It's Vinny and I figured I'd make a thread and stick it here so I can just add to it when I want to drop a note for information regarding some site stuff. Like, for example:
08/12/2020
Mass Alex Ep 21 is still processing and should be up later today
We're going to be doing a bunch of non-public streaming tests today during the afternoon so a lot of the staff will be pulled into that as we try to work through some technical and creative aspects of shows we'd like to do in the future. I believe Matt Rorie will be streaming during that time, so thanks Matt.
Later today Ben, Abby, and I might play some more Deep Rock Galactic, which I'm looking forward to!
EDIT 12:36 ET: Mass Effect probably has an hour left, maybe less? It's compressing off in the system right now. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes... sometimes it takes 20 minutes and then another 30 minutes to distribute one of the compressions to our platform (we make 7 versions of varying qualities). Here's a bit of what that looks like if you were to, say... stare and yell at it to make it go faster:
Not sure if this is worth noting here but currently waiting for a version of the Beastcast to export so that's an update if you're wondering where it is. It gets streamed live then we process (trim the breaks out and boost some of the audio) on the video version and that's exported, uploaded, and hopefully processing in the background while the audio version is worked on. We use the local recordings that everyone uploads and sync those up, add filters to clean up the audio, and try to level them out. Then it's exported, the tags and artwork are added, and then the two versions (free and premium) are uploaded to where they need to go. Then all the data needs to be dropped into the content management system(s) and if you played your cards right, those video versions you uploaded first is close to done and you can hit publish to go live. If it's not done yet, you can sit and wait for one of the four versions (free video, premium video, free audio, premium audio) to finish doing whatever it's doing and blow on the screen to make it go faster. Sometime's I'll just publish if something is moving too slowly and add a note into the comments that a certain version is caught somewhere but on its way. And now my export is ready so I'm starting the audio only version now. Bye!
Done recording Minecraft and processing that and today's The HotSpot. For how The HotSpot gets processed you can see yesterday's post about The Beastcast, except things move a bit faster because there are only 2 versions (premium audio and premium video) and only our content management system to deal with since we only serve it to the Giant Bomb site (not counting RSS feeds).
Also, I figured if anyone has any questions (mostly related to production) drop me a message from the site DMs and I can try and answer one here. Probably not extremely long answers though as I try to do these as some background process is running.
We're going to shift gears a bit from the back-to-back streams and try and get some other programmed business together. There are some folks on vacation this week (Enjoy!) including Alex for a bit of the early week, so Mass Alex will be delayed but hopefully we'll find a spot sometime later this week to record and process it.
We're still playing around with formats and tech but here are some other bits we're looking at getting to for this week:
Quick Look: Risk of Rain 2 Quick Look: Othercide Quick Look: MS Flight Sim (if only I can find a pilot to do this with... AHA)
HotSpot (Premium) Breaking Brad (Premium) Playdate (Premium) [Maybe playing one of my favorite Arcade games... need to see if it will work]
Of course Bombcast/Beastcast and probably a few more streams here and there hosted by other people or ones that I'm not directly involved in so I'm not going to list them here.
Abby will be out on this week's Beastcast but hopefully Jeff G. can join us to talk about VIDEO GAMES.
I'm also trying to spend time with Factorio since it's now 1.0 and I've got a lot of catching up to do. A video of that would probably be next week at the earliest.
Keep an eye out on the Upcoming on the front page for live/posting times.
Risk of Rain 2 QL was recorded yesterday but we had some trouble getting the file off of Ben's computer and onto mine so I can mix it and process it. Between the two attempts to upload it that total time was probably over 6 hours. Which is a long time. Seems like it is in the drop folder now so downloading it and hopefully that should be up later today. Fingers crossed everything is fine with the recordings!
Also, working on uploading and processing this week's Best of video (Thanks Derek!). Usually, Abby handles that but she is out on PTO this week. That goes live on the weekend.
