ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: THE LAST STAND

[Ross Scott]

 

 

 

Happy Halloween! Here's another video that took WAY more time than I intended it to! I selected this game because I thought it would go faster than a normal full length game, but things kind of spiraled out of control, as you'll see in the video. Some of you may be disappointed I'm covering a flash game for Halloween, but I've been wanting to cover some (and newer ones for that matter) on the Game Dungeon, I just hadn't gotten around to it. I promise I gave it a full treatment for this episode, with some additional surprises. I hope to have a "real" game next year with hopefully more videos leading up to Halloween.

 

Special thanks on this episode goes to Adam Shepard, who emailed me while I was working on the video, offering to assist with some additional music. He had a very fast turnaround time despite me being a fickle bastard about the music as I tried to figure it out in the middle of deadline pressure. You can hear his music for the "safe room" music and for the in-game ending. I didn't mention the music in this episode since it was long enough already and it was either absent or unremarkable for this game. I've gotten multiple offers of music help in the past, but lately I've been overwhelmed by sorting out my email, so for any other composers wishing to help, Adam had the luck of covenience. In the future I'm happy for more music offers for Ross's Game Dungeon, but it may be a while before I can sort through everything. Without spoiling much, I really mean what I say in the video when it comes to being able to relate to this game.

 

I also want to say thanks again to everyone who donated, especially helping with the SSD. I can only imagine how much data I've written to it since I bought it, I've been giving it an absolute workout with all the video recording and processing. This episode alone I'm sure involved a few terabytes of writing at one phase or another.

 

 

* * *

TECHNICAL QUESTION FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLE

 

To any experienced video editors out there, I have a couple questions:

 

1. Are there any video editors that support WORKING with lossless compression, like HuffyUV or Lagarith? Having everything uncompressed really leads to massive file sizes, it makes me wonder how other people handle it. I use Adobe Premiere CS5 and while it will open those codecs, it is unstable and unreliable when using them.

 

2. Are there are any "tricks" with the colorspace to get Youtube to preserve more of the color when moving from RGB to YUV or whatever the hell Youtube uses? I preserve the colorspace as long as I can from recording and editing, but it gets lost in compression slightly more than I'd prefer and was trying to see if there better ways of handling it.

* * *

 

 

This is going to be last Game Dungeon until at least December, and I'm not promising anything then. All I plan to be working on from here until the end of the year is more Freeman's Mind. It's going to be an endurance test however, as I'm also moving in less than a week. I don't know if I'll have internet right away, but I intend to get a recording room set up ASAP so I can resume work with only a couple days downtime from the move.

 

Finally, I was going to include a joke about Candy Corn Oreo cookies, but found out at the last minute that South Park had also, so I decided to scrap it. This isn't the first time this has happened. I also had an idea for a Civil Protection episode involving Cthulhu and an offshore oil rig that they also beat me on.

 

- - -

 

ADHD version: Happy Halloween! More Freeman's Mind coming!

 

LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

[VeryShyPerson]

TECHNICAL QUESTION FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLE

 

To any experienced video editors out there, I have a couple questions:

 

1. Are there any video editors that support WORKING with lossless compression, like HuffyUV or Lagarith? Having everything uncompressed really leads to massive file sizes, it makes me wonder how other people handle it. I use Adobe Premiere CS5 and while it will open those codecs, it is unstable and unreliable when using them.

 

2. Are there are any "tricks" with the colorspace to get Youtube to preserve more of the color when moving from RGB to YUV or whatever the hell Youtube uses? I preserve the colorspace as long as I can from recording and editing, but it gets lost in compression slightly more than I'd prefer and was trying to see if there better ways of handling it.

 

1. As far as I'm aware, VirtualDub can handle it so long as you have the codec.

 

2. VirtualDub has a "convert format" filter that has a lot of settings.

 

Anyways I'm only really half-coherent at the moment so maybe I'm completely off the mark here.

 

Have to go run some errands with my mother so I'll watch the video when I get home

[fllthdcrb]

1. Are there any video editors that support WORKING with lossless compression, like HuffyUV or Lagarith? Having everything uncompressed really leads to massive file sizes, it makes me wonder how other people handle it. I use Adobe Premiere CS5 and while it will open those codecs, it is unstable and unreliable when using them.

