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Making A Let's Play
Digger Dude
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've seen the glorious let's plays made by you guys and I'm thinking of doing one myself. I have a few ideas for games but I am wondering about the the technical part of it.
Basically, What is a good price for a microphone?, Is there any good screen recording software available for free? and is there anything I should expect when making one of these that would not be immediately obvious to a newbie?.
Basically, What is a good price for a microphone?, Is there any good screen recording software available for free? and is there anything I should expect when making one of these that would not be immediately obvious to a newbie?.
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It's good to do a LP of a game you already know up and down, but it's also cool to see someone go through a game for the first time like the Half-Life LP that ArcSyn made a few months ago.
Whenever you update, post it like a regular post in the thread, and then put a link to the post in the OP so people who are following the thread can see your update, and people who are new to the thread can use your link to jump to a specific part of the game. Just read over some old LP threads and see what they did that you like, and emulate it.
You'll be hosting a ton of images, so www.photobucket.com or www.imageshack.us will be your best friend if you don't own your own webspace.
But don't take much of my advice seriously. The only Let's Play thread I ever made was a spectacular failure.
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- Plan for time constraints. Fifteen minutes of game can take an hour or two to properly screencap, upload and write for, and that's if you get it right the first time. You're looking at weeks or even months of effort for a 20-hour game, give or take.
- Make your OP thorough, but concise. Explain what it's about for the uninitiated, make a case for the game, acknowledge its weak points, say why you like it... themocaw's Fallout Tactics LP is a good example.
- Know the game inside and out. You don't have to know every square inch of ground, but you should know the basics by heart, and many of the secrets. The more you know, the easier it is to write.
- Familiarize yourself with common image editing programs. Many games have dedicated screenshot keys, but not all, and some will have to be manually resized or even changed to more memory-friendly formats. You don't have to know how to work Photoshop blindfolded, just know how to shrink that 1280x1040 into something that won't break the H-scroll.
- Consider a game not everybody has played. I'm not saying troll the bargain bin for a copy of Wetlands, or scour eastern Europe for the last copy of Pathologic being used as a coaster by one of its devs, but sometimes it's nice to read about something we might have missed.
- Play for and with the audience. A good Let's Play is part writing and part performance. Be ready to take questions or recommendations. Help people with technical problems and respond to feedback. You may be pleasantly surprised with the results, and it helps bring everybody else on board.
- Have some fun with it. Throw in a mod or two or twenty, and tell us how they work. Stop to play basketball with the ragdoll corpses and then hurl a flaming barrel after them. Take an update to play as Collateral Damage Man and destroy as much as you possibly can. Have Mayor Pedros and his wife beat each other to death and make it sound like a rejected I Love Lucy episode. In short, don't be afraid to do stuff you wouldn't normally do.
Some of this stuff is pretty basic, and none of it's written in stone. By all means, poke around, read a few others, see what works and what doesn't. They're a damn lot of work, but they're loads of fun if you're willing to keep up with it.
Incidentally, what games did you have in mind?
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Actually I'm pretty sure thats the best Let's Play ever.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2657863
1. Would you guys be terribly offended if my videos had a little fraps water mark on them
2. What would you consider the best time for a video (5 minutes, 10 minutes etc.)
Lies! Heresies! True believers know that the Fallout Tactics LP is Lord!
There is only one way to settle this!
Dance Fight!
<begins snapping>
You're a better man than I am , Gunga Din.
Given that you're doing a video LP, my advice probably won't be helpful, but the one thing I must require: HAVE FUN! Play through Fallout Tactics using a 3 STR noncombatant. Choose your team of pokeymans based on which one is cutest. Take dynamic screenshots of your WWII team quickly and efficiently taking down a house. Enjoy yourself: if you do, everyone else will as well.
From your first extra perk at level 3 to your last dying day.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
Ein, Ein, crazy Ein.
Play the game man!
John ro-mero, made you his bitch.
Kill spiders man!
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
Gadwin Printscreen will auto-resize images, put names on them (which I changed for each chapter) and number them and save them in what format and quality you desire. You can also choose from a limited set of keys as your print-screen button.
The key to a successful LP IMO is two things:
1: Finish the thing. Don't leave us hanging and wanting more. There are many LPs that start and then drop off the front page never to be seen again.
2: Pick a schedule and try to stick to it. If you're going to take a break or be late, inform those reading so they don't get impatient or stop reading.
