What lies ahead in 2017

While I haven’t been making use of the blog, that is partly because I haven’t had much to post but that might be changing although I have to go through what will be happening generally in 2017.

 

Getting started early for Christmas 2017

While I didn’t do anything on the youtube channel for Christmas 2016, I will be starting what I have planned for Christmas 2017 as soon as possible as I will be doing a 12 days of Christmas anime episodes where each day will feature a series that has at least one episode around Christmas time, but this will be slightly different as there will be 13 episodes with the 12 days going up to the 24th while there will be a more special episode on Christmas day which will be more Christmas related with another special episode for new years day which will focus on a group of episodes that have a new years day specific focus or end on new years day.

 

Updating the video recording and video editing equipment

I can’t really start any of that project without at least getting a new camera since the polaroid ix2020 isn’t going to cut it if I want to actually put out quality video content, and I can’t really rely on windows movie maker to serve as my main video editor since it’s barely able to stitch several pieces of video together to make a single video that I can output to youtube so I’ll be using a few free trial video editors to see if they can perform or at least see if what I was planning to use as a general video editor from the free stack does better with the footage from the new camera since it couldn’t even work with the footage form the ix2020.

 

Sorting out all the tech

Even though I’ll at least have a computer to be able to do all the video editing on, that unit isn’t designated for video editing since all it will be doing is running old games once it takes its place under the TV, so I’ll have to get all the parts together to build the first of my gaming computers but I’ll also have to do the same for my media streaming system since what I currently use is being rather a pain in the neck and has pushed me away from dedicated streaming boxes due to the fact that one box can lose support for updates and apps regardless of when you purchase it and I have to have some method of storing all the footage along with the final product if I have to edit together several videos since my current solution is slowly running out of space since it is a general data storage device.

 

Getting the list for 2017 purchases sorted

There are four words that will most likely start that list…

Ghost in the Shell

And I’m not talking about the live action movie that is currently being filmed, I’m talking about the stand alone complex series which is finally getting a release in the west on blu-ray (only in the USA) and will be taking up at least £100 of my money in a few months time.

Another wallet buster that is getting a purchase in 2017 is the Magic Knight Rayearth blu-ray collection which brings both seasons into one set.

The remainder of my purchasing will be to catch up with series I haven’t completed or are behind on since I’ve still to get my hands on the final part of the persona 3 movie series for which I’m also likely going to double dip into when the UK release comes out (whenever that will be) and grabbing series that are being re-released on budget labels.

As for games, there isn’t anything new I’m getting beyond persona 5 (unless the PS3 version is canned) so most of what I do is likely to be focused on older games which I’m most likely going to be able to do captures on once I have a graphics card in the newer of my computers.

 

And that is it for this bodged together summary of what I’ll generally be doing in 2017 when I’m not looking for employment, so until next time…

 

I’ll catch you laters…

Update on the game capture test.

After my first attempt to test game capture failed miserably, I thought that I would only be doing game capture through my camcorder and only for console games.

 

When I decided to dig out the collection of DOS and early windows 95 games, I also decided to find out if I could capture video from a vanilla DOSBox install and things were going about the same as the last attempt.

 

That was until I decided to reduce the output resolution (if that is what the setting is for) which brought more success, but the game was still running with a lot of black space as the actual capture resolution was set to what I was using to do web page capture so I changed the resolution to around what the games would be displayed at.

 

Once I got everything configured correctly I pressed the preview stream button in OBS and everything started working with primal rage without and lag whatsoever except for the fact that I’d set the capture resolution to 640×480 while primal rage actually ran at a resolution of 640×400.

 

With that success in the bag, I decided to move over to the original super stardust which required another resolution change since I’d changed it to test primal rage at its actual resolution but the success was mixed as while the menu looked to run normally when I started the test capture and when I started the test play it started lagging badly which turned out to be the game not pushing up the CPU cycle count and increasing it to over 10000 cycles made it more playable and the capture worked at those same settings.

 

Now that I have this success, I might go back to ftl and see if doing a forced reduction of the games native resolution in the capture software helps make the game run with less to no lag in game.

 

Until then, I’ll catch you laters.

My attempts (and faliures) at video game capture

Now that I’m getting everything up and running with regards to the video side of things, I wanted to get some gameplay footage recorded so that I could upload it to the relevant channels and did some tests yesterday.

 

It didn’t go well.

 

I started with FTL for which I had a good idea for a video series, but the initial attempts to set it up didn’t go well as the OBS program window was always visible in the preview which I found out was because I was using window capture, however, when I finally set it up using game capture and started the preview the fun started as the game started acting like it did when the laptop was using the microsoft provided drivers for the GPU (lagging like all heck and OBS was constantly complaining about high CPU encoding) and even with dropping some settings it still had the same problems and for some unknown reason FTL shut down during one preview test, so I decided to try something else.