Well, there is the concept of editing proxies. For anyone who doesn't know, these are low-quality encodes of clips that are used as stand-ins for the originals during the editing process. I don't know how Adobe Premiere CS5 handles them, but in the one I use, they're mostly automatic. If they aren't in yours, then the procedure is:

 

1. Create proxies for all the clips for which they're needed.
   
2. Import the proxies into the project instead of the originals.
   
3. When done editing, change all references in the project to the proxies to point to the originals instead.
   
4. Render.

 

How you do step 3 is something I can't help with, but there's information out there somewhere.

 

Using the lossless originals during editing does put a heavy burden on the CPU, which can impact usability in a big way, but proxies are lightweight. On the other hand, depending on the quality level and how you handle the editing process, they might not be desirable. Obviously, if a proxy is scaled down or heavily compressed, you'll have trouble seeing some details. So you'll have to figure out whether you want to do this or not, and what quality settings are reasonable for you.

 

Anyway, that's an idea for you. Hope it helps.

[PapaFrita]

oh man, OH MAN

The Last Stand was the reason I started digging in flash games. Some friend recommend it and I really like it, I didn't knew flash games could be this good. That send me on a period of time of hardcore flashgames playing... eventually it stopped

I just played the first two, but the union city seem really cool, it's a shame, man

I shared your vision, when I played it I always thought "this needs to go out of flash and into a real game"... at least it's good to know that it wasn't my crappy computer that couldn't ran it

 

Awesome episode, Ross. I'll be missing RGD!

[GordonFreeman]

Ross, this isnt a "He can't do it" comment, but if you want to get it done by the deadline, why dont you make longer episodes? It seems to me that the total production time is actually less for more.

 

Or am I dead wrong?

 

 

Also if you really want to play Union City, try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-flash-and-video/ To download the flash game and fullscreen that thing.

[VeryShyPerson]

I liked the game dungeon video.

[Ross Scott]

As far as I'm aware, VirtualDub can handle it so long as you have the codec.

I use Virtualdub a lot, but it's not really a fully functoning editor (although the first episode of Civil Protection was made entirely using it!)

 

Create proxies for all the clips for which they're needed.

I've been doing this, but it has a couple problems:

 

1. This method ends up being a pain for 2D graphics that need careful line-ups

 

2. For uncompressed RGB video, I had about 2TB of uncompressed video this time spanned across two hard drives. It makes it worse that Premiere CS5 has this annoyance where it takes WAY longer to load a video that has sound muxed into it to generate "peak files."

 

3. What compression is compatible with video editors? That would solve my first problem at least of keeping the resolution the same, just with lossy compression for the proxies.

 

Ross, this isnt a "He can't do it" comment, but if you want to get it done by the deadline, why dont you make longer episodes? It seems to me that the total production time is actually less for more.

 

Or am I dead wrong?

Number of episodes doesn't make a huge difference so much as the total length. Two 5 minute episodes isn't much more time than 1 ten minute one.

 

Also if you really want to play Union City, try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-flash-and-video/ To download the flash game and fullscreen that thing.

This would cause the red or yellow screen you saw in the video.

[Darkorth]

The answer is not mine, but from TotalBiscuit himself who wrote a post earlier today regarding encoding and file sizes:

 

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/nh4vr9

 

I found it very informative for those who are curious and it could help you

 

His youtube channel so you see the quality he aims for:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ

[VeryShyPerson]

As far as I'm aware, VirtualDub can handle it so long as you have the codec.

I use Virtualdub a lot, but it's not really a fully functoning editor (although the first episode of Civil Protection was made entirely using it!)

 

Yeah, it's more of a linear editor. Still with the right filters and etc (there's a lot of third-party ones) you can surprisingly do a lot. I've got a folder in my bookmarks with a bunch of links to filters if you want it.

