Interest in a Let's Play?

This is where you can post your Commander Keen related stories, artwork, or other stuff that is related to Commander Keen but otherwise doesn't belong in another forum.
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CthulhuToo
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Interest in a Let's Play?

Post by CthulhuToo »

Greeting Keen Community,
I'm a long time fan of Keen, but haven't really played since I was a kid. After picking up the Complete Pack on Steam, I've decided to get back into the games and also create videos of them for YouTube.
My question to you guys is, do you think there would be much interest for Commander Keen videos? I haven't seen many others, and I think the Facebook generation is mostly unaware of the awesomeness that is Keen.
Anyway, I'm hoping to cover the entire series in my LP, which means I'll be playing Episodes 2 & 3 for the first time! Sadly, I never had them as a kid.
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Nospike
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Post by Nospike »

There are some popular keen let's plays out of there already, but I think the popularity of them is mostly based on the overall popularity of the author. Been wanting to do a Keen LP for a long time, my voice should be okay by now but I can't seem to be able to set up my microphone just right and the sound quality is hideous.
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Post by Benvolio »

I guess the facebook generation isn't too bad, check out the Commander Keen page on it, 24,000 likes trumps the PCKF's membership numbers by quite a bit!

There have been quite a number of playthroughs of the keen games but that's no reason not to do your own. Intellingent talk is always appreciated. Some of the vids out there on youtube, and indeed most gaming videos (think Laddergoat) are rather idiotic. First reactions to Keen2 and 3, captured with your vocal reactions, could be interesting. If you've browsed this forum and Keenmodding.org you will have come across some discussions of level design and the player's first time experience in the levels so clearly that kind of thing interests us!

You could also do some Keen fan projects or mods, if you have familiarised yourself with them. Good luck!
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Roobar
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Post by Roobar »

Welcome to the forum. If you think you can make keen more popular, then do it. Considering how small our community is, that will be good. I personally have played all keens so many times and have watched many videos that I'm not interested. Well unless u make hilarious videos :).
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Post by gerstrong »

A let's play with with Commander Genius might be something no one has done yet...

But, yeah, just do it!
Having fun developing stuff...
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CthulhuToo
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Post by CthulhuToo »

Thanks everyone for the feedback / encouragement! I agree that I'll have to find some way to differentiate myself out there, but like Benvolio said, mature / intelligent content is always a good thing.
And to Nospike, I'd recommend the Logitech G330 headset/microphone. It's only about $30 and has decent sound quality. It's been working pretty well for me, and I've heard from others as well that it's a good starter mic.
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Nospike
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Post by Nospike »

I have a Logitech desktop mic. The problem with headsets is that I already use Koss headphones and I love them so much I can't have anything else.
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Fleexy
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Post by Fleexy »

I thought about doing something like this (I even have a Blue Snowball mic on my desk) but I don't know how to manage the low-resolutionness of Keen/DOSBox without looking hideous on YouTube.
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Nospike
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Post by Nospike »

Dosbox videos actually don't look that bad on youtube. Take a look at rinrygamegame's Keen 4 game quickie, Grimson's pyramid of teh f0rbidz playthrough without saving or the speedrun of The Eight Accumulators posted in the mod's thread. The videos are all fairly high quality, both the ones made using fraps and dosbox's video capture function.
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biffstudly
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Post by biffstudly »

Just go for HyperCam 3. Great screencap program for those who don't want to go through the trouble of learning how to use fraps or sony new vegas or anything like that, very plug and play. Unregistered it does have a watermark in the top left but I'm sure there are some nautical ways you could remedy that.
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CthulhuToo
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Post by CthulhuToo »

I put up my first video today! Let me know what you guys think. I'm using Camtasia to record, and it seems to couple fairly well with DOSBox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU7DzpXhGQs
Fleexy, have you used the Snowball mic much? I've heard good things about it, so I'd be interested to hear what you think.
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biffstudly
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Post by biffstudly »

CthulhuToo wrote:I put up my first video today! Let me know what you guys think. I'm using Camtasia to record, and it seems to couple fairly well with DOSBox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU7DzpXhGQs
Fleexy, have you used the Snowball mic much? I've heard good things about it, so I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Props dude, mad props. You don't seem to be having a problem with dead air, which is absolutely huge. I can ignore dead air in some LPs if the game is something I really enjoy, or if the part the player is doing is extremely difficult, but generally dead air = death in LPs. (I'm one of the worst for this haha)

Great in content, you covered everything perfectly in the beginning of the video which is always a plus, and again something I forget to do regularly (my Hocus Pocus LP didn't have story until episode like.. 23 or something.

One small thing I'd like to point out, especially as you move on with this, make sure you edit your videos. I'm sorry if this is harsh, and I only learned this lesson recently myself, but nobody wants to see you play the same damn level 25 times, spanning three videos. That's just kinda painful to watch. It comes with the turf, you just have to note when it would be appropriate to cut out backtracking, and or re-tracking of a level. I usually just go with a good ol' "Crap I died, oh well, I'll meet you guys back at xxxx" and whenever I'm checking sound levels and for graphical errors in post production, I simply chop out the offending part.

But honestly, your voice is perfect for it (some people's voices just make me cringe as rude as that sounds) and the content is solid as hell. If you can keep it up like this you're definitely looking like you'll replace reedwulf as my fave LPer of CK1 :D

Keep up the awesome work!
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Post by Benvolio »

Good job CthuhluToo. I love your story about decoding the SGA... I never did that with SGA but I did something similar with several of the rune alphabets from the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Your vid is a good thorough run through, probably best suited to people who want a blast from the past and might not have played this for a decade or two. New players probably wanna try it out themselves but then, maybe they would think it's too much hassle to get it to work on their computer.

And yeah the old 320x200 aspect ratio is perfectly fine, no need for any widescreen tomfoolery!
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Nospike
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Post by Nospike »

Nice start for a LP, I sure hope you keep going. Only the main menu section seemed a bit long to me but that's just being nitpicky. :)
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CthulhuToo
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Post by CthulhuToo »

biffstudly wrote: But honestly, your voice is perfect for it (some people's voices just make me cringe as rude as that sounds) and the content is solid as hell. If you can keep it up like this you're definitely looking like you'll replace reedwulf as my fave LPer of CK1 :D

Keep up the awesome work!
Thanks man! I really appreciate the feedback. I agree that if nothing interesting can be done or said, back-tracking needs to be cut. I'm sure I'll have to do a lot of that in this series as I get back my CK "chops".
Benvolio wrote: I love your story about decoding the SGA... I never did that with SGA but I did something similar with several of the rune alphabets from the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
You, sir, are awesome! I've been a big Tolkien fan for quite a while now, but I've never attempted to learn / decode any of his languages.
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