Lets racing time

Awesome, we have 4 volunteers for this heat. LaularuKyrumo and Periodical make sure you have me added on Skype, and that you have made some test recordings and have the emulator already set and ready to go. ^_^ You also might want to practice, there was some pretty big smack talk going into the first heat but all that settled down halfway into the event. ^_^

NES MM Pentathlon H2 Victims:

Confirmed:

Brickroad
Destil
LaularuKyrumo
Periodical

Unconfirmed:

Spoonybard (Tentative)

Outlook not so good for me, but it looks like you got a solid four.

Testing my setup now, hopefully my stupidly overpowered monster desktop won't explode.

Running into problem after problem after problem.

So at first I had a problem with just getting applications to recognize my new headset. Long story short, the problem was that the headset was named poorly, and I thought it was actually the built-in speakers, when in fact, it was actually my headset all along. Whoops!

However, that didn't solve the other problem I was having: Xsplit doesn't want me to record locally, and all of my recordings, even the tiny 5-second one, ended up corrupted. So I tried CamStudio, and it worked fine... except that it does NOT want me to record the system audio. At all. After running around trying to fix that, before finally coming on here and begging for help, I read something interesting...

So does that mean that I'm a doofus and you guys don't actually want to hear my game audio at all, and should go out of my way to make sure it does NOT get recorded? Because... that's interesting, and if that's the case, then it makes my problem a LOT easier to solve. Otherwise... if you DO want my game audio, then I'm gonna have to drop out just because I can't figure out how to make it work.

Xsplit is really not a great program, it breaks almost constantly. I would recommend using OBS if you a looking for good streaming or recording software as it is actually far more reliable.

You are correct that I do not need the game audio, however you do need to sync your voice to your game video footage, otherwise it leaves me with having to sort through the whole thing and figure out where it syncs.

I tried OBS and just couldn't get it to work. I'm not a huge fan of Xsplit either, but the advantage it has over OBS is that it actually works. At least for streaming. XD

Syncing the voice and video is no problem. Heck, I'd have it confirmed already that it works, if I didn't cock things up by trying to tell CamStudio to put the video somewhere else, while it was finalizing the recording, which broke the whole thing. Now I get to leave it running for another 3 hours, oh boy!

OBS can be a bit tricky to get to work properly. I have to first open OBS and then the emulator I want to record. THEN make a new source in OBS telling it to stream that one emulator. I use pretty much the same settings for zsnes, fceux and minecraft, but neither will work with each others. It's a mess, but once it works, it really works.

But if you can get Camstudio to work reliably, go for that. Mine seemed to just lose the recording all the time(perhaps because I told it to save it somewhere else than the default directory?)

Bah. Maybe after this odyssey is done, I can sit down with someone and try and work out the kinks for getting OBS to work with Dwarf Fortress. I remember the big problems being that I couldn't get it to display two applications at once, and I was also dropping like, every single frame forever. And then I think there was some other issue that I don't remember.

goddamn technology, I think I might just play Monopoly for a few days and take a break. Seriously.

We're using skype for this right? I'm alanuhler on skype, should be on around 345.

Alrighty, getting down to the wire. Heat two is starting in about an hour or so. I'm going to start getting things set up to make sure everyone has the files and everything.

I think I'm going to have t bow out. Trying a new recording setup and I put off long test videos too long, having an issue with that as well as like four other things.

Well we are all on skype right now if you decide you want to give it a shot. We are going to be starting up in about 10 minutes (4pm EST).

Best of luck! I know what frustrations await you...

Okay, Heat Two completed! Some peoples did really well! ^_^

Can't wait for both races to be uploaded. I wanna see how many completed that evil/horrible challenge #5.

I still haven't heard from the participants in the NES MM Pentathlon Heat 2. I have everyone's footage from the first heat though and from the All-Stars race now. ^_^

I haven't processed mine yet. I've been prioritizing getting some of my personal LP stuff in order.

I'll do it tonight and PM you a link to the footage tomorrow.

There's no rush if you have more important stuff, I'm actually worried about your footage the least. XD

The other guys seemed to be having problems, I have the feeling your stuff might be all I end up with. I do hope I am wrong.

Well now that you mention it...

Remember how I hit F10 to load a state, and that ended up being Camtasia's "stop recording" button? Very late in the video I hit F8 (also to load a state), and that is Camtasia's "pause recording" button, so I don't have any footage after that point.

That's well after I completed all the challenges, though. I lost maybe 15 minutes of pointless footage.

This is going to be an interesting one to put together. XD

I think my biz is all fine, the OBS recorded my Skype but you can just mute it?

Yeah I can remove an audio track if it recorded game audio and skype, you recorded your voice separately though right?

did you record your audio separately with just your voice?

Yuppers got that audacity file.

Actually, that happened in the first Allstars race as well.
After an hour, people who still was stuck on SMB was allowed to use savestates just to get through that game. Now, that's F2 and F4 in zsnes, the same keys for "stop recording" in Hypercam, which some people used.

Yes, savestates in SMB. Don't look at me, I was almost done with SMB3 at that point.

I would imagine that you guys should include warnings to remap the state keys to something other than an Fx key. [ and ] usually work well enough because of how far away they are from default control setups.

Well there is no way to know what different people have their keys mapped too. We were using FCEUX, but they changed their shortcut keys between versions, where the new ones use I and P instead of the function keys. There is no real way to know which version has which keys as shortcuts, and when those overlap with other programs.

Menus exist. If keybinds are causing issues, you could worry about what overlaps and/or go to pains to remap, or you could take an extra second and choose open state/save state from the menu bar. I'm betting that none of you have recording software that has functions bound to left-click.

I have all of my recording hotkeys changed to include ctrl+shift for exactly this reason.

Oh shit narishm sorry I never actually check skype. My files (and body) are ready, where to send?