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Apologies for vanishing, I'm going to continue my LPing next week. I've got Floaty rog, Art of dying and Captain disaster lined up, likely in that order. The main reason why I stopped posting videos was that my channel was hit by a content id claim. It turned out to be incorrectly flagged and they reversed it after some back and forth. Annoying, but hey, that's youtube for you.

Since we adventure gamers enjoy puzzles (mostly) I figured I'd add the following. I recently received a metallic box secured with a 4-digit combination lock from my grandmother. It came with a rather cryptic note containing a string of numbers. If any of you can figure out the combination then I'd be very thankful, there's details in the video itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIdrX-DTpDw

Happy pi day all.

Just finished the LP for Monty, it can be found at the beginning of this playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtrHR3af4aQ0-XThfolNyQ6Zjfmuee_OO

I screwed up with this one. Unfortunately a newly acquired webcam had not just a microphone but a built-in soundcard as well. When I did the original (blind) LP of Monty it kept looping the audio back to my main soundcard, resulting in a horrible, distorted recording. This LP is the result of a second playthrough which isn't blind in any way, shape nor form. I did my best to inject commentary that I knew I made in my original playthrough but it's not quite the same. Fitz, apologies for that.

On Windows I can recommend Open Broadcaster Software. It's pretty swell.

Sorry about that, missed your message as I was typing my own reply. Yes, OBS is an open-source and extremely capable application. It has a grip of features not required for making let's plays though since it's designed primarily for streaming. If anyone has any thoughts about both streaming and making regular Let's Plays then it might be better to just start with OBS so you don't have to re-learn a new workflow. It can definitely do both.

Oh okay sweet XD yeah I've been wanting to do some Let's Plays myself with some AGS games but I'm pretty ignorant to which screen capture/audio recording programs I will need to pull it off as simply as possible without sacrificing quality. I've tried Hypercam but the playback was mega laggy and it also affected my gameplay sometimes and would just stop recording for no reason and with absolutely warning  . So hours of gaming were instantly lost T__T

I use Linux so my list of applications will be generally unusable for you. Instead of recommending what I use let's go through some that I've used with windows over the years. Generally it's the same for audio, if you want to record your voice then do so in a separate track so you can clean it up afterwards. For that there's really only one choice, audacity. It's free, open-source, works great in windows too and is an extremely capable waveform editor.

For capturing video in windows I'd probably recommend a hardware solution if you want absolute simplicity of use. Basically you buy a hardware encoder, connect the hdmi/dvi cable from your computer to it, then another identical cable from the encoder to your monitor. Whatever is on your screen can then be captured with the click of a button. No fuss, no bugs, it will always work no matter how new or old the game you're running is. Some examples are the elgato game capture hd, roxio has one and hauppage. I'm not the best person to ask about it but my elgato one seemed to work fine for the few times I used it.

If you're unwilling to buy additional hardware or require a software solution then my go-to windows application has always been Fraps. It encodes the data with an (almost) lossless codec. But you'll need plenty of harddrive space if you use that, and it will generally not work with older games since it injects itself for D3D and OpenGL surfaces.

There's a lot of confusion about fraps slowing down your computer when recording, this isn't actually true. It just requires vertical syncing. VSync works in intervals with your refresh rate. 120, 60, 30, 20, 15, 10, 5. Thus, if your computer is powerful enough to run a game at more than 120 frames per seconds then you'll get 120fps in fraps. If it's only capable of running it at 115 then it'll lower it to 60. If at 59 it'll go down to 30. That last bit is what people mistake as a performance hog because your framerate can vary during gameplay. Sometimes you're at 58, sometimes at 70. But if you at any point dip below 60 then fraps will sync at 30fps, creating the illusion that fraps require so much processing power as to almost halve the performance of your computer. Thus fraps will work fine on fairly modest computer setups and scales all the way up to beasts of machines.

If you plan on uploading to youtube then all of this is fairly unnecessary information anyway since youtube has a hard cap of 30 fps for videos, thus it's pointless to record at more than 30fps if you plan to upload it there.

What program do you use to record your Let's Plays with?

I wasn't sure if you just meant the video for my LPs or the whole shebang so I included all of it. If there's information irrelevant to your query below then please just ignore it, figured it's safer to just include it all.

1. I use FFMPEG to do surface recording, usually encoded in an intermediate codec.

2. For the audio of the game I capture it via a Pulse connector.

3. I record my voice via Audacity. Once the LP is recorded and edited I also use Audacity to do waveform compression, equalization, normalization and editing.

4. I use Avidemux to edit the videos without re-encoding a single bit of data. I feel this is important as to avoid multiple encoding passes since it'd reduce the quality of the final encode.

5. Once I've edited the video and audio I merge the pieces into parts. These I upload to youtube then encode via x264 for long term storage on my own network.

