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Quick May Update

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Hey everyone, just a quick update with what's going on. I'm working on multiple different projects, I hope to have a couple come out this month. The first will definitely be the next Game Dungeon. I hope to have it done in the next few days, it's become more involved and I can say that it's going to be a very special episode in terms of the content.

 

In other news, I wouldn't mind some advice from people in the following areas:

 

CAMERA MICROPHONES:

I've come to the conclusion that I could likely use a separate microphone when recording on camera than the one I use when I'm recording normal audio. I really am not an expert on microphones, so advice here would be appreciated. I'm thinking I'll want a lavalier mic, but I have no idea what are the good models or where the best cutoff point is in terms of price v. quality, so if you're familiar with this, go ahead and contact me.

 

REMOTE RETRO GAMING:

For some future videos, I'm trying to set up game sessions on older games (particularly DOS ones) where I can take turns with another person in playing a single player game, except over the internet. My distance from the USA means that no solution will be flawless, so there will of course be some lag, but I'm hoping it could be low enough for less-demanding action games. Many remote desktop solutions are in appropriate for this sort of thing, since they're not focused on gaming, so the wrong data gets priority. And the ones that are focused on gaming are mostly focused on modern games, where the overhead might be much larger than what I'm looking for (a 320x200 screen). Seeing as how GPUs can do video encoding on the fly, this SHOULD be possible, but I'm unaware of any software that does it. So far I've tried the trial version of Kainy (which was borderline playable), and I've heard of Splashtop, although that doesn't have a functional demo for internet use. If anyone has advice for software or wants to try and hack DOSbox or something to make this possible, please contact me at [email protected].

 

That's about it, more videos coming this month!

 

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Concerning "REMOTE RETRO GAMING":

 

I`m mostly throwing ideas, BUT I think that one crucial step might be hosting games.

 

If you don`t know already about it, here`s Tunngle -> http://www.tunngle.net/

 

This software allows you to do exactly what you could do with, for example, Hamachi, in bad old days of not being able to play Red Alert 2 on Internet, and being forced to play on LAN.

 

It has one crucial difference (and many more of course): neither do you, nor your partner in a gaming session, are acting as a host for a game, to which all others connect, which can be followed with lag or problems with connecting.

 

Servers are hosted by the company, and there is one server per game! So if you want to play Red Alert 2, Borderlands, Minecraft with someone that is half a world away (tried it, it works):

1. You and your gaming partner search for a specific game,

2. You and your partner enter the "room", that is server (interface of the software is of IRC kind)

3. You and your partner enter the game that you want to play.

 

After step 3, the rest of the story differs per game, but mostly you need to enter to LAN section of the game, make a game (you need to act as a host only in this part), give your session a name, protect it with password aaaaaand... that is it! Your partner will see your session in their LAN list and you can play a game without any problems that are usual with hosting a game.

 

There are servers for A LOT of games (and quite old ones too), and who knows what this company is wiling to do.

 

Now I saw that they made something called "Reviving Classic Games", this might be interesting to you, Ross.

 

Of course, this may be a step, not a solution to whole "Playing DOS Games over net" problem. But, I think more "impossible" things have been realized.

 

Who knows, if we pitch in enough ideas, we might begin something new here.

Edited by Guest (see edit history)

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glad your allright Ross, I thought you were dead :P

“Error 482: Somebody shot the server with a 12-gauge. Please contact your administrator”

“Caution Laser Caution Laser Caution Laser”

“I can now solve up to 800 problems a minute”

"I got my degree under the tutelage of Dr. Pepper."

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glad your allright Ross, I thought you were dead :P

I REALLY DON'T LIKE jokes like that... please refrain from using these

 

I dunno how you would feel reading a "joke" like this on the internet about people that are important to you :roll: : /

 

or save this for YouTube and keep away from the forum :|

Ross's girlfriend (IRL) Twitter: @AmazingMagda follow me! ^^to somewhere! ^^

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glad your allright Ross, I thought you were dead :P

I REALLY DON'T LIKE jokes like that... please refrain from using these

 

I dunno how you would feel reading a "joke" like this on the internet about people that are important to you :roll: : /

 

or save this for YouTube and keep away from the forum :|

 

Well, a lot of us really don't like not hearing Ross, even in the forums, in over a month. I understand you're concern, but keep in mind that you may know Ross is fine, but we don't, and it's been a while since he didn't update the site in over a month, so "jokes" like these are inevitable. I'm not saying they're funny, appropriate, or that Ross should update his site more often even if he doesn't have much to update us on, I'm just saying this is something that probably won't go away just by asking it to. I suppose you could try censoring these types of comments from the forums, but I doubt people would be cool with that either.

