For the first time in four years, I’m actually using this plug-in!
This is a poll relating to what I should stream once I get a run of Golgo-13: Top Secret Episode worthy of submission to SDA. You can pick up to two answers, though note that I won’t really be speedrunning any of these. The poll will be open until I actually get a run of G13 for submission.
Thanks everyone!
-EE
Loading ...Since Awesome Games Done Quick 2012, I’ve taken to streaming stuff on Twitch TV. Yes, I know I previously said that I was done with streaming. The post title says everything.
Truthfully, most of Twitch.TV’s issues are still there, particularly the chat not loading at random points. But one of the big things that changed my mind was that Nate brought a bunch of Easycaps to AGDQ 2012. An Easycap is basically an easy-to-use capture device that, once Lee generously gave me the proper software for it, I was able to use it with XSplit to give my streaming setup a major upgrade. Suffice to say that using an old webcam to try and capture the game I was playing was, in romscout‘s words, “An interesting experience, to say the least.” Fortunately, I don’t have to do that anymore, and can instead devote the webcam to, you know, webcamming.
I also have to thank Mike Uyama for kindly sending me a third set of RCA cables, which allows me to stream my “old-school” NES and SNES games, opening up a whole new world of streaming, including actually being able to stream proper speedrun attempts for the first time.
And now that I have something resembling a proper streaming setup, actually doing streams is really exciting, to the point that I’m trying to get myself on a consistent streaming schedule. This also forces me to, you know, actually play games, which is something I’m excited about. After I work out a speedrun of Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode, I have all sorts of games I can play on stream, to the point of almost being paralyzed about what to play next. It’s a good feeling.
I stream here every Tuesday and Thursday evening (EST), and I try to throw a weekend stream in too at irregular times. Come check it out, and feel free to hit the “Follow” button on the page as well–I like watching the number next to the heart go up. Also, when I’m not streaming, check out the SDA Team Page for other cool people streaming. Especially give the people who don’t get hundreds of viewers regularly some love, they could use it.
-EE
This past week and a half was spent in Maryland and Virginia, at MAGFest X and the Speed Demos Archive Charity Marathon, Awesome Games Done Quick 2012. This is going to be a long, long post, so I’ll break it up into days, in order so that you’re not totally overwhelmed.
Wednesday, the 4th
Thursday, the 5th
Friday, the 6th
Saturday, the 7th
Sunday, the 8th
Monday, the 9th
Tuesday, the 10th
Wednesday, the 11th
Thursday, the 12th
Friday, the 13th
Saturday, the 14th
Sunday, the 15th
So I’m about a month away from Gobble-Con 2.0, where I’ll be giving the So You Want to be a Speedrunner panel again. This time, I have a bunch of new videos to show, and I asked for a second hour to do a live run of Mega Man X, even though the game play won’t take a full hour. With setup and the like, an hour sounds reasonable. My current best time through the game getting everything is 41 minutes and 46 seconds (Which is actually only about 20 seconds slower than my time not getting everything, even though the two should be about 4 minutes apart if I were a top-tier player at either of them).
I’ve been keeping up on the writing thing as well, although I’ve failed to get anything published as yet. That’s fine, because I’m still pretty new at the whole thing. As long as the ideas keep flowing, I’ll break through eventually.
-EE
Later on today, Speed Demos Archive will be starting their summer marathon, creatively titled Summer Games Done Quick. It’ll start at 2PM EST today, and tentatively go until about midnight on Saturday. Check out the full slate of games to be played here. I’m not participating in this one (Utah is a little far from Connecticut for my taste), although I did begin a game facts cheat sheet to help out potential commentators with some of the games they may not know very well, which the runners of the games then filled in with even more cool stuff.
This time around, they’re playing for the Organization for Autism Research. So make sure to check it out and donate if you can.
-EE
This run finishes the game in a shade under 13 minutes and 45 seconds. If you happened to watch Japan Relief Done Quick, for reference, it took at least that long to realize I was streaming to the wrong place, at which point I was less than halfway through the game (Which is an excellent indication of just how terribly I played to that point. This contributed to my mood when I finally got streaming to the correct place.). Despite that, there’s still a tiny improvement to be made with a route change, or rather, when I grab food. There’s also some execution improvements to be made, most notably my needlessly going to the menu at the end of the Dungeon because I didn’t know casting Twin took almost no mana at all.
I suppose I should explain why I’ve uploaded this video to Screw Attack (Which is not a porn site; its name comes from a powerup in the Metroid series) and not Youtube. Put simply, Youtube wanted me to link a Google account to use it anymore, and I flipped out and refused to do it for awhile. I’ve since capitulated, but I’m still not putting up any videos on it. Screw Attack is a more gaming-centered site anyway. Yeah, someone who shall remain nameless is correct when they say Screw Attack “is where tens of people will see your video!” But on the other hand, the way I see it, if you’re not willing to do some leg work and promote your video yourself, you don’t deserve to leech off the popularity (Or lack thereof) of the video hosting service you put it on.
Hence, Screw Attack it is. You’ll notice a link to my account on “Emptyeye Elsewhere On the Web” over to the right. Right now, it’s just Magician videos, but I want to eventually put my remaining Youtube videos on there as well.