I want to spend an hour or two more in Othercide before we record a QL for that and the same for MS Flight Sim tomorrow, so while the Bombcast is going I'll be doing that. I've done all the tutorials in Flight Sim but want to try more of the challenges. Usually, Alex and I use that time during the Bombcast to record Mass Alex, but he's out today so the skies the limit! I'd like to get MS Flight Sim go up Wed if I can turn everything around quickly and Othercide will be later this week.
Was hoping to get more time with Factorio last night while waiting on the Risk of Rain footage to upload but instead spent until about 10:30PM with Brad testing out different direct connection options between remote computers for sharing gameplay. A lot of port opening, netcat, SRT, and general "Why is it doing that?" but some progress was made and I always like spending time with Brad.
After that I still wanted to play Factorio... but instead called it a night, which means I spent the night in a shoving match with the dog for a spot in the bed. The dog always wins. Should have played Factorio!
Drew and I recorded a QL for Flight Sim 2020 but the audio isn't great (my local recording got borked) so we're going to record again tomorrow. Good news is we finally got the multiplayer sorted by the end so we can do more of that this time around in the recording. Look for that going up later tomorrow afternoon. Thanks again to Drew for donating his mornings to help with this!
I'll be joining Brad along with some other folks for Breaking Brad later today, which I'm really looking forward to, so tune into that. Not sure if this is the first one I'll be a part of? Can't remember. Can't be...
Then we'll be recording the QL for Othercide. I dig the game but it stresses me out having to sacrifice my characters to heal! Look for that going up later this week as well.
After all that the plan is for Alex and me to record Mass Alex, so depending on how late that goes and what the upload gods do... that will probably go up tomorrow morning or later in the day Thursday after the Beastcast.
Enjoy the videos and streams!
--Vinny
UDPATE Alex isn't feeling great so we're going to push this week's Mass Alex recording to next week and maybe do a longer episode with, I suspect (but no promises), that Citadel DLC... we'll see.
In the process of kicking out that Othercide QL and I'll put that up today when it's done.
Later today we'll have The Beastcast where I'll talk more about Flight Sim and Jeff Gerstmann will be there as well for his thoughts on Battletoads.
And, of course, this is the spot where I will continue to post about how I need to spend more time with Factorio's full release.
UDPATE
The MS Flight Simulator QL is up now! I originally tried to get this up before The Beastcast and it was down to the wire. Even pushed the show back a bit because I wanted to get that upload in before streaming. Turns out the version Premiere kicked out was missing... um.. 3GB of data? Not sure what happened there, usually this can happen if Media Encoder crashes during a write or something but I didn't see any errors. I didn't know this file was bad at the time. I spot checked the file, it played fine, run time was correct, and I uploaded it and asked Rorie to keep an eye on it while I immediately started The Beastcast. He messaged me not long after saying the offsite compressions were all broken. So, during The Beastcast's first break I checked the export and sure enough, if I tried to scrub the playhead of the movie past a certain point things would crash. I had to wait until after the show to re-export and re-upload and that brings us up to now.
Here is the image of the two file sizes and run times. Metadata is weird. You can see the time stamps for basically when The Beastcast starts and when it ends (plus the 20 minutes of export time) for each file finishing which is fun... I guess.... if you're me.
Always something.
Anyway, working on processing Beastcast now and should be up later tonight.
Enjoy!
UPDATE AGAIN!
As I was scrubbing through and listening to the posted QL I noticed I really started stepping on Drew's audio and thought... that was really rude and then it just got comical by the end. Turns out I encountered one of my worst production nightmares. AUDIO DRIFT.
Honestly, with how taxing this game was on my PC I had worried about it and initially, for our first recording had favored giving all the CPU to the game didn't do a spare recording. Mistake. This time I did and luckily I was able to use the backup. Drift is weird. I'm never sure why it appears, but it usually seems related to taxing a computer. Things start fine and by the end the sync is way off. It can happen with files with identical formats, rates, you name it. I can't state enough how much I despise it.
Here's an example. These are two recordings of my mic during the QL. The top waveform is the one that drifts while the bottom is the one that stays in sync. You can see they start fine.
By the end:
It's a nightmare.
