Videochat February 2016

Ross Scott

Ross Scott

Staff member
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This ended up being a LONG chat, there were more people than last time, and I ended up having a lot of good questions. Unfortunately the video quality suffered somewhat, as using the same bitrate settings as last time caused Twitch to choke. On top of that, the sound became out of sync in the recording again, which I had to fix manually. If anyone has advice regarding the best method to record the stream and avoid sound sync problems, let me know. I was using the recommended twitch settings (CBR, 1000kbps) with the program OBS. Anyway, lots of topics covered, nothing too critical, I tried to keep the most important stuff towards the beginning. The next video will be another Game Dungeon, which I'll be trying to get out soon. You can leave questions for the next chat in the thread below, or email [email protected].

COMMENTS

 
Dammit, I was planning to attend, but completely and utterly forgot x(

Suggesting people submit their own gameplay for twitch is a neat idea. If my laptop can hack it (I tried recording a PS2 emulator and it had problems), I'd be up for providing something. Judging by the length of this chat, you'd be needing a runtime of at least 3 hours yes?

Also, alternating months of many videos and a single video works for me. Whatever minimises stress on your part eh.

I'm listening while typing this, so may ask/comment more later on.

 
Why does twitch never reminds me of this, but is always reminding me about the guy who connects every 10 minutes to play minecraft

Ross, if you didn't like the action second half in RE4, don't even bother playing evil within. It's like RE4 only bad... really...really bad.

Also thanks for answering some of my questions. Hopefully you'll answer some more of the ones I sent in future videochats.

 
Hmm. I believe Ross is a bit optimistic on the numbers of participants for Planetside 2 and the outcome of the invasion (Planetside 2 veterans are very skilled at farming newbies, I mean very proficient, they managed to pin down AngryJoe's army at the damn warpgate just for farming). But it's just me. Then again. 2-3 hours with few hundred at the time few times would work too, if it's a possibility.

 
Why does twitch never reminds me of this, but is always reminding me about the guy who connects every 10 minutes to play minecraft
Ross, if you didn't like the action second half in RE4, don't even bother playing evil within. It's like RE4 only bad... really...really bad.

Also thanks for answering some of my questions. Hopefully you'll answer some more of the ones I sent in future videochats.
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Do you have an twitch app on your phone/tablet? It reminded me there, that someone whom I follow (Ross) is LIVE now. This seems to be the best way not to miss it in my opinion.

 
I'm still a fairly consistent Planetside2 player, so I have to say that I'm all for this, but my perception may be a bit skewed. That being said, the alternative to playing in the regular servers is to hold a "server smash".

Server Smash Main Page

http://www.planetsidebattles.org/ServerSmash/tournament2015

Example Match

http://www.planetsidebattles.org/match/56

I've played in a couple of these and they're a ton of fun. The main thing is that it's logistical nightmare and you really do need a devoted person organizing each faction, and platoon leaders under them to make it manageable. Not to play in an organized fashion like in the server smash matches, but to play it get the keys out to people and organize the match, as I imagine this would be fairly relaxed. The main thing is to get into contact with the guys in charge with serversmash and see if they'd be open to the idea.

The bonus to using the serversmash server is that each character is fully unlocked, so there isn't any equipment or gun that the player doesn't have access to. The serversmash server supports around 1000 people (333ish per faction).

I'd look into it. But I don't organize them, just play in them.

 
Call ins are tough. I've listened to the old kingdom of loathing radio shows back when they'd have players call in. It was usually unpleasant to listen to. There'd be difficulties connecting, "Can you hear me" scenarios, people would call in to ask incredibly specific questions that took a minute to explain, people would have incredibly low quality equipment ie laptop mic in a noisy room. I think if you were to make it work you'd sort of need to treat them like "mini guests", using a prearranged discussion topic that has broad interest.

