HEY GUYZ you can listen to my voice vocally, I'm doing a let's play series



  • with a friend of mine called Robots in the News, we just finished our first game which is Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddeon, and we're currently in the middle of a Portal 2 co-op play through and we have some exciting things coming up too.

    Here's the Earth Defense Force playlist. Watch and let me know what you think and also this is the obligatory begging for follows and rates on my movies because that's what you have to do if you have a let's play series on YouTube.

    Cheers.

    Oh wait also who can answer my questions about becoming a YouTube Partner? I have questions and I can't find answers.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Watch and let me know what you think
     

    Just a brief watch, but I can give the usual Limey winges of "too much 'errr...../ahsum' and stating the obvious" but I'm guessing that type of commentry appeals to your target audience, so I'm just wearing my <pedantic dickhat> on that one.

    The only real nag I found is the vocal placement - it sounds like you're completely in the left ear and your mate in the right. Whilst this "talking heads" method enables the listener to identify who is speaking, you may benefit from rebalancing yourself closer together - have yourself 25% and him 75%, rather than you 0 and him 100.

    An intriguing series, nonetheless. From what little I saw you both got into the puzzle-solving quickly, so consider me a stalker subscriber here - I'm interested in how the others turn out.

    Edit: those two nags are fixed in the Earth Defence Force series (just watched the first part of that) - the commentry isn't as overwhelming and you give the game a chance to speak for itself. I'm guessing a lot of it is unscripted, but the brief intro with some background info is a nice touch.

    As a matter of interest -  what do you use to record the video? You have some direct-to-digital capture method?

    (I'm going to leech one of 1080s to watch on a bigger screen.)



  • @Cassidy said:

    The only real nag I found is the vocal placement - it sounds like you're completely in the left ear and your mate in the right. Whilst this "talking heads" method enables the listener to identify who is speaking, you may benefit from rebalancing yourself closer together - have yourself 25% and him 75%, rather than you 0 and him 100.

    Yeah, I actually liked that, but you're the second person to point that out, so I'm going to figure out a solution. Unfortunately, the whole Portal 2 series is that way and there's no way to convert the audio to mono using YouTube alone and I'm not going to re-upload all the episodes and break my links, so. Alas.

    I couldn't figure out how to move the two stereo "speakers" closer to the middle, so the first post-Portal 2 upload is just mono. Is there a simple sound editing program that lets you "move" stereo audio sources and spit out the result?

    @Cassidy said:

    An intriguing series, nonetheless. From what little I saw you both got into the puzzle-solving quickly, so consider me a stalker subscriber here - I'm interested in how the others turn out.

    Thanks.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah, I actually liked that, but you're the second person to point that out, so I'm going to figure out a solution.
     

    To be honest, it's no big thing: I was listening in earphones where it's more noticible. If I play it over stereo speakers, there'll be better sound meshing where both ears will pick up the talker.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Is there a simple sound editing program that lets you "move" stereo audio sources and spit out the result?

    Software-wise... no idea on that front. I used to be a sound engineer and our solution was adjusting the "panning" control for that channel which would bias the balance between the left and right channels to "virtually relocate" an instrument from the crowd's perspective. So if you're after software that tweaks that, you're looking for something that "pans" audio sources.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    [can't see/hear video from here...]
    @blakeyrat said:

    and we're currently in the middle of a Portal 2 co-op play through
    Something I'd be interested in. Watched 2 'teams' on it so far - one set was alright, but fluffed three levels to the point of dragging them out to 10x the time they needed to complete, (so-called 'first time we've done this,') the other sorta 'just quit' 2/3rd the way through and didn't finish it.



    (Looked for others, but the ones I found before giving up and looking for other stuff were either re-uploads of the ones I'd seen, or complete and utter crap.)



  • @PJH said:

    Watched 2 'teams' on it so far - one set was alright, but fluffed three levels to the point of dragging them out to 10x the time they needed to complete, (so-called 'first time we've done this,')

    Well, Rantis had done the co-op levels once when the game first came out, and I'd never done them (if you watch episode 1, you see I don't even remember the controls.) Despite that, Rantis doesn't remember shit so we mostly were starting from scratch. There was ONE puzzle we cut an episode without solving, then solved in the first minute of the next episode, but honestly we only worked on it maybe 2-3 minutes between episodes, so our run is mostly "pure".