Anyway, glad to hear from you again, Ross, especially excited that another Game Dungeon is on the way. Any updates on the movie you could tell us about? I'm still eagerly awaiting you're casting announcement, though I know that's probably a still a long ways off.

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Concerning "REMOTE RETRO GAMING":

 

I`m mostly throwing ideas, BUT I think that one crucial step might be hosting games.

 

If you don`t know already about it, here`s Tunngle -> http://www.tunngle.net/

 

This software allows you to do exactly what you could do with, for example, Hamachi, in bad old days of not being able to play Red Alert 2 on Internet, and being forced to play on LAN.

 

It has one crucial difference (and many more of course): neither do you, nor your partner in a gaming session, are acting as a host for a game, to which all others connect, which can be followed with lag or problems with connecting.

 

Servers are hosted by the company, and there is one server per game! So if you want to play Red Alert 2, Borderlands, Minecraft with someone that is half a world away (tried it, it works):

1. You and your gaming partner search for a specific game,

2. You and your partner enter the "room", that is server (interface of the software is of IRC kind)

3. You and your partner enter the game that you want to play.

 

After step 3, the rest of the story differs per game, but mostly you need to enter to LAN section of the game, make a game (you need to act as a host only in this part), give your session a name, protect it with password aaaaaand... that is it! Your partner will see your session in their LAN list and you can play a game without any problems that are usual with hosting a game.

 

There are servers for A LOT of games (and quite old ones too), and who knows what this company is wiling to do.

 

Now I saw that they made something called "Reviving Classic Games", this might be interesting to you, Ross.

 

Of course, this may be a step, not a solution to whole "Playing DOS Games over net" problem. But, I think more "impossible" things have been realized.

 

Who knows, if we pitch in enough ideas, we might begin something new here.

Well this might be useful for other stuff, but I'm specifically looking for "hotseat" gaming, where two people could take turns doing a single player game that doesn't natively have multiplayer support. It would essentially function like a remote desktop, except preferably for gaming.

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glad your allright Ross, I thought you were dead :P

I REALLY DON'T LIKE jokes like that... please refrain from using these

 

I dunno how you would feel reading a "joke" like this on the internet about people that are important to you :roll: : /

 

or save this for YouTube and keep away from the forum :|

Sorry Madga, I was sort of referencing Episode 4 of Freemans Mind since I thought Ross would say you thought wrong! POW!

but I see where your coming from, I actually did think something did happen to Ross, since I heard a few trolly rumors on youtube about him getting in a car accident (it seems Youtube loves that sort of thing, it was on one of the Machinima.com videos when Ross was still ok with them) and well I did actually think that he did get into an accident since he really didnt say much after April 1st.....but hey he did need a break so I understand that its good to get away from everything if it is possible

“Error 482: Somebody shot the server with a 12-gauge. Please contact your administrator”

“Caution Laser Caution Laser Caution Laser”

“I can now solve up to 800 problems a minute”

"I got my degree under the tutelage of Dr. Pepper."

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Well this might be useful for other stuff, but I'm specifically looking for "hotseat" gaming, where two people could take turns doing a single player game that doesn't natively have multiplayer support. It would essentially function like a remote desktop, except preferably for gaming.

 

Dang, good thing you clarified that, because I have some other idea concerning the "hotseat".

 

Recently, I had to look up for software in Linux based OS, Lubuntu specifically, which would enable me and rest of the employees on their computers in office to work on, for example, one spreadsheet at the same time, over Internet connection.

 

I found something and it`s called Fernapp -> http://www.fernapp.com/.

 

Could this (modified, so it can work with DOSBox (yeah, that`s easy)), or something similar be what you`re looking for?

 

It is for office work and it is for Linux, but I think there are a lot mentions of other programs, with similar functionalities.

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I think Ross is looking for something that has a higher response time, to allow one to play RTSes or FPSes remotely for example.

the remote play stuff for something may be difficult to do but hey if it is possible to do then he should do it honestly. that is if he is able to do so, if he can then sweet we may see more vids from that sort of thing, if not then ross may have a migraine coming

“Error 482: Somebody shot the server with a 12-gauge. Please contact your administrator”

“Caution Laser Caution Laser Caution Laser”

“I can now solve up to 800 problems a minute”

"I got my degree under the tutelage of Dr. Pepper."