 

That something else was superfrog (the original and not the HD remake) which seemed to be promising when I started the preview after making sure everything was configured correctly, but the moment the game tried to load the next screen the sound started to stutter and the CPU usage warning flashed up each time on OBS, and even after resetting the game resolution back to default the result was the same so that was another fail as I didn’t want any recording to suffer with any audio distortion.

 

The final attempt at this was with planetarian (which I’d purchased recently), and that was where everything went to pot with OBS as its game capture setting couldn’t pick up on the games window, and while window capture could pick it up it wasn’t filling the preview window, so I decided to end the test there and not bother until I had a decent system set up that could do this.

 

That means that to be able to do any game capture, I’ll have to either update my existing desktop (which should be able to run almost all of the games in my steam library) or build a new computer of which both are in the pipeline.

 

And that’s it, so until next time catch you laters.

Starting anew and announcing my plans

I posted my first video (there are now two, but I’ll be posting about that later) three days ago where I laid out my plans for the future of my new youtube and dailymotion channels.

 

To sum things up, I’ve been unemployed and seeking work for over ten years and in those years I’ve hardly had any responses back (meaning I haven’t had many interviews) and for those I have gotten beyond the application stage I can actually count them on one hand and have fingers remaining.

 

With my more recent discovery of youtubers such as Jayztwocents and Barnacules Nerdgasm who started their channels when they were in employment but decided to make it their career and main income source (the former gave it a lot of thought (of a kind) before they decided to quit their main source of income, and the latter was fired from their job (from Microsoft) and decided to have a go at turning his channel from a hobby to his main source of income which he needed to do as he lost the insurance he had when he was employed), so I’ve decided to attempt to come at it from the other angle and going from unemployed to making this blog along with the video streaming sites I’ve started up along with other services my main source of income.

 

This isn’t going to be easy since at the moment I still have to be actively seeking employment, so the amount of content I can put out will be limited until I can be certain that I can actually make the amount of money that is required to support myself for the future, but once I do that, I need to start paying any tax on my income myself along with making sure I have the necessary insurance to pay for any medical treatment that the NHS doesn’t cover (like dental treatment) along with paying for the certificate that means that I won’t have to pay the charges for all the medication that I have to take.

 

Needless to say, the next few months to the next year will be hard with working on the blog, getting videos shot and getting all the hardware I need to make everything easier to do.

 

The first thing that needs to be completed is what I’m referring to as the office as I’ve already gotten the desks, but I need to wait until the end of the month to get some other parts for my main (and the better of the two systems I have) computer and it also starts on my actual gaming (which will allow live streaming of games) system which will be the first of three main computers that I’ll be building.

 

That’s all I have to say on this now, so I’ll catch you laters.

Revival of the blog (and announcements of additions)

After a long while away, I’ve decided to revive the blog as a part of a greater plan for my possible future which will involve this blog, video sites and streaming services.

 

More information about this “greater plan” will be revealed once I start uploading videos which should start around the middle to the end of May (which depends on when I actually get my camera and the storage required to start filming content.

 

So until then, laters.

First impression: Harvest Moon Tree of Tranquillity (Wii)

After waiting almost a year since this game was meant to have been released in the UK (and for being one of the few reasons to get a Wii) all I can say after 5 days play is it’s about time.

The basic storyline is the same as it has been since thhe beginning of the harvest moon series (you move to a new place to start a new life as a farmer growing crops, raising livestock and hopefully meating the girl of your dreams to marry and have children).
Although this game does take some pointers from magical melody as at the start your heading towards waffle island to start a new life as a farmer after reading a flashy leaflet and after you faint whilst the ship your on went through some rough seas you see a strange woman in your dreams and after a few days on the island you find out that a tree that watched over the island had died and the harvest goddess (the strange woman you see in your dreams) has also vanished so your character takes on the job of reviving the island, the 5 rainbows that had dissapeared after the tree died, bring back the harvest goddess and eventually bring the tree back to life.
The game controls have improved over the Wii conversion of magical melody where you could only use the Wiimote and nunchuck controller here you can also use the classic controller (although you will still have to use the Wiimote for the minigames) which does come in handy for those who tire quickly, although even though I put myself in that group for some strange reason I prefer playing the game using the nunchuk style control system (probably because I got used to it more whilst playing magical melody although that might change once I finally get a classic controller pro imported from Japan).
Whilst most of this game is the same as in every other game in this series the creators have also made merry with the changes which include a end of season flea market where you can buy things that are not normally sold in the shops on the island, being able to travel to the other inhabited islands surrounding waffle island (after you complete certain parts of the game and after you’ve gotten married, had a child and completed all the game you can either go on with the game or get a item from the harvest goddess and then continue playing the game as your child!!! so when they say that this is the biggest harvest moon game ever created for any system they’re not joking (so I’ve only touched the tip of the iceburg).