    At one point we were planning to download some of the Portal 2 levels from Steam Workshop and do those as a filler program, I should see if Rantis still wants to. Since we need 2 fillers ATM.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Well, Rantis had done the co-op levels once when the game first came out, and
    I'd never done them (if you watch episode 1, you see I don't even remember the
    controls.) Despite that, Rantis doesn't remember shit so we mostly were starting
    from scratch. There was ONE puzzle we cut an episode without solving, then
    solved in the first minute of the next episode, but honestly we only worked on
    it maybe 2-3 minutes between episodes, so our run is mostly "pure".
    To be honest, I wasn't after 'pure' - I was after some entertainment, with (in this particular case with 2p portal) commentary - both had lots. Most of the time it was good. Watching the first lot struggle with one level (having not played Portal, let alone the 2-p version) but by this time knowing what "I would do" at this early stage) I was torn between forwarding in 10/30/60 second increments or listening to them, and watching them, fluff it.



    I watched them fluff it time and time again - with hindsight, it was funny, but at the time I was just after how two players solve stuff - and it came across as... I dunno - just the 'ineptness', while not stopping me watching the whole lot (first lot finished,) didnt leave me feeling satisfied with the effort. (The searchI used was along the lines of [2 player walkthrough] - walkthrough it wasn't. The other detritus that cropped up was the twats that were using hacks/bugs to solve some levels in 2s. While I'm sure they're interesting to a minority of players or observers, I found the one I did watch boring.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah, I actually liked that, but you're the second person to point that out, so I'm going to figure out a solution.
     

    I kinda got used to the hard separation, but it's still confusing since you're the host and your gun is on the right while your voice is on the left. So I basically continually mistook you and Rantis for eachother.

    Edit
    hey maybe I can swap channels in my sound crad config. I'd have to look into it.



  • I'm guessing you do the commentry in real-time... is there any mileage in recording your ingame speech separately then overdubbing with another - more structured - commentry?

    I know it won't be as realistic, but it can be difficult to comment upon a game whilst trying to focus upon playing it, so at least you could concentrate upon the play and record snippets that serve as memory-joggers when you later script the background commentry.

    In the first EDF I found the commentry about other weapons interesting, but it came midst a pitched battle... you probably want to wait for a lull in the action so it doesn't detract (and could be a good way of filling "dead time").

    It'll all add to the time and effort taken, but giving it a go just with one episode and comparing the production values against prior ones should give an idea if it's worth the additional effort. 

    Currently downloading the HD versions now!



  • @Cassidy said:

    is there any mileage in recording your ingame speech separately then overdubbing with another - more structured - commentry?
     

    That would completely rip the heart and soul out of Let's Plays.



  • @Cassidy said:

    I'm guessing you do the commentry in real-time... is there any mileage in recording your ingame speech separately then overdubbing with another - more structured - commentry?

    We're gonna play around with that. I actually have a couple of long plays, I'm trying to talk Rantis into commentating over them, but it takes a bigger time commitment. I've also come up with another idea I'd like to try that involved post commentary. So look for stuff in the future. But our queue is like 3 weeks, so keep that in mind also.

    @Cassidy said:

    I know it won't be as realistic, but it can be difficult to comment upon a game whilst trying to focus upon playing it, so at least you could concentrate upon the play and record snippets that serve as memory-joggers when you later script the background commentry.

    I personally think I'm pretty good at it, but feel free to give me your own opinion. Rantis has a nasty tendency to start saying something and then trailing off, and then I have to prompt him to finish the sentence. But we're aware of that and working on it, and newer episodes are better.

    Oh, but if you guys love Blakeyrants, you'll love the last half of Magicka where we both basically Blakeyrant an awful buggy unfun video game. Coming in a couple weeks.

    @Cassidy said:

    Currently downloading the HD versions now!

    Thanks.



  • @dhromed said:

    I kinda got used to the hard separation, but it's still confusing since you're the host and your gun is on the right while your voice is on the left. So I basically continually mistook you and Rantis for eachother.