[Ross Scott]

The answer is not mine, but from TotalBiscuit himself who wrote a post earlier today regarding encoding and file sizes:

 

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/nh4vr9

 

I found it very informative for those who are curious and it could help you

 

His youtube channel so you see the quality he aims for:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ

I did some color comparison tests and here's my issue with doing it the way most people do it:

 

Videogame footage is in RGB. Recording in YUV12 leads to a small amount of color loss. Uploading it to Youtube leads to an ADDITIONAL small amount of color loss. By keep it in RGB until compression and uploading, I did some tests and the color still comes out better preserving it farther in the chain. Now granted it's not an enormous difference or it could just be with how I do it.

 

Also he mentions Dxtory, but Dxtory has a big flaw in that its framerate is absolutely horrendous for any game using true antialiasing (not FXAA, SMAA, etc.). I use Dxtory whenever I can, but games with AA it's just not a good option for.

[VeryShyPerson]

Hey, I did a quick search and came up with this:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/321024-YouTube-HowTo-Lossless-unchanged-color

 

Don't know if that might be something you already have covered.

 

Edit: Also lookit this:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/330410-Youtube-changed-my-colors!-What-to-do?p=2046743&viewfull=1#post2046743

[Mr Nutt]

Have you tried sticking your videos through HandBrake before editing? I don't really know anything about the technical side of this, so sorry if this is a stupid suggestion.

[Ross Scott]

Hey, I did a quick search and came up with this:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/321024-YouTube-HowTo-Lossless-unchanged-color

 

Don't know if that might be something you already have covered.

 

Edit: Also lookit this:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/330410-Youtube-changed-my-colors!-What-to-do?p=2046743&viewfull=1#post2046743

It doesn't look like they list obvious solutions, but in the first thread it looks like somebody may have correctly identified the problem, I could maybe experiment to see if I can do anything with this data, thanks.

[Psychotic Ninja]

Great episode, but Pointing out the "Final" in the Final Fantasy series gets to me. To answer your question on why it's called Final Fantasy, it's because it was going to be Square's/ Hironobu Sakaguchi's final attempt in making video games. Hence the "Final" in the title (and the Fantasy, because it's a fantasy game). Obviously, it was a huge success, thus we got the franchise.

[VeryShyPerson]

On another note, this just happened:

 

 

Friend: soooooooo the last stand is basically guitar hero

Friend: only the first two are worthwhile

VeryShyPerson: lol yeah

Friend: and just like gh, there's too many fucking bad sequels

VeryShyPerson: what a shitty twist

VeryShyPerson: but i knew you'd make that comparison

Friend: i'm predictable sue me

VeryShyPerson: *initiates lawsuit*

Friend: fuck

 

[Presence]

Kongregate has a 'cinematic mode' for their flash games, which blacks the website and increases the flash window size, and they do have Union City. I'm not sure how this would influence recording though.

[kingkolton9]

The answer is not mine, but from TotalBiscuit himself who wrote a post earlier today regarding encoding and file sizes:

 

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/nh4vr9

 

I found it very informative for those who are curious and it could help you

 

His youtube channel so you see the quality he aims for:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ

 

"oh, game dipped to 59 fps? ROUND DOWN TO 30 THEN!"" I lost it there.

 

"I've been doing this, but it has to problems:

 

1. This method ends up being a pain for 2D graphics that need careful line-ups

 

2. For uncompressed RGB video, I had about 2TB of uncompressed video this time spanned across two hard drives. It makes it worse that Premiere CS5 has this annoyance where it takes WAY longer to load a video that has sound muxed into it to generate "peak files."

 

3. What compression is compatible with video editors? That would solve my first problem at least of keeping the resolution the same, just with lossy compression for the proxies."

 

NLEs are the definition of your mileage may vary. Some support a vast array of codecs, some support few. Some support open source codecs, some support proprietary, some support both. The only things that are standard are the codecs themselves, and even then that's iffy.

 

I thought YouTube used RGB, not YUV.

 

* * *

TECHNICAL QUESTION FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLE

 

To any experienced video editors out there, I have a couple questions:

 

1. Are there any video editors that support WORKING with lossless compression, like HuffyUV or Lagarith? Having everything uncompressed really leads to massive file sizes, it makes me wonder how other people handle it. I use Adobe Premiere CS5 and while it will open those codecs, it is unstable and unreliable when using them.

