Stumbling through... an out-take

[davidn]

I had meant to do another NES game this weekend, but I didn't quite get around to it - I instead stuck myself fiddling with various codecs and formats, trying to find the combination that would involve the least amount of post-editing, as resycnhronizing the commentary on the Little Nemo video took me absolutely ages.

To test things, I started up Shadowgate - a game that I'd played before but could only vaguely remember the solution to - and proceeded to mutter to myself throughout, narrating actions as I did them so that I could line up the audio and tell whether the timing on the sound and video were off from each other. Most of it wasn't worth posting, but I thought that this part was too good to waste. After forgetting exactly what was in which coffin and failing to cross that room the first time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOw7-oaWhGg

By some coincidence, the portion of the video ID after the "-" is quite similar to the noise I make during it.

The good news is that the video worked - I could just put the video and the two audio tracks together and they suffered no misalignment at all, so the next real video will be much easier to produce this time around. For my own future reference, the magic combination is:

Window recorded through Camstudio: FFDShow codec at 50fps, maximum framerate, no auto-adjustment
Microphone audio recorded in Audacity through the Front Mic audio device, exported to FLAC
Game audio recorded in Tracktion through Pod X3, through a line physically coming out of the speaker headphone socket and into the Pod's guitar input, also exported to FLAC

Video still seems such an inconvenient thing to work with, what with desynchronization and worrying about potential compression artefacts... somehow, a standard format that everybody can play (like MP3 and OGG) still hasn't emerged, though I think that MP4 (and H264 or whatever that is underneath - this is part of the problem) might be going a reasonable way to change that.

Comments

[scani.livejournal.com]

l0ne_w0lf played Shadowgate a lot in my presence... though I have to say, the most entertaining part of the game for me has to be the death scenes.

It's a sad thing that your adventures have ended here!

[davidn]

Which is good news, because there are absolutely tons of them! I've never encountered any other protagonist with such a lemming-like penchant for causing his own death. Accidentally clicking on a window will cause him to bravely leap out of it. Trying to examine the well in the courtyard will make him jump down to investigate. Look at a sword or any other pointy item in the wrong way and he'll experiment by jamming them through several vital organs. I was surprised to die within about two minutes this time by simply trying to pick up a book - I must have just used "Open" on it all the previous times and not realized its deadly potential.

Outside those, though, it's a very... oppressive game, with music of just the right degree of wrongness to be uncomfortable. And as you can see, its jump scares still get me!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

When you said that something made you yelp in the room with the coffins, the goblin wasn't what I expected (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73kASTZ80T8) :)

I really don't know what to think about how you were so startled by it, though :D I wonder if nostalgia has something to do with it? (Or just how high the volume was?)

[davidn]

That was actually the reason why I had to redo the coffin room in the first place - once you've spilled it, you would think that he would take the sensible route and step over it rather than through it, but seeing as we're talking about the only person in the world who is able to stab himself to death with a hammer, perhaps this is expecting too much.

I know my response is hilariously disproportionate - but like I said above, the mood of the game is pretty uncomfortable already, and I was just talking away to myself to be interrupted by this sudden square wave shriek from the headphones! I was just glad to realize, thanks to the related videos, that I wasn't the only one.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

The failing-torch music seems to panic you as much as Sonic's drowning music, the difference being that you didn't panic quite so badly as to lose all coordination.

I played Shadowgate at a fairly young age, and the amazingly frequent attendance of the grim reaper had me thinking very morbid thoughts for perhaps the first time in my life - questions about death, that sort of thing.

So, next, Uninvited? Or maybe Maniac Mansion.

[davidn]

It's a very morbid game - it seems to take delight in giving sometimes very overly elaborate details of how you died, like the message that you get after staying in the dragon room too long. And with its background creepiness level already raised, I think that the torch music might even be worse than the infamous water warning... I was much older when I first played Shadowgate, and I still found myself keeping a close eye on my torches to avoid hearing its hideous sliding repetition.

Uninvited would be a good one! Though I wonder how interesting I could make it, seeing as most of the video would be of me standing around stuck.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

"...seeing as most of the video would be of me standing around stuck."

You could always ask that mysterious lady in the hallway. She seems nice; I'm sure she'd give you some pointers.


D.F.