Hopefully one of those will answer your question.

Have fun playing and reviewing those lovely AGS games, definitely some great picks there

Please don't take what I'm about to say next as some kind of proverbial slap on the fingers, it isn't but I want to make this crystal clear. I'm not a reviewer. In the past I've included "review"-like summaries for some of my LPs but I never felt comfortable doing so and I won't do so again. Obviously anyone will be able to divine what I think of a game since I show my unfiltered reactions in a blind LP, but that's it. I do not want to be a reviewer so I choose not to be.

If you want a challenge you could try my latest game, The Art of Dying. I don't know if you enjoy non-adventure games though, it's a tricky platformer. A couple of small YouTubers have tried their hands at it but I would *really* like to see someone try and finish it, on easy mode at least. So far, NOBODY has managed to do so. And it's just 6 short levels.

I'm an omnivore when it comes to interactive fiction so I'd love to. That said, I'm not good at platformers.. no, I take that back. I'm terrible at platformers. But I'll give it an earnest shot to get through, if I get irrevocably stuck I'll bail and post the LP as is.

Been a crazy hectic week but I managed to squeeze in Ancient aliens, the LP can be found in the following playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtrHR3af4aQ28vzAW-zZANOk3xix9hfZy

I would be honored to. I'm adding "Captain Disaster in: The Dark Side of the Moon" and "Floaty rog" to the list. Right now I've got "Ancient aliens" and then "Monty" right before them.

Good job, TFeldt. Really enjoying your LP's, and the games. Even though there was no voice acting in Witchy Woo, just the subtle noises that she makes is a great touch. Well done Soxbrooker.

Thank you very much. The reception of this thread has gone far beyond my expectations and hopes. Still somewhat flabbergasted that I got more than single reply.

I have been enjoying your LP of Grey, been watching a couple of episodes a night, hand't played the game myself but loving the writing to it, its fantastic!

Thank you kindly. I also replied to the e-mail you sent me a couple of days ago but my reply was probably caught in a spam trap or something equally nefarious. It basically just said that you shouldn't feel obligated to give me any further information unless you specifically want it included in the LP, but thank you nonetheless. I just finished the LP of your game Witchy Woo. It can be found at the front this playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtrHR3af4aQ0-XThfolNyQ6Zjfmuee_OO

Please do a Ancient Aliens run through when you've got time. It looks like you're going to be pretty busy for the next weeks!:)
And thanks for doing this!

Edit: well I've found a 'let's play' of AA here:link; The guy that did it does not talk while playing so it's more like a extended walkthrough really.

Thank you very much for allowing me to do an LP of it mate. I don't mind doing let's plays of games that already have walkthroughs since I believe they cater to two different types of audiences. I'm preparing to do the LP of Witchy Woo the next time I get an evening free from work, but I'll bump your game up to the slot right after that.

After much blood, sweat and tons of tears (from giggling, naturally) I just uploaded the last parts of my LP of Gray. It can be found here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtrHR3af4aQ2fQ_x1VnX7tZWhk5i0am4d

Well, if your offer for exposion results in more exposion for you in return, that's really rather neat

Aye, it really is a positive feedback loop. The main issue I've been struggling with is that the number of views directly correlate to the popularity of the content covered. Not the quality, mind you, the popularity. This creates a small niché of viewers which undermines the effort of trying to introduce new people to the games.

If I were to do #yolo420swag videos I could generate thousand times more views, heck if I were to just cover something featuring a bikini it'd be millions more. Not complaining, it's just the nature of youtube. I've got some ideas for (appropriate) cross-overs that'll generate more views, thus more people visiting my channel and thus more people who will get exposed to the games and AGS in general.

Your welcome to do a lets play of our first game Witchy Woo if you would like too! its only a short one.
I love watching Lets Play Videos, I'll be sure to Sub to your channel

Thank you very much mate. I just finished recording Gray last night, it will take me a couple of days to do the post work on it but I'll transition straight onto your game afterwards. It looks great.

First, let me say that you have my permission to do a LP of 9 Months In.
However, you might want to play some other games first, since 9 Months In has already got its fair share of let's plays (not that it wouldn't make me very happy to see another one, it's just that some of the other games mentioned deserve more attention and mine not so much so, and also reliving the flaws of the game time and time again can really bring you down).

Much appreciated mate. And you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. I attempt to avoid redoing LPs of games that already have them. While there's tons of games I love that I'd like to cover there's really not much point, potential players can already find coverage of said games.

You also brought up some good suggestions for games, unfortunately (well, fortunate for me since they're great games) I've already played all of them. I could of course still do LPs of them, but they wouldn't be blind. They've also received a fair share of notoriety so, as you said, I'm going to stick to some overlooked gems for now.

