Team Hatoful presents the Undertale Demo - Part 4

[davidn]

It's the final part of the Undertale demo! In this, we realize what we now have to do, and head to the final confrontation, which I attempt to resolve in the most peaceful manner possible.

Please have a supply of buckets for tears on standby, and curb any temptations for extreme violence towards plants that this video might unexpectedly awaken in you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1bP0dUPdEA

Comments

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

So you are more in favor of just waiting until something amazing comes along? The problem with Hatoful is that few games really match its level of writing. It's literally just like Matt Smith having to follow David Tennant's Doctor. It's hard for ANYONE to succeed after a star like him. If we wait for a game on equal par we may have to wait a *long* time, and we would also expect things out of games that shouldn't be expected.

[davidn]

We certainly did start off high... too high to match! I enjoyed Undertale even though it didn't have the same potential for everyone to voice and interact like Hatoful... little things that last a couple of hours like that are nice to do, without committing to it being a huge project like the Hatoful games were - when the next big thing comes along, I think we'll know it, but in the meantime we can do things that we discover and seem interesting, if everyone in the group is sufficiently interested. Though as said above, it would be nice to do a game that wasn't quite so emotionally scarring at some point.

[kjorteo]

We could always allow for ... smaller sub-group side projects, if getting all five of us to agree on a project is too impossible (a virtual certainty when the question of emotional content comes up while Raven and I are on the same team.) Raven doesn't want to do the second part of Undertale and I have no intention of making him, but we don't need to just cancel the project outright because it's no longer unanimous, do we? Conversely, everyone else seemed to think the Professor Layton series would work except for me, but why should I stand in the way of the others having their fun (if I'm wrong)? Budgie once proposed 12 to the Moon and I was all for it while the others shot it down for being too sad ... can't Budgie and I just go do it? And you and I still need to play through a co-op NES or SNES game at some point ... :)

I'm with Budgie in worrying that we are never going to find another project that all five of us really want to do at the exact same time. We keep saying to just wait for that special magical amazing thing to come along ... well, that's what Undertale was, for me. I'm sorry to anyone for whom that didn't work out, but I'm glad we got to do it (including hopefully concluding it with the good ending next time? Hopefully?) If we don't chain everyone to this idea of a unanimous all-or-nothing approach, then we can do a lot more of the projects individual members are particularly excited about. No more disappointment if your idea gets shot down, no more awkwardness if your idea gets adopted and we do it but the others don't appear to be having fun.

Think Team Hatoful under the Freebird Rule (appropriately enough.)

Edit: The current barrier to this idea, of course, is that, well, you're the only one who knows how to and is set up to record things ... but we can figure something out if we have to, that's not insurmountable.

[davidn]

Well, we certainly are fabulous.

I was almost about to say outright that Professor Layton would never work, and then remembered that it... really did have a quite strong visual-novel side to it. But the important characters in each game all have voices anyway! There are so... many, many ingredients that have to come together to make the perfect game to voice, you're right, and Hatoful might just have been unique...

Loosening it is definitely going to be the way to go, because I don't want anyone thinking about it as an obligation - nothing to stop us releasing sub-group stuff under the same name, now that you mention it :) Recording has actually got a lot more simple since I got FRAPS to replace my previous mad setup - I can happily pass that knowledge on to anyone who feels like they've got enough space on their hard drive (though you'd also need a video editor).

Definitely think about NES/SNES games :) I noticed just now that Battletoads has a 2-player mode and I've always meant to play it - I have no idea what it is except it's reputed to be very frustrating. I'm not sure how well Internet play would work for something that fast-paced, though!

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

How would the posting etiquette go if you are not involved? We send you an edited video, you post under your account? Or should we really just get a team Youtube account and, possibly, give everyone access so we can just collectively deal with our own stuff?

How much raw video, and maybe even audio, does one Hatoful session generally net you?

