Ross Scott

Also I wanted to add, try to use the forum threads related to the different topics if you can.

It was the 28th for me on the west coast of the US.

 

Happy Birthday!

I just realized I was born in Louisiana, which is a time zone earlier than east coast. I still made it!

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Happy birthday! This is a giant birthday video I've been wanting to make for a while now. I had no chance at all time-wise last year, and I almost didn't make it this year! While I definitely have my own ends with this video, I tried to keep it entertaining also. Hope you find something in it you like!

 

Here are the threads related to the birthday topics:

 

Ross tries to get you to join in on his birthday.

 

Related threads here:

 

MMO Stories

 

 

Soundtracks

 

 

Art

 

 

Mouse Printing

 

 

Custom Software

 

 

Also believe it or not, the suggested Youtube thumbnail images didn't have one with me in it, so I left it on the default one.

 

COMMENTS

This relates to the video https://youtu.be/oITBRgSQBd8. This thread is for posting all the best MMO stories you have. See the video for what kinds are preferred.

This relates to the video https://youtu.be/oITBRgSQBd8. This thread is for posting the kind of art Ross likes (as mentioned in the video).

This relates to the video https://youtu.be/oITBRgSQBd8. This thread is for discussing custom mouse creation.

This relates to the video https://youtu.be/oITBRgSQBd8. This thread is for specific software Ross is looking for (as mentioned in the video).

This relates to the video https://youtu.be/oITBRgSQBd8. This thread is for posting every good lesser-known soundtrack you know of, especially game ones.

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Merry almost-not-Christmas! I managed to get this Christmas episode out pretty late, but it should still be Christmas in the timezones I'm aiming for! I almost covered this game last winter, but it got to be too late and there wasn't any snow left on the ground, so I saved it for this one, since we of course have snow everywhere. Everyone has snow. Everywhere. Enjoy the episode.

 

COMMENTS

I think the reason why Dungeon Siege 1(and 2) runs like garbage is not because the hardware is old or new, or good or bad. Its due to Dungeon Siege 1(and 2) not being very well optimized, I actually did a little experiment for a mod I was making. Anyway I forced the game to load the entire first region in Kingdom of Ehb, which is about from the farmhouse to the entrance of the forest.

 

Here is some pics of multiple areas fully loaded:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7lysuL1W-PtenBzTEZNdnI4dVU

 

20 fps zoomed all the way out on this system:

GTX 980

i5 4690k 3.6 ghz

Windows 10

 

When I zoomed all the way in I get 80 fps, meaning the GPU is the bottleneck despite being one of the top 10 GPUs money can buy. Ironically that also means that the Dungeon Siege engine would make a better rts engine because of how fast and optimized it is for running ais and scripts.

 

Now that would fun, an RTSARPG where you outfit your small army, and massacre other small armies.

 

If your curious about the development of this game here is a link to Scott Bilas's blog:

http://scottbilas.com/games/dungeon-siege/

Those shots are awesome, would be neat to see the great northern forest, dunes, and swamp area from the multiplayer map since they're so huge.

 

As for the optimization, my guess is it's optimized for different hardware. Again, I don't remember realtime shadows being a huge issue when I was on XP.

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After much deliberating, we now have the winners of the screenshot contest for the free games giveaway! I want to give big thanks to everyone who contributed a game, and to danielsangeo, who organized most of this and we wouldn't have been able to do this contest without him.

 

I unfortunately have to announce that I decided to change the rules. The simple reason: there were too many good entries. It would have been hell to try and figure out who is #34,35,37, etc. We had 481 entries and 124 winners. A lot of people had multiple great entries, but we picked only one per person just to keep things sane. So instead of a big numbered list of winners, they were broken up into tiers. You can view the winning entries below:

 

GOLD TIER:

These were ones I thought were either amazing, genius, or extremely funny.

 

SILVER TIER:

These were generally really good, they just didn't ignite quite the same spark to me that the gold tier did.

 

BRONZE TIER:

These were ones I thought were cool in some way, just not mind-blowing.

 

This whole thing was super-subjective, so don't get too disappointed if you didn't win. You may yet still have a chance to win something later on.

 

HOW TO CLAIM YOUR GAME:

1. First confirm you were one of the winners (a master list is located here)

2. Check the Games List for games you're interested in. This will be frequently updated as people claim them.

3. Make a small list of games you want, in the order you want them. Email [email protected] with this list. If your game is still available, it will be sent to you. If not, we'll go to the next game on your list.

4. If you submitted your entry on the forum instead of email, let us know which one your entry was (we can find out, but this will make it go faster).