I found this spot where MAYBE something happened and you can see a longer gap on the one that stays in sync (the bottom) versus the shorter gap on the top file. I've seen stuff like this before and it's bizarre. Maybe an audio person out there knows why this happens, where a program will clip a recording. I hate it.
Either way I think I found the issue. I was glad to have a backup. Sometimes you have to go through the whole file and methodically slice and reposition each bit to get it back. Sometimes if it's a steady drift over time (and not a lot) you can actually get away with time stretching the file and kind of cheat your way back into sync without changing too much of someone's audio pitch. It's always a pain no matter how you slice it and I've stopped using certain capture programs because of it.
The fixed file should be uploading now and live soon... but now you are more aware of dreaded Audio Drift.
Update.....
Still waiting for The Beastcast to finish processing through the system... and I can only assume that if I type that here it will go faster and I can be done. It's so close but it has been taunting me at 91%... for so long. Why taunt me so? (it's not done yet. guess this isn't working. going to watch transformer reviews). WAIT one of the videos just finished! Well if you read this and the free version isn't showing up yet you know why, hopefully that follows soon!
First off, hope everyone out there is safe. I know a lot of our team is dealing with smoke and the safety of themselves and their families during the fires in California. This could and probably will affect some of our recording and availability for certain members. Stay safe!
In lighter news, I'm trying to go on vacation for two weeks! Well, by go on vacation I mean just try and spend some actual time with the family (and get some personal stuff done) before the kids get back to (home?) school. It's been, and more importantly FEELS like awhile (last Oct) since I put in for time off but also... what is time even anymore? It's been hard to even think about taking time off when so many people are struggling with employment, but when I realized the kids start school in a week and a half and we haven't really done anything all summer, the guilt built up. Also, I'm fried.
Back to THIS week.
Alex and I should be recording some of that Mass Alex today [in ten minutes!] so maybe I'll put that up as soon as I can seeing as we missed last week and MIGHT miss next week... though maybe we'll sneak another in.
We've got folks getting some games ready today and tomorrow for recording later in the week. We're looking to get QLs up for SpiritFarer, Battletoads, Mortal Shell, Madden 21, and also an Unfinished for Rogue Legacy 2. Now, that's the plan, but of course things could shift and slide around, especially if we hit recording issues. These will probably all land Wednesday and after so keep an eye out.
We're looking to have a BIG Playdate this Wednesday with Among Us. We haven't tested it all yet, but that's the plan. I'm looking forward to it.
We'll have a delayed live Beastcast this Thursday because we're going to stream and talk over the gamescom Opening Night Live. Depending on how long that goes the Beastcast should be right after.
Then on Friday we're looking to have some VinnyVania with Curse of the Moon 2. Which means we'll probably not finish the whole thing and I'll have to pick it up again in 2 weeks... the way it was meant to be played, I'm sure.
Those are just some of the items we talked about in our production meeting today, but look out for other streams and videos going on throughout the week.
--Vinny
UPDATE
Finished recording Mass Alex with Alex. Long(er) episode this week. A lot to get though. Alex is uploading his files so I can process them (around a 2hr upload) and I'll probably set the export to go overnight. Look for that to go up at some point tomorrow.
Not too much to report today as folks are prepping games to record QLs tomorrow, and also recording the Bombcast, AND also I've got to duck out around 4PM to attempt to take the family to the dentist... We'll see how that goes. We've put it off for about 6 months but we feel pretty comfortable at this point that they are taking the proper precautions. Still weird and I guess we can audible if things feel... not great.
Mass Alex is on its way through the system and should be posting soon. I can't put it in the upcoming without giving it a specific posting time and if I'm off by estimating it being done early it just won't post and people will wonder where it is, and if I'm off by estimating late, you'll have to wait longer while it sits there waiting. There's no option for "2PM or when it's done... whichever comes first." So it will just go live when it's ready.
I played a bunch of SpiritFarer last night and I love it am really enjoying it. I feel like when I put it down I was starting to get tingles that things could become tedious... but I'm definitely going to play more, so we'll see. QL recording tomorrow with Alex and I'll have more to say on The Beastcast this week.
