Pundead love you for what's on the inside - Let's Play Plants vs. Zombies!

Hey Talking Time!! Do you hunger for fresh blood?? Are you ready to sink your teeth into a new video-LPing tyrant?? Do you fucking love punctuation?? Well, park your picnic basket right here on this lawn of the dead and prepare your bodies for Let's Play Plants vs. Zombies!!

Man I am nowhere near funny or punny enough to keep this up so let's not. Let's play some tower defense instead. Let's just slap this right here:

PLANTS VERSUS ZOMBIES!!!
01 - Lawn of the Dead

where doing it man. where MAKING THIS HAPEN.



Totally unrelated to those cool ass video(s) listed above me, kept for easy navigation and for posterity's sake:

Hey so like I mention in the video, this is my first LP. Not sure if video was the best choice? No matter! Stuff I'm concerned about, though: I don't know if this is the long-standing serious lack of sleep going on, but I thought those text overs were funny as hell. Maybe not hysterical all the time, but I made myself laugh out loud at "oh no edition wars". Are those fantastic? Do they showcase my immaturity? Could you live without them but don't really care? Also, it seems like I either watch really amazing/prolific/well-known video LPers (cough cough), or I watch people sort of hem and haw their way through their LPs. So, trying to avoid the latter and carve my way into the former, I crammed SO MUCH TALKING AND INFORMATION into this video. Not sure if I should have had more dead air? Do you guys like dead air? Love it? Prefer Dead Space? Would you rather your video LPs not be choked full of WORDS WORDS WORDS? I don't know! Talking Time, you're my only hope.

Oh, and a huge, HUGE thank you to Destil. I struggled with the technical portions of this for hours - I don't even want to figure out how many, but it is some multiple of "dozen" - and I was absolutely ready to throw in the towel. Then everyone's favorite Robotic Red Mage stepped in, slammed his head against the issue for an hour or two, then Problems were Solved and LPs were Made. As always, I owe you debts I could never begin to repay (except for maybe those debts that I could begin to pay). Thank you~

Thanks for watching it and I love you all!

Pretty good first showing, actually! I suggest you not do the whispering bits that way with your current setup, since the microphone pop is pretty severe and distracting. Might want to consider doing those bits post-production and smoothing the audio with Audacity or an equivalent audio-editing program. But it was informative and fun, which is always a good combo for an LP (and especially good for an LP about a tower defense game; they're so dime-a-dozen these days, sadly).

That was fantastic advice, and something I'd forgotten to mention in the OP that I had originally intended to. Besides sounding rather amateur and silly, I was really considered about that whispering/etc business because of the random spikes in volume. The reason why I had originally slapped the additional text overs was because "dark ... hearts", and after six hours working on the audio, I just wasn't in the mood to redub again. But then there's other parts that are, I fear, obnoxiously loud, so ... I did try fiddling with some freeware/trial voice editing, but I didn't touch Audacity until I needed to up the volume (it was terribly quiet when I first uploaded it to YouTube), and that's where I should have started from the beginning.

That was a lot of words to agree with you, but thanks for reminding me. It's definitely going to carry into the next video. Also, I wonder if the increase in tower defense games is because they're probably a lot cheaper to produce.

And thanks for the kind words! It means a lot. :3

Always glad to help out my fellow LPers! As for why tower defense got so prevalent, it's the same reason why Tetris clones got so popular during the 80s, Dr. Mario clones during the 90s, and Bejeweled clones during the 2000s: someone hit a sweet spot with the original, and everyone else decided to follow the leader since it was effectively guaranteed profits. I'm sure a lot of them also wanted to do their own take on the idea, but the underlying principle is the same: it's a cool idea, so they make their own version of it.

Looks fun, seems informative, I like the text pop-ups (although I'd like to see them hang around a little longer than the spoken words themselves), 1: because they add style, and 2: because of the next thing.

Please normalize your audio. I'm running at full volume to hear you, and am missing out on words whenever you start rambling (I don't mean that as a negative) and speaking fast because your voice dips and it has to fight against the ambient hiss from my system.

Just finished watching this, I' like the length of the videos (7 minutes is something I can watch while eating lunch, without taking up my entire lunch hour), and seems like a great mix of entertainment and being informative (which is one of my favorite bits of LPs).

Like Adam said though, leaving the text hanging up a little longer would be nice.

But yeah, looking forward to the next video!

Two problems with this:

- Who's the leader?
- Most TDs are free to play, or at least the Flash games market is saturated with them.

Render: Oh, that's definitely true. Too bad.

Adam: Duly noted, thanks a lot! ... that came out super sarcastic, but I don't know how to phrase it more sincere-sounding. And it is sincere! Normalizing isn't something I'd even think about, not for a while anyhow, but it's an excellent point, and I'll see what Audacity can do for me in that regard as well.

How long would you rather see the text up for? Maybe for spoken length + a second or two - tangentially, is it a readability issue? WMM doesn't allow multiple captions at the same time, which is something I nashed my teeth at a couple of times, though I could probably use images to work around that, or get creative with the spacing of text (or just find a non-shitty program with better options and less crashing).