    See that's the thing, I don't think of the commentary voices necessarily "belonging" to the first-person character in the game. The game footage is just the game footage.

    Rantis has proposed we record video on both our computers, so I can cut back and forth to the viewpoint doing the most interesting thing at any particular time. This has file transfer and disk space concerns, but we might try that on our next video.

    @dhromed said:

    That would completely rip the heart and soul out of Let's Plays.

    Lots of popular Let's Plays are post-commentary, take a look at ProtonJonSA's YouTube account for example. And Retsuprae has done some extremely hilarious commentary over long plays they didn't even play, but downloaded from longplays.net.

    Portal 2 Episode 5



  • So... you are recording a videogame session, adding comentaries and posting in youtube (some sort of site to share and post videos I guess). That could be an interesting notion althought I hardly find it compelling but tastes differ I guess, to be honest I never understood the whole social thing like Facebook or Twiteer (I'm guessing this is some sort of sms board or something). Anyhow for the whole sound part, most video players have an option to change from stereo to mono but I'm not sure if youtube (why is named like that btw?) player can do that or not.



  • @serguey123 said:

    That could be an interesting notion althought I hardly find it compelling but tastes differ I guess
     

    You make it sound like it's this new-fangled revolutionary thing.

    @serguey123 said:

    So... you are recording a videogame session, adding comentaries

    The commentaries are recorded real-time while the game is being played. I feel this adds tremendously to the entertainment value, though that doesn't mean post-commentary is necessarily crap. It just lacks HEART AND SOUL.

    You come across as highly non-social (that's okay; just a statement of observation), and the appeal of these videos is mostly to hear people talk while doing a thing X that you like. So yeah.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dhromed said:

    @serguey123 said:
    That could be an interesting notion althought I hardly find it compelling but tastes differ I guess

    You make it sound like it's this new-fangled revolutionary thing.

    Well, compared to what he's used to...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    See that's the thing, I don't think of the commentary voices necessarily "belonging" to the first-person character in the game. The game footage is just the game footage.
     

    Well, it would be that way if you'd added commentary afterwards, but since you're recording commentary as you play, the voice obviously belongs to someone playing.

    You don't perceive yourself in the game while you're playing?



  • @dhromed said:

    You make it sound like it's this new-fangled revolutionary thing.

    To me, yeah, I should probably elaborate that only use like 5 non work related websites and that is the extend of my social internet browsing experience.
    @dhromed said:
    You come across as highly non-social

    True, at least on a online level, I don't see the appeal of sharing least of all with people I don't know.
    @dhromed said:
    that's okay; just a statement of observation

    Not sure what you are getting at
    @dhromed said:
    the appeal of these videos is mostly to hear people talk while doing a thing X that you like.

    Hmmm, ok, althought I rather play the game than watch a video of people playing the game no matter how interesting the commenting is but as I said, tastes differ. I guess is like watching a sport event instead of actually playing the sport.



  • @serguey123 said:

    I guess is like watching a sport event instead of actually playing the sport.
     

    Kinda.

    I watched some sport-like commentary with Starcraft II videos on youtube and it was unexpectedly entertaining. Maybe this is how all those football or baseball fans feel when there's a game?



  • @dhromed said:

    @serguey123 said:
    I guess is like watching a sport event instead of actually playing the sport.
    Kinda.

    I watched some sport-like commentary with Starcraft II videos on youtube and it was unexpectedly entertaining. Maybe this is how all those football or baseball fans feel when there's a game?

    Tribes: Ascend matches are awesome, if you understand the game. Starcraft II, Tribes: Ascend, and a few other games (Nexuiz apparently) are considered "e-sports", designed for team-based play.

    Back when I was on-top of the Tribes ladders, back in 2001, none of this streaming technology existed in any usable fashion. Kids today are so lucky.



  • @serguey123 said:

    to be honest I never understood the whole social thing like Facebook or Twiteer (I'm guessing this is some sort of sms board or something).

    What the holy fuck are you talking about? This is YouTube. You post videos. What is a "sms board" and what the shit does it have to do with let's plays? Did your brain just diarrhea words out of your mouth or something?

