more comfortable viewing experience, but that caused some game breaking issues in various spots in the levels. I also decided against turning on subtitles, because they are LARGE, right in the center of the screen and easily broken by random noises in the world. And, well, honestly Thief is one series of games where the hard of hearing cannot get the experience due to an easy 50% of the game being all about the sound. I'm sorry, deaf people, but there are certain things in life you just can't be a part of, same way that double-leg amputees can't have foot-rubs and I can't enjoy anything that requires thought. We all have our problems.

I also uploaded an HD Hitman: Blood Money fukkaround video because I thought I fixed the issues I hads with the sound recording, although I still couldn't hear a lot of the stuff I know I said and had to edit out certain sentences where it sounded like I was just whispering or moaning even though I actually spoke out loud. I recorded some more fukkingaround in A Vintage Year the same night, or to be more precise I recorded the cutscenes and briefing and only a minute or two of the actual level, but decided to stop for the evening as recording in HD takes a lot of space and I realized one thing: no matter how much I love Hitman: Blood Money, I just can't come up with anything to say about it while playing. So what I guess I'll do is upload A Vintage Fukkaround someday and then leave the rest of the game, as usual with my LPs and Fukkarounds, to be finished later and start thinking about doing Fukkarounds of games I haven't played yet, including Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery. I promised to do that and I stand behind my words, especially since it should be a lot more interesting for a Fukkaround than a game I like and know inside and out. And there's people's testicles involved, more specifically Martin alias GamerBomb's. Only reason I wish to stall with the Barbie stuff is that the games cost a fortune and while I don't mind making myself look stupid buying and playing a Barbie game, I do mind making myself look stupid by buying and playing an expensive Barbie game. I may be a bit insane, but I am still primarily a cheapskate.

Admittedly it has been a long time since the last Fukkaround and some people have asked me what Fukkarounds are. The answer is simply that they're Let's Plays done by me, just named differently because some sad elitist LP wankers spend more time trying to shoot down others for crimes against the artform know as "Let's Play" than recording their own videos, and Fukkaround is a more descriptive title for my videos. Sure, "A load of Bollocks" could be an even better title, but Fukkaround is fine. When the LP crowd, and I am exaggerating when using the term "crowd", asked me why the hell my videos suck so much, they couldn't understand it when I said that it's my way of doing LPs, but now that I call them Fukkarounds nobody questions the quality of my running commentary. Some people think LPs are guides, some think they're comedy riffs of games, some think they're casual gameplay, but Fukkarounds are always bad. It's that simple. If you do a Fukkaround it sucks, and if it doesn't then go LP.
I don't really hide the fact that personally I don't like my own LPs and Fukkarounds. I find them to be crap and I'm mostly just ashamed of myself, and one (or more) could ask then why I upload them for the public. Because some people like them for whatever incomprehendable reason, that's why. I find the process of recording videos so amusing that it doesn't take a whole lot away from me to record and upload some bad ones for others to see if they enjoy them, just as long as I don't have to watch them myself. I'm really bad at doing commentary, sure, but why stop because someone like myself criticises myself for something I've done to hurt my own reputation?

The HD videos, I'm still only trying out different video settings to see what's the best for me and iron out the kinks. Basically every Thief: DS video, which I have six done now (three uploaded), has been rendered differently. Oh, and the videos aren't 1440x900 anymore. I still do record the game at that resolution, but the edited videos I upload are smaller to save some time. Still large enough to be 720p, though, don't worry. In fact, try and spot the changes in quality if you can. I doubt you're able to.
Naturally rendering and uploading considerably larger files than before takes more time and so there's no way I'll upload more than one video a day even when I have some already done, but the only times when people have actually complained about my rate of uploading it's always been about uploading too many videos at once, so there shouldn't be any problems there. Nobody complained even when I didn't upload anything for 6 months, which is kind of sad if you think about it, so why start now.
One thing I really hate about HD, though, is that I get much more video errors now and often can't use the recorded footage "as is" without encoding it with some other program first or re-recording the whole thing again. Fraps recordings sometimes suffer from these small errors that only cause slight stuttering in certain media players, which wouldn't be a big problem if it also didn't cause freezing and crashing in the horribly picky video editing software known as Sony Vegas. But, Fraps is still the best screen capture program, wouldn't catch me saying otherwise. Sure it has it's limitations, but I've tested several other programs in the past and Fraps is easily the best for my line of "work". If something's gotta go, it'll be Sony Vegas when I have money for another editing software again. It's just too bad that Studio 10 and Pinnacle stuff in general doesn't seem to work with 90% of computers and other programs, from my experience.

And, lastly and leastly, I have created a GOG.com account. I had some spare dollars left on my PayPal account that I didn't bother to withdraw so I created the account on a whim and bought Deus Ex GOTY and Dungeon  Keeper 2. I also finished Dungeon Keeper 2 after so many years of yearning to play it again, and it's a really fun game, albeit quite easy. I wonder why so  many people give it so much shit. I know, a lot of people do love it like I do, but in the past I have read more negative reviews of it (usually tagged along with nothing but praise for the first game) than positive.
Also, in the past, some people asked me how they could donate me games to record. Most wanted to send me copies in the mail or pirated ISOs through email (probably just to steal my identity and send me worms) and nobody ever donated me money, not even when I cried and begged them to on my knees, but if you really want to send me free games then the only way I'd ever accept them is if you gift them to me on GOG.com. Or Steam, but I'm still not big on Steam. But you never will send me anything now will you, you cheap bastards, even though I know you either have a GOG.com account or will have one because signing up is free and nets you 6 free games (good ones at that) and GOG.com is simply put awesome, even if I do rather sleep with physical copies of games. Hell, I can burn the GOG.com games on DVD discs and sleep with them if I really want, am I right?

Go join GOG.com! It's the only way of downloading games that I condone!
And send me free stuff and money, you freeloading cheapskate bums!

3 comments:

  1. Deus Ex...my favorite game...STIL, after all these years!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very excited to hear that more Fukkarounds are on the way, also screw the LP community most famous LP'ers are some of the most boring people alive, I find your to be quite entertaing well except for that time in Fahrenheit where you were in the library... Also of course loving the Their walkthrough!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I found myself screaming at the computer when you were in the library ;), it was entertaining for me!

    -Neal

    ReplyDelete