I recommend you get a smartphone. You're in Europe so it's not like you're sticking it to Verizon or anything by not having one, and there's nothing wrong with a used galaxy note 3 or whatever. Beyond giving you a 'good enough' gps, camera, video camera, alarm clock, mp3 player, mini tablet, barcode scanner, accelerometer, wireless screencaster, stopwatch, programmable infrared remote, flashlight, calculator, ereader, notepad, and something to do in line, it can provide backup internet access via tethering/hotspot. Just park it in away mode if you don't like being on call all the time.

When it comes to a physical dos box, there's actually two modern hardware advances that can take some of the pain out. First off, there's readily available ssds for them, which were made for industrial machines. I've tried one and I can confirm they work. Second, there's usb-floppy emulators that can turn a usb drive into multiple floppies and internally convert between fat16 for the computer and fat32 on the usb drive. Fat 32 will be supported for at least the foreseeable future since it's the standard on usb drives. That'd let you move data between the dos machine and a newer machine without having to work with true floppies. At least in theory, I have yet to try one out. What I HAVEN'T found a good solution for is getting a modern (comfortable) keyboard and mouse to work. Old 100mhz motherboards often didn't even have ps/2 ports. Din5 and serial aren't fun.

 
I think a Planetside 2 event would still be fun even if not everyone can join in on it. If its being streamed on twitch, it'd still be fun watching the madness unleashed in real-time. I wouldn't worry too much about normal players getting pissy either. From similar events I've seen done in WoW and such, the enemy players handle it well if its pretty obvious what's going on.

 
Game discovery is indeed becoming a real problem.

As a PC gamer, I primarily use Steam, and there is a convenient bot that posts every new release on Twitter (in comparison with the official Steam account which skips like 90% of new games). The cool thing about that bot is that it builds monthly and yearly charts of best games sorted by their Wilson score. That way you can browse just the most acclaimed games and find something that suits your taste.

But the next big thing for game discovery and exactly the thing Ross was talking about is the upcoming project called Glitchwave - an open database and community focused on discovering video games. It will have platform pages, franchise pages, genre pages, customizible upcoming section, custom charts, user lists, automatic recommendations, personal collection management, followers and other stuff. It has been in development for quite a while now, and will finally launch in April this year. You can get into the beta which starts later this month by supporting the project on Indiegogo ($10 pledge or more).

 
Game discovery is indeed becoming a real problem.
As a PC gamer, I primarily use Steam, and there is a convenient bot that posts every new release on Twitter (in comparison with the official Steam account which skips like 90% of new games). The cool thing about that bot is that it builds monthly and yearly charts of best games sorted by their Wilson score. That way you can browse just the most acclaimed games and find something that suits your taste.

But the next big thing for game discovery and exactly the thing Ross was talking about is the upcoming project called Glitchwave - an open database and community focused on discovering video games. It will have platform pages, franchise pages, genre pages, customizible upcoming section, custom charts, user lists, automatic recommendations, personal collection management, followers and other stuff. It has been in development for quite a while now, and will finally launch in April this year. You can get into the beta which starts later this month by supporting the project on Indiegogo ($10 pledge or more).
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Yeah it seems like something waiting to happen. To clarify, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/01/best-pc-games-of-2015/

https://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/2013-and-beyond/

Have the games arranged by genre per year, have a decent screenshot, and a quick blurb about the game. I find this to be the best method for browsing for new games, but I've only seen this for upcoming games, as opposed to ones that are already out.

 
Hi Ross. Here are some questions for your next Q&A video live stream.

1) Will you be playing through Chrono Trigger for a future episode of Ross's Game Dungeon?

2) Who are your most liked and most disliked people named Ross?

3) What are your opinions about using crowdfunding to create computer games? Do you think it is appropriate for medium or large-sized companies to use these platforms? Should it just be small timers and "indies," or is it proper for anyone?

 
So Ross I know you've been wanting to cause some sort of in-game mayhem alongside the meetup. But what exactly did you have in mind for us to do? Are we going to be disrupting things due to our sheer volume?