On my calendar for today is recording a QL for Madden with Alex. Sadly, probably we won't have our annual usual scrimmage (I think Alex's is scared to face me) due to the part where local multiplayer for the consoles is off the table due to us... you know... not being local and buying another copy of the game just for that seemed a little much.
Then it's off to an hour meeting.
Then it's back to another recording with Alex for a QL for SpiritFarer, which I have really been enjoying.
Right after that it's time to test out that Playdate for Among Us. By test, I mean play it live with all of you and most of the staff. Excited, but a little nervous.
After that's up and archived I'll try and turn at least that Madden QL around for today and post it.
But that's not all! I believe Jan and Ben are doing an Unfinished for Rogue Legacy, Abby had her Rhythm Fever stream (archive should be hitting soon I suspect), and Jan is scheduled for some Pokemon later today.
Don't forget we've got that stream tomorrow for gamescom as well!
Time to go record.
--Vinny
UPDATE 000001:
Moved the start time for the Playdate back 30 minutes to allow for a bit of room between our next QL recording the start of the stream. I suspect I'm going to need some time to arrange this scene once everybody joins...
BUT even if you're not interested go check the Quick Look for Spiritfarer. I feel like a lot of folks are going to miss this game, and so far it's one of my favorites this year and might even crack some other favorite lists of mine... we'll see.
We're going to be talking over the Gamescom thingy in a little bit at giantbomb.com/chat so join us there. Here's a picture of me mugging for the camera while Jan gets things setup.
Very handsome.
After that we'll have The Giant Beastcast. We're aiming for 4PM Eastern but if things run long on Gamescom we'll just start after that. It's just Alex, Jeff B., and myself this week as Abby is on PTO (paid time off... I realized when I write PTO not everyone knows what that means. It's a vacation day).
Alex is going to be taking a break from drumming today as he tweaked something in his body but wanted me to let you know that "I'll be back next week with a longer set to make up for it" which sounds bananas, but those are his words.
Lastly, here's an image sent into The Beastcast by Hank. I think... I hate it.
Friday! Am I right? Busy, but not so bad as Friday's go. Unless maybe if you're Alex who got the back-to-back-to-back Triple Dipple stream goodness today with Clue Crew, HotSpot, and VinnyVania. Thanks Alex!
Our site video player allows us to put an archive of the show back on the site almost immediately after it's broadcast, but only if we don't reuse the same chat for another stream. In practice, that means if there are two shows back to back you have to close the chat, boot everyone out, and have everyone file back in if you want to use that function. It's why, even for premium things, we generally weren't able to use that version of the archive for shows during the heat of Lockdown. That being said, with some breaks between shows now, we're able to use it again. When you see a version of a show up that doesn't have Download options, that's what you're looking at. It's basically just replaying to you what was streamed, at that same quality it was streamed.
I say that because The HotSpot and VinnyVania are currently in that state on the site as I type this and begin to process those archives. They should be fully archived soon.
Rorie's The Hellfire Club stream also just ended as I'm typing this all out so make sure to check out the archive when it's up!
Here's some stuff from this week to also keep you busy:
I'll be on vacation next week so probably no VinnyVania and Mass Alex (mmmaaaybe... we'll see).
To celebrate, here's a clip of when Alex and I were trying to record the QL for Madden and as soon we started my microphone stopped working and then I hard crashed. For some reason I find it very funny.
Loading Video...
Enjoy the end Celebrate the passing of summer and see you in a bit.
If you don't know, it was announced today that ViacomCBS is selling CNET (which includes us) to a company called Red Ventures.
I know folks are extremely curious about what this all means, but we, or at the very least I, honestly don't know the answers. A lot of meetings today but detailed information isn't available yet and especially nothing yet that I could even translate into how this might affect you and what we do.
So the week continues!
Alex and I are hoping to get Mass Alex recorded tomorrow! WooHoo! Give me my comfort food!
We're going to talk over the Sony's PS5 event on Wednesday. Price? Has to be, right?
Cripes, I forgot how tiring these virtual school/hybrid learning/remote learning/whatever days are!