5. Games will be sent first by tier, then FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE. So everyone in the gold tier will get a chance to pick before silver tier, then bronze tier.

6. Have patience. Silver entries won't get served until everyone in gold picks a winner or a week passes, whichever comes first. So it could be a couple weeks before you get your game, depending on how things go. Once you email us letting us know what games you want, your place in line is secured.

7. In the event there are no games left that you want, please just tell us "pass" in an email.

 

Sorry about changing the rules and make it a semi-free-for-all, but it was the only way to retain our sanity. We had so many fantastic entries, thanks a bunch to everyone who participated. I highly recommend people check out the winners. Also since we had more games than winners, once every winner has gotten a chance to pick something, I'll make a new post about the remaining games later. Afterall, I don't think Daikatana is going to fly off the shelf.

 

COMMENTS

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Merry Christmas triple-Eve! Here is the first Christmas episode coming out this month for Game Dungeon. This is an episode I knew I wanted to do, but had some concerns about it, so I decided on a halfway solution. This episode is split into 2 parts. The first half everyone can watch and should help your holiday mood. The second half is for adults only and I made it age-restricted on Youtube because I think this is the most intense game I've had on the show so far. This is one case where I feel like censoring it would have really misrepresented the game. You'll hear this in part 1, but definitely do not watch part 2 if you're easily disturbed.

 

The next video I'll get done ASAP, though it's going to be close whether or not it gets made in time for Christmas or not. It can be kind of amazing how long simple details end up taking to do. So while I can't promise dates, expect 2 more videos this month!

 

COMMENTS

YouTube LIVE chat is deleted after x amount of time or y amount of messages? I wasn't aware of that.

I haven't seen any indicator it isn't. Do a test. Find the most popular Youtube livechat you can, where people are messaging every couple seconds. When you enter, make a note of the message at the top. Wait about 10-15 minutes, then scroll up to the top and see if that message is still there or if it's a new one. That was my test for Twitch, which it failed without IRC.

 

Ross I know you've had issues running older games on newer hardware. Have you considered getting a dedicated old games PC?

It's more of a philosophical thing, I think I'll talk about this when a do a followup episode to Dungeon Siege.

Did you consider using YouTube for live broadcasts? I haven't used it for broadcasting but there a few good points for it e.g:

1) most people follow you on YouTube, not on twitch, therefore they may accidentally notice that you are broadcasting on YouTube; as I see it you have 1278 followers on twitch and 127k subscribers on YouTube. Speaking from my own experience - I missed the last one because I forgot about it and I rarely use twitch but in the mean time I could be one of those 127k using YouTube at that moment and might accidentally come across that you are LIVE.

2) from what I have heard from streamers - they only use twitch because of the customization - addons, subscriptions etc etc - therefore if you are not planning on using those things and use it just from time to time for a video chat - do you really need twitch? If you would do LIVE gaming that would be different.

3) I'm not sure of this one but could it be that broadcasting on YouTube is a little less of a hustle in terms of video uploading afterwards? Doesn't YouTube automatically offer the option to make the recording available afterwards at the channel?

I haven't had time to research much. I think my main concern with Youtube was that if there were lots of people, comments might fly by too fast and I wouldn't be able to read them in time before they were purged. With twitch I can have it connect to IRC so that I can take comments at my own pace if I need to.

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Hey everyone, in the interest of giving everyone enough notice, I wanted to announce the next videochat will be at 4PM EST on January 3rd. It will be on twitch again, located here:

 

http://www.twitch.tv/rossbroadcast/

 

I may switch and use a different videochat service later on, but I need more time to test other ones and I wanted to make the announcement ASAP to give people plenty of notice.

 

Upon user suggestions, this next chat will be more structured than the previous ones. I'll start out with announcements again, but then I'll start answering questions or discuss topics that people can submit ahead of time. If there's something you'd like to hear me talk about, either leave a post in the comments to this post, or else email [email protected] with your question or topic you want discussed. I'll try and cover as many questions / topics as I can during the live chat and try to respond to any additional stuff in the chat. This is still an evolving thing, but I think will get more refined as time goes on. Also for those wondering, I'm still using my old email address for normal emails, this new one is simply for contemporary events like this.

 

In the meantime, I'm working on the videos, expect the first Christmas episode in a couple days!

 

COMMENTS

To clarify: you don't have to give your steam name unless you're a winner AND you picked one of the games marked that way.

Allow me to de-lurk to ask a rather important question; Is that Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition,or whichever version comes with the DLC?