 

2. Are there are any "tricks" with the colorspace to get Youtube to preserve more of the color when moving from RGB to YUV or whatever the hell Youtube uses? I preserve the colorspace as long as I can from recording and editing, but it gets lost in compression slightly more than I'd prefer and was trying to see if there better ways of handling it.

* * *

 

To start off with part one, I have something that may interest you, Ross. You can have the Source Engine output a bunch of .TIFF files, then compile them using VirtualDub. (I can't give you a link right now; I'm not at home.) There's a larger (total) file size, but no 4GB limit. AFAIK, Sony Vegas can use Lagarith, but support can be iffy at times. Not sure about HUffyUV. What I would do is get one of those new 8 (Or 10) TB HDDs and store the AVI files, demos and TIFFS (Should you choose to use them). I can't imagine the rest of FM taking more than 10TB, and you can still use the SSD, so there's no bottleneck.

 

For part 2: I thought YouTube used RGB, not YUV? I checked their advanced encoding documentation and I cannot find any mention of what they recommend, but I'll assume it's RGB. I mean, your AVIsynth script uses YUV, so that may be the problem. Have you tried finding any addons to Premiere Pro that increase compatibility for compressed AVI files? Sorry I'm not being too much help here.

[Ross Scott]

To start off with part one, I have something that may interest you, Ross. You can have the Source Engine output a bunch of .TIFF files, then compile them using VirtualDub. (I can't give you a link right now; I'm not at home.) There's a larger (total) file size, but no 4GB limit. AFAIK, Sony Vegas can use Lagarith, but support can be iffy at times. Not sure about HUffyUV. What I would do is get one of those new 8 (Or 10) TB HDDs and store the AVI files, demos and TIFFS (Should you choose to use them). I can't imagine the rest of FM taking more than 10TB, and you can still use the SSD, so there's no bottleneck.

 

For part 2: I thought YouTube used RGB, not YUV? I checked their advanced encoding documentation and I cannot find any mention of what they recommend, but I'll assume it's RGB. I mean, your AVIsynth script uses YUV, so that may be the problem. Have you tried finding any addons to Premiere Pro that increase compatibility for compressed AVI files? Sorry I'm not being too much help here.

Believe me when I say I don't mean this in a rude way whatsoever, but a lot of what you're saying either isn't applicable or else is wrong and it requires an explanation of two or more things to explain why. To give an analogy, it's like trying to get help with fixing the brake pads on a car and getting advice about anti-freeze to pour in the gas tank.

 

The part about Vegas being iffy with Lagarith is helpful information though, thanks. That means it's on similar footing as Premiere.

[K4_Kydure]

Man, I remember when The Last Stand first came out. It dominated the Newgrounds top 100 for months as well as it's sequel.

A damn shame it turned into this online only paywall nonsense, that last one actually looked like it would be interesting if it was a $20-30 title.

[techdude]

Ross, I'll take a shot at some of the technical questions.

 

For the first one, I don't know about cs5, but I use premier and after effects CC (basically a subscription version of cs6) with raw video a bunch. The key for me was to set up the scratch disks in the settings (File->Project Settings->scratch disks) to point to an SSD drive (and it should be different than the drive the originals are stored on).

 

Second, you can turn down the quality settings on the preview, and you might try a different renderer in the settings to see if that helps. The renderer should match your graphics card (OpenCL for ATI, CUDA for NVIDIA) The renderer I use is the Mercury CUDA hardware based renderer. In general, during editing you should have lower quality and only the final composition should be rendered at full quality.

 

Something else you might try if you have lots of spare ram (>= 16GB should be good for 1080p), you could create a ram disk and point your scratch to that.

 

I don't know what you have for graphics card, but a good graphs card with plenty of vram is going to make a huge difference. Premier uses graphics cards well.

 

As a final thought on part 1, under memory settings you can adjust how much ram to reserve for adobe programs.

 

For part 2, it's a big topic. To start, make sure you are using the presets in premier or media encoder for the YouTube size you are uploading. The problem is that every time YouTube scales it, it can mess it up.

 

I would mess around with generating a color profile in speed grade that works, and then you can use it for all your YouTube videos. It may be possible that someone has already created a good LUT for YouTube. It really is specific to what the video contains so it is going to take some work.

 

Hope some of this helps.

 

I love your work Ross,

~

Techdude