Here's a fun thing, though. I do woodworking, but mostly with hand tools and that means building anything takes centuries. A flat piece of wood one might call a "shelf" will take 3 months. So, when we finally decided (3 days ago) that the two kids need proper desks instead of using the kitchen table (fine) and an aluminum folding camping table (not as fine) I got to buy a new power tool. I mean, those kids need desks, right? RIGHT. Dang right. Let me dip right into that household slush fund. Didn't even have to come out of my Transformers budget. Now those desks will only take half a century to get done.
Speaking of getting it done. I'm currently awaiting Alex's files of Mass Alex so I can process them for tomorrow morning. We thought we'd get through most of the party DLC stuff, but turns out... it's very long! Still very enjoyable though. Strap in for some pull-ups.
Tomorrow is the Sony thing and I just made a YouTube upcoming for it. I swear they change that interface every 30 seconds... Or I'm extremely old. Or both.
If you're wondering if I played Factorio during my two weeks off I didn't except for one, very fun, multiplayer session with my brother. I don't think I touched anything but Microsoft Flight Sim and Spiritfarer the whole time.
Vinny's Top Ten Games of 2020
Microsoft Flight Simulator and/or Spiritfarer... Last of Us 2? I can't do this now.
This week vanished into the ether. It is gone now.
The audio from the HotSpot is exporting now and should be up soon along with the video. Brad did me a solid and made the page for it which might not sound a like a HUGE deal, but I really do not like writing the descriptions for things. After over a decade of writing descriptions for things I just sometimes don't know... how to describe them. You'd think I'd have gotten the hang of it. Thank you Brad!
Ok, export is done on the HotSpot. Going to upload it and will update this with some other stuff from week when that's done and the VinnyVania is exporting.
--Vinny
EDIT: Actually, VinnyVania is up and I'm going to grab some dinner because it's tacos and I'm not missing that... update later!
EDIT - THE TACOS WERE DELICIOUS:
Ok gonna keep this short because I just heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has passed away and my mind is kind of reeling.
This weekend I'll be joining Drew Scanlon to help raise money to help fund multiple sclerosis research. You can watch at giantbomb.com/chat or youtube.com/clothmap at 10AM Pacific | 1PM Eastern on Sunday.
Meetings and a decent amount of them. They pop up when you least expect them and can chew up a good chunk of your day.
But that's not why I'm writing this, to tell you about meetings. I'm writing this because if I write down that I want to do a QL for Iron Harvest but... I haven't touched it yet it... and that makes me feel more guilty for not carving out the time.
Also, I'm pretty excited to get to the second half of that party in Mass Alex. If you've been waiting for the end here we are. I'm not sure how many episodes are left, but it can't be TOO many.
We're planning on more Breaking Brad and VinnyVania this week. Playing those things once week is hard enough, so sometimes it's best to keep trucking until it's done. I hope both of those games understand that.
Abby and I are trying to find a good spot to record Six Crazy Frights which should be airing soon as we lead up to Halloween. Look out for that in the future.
Audio issues. That's where I'm at here. I installed some capture software on my PC recently and since then I've been having headaches with my audio. Even after uninstalling the (possibly) causal software I'm still getting sync issues, buffer issues, you name it. I'll probably roll back my PC to a previous backup if I can't get it all sorted out, but what a headache. And it's intermittent too! I hate inconsistency. Too hard to test. BLEH!
But I am happy it's Friday. Got a busy weekend ahead of me but should (hopefully) be productive! Gotta get busy fixing/building/cleaning things over here!
Have a great weekend, watch some of this great stuff below, and see you next week!
What happened to Monday? Don't know. I know the kids were off and I know I sat at the computer and I know I looked up and it was 10:00PM. There was some leftover Yom Kippur dinner waiting for me, and that was a treat.
I did record more Six Crazy Frights with Abby! That did happen. Check out the one we recorded last week for Slender: The Arrival!
I also know I was able to play some Iron Harvest, and maybe it was playing it after a long day but so far that game seems to move too slowly... I think I'm still ramping up but let's ramp faster please!