Finally, don't worry about time. I spent more than a year beating my head against zork back in the day. As long as I'm having fun it doesn't really matter how long it takes.

I think that's great that more AGS games will be Let'sPlayed!

It's amazing watching someone play your game and it just a teaches you so much about good game design and reassures that games can be taken seriously.

Good luck, and count me in for subscriptions!:)

Thank you very much mate, it really helps with exposure. For those unfamiliar with youtube, it works like a positive feedback loop. Every time a video gets "liked" the chance of it being randomly featured is increased. Every time a channel gets a new subscriber it gets moved up in the ranks and shown to more people. Thus more people will get exposed to ags games and hopefully try some out themselves.

When I first began I was planning on doing mostly amiga games (my first lp was of crime city). But I discarded the idea since it's been so long that it didn't really help the developers of those games. Would much rather expose more people to the world of ags.

That's another sound issue: AudioChannel *snd1 = aLCStatic.Play();

And that is a WAV file, so apparently Linux does not like those too.

I can certainly compile a new version that just never plays a sound, but I think that's not exactly the sensible thing to do.

Interesting data, though. I have confirmation that Linux sometimes messes up imported TTF fonts, and now I learn about this sound issue. Considering that the new AGS version seems to be more about cross-platforming, I wouldn't mind recompiling it with that, once released.

No no, both midi and wave works fine in linux. The second null reference only occurred when I had turned off all sound. It appears that attempting to do aLCSTatic.Play() when sound is disabled will yield a null reference. It isn't related to linux or wave. You just have to make sure it catches the exceptions that are thrown or not use sound playing functions when sound is disabled. If you attempt to use an audiochannel that doesn't exist (because it cannot be created since sound is disabled) it will crash. Apparently.

1. Create the audio channel.
2. Verify that the audio channel was successfully created.
3. If it was then .Play() with it.
4. If it wasn't, then don't attempt to .Play() with it.

Let's not complicate it too much, if you can just catch the exception of the original problem with midi and recompile then I can try it. Assuming there aren't any more explicit references to unset variables it should work.

EDIT: Actually, we're going way, way off-topic here. If you want me to beta-test any modifications then I'll most happily do so. Let's move our conversation to PMs if you do want me to.

Ah, midi, yes that would certainly do it. There's support on some level for midi but it's flakey and I believe I read somewhere that it broke with ags 3.x. As far as I know the linux branch doesn't support turning just midi off. It's either all sound or no sound. Don't quote me on that but the only setting in acsetup that seem to matter is digiid={0,1}, the rest get ignored.

Turning off all sound leads to a problem in "room1.asc" on line 22, another null pointer reference. If you're up for sending me the recompiled game with the catches in place I'll gladly try it. My email is anders@tonfeldt.se if you want to send it directly.

I attempted to make one of Hubris but unfortunately it appears there's either a generic bug in the scripting of it, or there's a portability issue with running it under linux.

That seems to be a Linux issue. In addition to the reported bug you also have the sound pop a lot, and there is a font outlined when it should in fact have no outline. Since Hubris was developed for Windows and never tested on Linux, I admit I would not even know where to start fixing the bug. (It IS a game designed to be run under Windows, made with a toolkit written to run under Windows and thus should also be played on a computer running on, well, Windows. I don't know how well Linux supports AGS, at all... )
But thanks for trying!

__
Edit: Hubris uses an external file to store player data. These files usually reside in the (Windows-Specific) folder USERNAME/My Saved Games/") and that is where the program looks for them. So on a Linux system this may indeed cause the problem. Without that file the game will have no way to load certain data, and that can explain the crash.

I'll gladly help you resolve the issue if you wish. If the file you're referring to is named either "profile.tab", "options.dat" or the regular "agssave.999" then the files are written correctly but in the game's main directory. What does line 50 in the source file "room2.asc" state? If it references any variables then please do include the contents of them as well.

If this isn't a scripting bug or a hardcoded path I'll either fix the bug in the main ags interpreter tree or at least relay the information to the maintainers of the linux branch (depending on how lazy I feel).

Ah, thank you both most kindly. I will be adding them to the list post-haste.

I had the day off, my fiance was off on adventures involving shoes and shopping, so I made the first LP for Lighthouse. It's available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnjbDoqChIE&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLtrHR3af4aQ0-XThfolNyQ6Zjfmuee_OO

After that I attempted to make one of Hubris but unfortunately it appears there's either a generic bug in the scripting of it, or there's a portability issue with running it under linux. It appears a map reference is set to null, so it either doesn't exist or the path to it is invalid. I recorded a video of it in the hopes that it'll help track down the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibs780FMJ3Q&list=PLtrHR3af4aQ0-XThfolNyQ6Zjfmuee_OO

Ok then. I must admit I'm rather stunned. Figured I might get one hesitant reply not a 6 post strong list of awesome games. Let's see here, I'm going to add "The lighthouse", "Hubris" and "Gray" to the queue. Allow me to humbly thank you all for allowing me to do LPs of your games.