-EE
Lately, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into the Connecticon Rock Band tournament. I finally finished the spreadsheet of songs for it, containing all 661 songs you can currently play on my Rock Band 3 setup. The spreadsheet will be printed out to help people get a sense of what they can pick, especially for the finals, where the tentative plans are to allow free song selection with the disclaimer that the same song can’t be played more than once throughout the finals. It’ll help for the qualifier too, but I have another weapon up my sleeve for that that might help even better.
That weapon is an OpenOffice.Org database. With this, I feed the spreadsheet into the database, and then, using queries and the like, can spit out the list of allowed songs (Current plans for the preliminaries are one “easy”, one “medium” and one “hard” song, with those adjectives determined by the total number of dots the song has for whatever combination of instruments are in play) for the combination of instruments being used, and the difficulty we’re trying to find a song for.
The other big news is that I’m considering a site redesign. The site, and the look for it, is almost four years old now. It has some quirks I never entirely fixed, and site technology has improved a lot as well. In other words, I don’t need to, EG, list out every single month on the sidebar anymore, I can theoretically just put the years with the number of posts, and then from there you could click and get to the months. So sometime soon, I’ll start looking into themes I can modify for my own purposes, coming up with new categories, and so on. It should be fun.
In less big news, I do still intend to finish a speedrun of Magician. In the meantime, I plan to upload the best run I have so far on my Screw Attack account, where you can currently see a couple “work-in-progress” versions of the run. I’ll make sure to post when that’s done. Really, this time.
-EE
I figured I should try and not let a month pass between updates this time out.
My current main activity is preparing for the Connecticon Rock Band tournament. This being my first year running it, I’m trying to do a really good job of getting prizes and things for it, to the slight irritation of my “boss”, so to speak (In short: He loves the initiative I’m showing, but for the sake of reimbursing me, wishes I hadn’t gone and bought stuff right away. Truthfully, this was stuff I was buying even if I had to eat part or of all the cost of it. I’d rather spend a bit more money and have this be memorable.). But it’ll be worth it in the end, or at least I think it will be.
The other thing I’ve been up to lately is writing short stories. I’m in the process of revising several of them, and I’ll share the ideas behind them once I revise a couple more of them. Eventually, what I want to do is self-publish a collection of short stories, and possibly some novels as well. knowing my proclivity for not finishing projects, it’s admittedly unlikely this will get anywhere, but we’ll see.
My Magician speedrun continues to move along. I think I’m one more improvement away from submitting to SDA, which is now under new management. Frankly, I’m amazed Mike lasted as long as he did; as he mentions in the first post, he outlasted two people, one (Both?) of whom assumed site duties after he did. Still, he was the one who got the site where it is today, and he’s left it in good hands. Also, he’ll still be planning the marathons for the site, which is definitely a good thing.
Next time: More Substance?
Indeed.
Japan Relief Done Quick is done. From an “SDA-as-a-Whole” perspective, it went incredibly–putting the marathon together in just two weeks, over $25000 were raised for Doctors Without Borders, and people seemed to like both the Commentator’s Cheat Sheet and the PC Game Collection I donated towards it. From a personal perspective, please do me a favor and pretend it never happened.
I’ve been making some changes in my life lately. Immediately after JRDQ, I went offline for a week, with the exception of any website I needed to do work at my day job. To the surprise of a bunch of people, including my wife, I actually made it the entire week. And I think I’m better off for it; for one, I’m actually capable of doing stuff like “washing dishes” or “playing some of the many games I haven’t beaten yet”, and not being addicted to Skype even during the weekdays. For another, I’m more productive at work, or when I’m not productive at work, I’m at least unproductive in a way that won’t also get my boss into trouble.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that I’m basically destined to flit from project to project and hobby to hobby and never really finish anything. And at last, I’m fine with that. My current time-killer–ask me in two weeks, it’ll probably be something different–is writing short stories of all kinds. This started out because I had an idea for a world/novel in my head, that was nothing more than a bunch of unconnected stories with no real force tying them together. Eventually, I just said “Screw it”, and wrote them as stand-alone stories. I’ve basically finished one, and am working on a bunch more, some tying into that original concept, others being completely standalone.
Who knows, maybe something good will come of this “writing” thing.
-EE
With the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, combined with the fact that without Japan, there would probably be no video game industry as we know it today, the fine people at Speed Demos Archive saw fit to quickly organize a charity marathon for Japan. This one is both shorter and a lot more casual than the last marathon–for one, we won’t even all be in the same location this time, and for another, if people want to use emulators (No slowdown or re-recording though), that’s actually allowed this time around.
This is actually good news for me, since it means I can stream Magician for it (The game’s almost total lack of sales, combined with it being a game more suited to playing than watching, mean it’s not really a good choice for the once-yearly “big” marathon SDA does)…a fairly representative speedrun that I did while trying to get an SDA-worthy submission (Which is still ongoing) is available here, albeit in a slightly squished form. Oh, also, I can see in the Caverns much better than you’ll be able to.
The bigger news here, though, is that I’ll be donating basically my entire collection of PC games to the cause in an effort to spur donations. My “lair” in my apartment is a rather large mess as it is, and i don’t play any of these games anymore, so I figure everyone wins if I just donate the entire lot to this cause.
I’ll be putting up another post later tonight that details everything I’m giving away. Suffice to say that the minimum donation to have the potential to win the lot is less than the price of just one of the games in the collection, let alone the entire thing.