 
Just wanted to say that I've found APB:R to become seriously laggy at times on servers with high load to the point it's usually worth joining another zone. I realise my internet connection last time I played wasn't brilliant but my friends on cable also suffered as much as I did and they don't normally lag.

You mentioned which hitman game to play to get a better feel for the overall experience while still allowing leeway when things go horribly wrong and I would say my own view (that I suspect will be shared with others) would be blood money. However in saying that if you want a mix of the ease of blood money and some of the difficulty of hitman 1 (I find it the hardest game of all of them) then I'd suggest contracts.

On another note, in the Boppin game dungeon episode, it's mentioned that when your character cries you lose a life yet in the twitch steam feed the lives rarely went down when he cried - so is it random life loss in the game or was something strange happening?

 
8ch's /v/ was specifically working on a wiki for game recommendations. This hasn't been getting as much support as it should, but it is the only thing I know of that is like what you were describing. Something like this for what you're asking is probably the best way to go.

There's a mod for TF2 called Team Fortress 2 Classic that, kind of obviously, makes it much more like Team Fortress Classic. I think it's great, and it's pretty simple to install. http://tf2classic.com/

I wouldn't be too excited about finding time for The Witness. I've heard it's just repetitive maze puzzles, but also has inconsistent mechanics which become frustrating. Fortunately Steam has it's refund system now.

 
I would hate to bust Ross's bubble about the number of fans he can get to play Planetside 2, but it's probly not enough to really worry about server population levels... Continents have a limit of like 250 per side, so around 750 total per continent on each server, the tournament server has a limit of 1000 for 2 sides on 1 continent. (plus you'd really want people to get to BR 10 first, so they at least know the basics of how the command structure works)

What would need to happen is get people on 2 or more continents, fully saturating the population limits of the continents, then it's easy to wipe the map with the other sides. (if he can get that many, and keep them organized) It would be fun to see the NC lock down all 4 continents at once, now that would be a record worthy of a "Ross's Army" attempt.

 
I would hate to bust Ross's bubble about the number of fans he can get to play Planetside 2, but it's probly not enough to really worry about server population levels... Continents have a limit of like 250 per side, so around 750 total per continent on each server, the tournament server has a limit of 1000 for 2 sides on 1 continent. (plus you'd really want people to get to BR 10 first, so they at least know the basics of how the command structure works)
What would need to happen is get people on 2 or more continents, fully saturating the population limits of the continents, then it's easy to wipe the map with the other sides. (if he can get that many, and keep them organized) It would be fun to see the NC lock down all 4 continents at once, now that would be a record worthy of a "Ross's Army" attempt.
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How is communication handled in PlanetSide 2 exactly? I assume you can't talk to other people that are on a different continent to yours. Is that correct? Since there are 4 continent maybe Ross could designate 4 different people as leaders and maybe he could talk to those leaders via a separate VoIP service. He would need some way of establishing a connection between him and those 4 other people. Something like a VPN might work. I'm just hypothesizing as to how Ross could make communication work.

 
We had already decided we needed a 3rd party voice chat, but you can talk to anyone in your server/faction/continent/outfit/platoon/squad/fireteam through text chat, or anyone in your vicinity or squad/platoon with voice regardless of their location on your server.

The communication system would be: Ross > Platoon leaders > Squad leaders > squadies/fireteams

Communication is remarkably easy when structured this way, and wouldn't be an issue. Getting people to go where needed, and do what is needed is the problem... It's nearly impossible to get people that don't know the game to respawn on the other side of the continent to combat a new advance by the enemy, or to attack a point instead of pretending they're playing CoD. It's also really hard for many people to realize that your KDR is totally meaningless in this game, as it has no bearing whatsoever on how helpful you are in achieving victory. (and even hurts your cert and XP gain rate in most cases)

At most I could lead a squad, with or without fireteams. I'm not as good at the general war section of combat, but good at squad 'special ops' tactics. (grab a stealth Galaxy, ensure nobody will fire any of the guns, and park over the points we want to capture, it works more often than not)

 
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