    @serguey123 said:

    Anyhow for the whole sound part, most video players have an option to change from stereo to mono but I'm not sure if youtube (why is named like that btw?) player can do that or not.

    It doesn't, which is annoying because I spent a lot of time looking for one. Even using the JavaScript API you can't tell YouTube to play in mono.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What the holy fuck are you talking about? This is YouTube. You post videos. What is a "sms board" and what the shit does it have to do with let's plays? Did your brain just diarrhea words out of your mouth or something?

    @serguey123 said:
    Twiteer (I'm guessing this is some sort of sms board or something)

    As in twitter.com, you know? I was just mentioning other social sites that I don't get
    @blakeyrat said:

    It doesn't, which is annoying because I spent a lot of time looking for one. Even using the JavaScript API you can't tell YouTube to play in mono.

    Too bad, you will need to modify the source then.



  • @serguey123 said:

    As in twitter.com, you know? I was just mentioning other social sites that I don't get

    Yes I use Twitter, but I'd still like to know what a "sms board" is, assuming it's anything at all and not just your own verbal diarrhea. And I still don't see what using Twitter has to do with uploading a series to YouTube. Those sites aren't linked in any way, you realize?

    @serguey123 said:

    Too bad, you will need to modify the source then.

    Which is even more of a pain because it's impossible to modify a YouTube video without changing the URL, and I've already created the blog entries linked to the right URLs. That's ignoring the upload time... anyway, the end result is that Portal 2 is just going to be stereo, future uploads I've already been fixing.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yes I use Twitter, but I'd still like to know what a "sms board" is

    How would you describe it?
    @blakeyrat said:
    I still don't see what using Twitter has to do with uploading a series to YouTube

    Two things I don't get the purpose off
    @blakeyrat said:
    Those sites aren't linked in any way, you realize?

    I wouldn't know, never used them.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'm trying to talk Rantis into commentating over them, but it takes a bigger time commitment.

    Yeah, that's the major drawback - as well as losing the freshness and vibrance of "in the moment". If he's still resistant to the idea, get him to try it at least once even just to prove it's a crap idea. Occasionally useful things have been known to emerge from trying something different.

    @blakeyrat said:

    But our queue is like 3 weeks, so keep that in mind also.

    There's already quite a good stock of vids (and they're not short runs either - some of HD downloads are 600MB - 1GB) so even die-hard fans aren't going to be disuaded by the lead times. Do you have some release frequency in mind? (new vid every 3-4 weeks?)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Rantis has a nasty tendency to start saying something and then trailing off, and then I have to prompt him to finish the sentence. But we're aware of that and working on it, and newer episodes are better.

    I suppose it's a focus/concentration thing. In my youth I could crack jokes and maintain a pretty good conversation when playing some videogames, just letting muscle memory repeat known steps through early levels; if you're fairly familiar with a game you have mental processing power spare, so I'm guessing you don't get as distracted by the game as much.

    Another way of combatting this is to have one provide the commentry (and be prepared with suitable soundbites for dead space, as well as an overall gameplan) whilst the other focuses upon play. No reason why the player can't engage in the convo also, but at least delegating responsibilities provides a bit of a fall-back. It may take a few runs to become natural and not feel staged, so again there's a time/effort investment to consider for that one.

    I do like the idea of recording both screens and changing between them - showing different viewpoints. We had someone record a Unreal Tournament I participated in and when replayed you could flick to either player view as well as a spectator - just watching from the viewpoint from the enemy as well as a room-corner perspective gave a great insight into stuff previously overlooked.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Oh, but if you guys love Blakeyrants, you'll love the last half of Magicka where we both basically Blakeyrant an awful buggy unfun video game. Coming in a couple weeks.

    PREORDERED!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    What is a "sms board"
    I'm guessing (relating to twatter) 'short message service' - i.e. text messages. And the allusion to a message board (i.e. usenet.) Sorta makes sense. ..ish.
    @blakeyrat said:
    and what the shit does it have to do with let's plays?
    Putting content out there for the world and his dog to consume I'd imagine.



    Granted, I'm stretching a few metaphors here, but I think that's the thrust behind Serguey's post.