[davidn]

That's a very good question! (Which is business-speak for "I have no idea") - posting all under one account rather than multiple personal ones would definitely keep the watchers from having to subscribe to a heap of channels. I hadn't really thought ahead to what my lack of involvement would imply :)

The Hatoful sessions I recorded with Camstudio 2 were, for hour-long videos, about 3GB each when you add up the size of the video (about 1.5GB) and the two audio recordings (750MB each). However, it depends on the codec you use - FRAPS doesn't use a compressor at all and so a five-minute video can be about 1GB, depending on the screen size, but this comes at the advantage of only minimally affecting the game speed (you can compress the video later). I would say you definitely need a dedicated partition of about 500GB to do it - I took an external hard drive apart and just installed that :)

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

You'll have to find a modified version of Battletoads. I'm almost completely positive that I've seen one before. The issue is that, apparently the game is so difficult that no 2-player team beta tested beyond the first half of the game. In one of the levels in the second half, the 2-P controls simple do not function. The level features a "chase," so the second player is immediately killed, and. . perhaps the screen doesn't scroll with the second player still so 1-P dies, too? Anyway, certainly 2-P will game over in this area. Which, you probably won't get to anyway; you're confidence is pretty impressive, from someone who knows the game. There is a modified version that enables full 2 player mode throughout the game; somewhere. .

[davidn]

Wow, that's... quite a thing to have missed! Did they just think "Nobody's going to get this far - ship it anyway..."

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

I think that's quite possible for it's age.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Okay, I knew I should have expanded the comments, because this is basically the same point I just tried to make. ;)

And about the capturing setup -- don't forget that David is going to this extra level of effort, splicing his audio out separately, AND the game audio out separately, which (while nice) a stream could probably do without, and I'd bet that most do.... Really all you need is Google Plus itself, it streams directly to youtube if you aren't interested in editing.... and even if you are, I'm pretty confident you could do it with FRAPS and MAYBE a second laptop for your microphone.... though I admit I'm kind of beat at the moment and less able to tease the theory all out than I thought I would be at the start of this paragraph. ;p

[davidn]

My recording setup got significantly simpler when I started using FRAPS (though bear in mind it can't hook into games that don't use DirectX/OpenGL, maybe one of the two, I can't really remember.) I had to record three different channels when I was using the manual screen-recording method, but now it's down to two - and FRAPS by some black magic has the ability to record from both microphone and speaker output at the same time if you choose to do it, and that would bring it to just one (with no need for a microphone laptop). The only reason I didn't was that I like having the game audio separate from my voice - it allows for editing that's just a little more professional, especially if I can eliminate any involuntary breathing/coughing noises on my part.

I forgot about Google Plus (which we may have to permanently, if they don't fix this horrendous feature and any other games are particularly keyboard-heavy!) - for an unedited play session, yes, that really is all you need.

[davidn]

I've also been thinking about the keyboard problem and wondering if I could get around it by running the stream from a computer other than the one I'm playing on, but having to expend energy on this is honestly vexing when the system worked perfectly before!

[premchaia_pre4]

Surely if it's audio-based detection, you'd have to use acoustic isolation anyway? You'd have to find some way to route only your voice and not ambient clicking into the microphone…

[davidn]

Blaaagh! I forgot it might be audio-based (I haven't tested it completely because the "feature" only turns on when you have four or more people in a hangout). If it really is done like that, then I've no idea.

[premchaia_pre4]

I was there (well, observing, at least)! You also found out that it was audio-based, surely? You even mention it in the first video, as I recall. You wound up with a duvet over your hands to drown outsuppress the noise so the microphone wouldn't pick it up and trigger the detection software that would close the noise gate. Unless something's changed since then.

Append: also if it only triggers above a certain user threshold, that could just be an incentive to form smaller groups to begin with…

[davidn]

I thought at first that it had cured it, but later on I wasn't so sure, as it seemed to trigger occasionally no matter how quiet I was being... between that and Kjorteo's test, I wonder if it's looking for frequency of keystrokes (many of them in quick succession trigger it, slower ones - as might be produced when trying to be quiet - don't...)

[premchaia_pre4]

I thought Kjorteo's test was pretty conclusive. Not to mention what looks more authoritative.

"we can adjust the threshold parameters as we see the need." Never mind the actual users being able to adjust them. This is what happens when you let things get so centralized, folks…

"as this evolves and we see our detection getting more and more accurate, we'll consider going to smaller hangouts too. but for now, we'll start with 4+ rooms." Hah.