I'll add "Annie android", "Nine months in", "Spooks" and "Donald Dowell and the Ghost Of Barker Manor" to my list of developers I need to e-mail for permission. Great suggestions all of them.

Since I wasn't really expecting any replies I didn't add the disclaimer, here goes. I move at a glacial pace. It takes me roughly 10x the gametime to finish an LP. An example is my LP of the Technobabylon series, it stands at 3 hours and 36 minutes. It took roughly 31 hours to finish the videos. The reason why I'm saying this is so that nobody thinks I'm ignoring their suggestion as time goes by.

Fortunately blind LPs (which is what the developers here want, I'm guessing?) are somewhat quicker since they don't require any preparations beyond the allocation of time to record and edit.

Salutations.

I have a small youtube channel where I (mostly) do "let's play" series of games I enjoy. My intent when I first started was to cover games that were either forgotten or overlooked. It's a formula I've stuck to, for the most part.

Since I don't want to step on any toes I always ask the developers for permission after having done a couple of parts. I've only just completed the excellent Technobabylon series, with permission and a blessing from James Dearden, and thus I'm on the prowl for more games to cover. I have a list of about a dozen AGS games I want to cover and will send some e-mails asking for permission to do so starting next week.

But I figured I'd ask here first. Is there anyone who wants a let's play of their game? During my short stint as a game developer I found it extremely helpful when people recorded their blind playthroughs of my games since it enabled me to figure out exactly where and when players got stuck. What was too obvious and what was simply too obscure. I can vocalize my thought process as verbosely as you prefer.

Since you don't really know me I'll list the most salient points.
1. I do not monetize my let's plays, there are no ads or other commercialization of them. I love the medium, that's the only reason I need.
2. I don't do facecams, intros, add music, scream shrilly or anything else of that nature. If I did I might actually have viewers, see next point. I cover the game and only the game.
3. My channel is miniscule in stature so I doubt it'll give you any exposure worth mentioning.
4. I tend to narrate every single strip of text in a game I play. This is because I was requested to do so by a friend of mine who has a seeing disability. However that is optional, if you want me to put a sock in it and just voice my own thoughts that's totally fine.
5. I can do both prepared let's plays and blind ones. It doesn't matter to me, but I'm guessing a blind will be more helpful on a mechanical level. When I do a prepared LP I play through a game twice, record each session. Watch them, take notes and then record the final, prepared session. My technobabylon LP below is prepared, my LP of the living nightmare series is blind.

That's about it. Never done a public request before and I doubt it'll receive particularly many replies but I wanted to put it out there since I love the concept of AGS and its community. Some of my favorite games and series (of all time) have been released here over the last decade. If I can help in some small way I'd like to do so.

Channel - https://www.youtube.com/anderstonfeldt
Technobabylon LP - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtrHR3af4aQ0XA3OaWPXhIvuuAY5ycK6c
Living nightmare LP - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtrHR3af4aQ2Y0m3YekbtlES4PPZZZTh4

Yeah, that was super clear, and this is really great information, TFeldt!  Thanks for the video.  We've had other testers intermittently report input lag as well.

Looks like http://code.google.com/p/aseprite/issues/detail?id=283 to me, so maybe a known-issue with A4 at present (or at least with the way we're using it and polling inputs).

That's great, I'm happy it was useful. I had a look at that issue tracker and it does appear to be a likely culprit. If it's yielding for more than 1ms in a non-blocking mode then it'll create a queue build-up that keeps increasing over time. It might also be aggravated by the host's performance. For me 500hz polling was fine, so as long as it yields less than 2ms then it works fine for me. Actually had this exact problem with the unity3d engine a while back, but they eventually fixed it internally.

Easiest way to fix it might be to just have it block events instead of creating a queue, the net result would be the same as reducing your polling rate only done in the application itself. They do seem to be considering a more long-term fix though, using message queues provided by allegro 5 instead. If I remember correctly that would remove the necessity to yield since it'd be processed on creation instead of having the main thread keep checking for it manually and thus spiking the cpu usage.

Unfortunately I'm back. It turns out it wasn't a problem with my mouse but a built-in input event throttling in either AGS or Allegro (or a performance bottleneck related to input events). It'd take far too long to describe in text exactly what transpires so I made a video instead. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so 30 frames per second for 288 seconds would be worth 8.6 million words(!). Hopefully I made everything clear, in case you have any questions then I'll always be available for further testing. You can find the youtube video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMlQ1aNDun0