I know I still have strange issues with my audio, so I'm reverting some of it back to where it was... but some of it is hard to test, especially when I go from doing one thing that is fine and the next thing it's not fine and we're not sure on which end the problem lies... lays? might lay? Who cares. It's frustrating.
THIS WEEK
Alex and I are trying to see how much Mass Alex we have left. I'm thinking at least two longer episodes. We'll record it normal this week, but if I feel we're nearing the end maybe we do it live as special thing next Friday? TBD.
Sea Beasts! This Wednesday Abby and I are going back in to see how the waters are. While I like the full crew and the... tension it brings there's a lot of fun in when there are just two people on the ship.
Breaking Brad is back on Thursday after the Beastcast, I won't be there for it (editing said Beastcast) but I suspect he will beat the game.
Speaking of beating the game, this Friday is VinnyVania! Last episode? No idea. Honestly. I think someone said I'm nearing the end and the map in the game seemed to be at the top of something so we'll see.
I did it. I just finished the campaign portion of Star Wars: Squadrons. Not sure if it was exactly necessary to do that, but I really wanted to get through it before recording the Quick Look tomorrow. Going to spend time with the multiplayer now and see how that is. I think the campaign is... ok? The story didn't grab me, but as a device to introduce you to all the ships it's effective. After I FINALLY figured out how to boost properly (I think I am now... at least) and also how to manage the power on the TIE fighters it was more fun. Quick Look should record and go up on Wednesday.
Abby and I recorded a Quick Look today for The Solitaire Conspiracy which seems like a fun take on solitaire. Look for that soon.
We then tried to squeeze in another recording for Six Crazy Frights but ran out of time as I have to jump into a meeting. The setup and tutorial was a bit more than we were expecting so hopefully we can squeeze that in somewhere else.
There's also a Quick Look for Genshin Impact which I believe is being recorded tomorrow as well with Jan, Jeff, and Jason? People might change.
I believe Brad will have some BugSnax coverage later this week but no Breaking Brad. Taking a week off.
No Mass Alex tomorrow because we're planning on doing it live on Friday! Brad might even join us.
This Wednesday's Playdate is scheduled to be some Left 4 Dead with Abby, Ben, Alex, and Jan.
I get nervous and anxious when trying to show off games that either have long histories, complex mechanics, or frantic action. The action ones I don't mind as much because what are you going to do, really? You might just have to stop talking for a bit or you might just bone up the action. That doesn't really bother me. It's the ones where I feel like I need to map out how I'm going to present a game, like Star Wars: Squadrons and what is necessary to dive into (do we need to go over all the power management and menus?) or just show off the action portions? I usually try to approach it from what I think is interesting (so yes, the power management). Ran into a similar thing with Baldur's Gate 3.
I find a lot of the divergences and ways Baldur's Gate 3 adheres to the 5e ruleset interesting, but is that worth sitting on a menu for 3 minutes talking about? How far into spellcasting do we need to go? What if someone is jumping in here as their first CRPG game? What if someone is jumping in here from Baldur's Gate 2? How much of DnD 5e's mechanics, classes, history, lore am I going to misremember in the moment?
My plan was to start from that interesting cutscene at the beginning (eye stuff), go through what's in the character creator, talk about what's not there and what fifth edition is, and then spend more time going into combat/dialogue/gameplay and showing it all off. Sometimes it's hard for me with things that feel complex to not go into tutorial-like explanation mode, but for a game like this it felt like that would be useless.
ANYWAY
Baldur's Gate 3 Unfinished should be up tomorrow (Wed) but enjoy this shot for now:
Other Stuff
Abby and I recorded another Six Crazy Frights and for a game I apparently played with Patrick around seven years ago. That was a bit of a "been a long road" moment for sure.
Going to try and jump in with Ben and record a Quick Look for Age of Empires 3 in the near future. Played the heck out of 2 but not sure I remember playing 3 a ton. It was a long time ago. I like RTS games where you can build walls, so more of those.
Abby is streaming Wednesday morning and then we've got more Breaking Brad in the afternoon.
Thursday is currently scheduled to wrap with some Alex drumming away.