Whilst Everything else has gotten better the motion controls are still a bit touchy and even though the material requirements for building and improving your property have gone down obtaining that material with the basic tools you are given at the beginning of the game would mean that even the task of chopping down a tree for wood would quickly drain your stamina completely.

Apart from that this has to be the best harvest moon game made for any home console ever.uk

First Impression: Mana Khemia Student Alliance (PSP)

It’s rare for me to get identical games on different consoles to compare the differences but this is an exception to that rule.

Basically Mana Khemia Student Alliance is a portable version of Mana Khemia Alchemists of Al-Revis with a few extra features added on, which are a network mode for 2 player battles (that being 2 players against a monster) and jump start which if installed cerates a 95MB file on the memory stick which is supposed to improve loading times.

But what they give with one hand they take away with the other as they’ve removed the Japanese voices which means that I have to play this version with Flay sounding like a complete burk and the vice-principle having what sounds like a part Scottish part Russian accent (along with what I think is a few others now with no voices at all).

Also even after playing this for a little while I can see that little effort has been made in converting this game to the PSP since the opening video has had the top chopped off it to make it work on the PSP’s wide-screen display instead of re-animating it and the section on the campus map which shows if your in a class or not is now unreadable even when it’s close on the screen.

The worst thing is that even with jump start turned on the game suffers from horrific loading lag even when a battle is started and thus far the only thing in the jump start file is all the voice data which is pretty much pointless since it should’ve contained most of the data relating to battles or some of other components would speed things up a bit.

So to sum things up if you have either the PS2 or the PSP and you only want one version then get the PS2 version, but if you want to have a copy for the go as well then get both since you can try something on the portable version then do it again (or try something else you didn’t do on the portable version) on the PS2 version.

And if you only have one of the consoles then if you have a PS2 then just get that version and don’t bother with the PSP version, but if you only have a PSP and can’t afford a new (or used) PS2 and your not bothered about the loading lag then stick with the PSP version, but in the end if you want the better version then get the PS2 version and if you don’t have the console to play it on then get one.

Review: Magical Witch Punie-chan

When you look at the cover and read the small summary (if you buy this on line) you would probably be wondering why such a cute looking girl is hated so much that a lot of people want her dead, but all that cuteness is just a cover as punie has a darker side which when unleashed will just about abandon her magical abilities in exchange for punishing her opponents with a wide variety of submission holds that will leave her opponent without a single intact bone in their body, and this has made her so many enemies that even her cute animal mascot (who’s head she cracked like an egg), her (shock) younger twin sisters Puyn and Potaru and a plethora of other persons want her to be as dead as a doorstop.

The story focuses on Punie Tanaka who has to spend a year on earth as a test to see if she is good enough to be the successor to the throne to the magical land that her mother and father rule over and if she fails then there’s a list of others who are more then willing to take over succession (mostly by killing of Punie so she can’t succeed her mother for the throne). There’s also a short line of supporting characters including Anego who is the schools gang leader and seems to lead a load of extremely ugly girls but they get their way most of the time (mostly through violence), Tetsuko who is saved by Punie in the very first episode and is a large chested, glasses wearing complete and total train nut, Payatan who is Punie’s cute animal mascot and Pyun and Potaru Tanaka Punie’s younger twin sisters who have their eye’s on Punie’s spot as successor to the throne.

This series is classed as a comedy and it doesn’t fail to impress from the get go with Punie’s mother sending Punie’s bawling father flying back a few feet shortly followed by punie’s magical veggie attack on Anego and her gang when they target her (and on the second wave I was going to chime in with part of a modified version of the pokemon song) and the shocked face of Anego shortly after when Punie suddenly appears whilst her and her gang are trying to shut down a rival curry stand that was being run by Tetsuko who actually is the first person to be on the receiving end of Punie’s other personality but she doesn’t end up on the receiving end of any of punie’s submission holds (thankfully) but Anego and her gang were not since they soon found out the even if they have a charm that is supposed to keep Punie from being able to use her magic it doesn’t stop her from breaking several of their bones with her plethora of submission holds but even then she doesn’t give her younger twin sisters the same treatment when they show their teeth since all they end up with is either a bottom slapping or several other punishments that are more fitting to their age (but I think what she should’ve done is on the first sign of betrayal to send them back home with every bone in their body broken).

But even though this starts on the right note it fails abysmally in the last 3 episodes as even though they kept some humour in with Punie using real cavalry in a mock cavalry battle in episode 7 the rest fails as they seemed to use several references from both alien and the evil dead which was just the death knell for this as a comedy anime and to be honest the people who though of those plot twists should be on the receiving end of punie’s submission holds.

Final words

A good short series but let down by a bad ending

Score

4/10

My world. My way.

Welcome to the world of blighty otaku the blog that will go through the world of anime, manga and video games with my own unique view.

So once I’ve gotten things sorted out I will be posting my views on what get’s my back up in my world along with the odd review and anything I can think of that is either good or bad in my world.