Lets racing time

LETS RACING TIME!

Ack! Why was that text blue!?

That helpful blue text will transport you to the Talking Time vidyagame racing channel, whereupon you may drink your fill of fantastically enchanting television game races.

Huh? What?

Sometimes a bunch of tyrants get on Skype to see who can play Mario the fastest. Usually it's pretty fun to watch.

Oh, okay. Well, what do you race?

Mostly Mario and Mega Man games, but we do mix it up. Go click the link to peruse the race archives at YouTube. Also be sure to Subscribe so that new races are delivered piping hot directly to your YouTube table.

How often are new races posted?

There's no set schedule but we average about one a week or so. The typical race has four participants and is about two hours long.

Can I race?

Sure! Read the latest posts in the thread to find out what races are happening, or just post a suggestion yourself and see if you can get people to join you.

What do I need to be able to race?

Well, we'll need to be able to hear your lovely voice, so you'll need Skype and some manner of microphone or headset. And you'll need some way to play the game you're racing, which probably means some kind of emulator. Oh, and some way to record your game footage, usually with a screen recorder.

What's a screen recorder?

Software that records part of your screen. It's how we sexy YouTube LPers ply our trade. A lot of folks around here use Hypercam 2, which is free, and relatively easy to get up and running. If you want to race but have never recorded before, download that and play around with it a bit.

Help! This is hard!

Yeah, there are about 10,000 little things that can go wrong with recording. Post your questions or problems in this thread and we can probably help get you up and running.

So what do I need to record?

We need you to record your game footage and your microphone. Make absolutely sure that you are recording only your microphone, and not the game audio or the Skype call. Most screen recorders have settings called "system audio" or "stereo mix". You will want to make sure those are turned off. The dude in charge of running your race will probably make you do a test recording beforehand to ensure everything is set up properly.

What do I do with this giant video file?

Transfering huge files can be problematic, but fortunately there is an easy solution. If you verify your YouTube account status by linking it to your mobile or to your verified Google account, they will let you upload videos of any length. Upload your footage as an unlisted video, send the link to whoever is processing the race, and they will take care of the rest.

Anything else?

There are no other requirements as such, but dig these rules of thumb:

• Screen recording is finnicky, and has the damndest tendency to introduce problems long after you thought you had everything figured out. Plan on doing a long test recording (2+ hours) before you jump into your first race so you can nip any potential problems in the bud.
  
• No matter how well you know a game, races will always go more smoothly if you do a test play beforehand.
  
• Always do a test recording to make sure all your race settings are correct, even if you personally double-checked them all the day before. Many hours of footage and commentary have been lost because some twit didn't know a box was unchecked.
  
• That includes making sure you have plenty of hard drive space.
  
• Plan to stay for the whole race. A game you can complete in 30 minutes will take someone else two hours. Keep a few spare roms handy so you can play something else while waiting for the other dudes to finish. That way we won't be deprived of your wonderful commentary!

Now that I have finally edited this first post, Googleshng is happy. Happy racing everypeoples!

It sounds like a heck of a time.

What is the racing etiquette? Do you practice beforehand? The answer is yes for any "serious" races I've seen, but I can see how it might be frowned on.

I am unsure about the condition of my microphone, but am interested otherwise.

I'm interested!
Evenings work best for me.

I vote we play something not awful. I'm not picky, and pretty indecisive, so I'll go with whatever other people think would be best.

I'd love to do this with something that doesn't take more than about 2 hours or so. I'll be pretty busy until March 9, so ideally it would be after that. I can usually do 9 PM - midnight EST most nights, with a bit of advanced warning.

This is something I've wanted to try since I saw Proton Jon's Battletoads race, although preferably with a game where nobody gets stuck on the same level for over an hour.

I am very interested, but I'd need some pointers on recording video as I have zero experience there.

Oh hell yes I want to race!

Something simple and actiony would be best to start with, I suppose. NES Mario?

For a quick first attempt, there's always SMB3 w/ whistle.

A good microphone is a necessity. A cheap, widely-available option might be the Xbox 360 Rock Band mic. It's surprisingly good quality, and Amazon has them for like $15.

In my heart of hearts I was hoping you would say this, Kishi.

CamStudio with the ffdshow codec gets pretty good results right out of the box. Spend an evening poking around with it, when you get the chance, and let us know what happens.

Most emulators have an option to export .avi while you play, but they don't record lag frames, which can cause problems with audio desync.

So, like... better than headset quality?

It might not matter; I suspect my kids have broked the headset I bought to replace the headset they broked. All I know is I played some L4D a few weeks ago and the mic wasn't working there.

Better than $15 headset quality, yes. Vorpal and I recorded Eris on my Rock Band mic.

