The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Gaming

Late Night Open Thread

Twas a long work day. Came home and I was too tired to play anything with puzzles so laid off of Obduction for the time being, which seems to be a fine choice since Cyan has uploaded some hotfixes to hopefully improve the game. Though at this point I don’t know what’s more entertaining, the game itself or the people who are getting pissy trying to run the game on inferior hardware? Some of the people at the Cyan forums who are complaining that they won’t fund another project after backing a game that won’t run on their old hardware are really out of touch. You had 3 years to come up with something to run the game, and you choose to run the game on your toaster mac and act all surprised when it doesn’t work. Amazing! It’s almost like Apple markets outdated hardware at ungodly prices to make people believe it’s still relevant… oh wait.

I have fine tuned my OBS Multiplatform setup, have the Elgato running through it rendering with the codec for my GPU. When I go to start Obduction with a new save I should be ready, assuming the memory leaks are dealt with by the time I pick it up again. In the meantime I tested with Skyrim of course, and the CPU barely moved. Framerate was literally the same recording or not, and I don’t have to worry about audio latency. I see OBS Multi has an option too for streaming and doing a local copy (with more advanced features than Elgato’s setup), so I’ll have to test that when I find time to livestream.

Gaming

Sure I can run Crysis… but Obduction?

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I thought it was excellent timing that I had a day off on the release of Obduction. I’ve really enjoyed the game so far, so much to explore and take in. It’s like Myst without linking books, and in space. It was really difficult to pull me away from it, thankfully the memory leak in the game ate my system RAM and my VRAM.

Yeah, the release has been a little buggy for people. I count myself among the luckier ones too. I’m really glad that I don’t game on a mac. Hopefully Cyan releases some updates though, from the performance standpoint I can only say it’s “playable” at best, and that’s on a 6 core 12 thread Xeon processor and one of the best GPU’s out there. There have been some other tips and tricks I haven’t done yet to improve performance (one being deleting your save and starting over), so I’ll try that next time I play the game.

I tried recording some clips with my the Elgato software but I’m still running into little annoyances with video/audio latency. So I’ve switched over to OBS Multiplatform earlier tonight and tested that. I still need to refine it but I can already tell it runs much better, the desync issues aren’t there and if they are they are not as apparent. And unlike old OBS I can actually use my AMD codec! Meaning I can record from the capture card, use that codec and save CPU/GPU usage. And the nice thing about OBS? It looks like that will let me stream and record at the same time much like Elgato’s Game Capture HD, which I didn’t know since up until this point I’ve been using classic OBS.

With all of this stuff I can honestly say I’m never bored. 😛

Gaming

Obduction awaits

At 7am PDT Obduction will be ready for release, apparently. That’s according to one of the playtesters (I think?) on Steam. I haven’t heard or seen anything from anyone at Cyan, so we’ll see how this goes. In the meantime I’ve been going between reading websites and playing various games. Guess I’ll get some rest, wake up to see if I got my game code, and go back to sleep while it downloads. I have the day off tomorrow so chances are I’ll play the game a bit.

Gaming

Revisiting (slightly) older games

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Sometimes we all need a good charge.

Since I’ve mostly been doing technical experiments with hardware lately I decided to take a break and do some gaming of the Portal Variety. I even went back to the original game and got a couple of achievements. All I could think about while beating a couple of the advanced chambers was how Valve really needs to get back into gaming software. I miss being stoked for their games. Thankfully Portal Stories and Time Machine are nice alternatives. Tag? I still haven’t figured out what I think about it yet.

Some games are like that. Not sure if I’ll love them or hate them, and sometimes they take revisiting. Take Dead Island for example, I used to be annoyed with it when I first played with it a bit a couple years ago. But this time around I cracked it open again and actually had a good time. Maybe it was from the knowledge I learned playing Skyrim, but I seemed to have a better time going on quests and leveling up than my previous attempt. Might have to go back and play through it some more soon. I think one of the turn offs the last time I played it was the odd placements for some buttons, the kind that tell you this was made for a console, even the Borderlands games have this feeling for me. But I have a better understanding for it now so hopefully it’ll continue to be fun. 😀

Hardware / Technology

What I’ve learned about the Elgato HD60 Pro

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The Elgato HD60 Pro has been a bit of a learning curve. One of the reasons I haven’t been posting lately is due to my desire to get the best stream/recording combo up and running, and believe me when I say there have been some bugs that needed a good thwarting.

One issue I ran into prevented me from recording if I had flashback mode disabled. At first I thought it had to do with how I had the Elgato plugged into my GPU, when the entire time it was actually my audio.

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I have a Creative XFi sound card with a ton of plugin options, and I noticed the software seemed a bit confused when it came to establishing which port was ok and what wasn’t. So I disabled everything but what I intended to use and all of a sudden the program started to let me record.

However my worries weren’t laid to rest as I encountered yet another bug was discovered while recording. The audio would have frequent skips throughout the final mp4 as though there was a buffering problem. After more intense experimentation I found a solution, record the game audio separately from the video. This gives me three different files:

  • The Mp4 file
  • Commentary Audio (if needed)
  • Game Audio

For some reason recording separately vs mixed streams outputs a better quality result. Which I’m ok with since I can just compile the footage in premiere anyway as well as tweak each audio file to my liking if needed.

However…

After about 18 to 20 minutes in the video will suddenly have video/audio latency issues that cannot be fixed. So what I have to do is record in increments of about 15 minutes to play it safe, which honestly isn’t that big of a deal to me. In FRAPS and even in OBS I’ve always stopped and started to make shorter files as an old habit. If I have to continue this practice I don’t see a reason to rage.