Sorry, it's just the basic.

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Hey everyone, I have another screenshot contest this time with a lot of games to give away! I sometimes receive game offers whether I'm interested in them or not, so rather than have them go to waste, you have a chance to win some of them. Most of these aren't top-tier games, they're all games I either already have copies of or aren't particularly interested in, but hopefully some of you out there will enjoy them. All games are digital copies for PC either for Steam or Humble Bundle codes.

 

- - -

 

RULES:

-Submit an interesting screenshot from any game either by posting in the comments to this post, or else emailing it to [email protected] (external links are fine).

-You can submit a maximum of 3 screenshots per person.

-Only one game can be won per contestant, so as to maximize the number of people who get games.

-You have until midnight EST of Dec. 21st to submit a screenshot. You can try and submit one late, but you may not make it.

-Winners will be announced on Dec. 22nd.

-Winners will get their pick of which game they want until there are none left. So 1st place gets 1st choice, 2nd place 2nd choice, etc.

-If a winner does not claim which game they want within 24 hours of being contacted by email or private message, they will get perpetually bumped in line behind the next person.

-While I think these all will work, since these were all gifted, there's no guarantee that all the games are working, since I can't check them.

 

- - -

 

TIPS:

Here are some characteristics of screenshots that are more likely to win (note: they probably shouldn't have ALL of these):

+Screenshots that seem to raise a lot of questions

+Screenshots that seem like there's some sort of story behind them

+Impressive action

+Slapstick humor

+Something surreal

+Something I find funny

 

Some characteristics of screenshots that probably WON'T win:

-ONLY something scenic without anything extra

-Screenshots you can't appreciate unless you're familiar with the game it was taken from, or have a lot of context

-High Scores or kill/death ratios

-Toilet or sex pose humor without something more clever to it

 

- - -

 

THE GAMES:

Here's a list of all the games so far. If you have any extra games to contribute for the contest, just email [email protected] and we'll update the list later:

 

ACTION:

Crysis 2

Hitman Absolution

Remember Me

Star Trek (2013)

Syder Arcade

Prototype

 

ADVENTURE:

Broken Sword 2

Shivah: Kosher Edition

 

FLIGHT:

Ace Combat Assault Horizon - Enhanced Edition

 

HORROR:

Dead Space

Harvester*

Outlast

 

OTHER:

MirrorMoon EP

Super Splatters

The Beginner's Guide*

 

PLATFORMER:

140

Cave Story Plus

FEZ

La-Mulana

Savant - Ascent

 

PUZZLE:

Bridge Constructor

Contraption Maker

Crayon Physics Deluxe

EDGE

RUSH

World of Goo*

 

RACING:

Ridge Racer Unbounded

 

RPG:

2x Fallout 3 (basic edition)*

Fallout: New Vegas (basic edition)

Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition

Pixel Piracy

Ravensword: Shadowland

UnEpic

 

STRATEGY:

Civilization V

Beware Planet Earth!

Kingdom Rush

 

 

*Games with an asterix will require knowing your steam username in order to receive a copy.

 

Thanks to Victor Nicholoulias, "Explosive Vomit", "Sum Dood", and Tyler Cronrath for the games!

 

COMMENTS

The reason I'm ranting on about this: it's often easy to tweak the EQ curves yourself. Some drivers have options that let you do it, other times a box with a 'treble' and 'bass' knob on it is good enough.

I keep all EQ settings at default since I do so much editing. If anything's being colored, it would have to be happening at the driver level, not from user control. Also your picture sums up the situation pretty well.

 

Ross: have you tried sending an email to ASUS about the issue? The cards are not crazily expensive, but they're not free either, so they may be happy to give some assistance.

Yes, they have no solution aside from "reinstall drivers and hope it doesn't happen again". Even the creator of Unified unofficial drivers said they don't know what the cause is.

 

On that note, please lay on me what would be recommended setups.

If you can replicate the sound problem reliably, try different video drivers too.

None of this is reliable. None of it.

 

[*] Has this problem ever triggered at another time/in a different situation? What were these situations?

It has triggered before, but always in the same situation, seeking on Youtube. It hasn't happened in any other situation. I have also had another driver problem with the card, but nothing so serious as this. The other problem is at a random time interval (sometimes days, sometimes months), the volume control for the right audio channel will stop working. There's been no consistency whatsoever with what triggers this. Rebooting won't fix it. Only reinstalling the drivers will. Others have reported the same problem:

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/304988-volume-control-left-channel-only-asus-xonar-essence-stx-win7.html

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2001229/conflict-soundcard-asus-xonar.html

http://www.overclock.net/t/1097645/solved-asus-xonar-problem-no-sound-on-left-channel

 

This was bugging me earlier and making me consider getting a different solution, but the more recent random ear-shattering static means I have to change something.