Friday we've got The HotSpot and then the thing I'm most excited about... Phasmophobia with me, Abby, Ben, and Jan. Abby and I played a bit more today to test everything out with using just the in-game audio and to also get a better sense of the controls and yeah, it seems great. I died again. I'm not usually scared in games but that one does a number on me.
Ok, this week. Plenty of stuff keeping me busy off-camera this week, mainly how do you take account of and audit 10+ years of production gear when you can't go into an office. Answer? ______________________.
I've been playing that G.I. Joe Operation Blackout game, so look for a Quick Look of that soon. It's not great but I don't really have strong feelings about it. My Transformers knowledge definitely outpaces my Joe knowledge, but I'm not sure this is scratching much of a nostalgia itch.
We've got The HotSpot on Friday and instead of a premium show after we're looking to do a live Jackbox Quick Look, so stay tuned.
Filmed another spooky game with Abby today and that was fun. More positional audio in that one, though it's hard to keep quiet when you're trying to do something entertaining. Feels awkward.
We'll have more popping up so keep an eye on the site.
"You already have a perfectly nice, and expensive, bike!" was the answer I got when I asked my wife if we should get an exercise bike for the house. It's true, I do have a bicycle I bought when I used to ride to the office in Sausalito, which was a fantastic ride. It's also true we do not have the room to put another thing in this house. BUT, it is also true that I am turning into the human equivalent of mashed potatoes. Also true, as everybody knows, the only way to solve that problem is to buy something expensive and put all your hopes in that wonderful panacea. So after talking with a friend he clued me into indoor bike trainers! Basically, turning my bike into an indoor stationary bike. My wife found my compromise satisfactory though she is still very skeptical, and so this is the path I will be headed (or hopefully pedaling) down. We'll see how it goes! Hopefully in the direction of mashed potato to baked potato.
Right, it's Wednesday already.
On Monday Abby and I recorded the last Six Crazy Frights for this season. We were able to play some Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope and that was fun. I really like those games and what they do, especially in the online multiplayer mode.
Today we'll be recording the Quick Look for it. I'll be playing the Quick Look in single player and starting near the beginning again to avoid much in the spoiler realm. If you want to see it things go a bit further, and with the other perspectives, check out the Six Crazy Frights going up a few days later.
I had time on Tuesday to play both Transformers: Battlegrounds and Amnesia: Rebirth which felt great! Even though neither game really struck me, being able to sit for hours and just play and prep some games hasn't happened in a fairly long time. Now we just need some time to plug in those recordings. I'm not exactly sure where to pick up with Rebirth for the QL. Need to figure that out.
Abby and I will be doing some Sea Beasts today. I think I prefer the two-person bits of it because it feels like there's less milling about and I always have something to do.
Alex and Bakalar have recorded NHL 21 and that should be going up soon as well.
Brad and Jeff are playing with the new toys (consoles) and trying to manage the minefield of both console and individual game embargos.
We're also looking to do another Playdate of Deep Rock Galactic this Friday, so I'm looking forward to that... if I can make it. Lots of meetings still happening with very short notice.
Bombcast, Beastcast, HotSpot all on track or, in the case of the Bombcast, recorded!
Some bigger titles creeping up, especially from Ubisoft, so expect people to be jumping on those soon in the near future.
We also made a spreadsheet to figure out availability for this year's Extra Life streaming, so more on that schedule soon. Spreadsheets. So many spreadsheets lately.
Last week was a lot. Not even counting what was going on outside of work, it was a decent amount to try and sort through here. The embargo schedules on these new consoles and the games that come with them have been a bit allover the place. That makes trying to communicate and schedule streams and videos... not ideal.
Don't forget to check out the Quick Look for Valhalla as well as the Extra Life archives hitting the site. Thanks again to everyone that participated (and continues to participate) and to everyone that has donate. If you'd like to still donate you can here: http://tinyurl.com/gbel2020
This week though, a little better for planning out. A little.
If you didn't catch it yet, Ben and I recorded a Quick Look for Bugsnax. I finally beat the game last night after getting all those little critters in my notebook, so more to say on this week's Beastcast.