  • You see blakey? Is not that hard



  • @serguey123 said:

    You see blakey? Is not that hard

    It's been about 5 years since I heard anybody refer to a text message as an "sms". Now that I've made that link, it makes more sense.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    It's been about 5 years since I heard anybody refer to a text message as an "sms"

    Ohh, I had no idea, I think it has been stablished that I'm not up to date with social and communication tech, cellphones still provide that service? (again I'm not sure as I don't own one because it didn't make sense to me and I don't even remember when was the time I used one)



  • Started a new game: Magicka. This is a bad game. Our let's playing it does not imply it's good or that you should try it.



  •  $ yt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RtJVCPeaY4
    [youtube] Setting language
    [youtube] _RtJVCPeaY4: Downloading video webpage
    [youtube] _RtJVCPeaY4: Downloading video info webpage
    [youtube] _RtJVCPeaY4: Extracting video information
    [download] Destination: Robots_in_the_News_-_Magicka_-_Episode_1-_RtJVCPeaY4.mp4
    [download] 100.0% of 522.71M at    2.45M/s ETA 00:00

    Leeched, ta! Get in!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Magicka. This is a bad game.
     

    It looked like a fine game.



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Magicka. This is a bad game.
    It looked like a fine game.

    YOU MAY WANT TO WATCH THE WHOLE SERIES I give up on it around episode 4, Rantis forced me at gunpoint to play until episode 9 at which point we both gave up on it.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    YOU MAY WANT TO WATCH THE WHOLE SERIES
     

    Okay, alright, sheesh. right now it's just you getting used to the weird recipe-style skillbar.



  • The difficulty in the game is that that the controls are lousy.



  •  UP IS DOWN AND LEFT IS RIGHT THINGS MAKE NO SENSE



  • @blakeyrat said:

    with a friend of mine called Robots in the News, we just finished our first game which is Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddeon, and we're currently in the middle of a Portal 2 co-op play through and we have some exciting things coming up too.

    Here's the Earth Defense Force playlist. Watch and let me know what you think and also this is the obligatory begging for follows and rates on my movies because that's what you have to do if you have a let's play series on YouTube.

    Cheers.

    Oh wait also who can answer my questions about becoming a YouTube Partner? I have questions and I can't find answers.

    I can answer all questions, but can you train your brain to understand me?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @serguey123 said:
    You see blakey? Is not that hard

    It's been about 5 years since I heard anybody refer to a text message as an "sms". Now that I've made that link, it makes more sense.

    Welcome to Hyderabad.

    Everyone here and across our entire great nation calls it SMS and not text.

    Listen to TV shows and they all asking us to send an SMS to vote for Indian Idol, Dance India Dance and all kind of shows.



  • @Nagesh said:

    Welcome to Hyderabad.

    Oh thanks, I've always wanted to trav--

    WAIT A MINUTE! I'm still in Seattle! Just what are you trying to pull?!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Nagesh said:
    Welcome to Hyderabad.

    Oh thanks, I've always wanted to trav--

    WAIT A MINUTE! I'm still in Seattle! Just what are you trying to pull?!

    That city name remind of some hollywood movie made hundredsof years ago. some bollywood producer also copied that movie that result in minor hit.



  • @Nagesh said:

    That city name remind of some hollywood movie made hundredsof years ago. some bollywood producer also copied that movie that result in minor hit.
    Ain't no way in hell you're in India.  Y'all don't have any power!  How are you posting from there?



  • @nonpartisan said:

    @Nagesh said:

    That city name remind of some hollywood movie made hundredsof years ago. some bollywood producer also copied that movie that result in minor hit.
    Ain't no way in hell you're in India.  Y'all don't have any power!  How are you posting from there?

    May want to check a map, where Nagesh claims to be is not in the eastern part of India.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'm still in Seattle!

    Why are you still there, you should come, is sunny there.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    @Nagesh said:

    That city name remind of some hollywood movie made hundredsof years ago. some bollywood producer also copied that movie that result in minor hit.
    Ain't no way in hell you're in India.  Y'all don't have any power!  How are you posting from there?

    1. Have you heard of UPS.
    2. Six north-eastern state lost power. Hyderbad is in state of Andhra Pradesh. Enough power here.




    Don't try outwit me!


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