You still need headphones, though, or the mic will pick up your speakers and it will sound just awful.

I use a headset! And I think my voice sounds pretty okay in recordings and over skype. You don't need anything terribly intricate/complicated to get decent voice audio. You should be able to get a decent mic for under $20.

I greatly look forward to watching these. I've looked at some races but I'll be honest I don't usually stick with them for long because i don't give a crap about those guys, but TT races, hell yes.

I probably wouldn't be able to even attempt to record anything until the summer, but maybe after finals I'll try to figure it out.

Brick, will you be hosting the final results on your youtube?

As for game ideas, god, I think any NES or SNES platformer would work. Finding obscure shit would be awesome, too, like some shitty hacked games (that mario-sonic thing).

E: BTW, 9 people is WAY too many! I'd say no more than 6, but 4 might be optimal.

I'm interested but I'd have to figure out the technical stuff, too.

Ideas:
Blaster Master
Umihara Kawase
FFV: Ancient Cave where the goal is to get as far as possible within a time limit

This one could be fun to watch, since someone will probably doing action while someone else goes into menus, which solves a major issue with video LPs of RPGs.

Can anyone actually beat Blaster Master??

Ideas:
2P v 2P Contra
Ditto on Double Dragon II, or really any brawler.
Desert Bus trollface

I was thinking it might be cool do to some special challenges, rather than just play games from start to finish (although that's cool too). Someone could create a save state for a game and we could all play from there, using whatever items or stats they had accumulated. This would open up things like RPGs, since you could do a race of a single dungeon or something similar. Could be interesting in a game that gives you a lot of control over your party, like FFV or DQ3.

Ideally, none of the players would know what was in the save state before starting the race. So you could have a party full of FFV characters all with different abilities, but set to Freelancer or something. Part of the challenge would be configuring your party quickly and efficiently, without having the luxury of taking your time making your builds.

For something that hard, you could use a timer instead of a race to the finish. See how far you can get in Blaster Master in 1 or 2 hours, for example.

*cough*


I will say I prefer not to play an RPG as a part of a race, even if it is Ancient Cave... but I'm willing to comply if everyone else is insistent.

I have an idea but I really would rather LP the game first.

I think River City Ransom would be good.

Speaking of NES shooters there's Life Force which has 2P simultaneous play.

I agree. At the very least, I want to do the first race with four (preferably with people who already have recording rigs set up) just to get my bearings and figure out how the editing works. Then I'll be able to better help folks who want to play but haven't done any recording before.

1p action games are best suited to races, of course, but there's no reason we can't do crazy RPG challenges and things too. Co-op games like River City Ransom would be fun, but present extra technical challenges because emulator netplay is basically terrible.

keep in mind that 2p simultaneous would require either figuring out emulator netplay or two people being physically in the same place, so it's not really the same thing as the races Brick was linking to. I just threw that out there as a possible special case if, say, two pairs of tyrants wanted to get together and try it.

I would do this. I've fiddled around with recording a bit, but it's been awhile and I wiped my hard drive, so I'd have to try and get setup again. My headset puts out decent audio.

Saturday is my most flexible day, but I'm theoretically available daytime almost any day of the week since I'm working overnights now.

I'm glad there's so much interest in this! Hooray!

First I want to do a trial run of something short with just a few people who already have their rig set up. I'm thinking warpless Super Mario Bros. Could we get a group together on Thursday? I'll be available anytime from afternoon until the wee hours of morning.

I think the easiest way to record will be to have everyone take care of their own video and microphone, but not the Skype chat or the game audio. That gives me four videos, each with their own audio track, which should be easy to sync up in Camtasia.

Thursday is my least busy day, so that's perfect. I'm usually available after 4pm (mountain standard time), possibly earlier.

I am v. interested in seeing the results of this! Seconding RCR.

Two more spots for Thursday night SMB shenanigans!

Man, I would love to do this if my connection wasn't a hundred kinds of butt right now. I can record video well enough, but I'd probably keep getting dropped from the Skype call, especially that time of the evening.

I'll help you perform a stress test, Spoony, if you like. If it turns out you can't play, I'll at least do what I can to slip "a hundred kinds of butt" into my commentary.

I'm at work now, but I should be able to try it this evening.

Odds are good, though, that even if it seems mostly stable I'll probably be knocked off at least once or twice. Besides being slow in the evenings now and then my connection just drops, there's no way to predict it.

If re-connecting to Skype in the middle of recording isn't a deal-breaker then it should hopefully work out.

No, that should be fine. As long as you record the game and your mic we should be able to just ignore the interruption*.


*By which I mean, make fun of you behind your back.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as spoony. If a mid run drop is ok, then I imagine I should be good to go. Just gotta redownload and test the some software.

I'd be interested in attempting at least one of these!