I'm also playing the Crash Bandicoot game. Probably won't have anything to record this week yet, but as someone that was never really that into the series I'm enjoying it so far.
Abby and I recorded an Unfinished for Teardown today, that is currently up on the site. I really like it and am curious to see where it goes and what further tools I can unlock. Also, my dog is ok (you can hear him in the video). He was just being whiny at being alone upstairs. I really don't know how he's going to manage once we can leave the house again.
Alex and I also recorded a Quick Look for Yakuza: Like a Dragon. That will go up tomorrow morning (processing that now). I've seen Alex play a lot of Yakuza and this one seems even wackier.
Jan is on the books for recording some Fuser later this week, I'm very curious about that one as well.
We've got a pretty some launch day streaming happening on Wednesday. We'll try and cover anything we haven't been able to talk about up until now for both consoles. I'm told there's still more!
We're also looking to have a new Breaking Brad this Friday, so stay tuned for that!
Of course, Bombcast, Beastcast, HotSpot should all be normal time this week.
Whew. What is going on folks? Over here we've got all sorts of business. It's been about a month since we'd had one of these and I just have not been able to find the time. I just had a postponed shoot today which just freed up a block of my time so here we are!
Some interesting things are brewing. If you hadn't heard, we're moving our Game of the Year coverage to early next year. We're still deciding the dates and what form it will take, but so far it's probably been one of the best PRE Game of the Year planning discussions I've had in awhile. While nothing will be in person, obviously, and we'll still have to manage Game of the Year recording versus regular site content, I feel like we have a lot more options by getting out of December and when we to cram it all in as quickly as possible. We're still in discussions about the final format and what we'll record in the end, but I like where things are headed.
We also had a great test during our Destiny 2: Beyond Light stream where Brad, Jeff, and I sent Jan our gameplay feeds and he mixed them locally in VMix and restreamed them back out. It's a problem we've been trying to solve for awhile and Brad has done a lot of legwork playing with SRT streaming and testing. The next step is seeing what a full test looks like with "Everyone sends cameras and audio | I send gameplay | other people get returned my gameplay and everybody else's voices minus their own | I get everybody else's voices minus my own and minus my own gameplay audio." Normally that wouldn't be that big an issue but doing it all over the internet, with different latencies and connections speeds adds all sorts of hiccups. What appears to work for 5 minutes might not work for 90 minutes. Also, everyone needs to sort out how to send discrete gameplay audio to Jan that doesn't mix together any other desktop audio. For some setups this is easier than others. Well, we've had varying degrees of success when it comes to what plays well with different computers, even computers that should be virtually identical will behave in unpredictable ways and, as a small team, some isn't there to troubleshoot for you because they just installed this weird software you don't really understand on your computer you are kind of sunk. Better to see if a person can reach the destination on their own first in a way they actually understand, and if they can't then start pushing your own solution on them.
This week we've got some fun Premium streams planned.
If you've been enjoying Assassin's Creed Syndicate like I have I'll be playing more of that on Wednesday.
Last week, Brad and I tried solving some Scrap Mechanic challenges and as much I TRIED to get him to continue to the next one we might go for something a bit different this week. Look for that stream later on Wednesday.
Friday, we'll be testing out the new process I spent a whole paragraph talking about above this. While we're not ready to call it UPF, we'll be testing to see where it all breaks down in our Relaxed Friday Stream.
We're also trying to bank a few things for the winter break we get off between Christmas and New Year's Day. Trying to squeeze those recordings in is challenging (it usually means something else has to give), so can't promise anything but I will say, for fans of this here little post... I'm trying to convince Alex to sit for some KOTOR or KOTOR 2 and he's seems into it. We'll see.
Of course we'll have The Bombcast, The Beastcast, and The HotSpot so look for those.
Next week will be a short one so we'll be recording the Beastcast earlier than usually, probably Friday. We're also planning on doing a stream on Wednesday before we head into a week of trying to play games before GOTY talk.
Hope everyone is safe and thanks for reading/watching/listening,
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