Now onto streaming. Twitch has been rather fickle, but that’s before I even bought the card. YouTube on the other hand has been really seamless, whatever I throw at it will stick. I streamed Dead Island while recording a local copy with zero framerate loss. The only problem I had was when I went to stop and start recording the game capture HD program didn’t want to behave, but that seemed to be related to Dead Island from what I can tell, as I tried to interact with other applications on my 2nd monitor and it outright refused until I brought up my task manager (revealing an adorable Stewie Kitten on live stream to my audience of 1).

I think I finally have it figured out enough to get started on proper recording again. If things continue to go smoothly I’ll do a YouTube video review of the hardware and address on the issues I’ve had to lick, on the chance that someone might be in a similar position with audio issues.

Gaming

Quantum Break is coming to Steam apparently

I’m guessing it didn’t sell too well as a Windows Store PC/XBox exclusive, here is the Steam page for it. It looks like it have a Direct X 11 version as well for those of us who don’t want to deal with Windows 10.

Unfortunately the only thing that’s enticing about Windows 10 is Direct X 12 which handles AMD cards with amazing results. Sadly all the other junk they’re pushing is still keeping me from wanting to upgrade anytime soon. Not that it matters, I’ll probably grab Quantum Break when it goes on a sale. I don’t feel like purchasing Microsoft sloppy seconds at top dollar, hell I haven’t even purchased the new Tomb Raider yet…

All in an Overlord's day / Gaming

Coming up for air again

There hasn’t been much to write about, things are going pretty smoothly AFAIK. I’ve been collecting all kinds of footage whenever I play anything. Not sure what I’ll do with it but I have been contemplating posting a video about the Elgato. I recorded some Skyrim shenanigans with it, as per usual. I had a weird thing happen when I went to sleep in a rented room in Candlehearth Hall:

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Apparently most of the local staff and patrons thought it would be a real hoot to watch me sleep, not once but twice. My brain instantly wanted to come up with a storyline idea for why that would happen. Maybe they’re concerned because I’m not a nord, and most people do enjoy watching cats sleep… although I’m not much of a Khajit anymore.

Ugh, and now I have to go to sleep. I’ve been staying up later than usual due to the nice summer weather and some of the strange scheduling lately… I’m thinking, and hoping that I’ll even out soon. I think it’s playing a bit with my attitude, I haven’t exactly been feeling… right lately.

Gaming

Open Thread at the witching hour

Alright, I’m feeling well enough to post again. Felt kinda bleh in one form or another but hopefully it’s all passed.

Been experimenting with video streaming with the Elgato HD60 Pro to Twitch. My first run with it the other day was a little strange when my stream kept randomly traveling at the speed of cocaine, but tonight it went a bit smoother. Think I need to bump up the bitrate though to make it look a little more crisp. Also did a local recording at the same time the stream took place, no problems.

I’ll also be looking into YouTube streaming soon. It requires a phone number but that’s ok, I’ll be obtaining a flip phone that’ll do the job among other things. Honestly I would prefer to do my public streaming on Twitch, but YouTube seems to have a better setup. They don’t require Adobe Flash, you can stream at 60fps if your bandwidth can handle it, Twitch requires you to be partnered to always get good bandwidth while YouTube will take whatever bitrate you throw at them and the list goes on… I really wish Amazon would pay more attention to the streaming market, they’ve owned twitch for awhile now and it would be really nice if they offered better competition with YouTube/Google.

Gaming2

Playing around a bit with Street Fighter X Tekken

Today I decided to tear into Street Fighter X Tekken. Had a bit of a rough start though, for whatever reason the game needed GFWL to function and the version it installed was borked. Fortunately someone had a solution involving XLive.dll. Adding that to the root directory of the game fixed it without having to install a newer version of GFWL, which is perfectly fine with me since I try to keep as little cancer on my systems as possible.

Anyways I modded the hell out of the game. There are quite a few model/costume replacements you can download for it, here are some of my selections:

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CHIMICHUNGAS!!!

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Who wants to cross swords with me?
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GO TEAM FABULOUS
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MY NIRNROOT DAMMIT!!!! Oh wait, wrong game…

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JUST DANCE!
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Time to kick all the porn… wha?
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Hurt me more, Snake.
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How the hell does he keep appearing in my games…
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Peace out!

There are many many more model replacements I can (and plan to) download, including Solid Snake, The Joker, Col Sanders, Princess Peach, etc etc etc. I’d have more to showcase but some of the download servers they’re kept on limit you to 1 download per 180 minutes unless you use their pay service… :S I can afford to wait. I plan to move this to the HTPC so I can play it on the couch. I’d stream it but I’ve been having issues with that between the desktop and the HTPC lately, which is odd considering my laptop and desktop can see each other, and the laptop and HTPC can see each other, but getting the desktop and HTPC to talk to each other results in epic fail… Oh well, it’s not like this game leaves a huge footprint or anything.

Work

I think I need to take more vacation

On Saturday I had to magically make 9 giant loads of freight disappear in 3 hours. I was successful in getting it off of the floor, but wasn’t able to work it efficiently. I looked at our shipping manifest and I’m trying to figure out how anyone could drop the ball on this, the amount of freight we were expected to receive on paper should have raised an eyebrow and I should have been told to come in earlier to properly finish it. But despite all of that I finish, albeit one day later.

So as a result I’ve been passing out after work the last couple of days. This week is going to be REALLY interesting because more hours have been cut, and for the two busiest freight days I’ve been scheduled only 4 hours to get my work done. Meaning there will be a good chance that I’ll be leaving my work for others to finish, if they can even finish it with the summer traffic coming in. I’m not stressing about this, if anything I feel like I’m the one standing around watching Rome burn around me while eating popcorn.