It's because of #2 I haven't started my OpFor LP yet because I don't have the time right now to keep any sort of schedule on the updates. I don't want to have an LP with 3 updates and 2 months between that and the next one.
I wouldn't want to spend a lot, and hopefully I'd be able to do it on a relatively low-spec machine.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
It would take forever though, HM 64 is so awesome though I'd say go for it.
But in a way, it's good to know.
The problem is screenshots. I've never done a LP before, so how do I take screenshots for a N64 game?
Let me guess, SMT?
Actually, Dragon Force.
But yes, there's also one of those; someone's actually done a LP of DemiKids.
I had the same dilemma with doing an LP of a Saturn game. I resorted to taking the pictures myself.
I'm not entirely fond of the presentation, but that's my only option.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
Not sure if this was addressed to me or not, but I'm working on an LP of Dragon Force, even though it looks like I got beat to the punch a long time ago.
If there isn't, there should be. It would be pretty nice to be able to read all of those.
cj, pretty much everyone has been beaten to the punch by SA. The only way I'm even keeping my threads somewhat original is by having them be a "multi-game" thread instead of just 1 game. Mario wouldn't have even been interesting at all if I didn't do all the games on it. Goemon 2 and Pink Panther are the only games I've done that even SA hasn't done.
As for making an LP, all I can say is if you do videos, have fun playing the game. That is the most important thing. Even if the game is terrible, if you have some sense of sadistic enjoyment playing it, then the viewers will be able to tell. If you're having no fun then nobody will enjoy it and you'll end up wanting to stop.
I had bought an Adaptec Gamebridge for cheap off of w00t. Even though it's not the best quality, it should do the job fairly nicely.
I realize this, but what if I wanted to find your DKC or Mario LP's easily? I'd have to use the forum search, which is always a PITA. We are smaller, yes, but since LP's get lost in the sands of G&T it's almost harder to find out for enjoyment or to check and see if something's been done before.
That is Awesome. Problem solved, Harvest Moon LP coming soon.
Would that SA link have that kind of info? And what's a decent enough mic to use? Nothing fancy, just whatever will make the voice clear.
There's talk in the FFVII thread about doing an FFVII LP, which I have no objections of. Not sure I could finish the entire game though, so maybe a disc by disc basis? Or I could stick with an SNES game instead.
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That said, if you want to FF7, I'd stick to pictures. Can you imagine doing a video for a FF during your typical dungeon crawl? "Well, we just got in another random battle, as you can see I'm just going to blaze away with my physical attacks and save my MP for later, like I did the last 50 times."
Video works well for action games or platformers, because there's a lot going on. RPGs, at least of the Final Fantasy variety, don't lend themselves to that at all.
(Don't take this as me jumping on you. I just want to make sure everyone realizes why this isn't a good idea, at least in my opinion as a person who watches a lot of other people's LPs.)
FF 7 is probably just long enough and slow enough where the best option might be a combined one. Tape the minigames and cutscenes, screenshot the rest.
Dose anyone have any recommendations for software that can do this.
Also I'd like to see this desert bus let's play
Yeah, I considered that, but I'm not 100% if my commentary would be witty/interesting enough to carry the possible hundreds of screenshots that would accompany this game. I'm still interested in trying, though.
But I really do want to figure out how to get audio and video working together. I've seen some vids of PA members doing this, so someone should know how to do this. If it's software related, just give me the name of the program.
Recording major battles or minigames/etc is a good idea too. Maybe I can alternate between the two.
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More like thousands. I used hundreds in my MoO LP thread, and that game only took what, 4-5 hours to complete?
I had nearly a thousand shots to go through to cherry pick the best.
Properly set up, video LPs are easier. You can also edit out random fights if you so desire.
Not everyone here reads the SA forums. I, myself, am one of these heretics.
If I did a LP, it would be a bit classier without rimming on every single scene in the game.
For the record, I'm set on doing this. I'm sticking to the idea of screenshots for most of the game, videos for major fights and/or minigames. I would even take requests on what who you would want in my party for certain parts, what materia to equip, etc.
But before I do this, I want to get my feet wet with a smaller LP, a short action game like Final Fight or something. But to do that, I really want to figure out how to create videos with recorded audio.
So please, if someone can tell me how to do this, or what program to use, or who I can ask for this, let me know.
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Shoot, I'm barely two hours into Dragon Force, and I think I've already broken the 400 image mark.
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