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[marcgfx]

I guess the idea with video-exchange is not gonna work-out. real shame.

[Zizka]

@marcgfx: Heya! 

I wrote you two emails but never got a reply so I'll put my message here:

Would you be ok if I changed the rules for the VREC? Like encouraging video exchange but not making it compulsory?

I think that a good proportion of people will reciprocate. This would allow us to be proactive and review as many games as possible without having people request it.

This would keep the thread alive and I think that in the long run it would lead to more reviews of our respective games than with the way things are right now. I would test the games available in the play testing forum.

I think a change is necessary since no one is participating there must be something wrong with the format although I don't know what it is.

monsterfinger still would owe you are review but for future videos, I would do them without any expectations (although I would appreciate if people would do the same for me when the time comes).

I think it's important to ''lead by example'' so to speak.

[marcgfx]

I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in getting a video review, but it does not seem like a lot of people are ready to do the reviewing. if you are ok with leading by example, I applaud you, but from now on I will request a review in advance, as I have proven to be ready to do a review myself. when you are ready, I will of course review your game.

[monsterfinger]

Apologies for the massive wait, we are getting ready for a photoshoot and interview with Retro Gamer Magazine.

The commentary could be a problem, but either way I will do my best to sort a gameplay video, its just using the right screen capture software, can you run your game in a window? If so I can record with out any real frame drop, if its full screen though it can get a little choppy as my laptop is rubbish.

[marcgfx]

my game runs in the browser, so you can make the screen size bigger or smaller as you see fit. smaller screen -> easier for your hardware. chrome works best by quite a margin. you can also go into the settings menu and reduce the quality to low. this changes the shader used -> terrain/tracks are not quite as interesting to look at, but your hardware will have a bit less work to do.

[monsterfinger]

I don't understand whats happening, i have used Opera and Chrome and it keeps coming up saying my computer doesn't support Web GL. Do you have a downloadable EXE?

[marcgfx]

weird. even worked on my dads computer thats about 6 years old with no problem. can you maybe show the error message/screenshot. if you have a newer version of chrome, webgl should really be enabled by default.

http://superuser.com/questions/836832/how-can-i-enable-webgl-in-my-browser

at the bottom of the best answer, it is mentioned that there is some hardware that does not support it. hope this is not the case.

[monsterfinger]

Ill get a pic of the error for you. Hoping i can play it as it looks cool.

[marcgfx]

thanks man, would appreciate the info!

[alvarop]

I will give this a go during the weekend. Will edit this post with tests if I don't forget! Very cool initiative. I don't have a game that currently needs testing, can I still apply and later on ask for my game to get some feedback?

[marcgfx]

sure thing. zizka's game is currently not in a testable state either

[Zizka]

Hey, it's cool that people are starting to join into this. I couldn't understand the lack of interest as I really think it's a good idea.

alvarop, you may submit your older games if you want. I remember playing a game of yours way back then.

EDIT: It's also good to see that monsterfinger is staying true to his commitment.

[alvarop]

Cuboid for monsterfingers*




*Oh I just realized he submitted more than one game. Oops! Well, this is an in-depth review of cuboid then

Cyberlimpics racing for marcgfx


(currently uploading)

I really hope this is useful for you guys, and hope my rambling / no-preplaying policy / accent aren't too annoying!
I will submit a game I'm working on eventually, I'd rather have a new game tested than older ones.

[Zizka]

Cool! Adding to the first message, thank you.

Both monsterfinger and marcgfx now owe you a video.

Just let us know where you're ready to test something, I'll give it a go as well.

[marcgfx]

thanks a lot alvarop, was very informative watching you play! I'm glad you enjoyed it overall
the game has absolutely no ads right now, so those popup must be coming from whatever lovely virus you have right now 

weird that it did not work in chrome, its really the only browser I use/test regularly. framerate should be a lot better than on firefox, its not meant to be dropping frames. the quality settings could help out, but only affect the impact on the GPU atm. music/engine noises did not seem to be working either, but thats an issue I have with firefox.

the weight-extra: makes you heavier, this lets you push away opponents easier/run of trees better. the plus adds a tiny bit to your overall speed. I think I must create some kind of listing with all the extras, so it can be looked up at least.

I will be adding some kind of tutorials, so that I can help out first time players and alert them to some tricks. e.g. when you let go of all keys for 1 second, you get placed back to the last checkpoint. so when you get stuck, you don't have to untangle like you had to

you are right about the main screen/loading screen being boring. just not quite sure yet how to tackle this. I was thinking about adding infos/help, e.g. keyboard / placement / tutorial stuff. but first I will try to improve the loading speed altogether.

thanks for the video, was really a great/informative review!

[marcgfx]

review of super toaster x, not quite 10min...:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XqsDvuIQU&feature=youtu.be

seems to still be processing, should be ready soon.

[Zizka]

@marcgfx: Cool thanks for keeping up to your commitment. I'll leave my comments directly in the devlog after watching the video. I'm anxious but excited to hear what you have to say.

Super Renegade Response by monsterfinger.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7snnHBB1I2uMmxNYnh6OHZjYTA/view?usp=sharing

It's pretty long, 17 minutes. I'll try to stick to 10 minutes next time. I had to upload it to my google drive as it was too long for youtube. No need to download anything however, it'll just launch directly from Google Drive.

My microphone really is terrible. I might buy a new one today after work, anything would be better than the integrated microphone of my computer.

By the way guys, let me know when you're not looking for feedback for your game anymore or you'll end up with a lot review videos lined up, especially if it's for the same version of the game.

Also, I think that perhaps something which might be off putting for people is finding a good video editor. If you guys have suggestions, you could make them here and I would proceed to add them to the first message.

I personally use Camtasia Studio but I'm on a 30-days trial. It's over two hundred bucks so there's no way I'll end up buying it once my trial is over but it works like a charm. Well, it works well apart from being a pain to use when you want to accelerate certain sections of your video on the pc version (which would be handy for us for sections where there's not much happening).

From my personal experience, the problem is that the free alternatives are really not up par with Camtasia. I might be looking at the wrong places but the various software I've tried isn't that great. It's either not userfriendly or pretty buggy. There are many open source alternatives which are often as good if not better than the paying ones but I'm not finding this is the case when it comes to video editor.

If we could find a free video editor which also happens to be easy to use, I would put it in the first message of the thread and it'd be convenient for people who want to give the VREC a shot.

[alvarop]

I'm currently not using a video editor, although I do have Final Cut because of my job. I think it's OK to have the videos in a very raw format, as you capture them while playing, since they contain mostly feedback / a play testing session. I'm currently using OBS for all the captures I'll be doing and it works perfectly. I think marcgfx is using it as well. It's more commonly used to stream, but you can set it to output to a local file. Easy to do.

In the future, if more people join, there should be some type of maximum amount of video feedback to be given to a specific project, so that not everyone is giving feedback on the same games?

[marcgfx]

yeah I used Open Broadcaster Software, its actually really good. I used ffmpeg to crop the video to 640*480 for super toaster x. both tools are free and good, but not 100% user-friendly.

[alvarop]

Currently uploading + processing, but here's Super Toaster X alpha

Don't remember if I mentioned it in the video, but the aspect ratio is incorrect when the game is played in fullscreen. The pixel art gets a bit stretched and it looks pretty bad. You will notice it in the video.

And after recording I noticed that the two different characters at the beginning of the game is not two playable characters or difficulty level, it's just keyboard / gamepad. Just shows what type of gamer I am : really, really distracted.