Go with YouTube annotations.

Thanks! I like the length of the video as well; it's a significant chunk of information and playtime, but it's still manageable, both in making it as well as watchability (I myself would be a lot happier committing to eight minutes over, like, 28 minutes). Will definitely keep the text length in mind next time!

Mogri: As much as I'd love to say it's PvZ, I think the two forerunner of the recent tower defense craze were Desktop Tower Defense and Flash Element Tower Defense - they predate the other big names in the genre by about two years (and have an enormous amount of hits). I think generally FtP flash games are made profitable by ad sales, so the games don't necessarily have to be for sale to make profit.

Also, re: YouTube annotations: I don't think I'd be able to use fancy fonts with that, could I?

Looking forward to seeing if I've missed anything in my own playthroughs of the game.

But... I like wallnuts...

Youtube annotations don't get the fancy fonts, as far as I know, but you wouldn't have to flash them so quickly, they'd be more readable, and you wouldn't have to worry about whether more people than not like them because every individual would be able to turn them off at their own preference. I only nitpick because I care.

Also, the very first TD game I played? Warcraft 3 custom maps. Also one of the last ones I played that I enjoyed (though I did get really far on this one, once upon a time).

The flashing thing was entirely on my part - WMM sets every annotation at a seven second default, so I had to go in and manually change it to .5 seconds or whatever, and time them myself. The length's all on me - was trying to be stylistic, just needs a little tweaking.

Coincidentally, that Warcraft III TD map/mod was one of the influences George Fan cited when he made the game. :3

I think everyone else has covered most of the issues I noticed, but I for one would appreciate subtitles; the volume you've set your voice at is kind of low for me, so occasionally I miss a word or sentence. Subtitles are a good solution to this because they also serve as a free script.

Aside from that, though, I really enjoyed watching this first episode.

Thanks Aerdan! ♥ I'll get the subtitles up on YouTube today, I think.

I would recommend not using Youtube annotations for your subtitles, because the way they overlay most videos is a bit distracting, and tablet and phone Youtube apps don't support annotations yet (that's what I watch on most of the time and I, of course, am the most important viewer.)

And most of what needs to be said about audio has been said, but if you're recording on a headset, it may help if you make sure that the mic dongle isn't too close to your mouth while you're recording. And if you're using a freestanding mic, move it a bit further away. You'll still need to fiddle with audio levels anyway, but that'll take care of the root problem.

That said, you did good for your first video! I will be looking forward to more Plants vs. Zombies strategy and fun.

I really liked the first video and I am excited to see more of PvZ!

Yeah, pretty much what everyone else said here. You have a great voice for video LPs and the presentation is top-notch, although raising the volume when mixing it would help a lot since you tend to speak more quietly whenever you have a lot to say.

For the Cherry Bombs, I actually got a lot of use out of them (along with the Jalapeno later on) during my run of Adventure mode, especially during any stages with those Goddamn Zombonis. Some of the waves can be absolute jerks, and the explosive plants are great for when you just want to blow them to bits so you can get back to planting more right away.

By the way, will you be going for all 20 achievements?

Dawns: Thanks for the input! It's definitely true I need to watch how close my headset it, that breathy noise was a little annoying at times. Re: captions, I've spent hours working on the captioning system, and short of ruining my videos by putting the text right in, I don't see a reasonable system that isn't a huge time sink. Is this a thing people really care about? Would typing up a transcript suffice? I feel like I'm spinning my wheels over something no one else cares about in LPs. I don't know though and this is probably the late night frustration talking. Sorry~

Taeryn: Thanks, I really appreciate it and that means a lot. ♥

Pappy: Thanks to you too, and you're right along with other people about the volume, I'll definitely be addressing that in the next video.

Oh, and I agree, the Cherry Bombs can really shine in some particular levels, especially those Zombinis *shake fist*. Still, even for those, I would rather bring in Squashes, because they recharge faster and cost so much less, and in adventure mode, CB is almost always going to involve overkill for what I need. Also, like you said, there's Jalapenos, and while they recharge as slowly as the CB's, and are barely any cheaper, they also nuke any ice trails that the Zombinis may have left, and if I'm already blowing consumable plants on zombies, they're likely already done some damage that I'll want to take care of as soon as possible. (I'll just spoiler it all, out of laziness).

That being said, once you've set up your Survival: Endless engine, you're going to want to bring in all the consumable explosives you can. While I don't think CB's are all that necessary in adventure mode, they're absolutely invaluable when you have a dozen Giga-Gargantaurs running amok and some asshole Jacks right behind them, looking to blow up all your shit. In S:E, I generally use my duplicate for freeze shrooms, but 'bombs are a great candidate for it as well. I guess that's what cob cannons are for, though. :P

I could hear you just fine, and wouldn't need captions. I'm not sure if it's the same for everyone else, though.

Hey I thought I mentioned this here but I guess I didn't!

As TTers who have skyped with me can attest, my mic is completely and utterly shot. Until I get a new one, this thing's on unfortunate hiatus. : (

It'll be here when you do

That's a TOTAL BUMMER

What no just crackle into the mic like you do with us normally.

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