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.

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.