 

[*]Once the problem is triggered, how do you stop it? Is it as simple as repositioning the slider again or do you have to reboot your computer?

I think I may have had both, I'm not sure, it's practically an assault when it happens, it's distorted my memory somewhat. I'm pretty sure one time I had to reboot and it affected other sounds system-wide, another time it may have gone back to normal, but I decided to reboot anyway, I don't remember. I know the problem doesn't occur if no audio is playing.

 

[*]Are you watching youtube videos using flash player or the htm5 player? You can right click a playing youtube video to find out. ]

HTML5 on Firefox.

 

Keep in mind that sound quality testing is as evil as room acoustics. Small differences in volume can make you favour one device under test over another DUT. Similarly the Xonar card may be tweaked (in software or hardware) to have a higher bass response (or other EQ shenanigans), which some people prefer.

I was using closed studio headphones on songs I was extremely familiar with when I tested it, so I doubt acoustics played into it. The difference was fairly obvious for songs that I knew. I wouldn't say it was a night and day, but there were subtle details I simply couldn't hear on the motherboard audio. I would easily be able to pick out the difference without having to listen to it repeatedly for songs I'm familiar with.

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Here's the second installment of the live videochats from Twitch. This one wasn't as full of people, likely due to the time. I tried to vary it to get different crowds, but in the future I think I'll try and target times when more people are around. Nothing super important in this one, mostly just that you can expect more videos, I answer questions on a lot of different topics, and try to get some help and input on things. The format is the same as last time since I didn't have time to organize something better, but hopefully the next chat will be more structured.

 

Anyway, this video is unlisted so as not to crowd out the others, but I'll try and make it easier to access in time. You're of course welcome to share the link anywhere you want.

 

COMMENTS

About the whole "Multiplayer having more than single player", a lot of FPS has that nowadays. The regular Call of Duty often does.

I think you're misunderstanding. I said it has MORE content. I doubt you can play through a single player campaign CoD game in less time than it takes you to play the multiplayer without repeating one map.

 

I used to run a rather popular Dungeon Siege community site, DungeonSiegeCenter.com - the domain has long been out of my control though.

 

I just checked the WayBack machine... ahh, memories. No pay, constant demand for updates, people threatening lawsuits because I uploaded their submitted content a day before they wanted it to be available...

 

Good times. We got 1.2 million unique visits in the first month. I've got a gold release of the game sent to me by Microsoft, they spent $24 US on the postage! HA!

 

I miss my buddies SeaWolf and Liam, I'll have to look them up.

 

Ross is right about the magic too, I always played ranger and had way more fun.

Awesome, let me know if there are mods you think are worth running. I actually tried running the SP version of Yesterhaven after I made this video and it unfortunately crashed.

I love the model renders, if someone ever gets this into a playable state, I'll definitely mention it in a future follow-up.

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Believe it or not, I was hoping to have this out a little bit before Thanksgiving, but this is what happens when a video turns out more complex than I planned for AND I get sleep. A lot of the time involved with this episode was getting to the points I needed to in order to show different parts of it. I had a lot of previous saved games for Dungeon Siege, but some were missing and some I was simply unable to get working again due to some mod dependency weirdness I guess. In any event, while this is hardly an obscure game, I consider it a real cornerstone in terms of influential games for me. It's all laid out in the video.

 

Right now my plan is to have two more Game Dungeons this month, along with an extra video. I'll also be having the monthly video chat on the 6th and post it up here afterwards (though it will be unlisted on Youtube).

 

COMMENTS

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This is just a quick update to announce that the next videochat will be at 10AM EST on Dec. 6th. I wanted to switch the time and day of the week to give other people a chance to join in the chat who weren't able to join the last one. It will be on twitch again here:

 

http://www.twitch.tv/rossbroadcast

 

Several people gave me other suggestions for a better chat format, but I haven't had time to look it over very thoroughly. We'll probably come up with a better system in the following months, but in the meantime, I figure any communication is better than no communication.

 

On another note, I was hoping to have it done already, but it will be another couple days before the next Game Dungeon is done. I'll put it up as soon as I'm finished with it, but unlike October, the episodes definitely take longer when I also sleep. For December, I hope to have two more Game Dungeon episodes and an additional bonus video.

 

COMMENTS