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I almost wonder if a virtual LAN + a dummy steam account + steam inhome streaming might be a workable hack for the problem.

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I've never actually USED dosbox personally so I don't know the answer, but does it provide 'save states' for the entire emulation engine?

 

My thinking goes like this -> both Ross and the other person set up the same version of the emulator and each have a copy of the same game / rom file. When it's time to hand the control over to the other player, the current player snapshots the emulation state - sends it to the other player and that person load it into their emulator to pick it up at the same spot.

 

This way the person actually playing the game has zero lag whatsoever because the game is running locally. Both Ross and the other player could then stream video of whats currently happening back to the opposite person during their turns so the guy not playing can follow along in (almost) real time.

 

Big downside with this is that the game has to be playable in an emulator of some sort with save states (which means dealing with emulation quirks and inaccuracies), and it would take a little time to snapshot a savestate -> send the file to other player -> place the file where emulator expects it -> load the savestate. Not exactly as easy or fast as pressing pause and handing the controller to your buddy ;)

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I mean.. sure you could go this route... but I don't see a career in it. You've already proven that you can deliver a high quality product. I think you should spend a few years following the herd and living off your legacy (making it very obvious you are conscious of doing this). We will forgive you for it. Plus new audiences would be exposed to your half-life magnus opum. Once you feel there is a project that resonates with you and would draw the kind of crowd that half life did you return to making a high end drawn out project. Since your audience has matured 10 or so years, there is a good chance many of them have media connections and gratuitous disposable income. This would allow ample opportunity to sell products and afford you enough leverage for blizzard to consider you as a voice actor... Even for a dlc dota package. I've been a broke young adult for like 10 years now, but I'd love the prospect of wearing a new Ross Scott t-shirt to conventions or local card game competitions... but it would be a mute point if the energy that resonated around your legacy was that of reminiscence.

 

IDK... that just seems like the best route as far as pleasing your fans goes. This whole old school gaming thing seems kinda self indulgent and solopsistic.

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If one were to use savestates one would simply point both emulators at the same cloud directory. That's not the awkward part, the awkward part is swapping between playing, streaming, viewing and recording the gameplay.

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I sent you a PM regarding the lavalier mic. I wasn't sure if that was the proper method of contacting you about this. I did send you a PM the other day about a microphone that was at a huge discount, but the deal's probably ended by now and it wasn't a lavalier mic, anyway. So, if you haven't read that one yet, just ignore it now.

 

Regardless, it's nice to see that you're back!

Yeah, turn on all the mushrooms; I don't care about the power bill.

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I will for Freeman's Mind, I plan to this month. For Game Dungeon the filesizes I upload to Youtube get absolutely massive, I'm not sure how practical it would be without burning a lot of the quality.

That was in April. So just typical Valvetime Rosstime for the FM episode downloads, i'm guessing? P:

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I'll have to ask my friend what he would suggest for a lavalier mic... He was a professional sound stage guy (aka roadie) for decades, and knows just about everything about sound equipment.

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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glad your allright Ross, I thought you were dead :P

I REALLY DON'T LIKE jokes like that... please refrain from using these

 

I dunno how you would feel reading a "joke" like this on the internet about people that are important to you :roll: : /

 

or save this for YouTube and keep away from the forum :|

 

Well, a lot of us really don't like not hearing Ross, even in the forums, in over a month. I understand you're concern, but keep in mind that you may know Ross is fine, but we don't, and it's been a while since he didn't update the site in over a month, so "jokes" like these are inevitable.

 

No, jokes like that are avoidable. Ross has a right to remain silent as much as he wants (although I know it's not reccomendable to stay silent for long times) Anyways, I don't see any logic in joking like this when you don't hear about a person for a month, unless you wish them something bad. I find it extremely childish. People are able to express their concern in more normal ways.

 

Thank you ScottD for replying to me earlier. I'm happy I got attention of two people on the forum, so at least two people understand where I come from. I wish to finish this topic now.

 

Unless it occurs necessary again.

Ross's girlfriend (IRL) Twitter: @AmazingMagda follow me! ^^to somewhere! ^^

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