Video campaign

[Catwalk]

UPDATE: I have officially started the campaign and will be listing all entries in this post. For now, I've stopped doing live commentary due to technical limitations, DOSBox's screen recorder works better than CamStudio but seems to only allow speaker audio. If anyone has suggestions on what software to use, please let me know.

 

Videos uploaded so far (updating this list and responding to the thread as new ones are added):

 

- presenting the campaign rules and mods

- tour of my base and soldiers, downing a sub

- going through standard equipment procedures

- leaving the Triton and securing the perimeter (in theory)

- swarmed by aliens!

- entering the alien sub

- had to restart after the last mission as the game crashed and I lost my progress

- downed another sub before the end of month terror mission

- messing up on scouting

- clearing the map and breaching the sub

 

 

ORIGINAL POST

I finally managed to upload a video, you can find it

.

Nothing much is happening yet, just starting up the game and then a futile sub chase. I've lowered Triton speed to 150, making it hard to investigate anything but downed subs, terror site, alien bases and artifact sites with it. For landed subs, I will often have to use the lower capacity of the Interceptor or wait for the faster Hammerhead to arrive. This is still only a test run, I'll be starting over when I'm ready and set.

 

If you have any comments or advice on how to go about this before I start doing the campaign, I'd be most grateful. I'm planning on using pause a lot during geoscape activity so you still get a summary of activities but won't have to bother with me idling away while I mull over aquanaut names or triton loadout. There will be live audio comment on the next attempt!

[Civilian]

Snugglezilla, Armchair, Brahms... I like those names You should give the new recruits such cute names, too!

 

I see you modded the interceptors to have only one weapon, very interesting!

But why did you not use all scientists to research?

Your default mission equipment is similar to the one my troops use, but you made several changes to the weapons iirc, gonna look at those changes in the campaign thread right away.

 

Well: Moar!!!! with sound, yes!

[Catwalk]

Super small intro of me taking 29 seconds to say "hi, I'm going to make a video" uploaded! Still mostly goofing about and trying to get used to audio commenting, I'm very much used to typing for any online communication. And I'm Danish, we all talk that monotone View it here. Working on a presentation of the campaign where I explain all the rules and mods.

 

I've imposed rules saying that I'm not allowed to use all scientists and technicians. Effectively, this is the same as reducing their efficiency. The formula is x / (x + 3) where x is number of laboratories or workshops, so if you have one laboratory you may only use 1 / (1 + 3) scientists = 1/4, so with 10 scientists you may only use 2 of them. With the 10 incoming scientists I have, I'll be able to utilize 5 of them. With around 40 scientists by the end of the month and 2 laboratories, I'll be able to utilize a whooping total of 16

[Jman4117]

Why not go with the research from captured aliens or just up the cost of staff considerably. It seems less a game and more like math class like it is. Keep the rules more transparent to the user, so they don't have to think about them all the time, while still making the finance considerably more difficult. Also, game sounds and commentary on the ruleset would be great, it's really hard to follow what you are doing without commentary.

[Catwalk]

Jman, I agree it can seem complicated. Figuring out what's the best course of action with the means available will definitely get more complicated, but just figuring out how stuff works isn't all that complicated. After seeing the responses so far I decided it wasn't realistic that others would try the same campaign, so I just went with what I find entertaining. I like having laboratories be more than a capacity building, and I like being faced with more difficult choices about priorities. That's the overall philosphy behind the rules, trying to make it more difficult to figure out what the best course of action in a particular situation is. I love X-Com to death, but I did find the lack of balance to be a turnoff.

 

The first two videos were mainly for playing around with technical stuff, I think I got it working well enough now to get started.

[Civilian]

Good Quality of the video and the sound. And you actually have nice and clear voice. The rules are complicated, but you did a good job explaining them. I guess once you actually post a mission video, the whole thing will be (almost) self explaining.

 

You finally gave the new soldiers names, good! I like the AC/STR strings you added, good idea, but Mandy is a 43/22 not a 44/22 *nitpicks*

[Catwalk]

You misunderstood the stat strings slightly, it's FA/RE-ST, so Mandy is in fact 44-22. The 44 is for 40s FA and 40s RE, Weenie being 65-21 means his FA is in the 60s, his RE is in the 50s and his strength is 21. XcomUtil just doesn't know how to put a dash in between them as it has to end the stat routine when it sees a statid that's longer than 1 character for some reason.

[Catwalk]

Just finished another 5 videos, first mission completed! Last 3 are still uploading.

[Civilian]

You misunderstood the stat strings slightly, it's FA/RE-ST, so Mandy is in fact 44-22. The 44 is for 40s FA and 40s RE, Weenie being 65-21 means his FA is in the 60s, his RE is in the 50s and his strength is 21. XcomUtil just doesn't know how to put a dash in between them as it has to end the stat routine when it sees a statid that's longer than 1 character for some reason.

 

Oh ok, I see! Can't wait to see more videos!

[Catwalk]

Next mission is underway and all videos from the first mission are up now. I'd like some feedback on the format so far. Do I comment too much/too little? Should I try to be more sparkling and entertaining (probably not going to happen)? Should I skip more stuff or keep recording the entire campaign? Would you like TFTD sounds enabled (causes static whenever I tab away because of DosBOX)? And I'm curious about how many are watching this, if anyone other than Civilian signed up so far I'd really like to know

[Civilian]

That's not me, I do not have a youtube account (yet)

However i watched all videos so far, some even twice, especially the insane-speed "skirmish" one which made me motion sick.

 

And yes, please enable the sounds, it gives the game more depth. In the later videos your framerate in TFTD seems to have dropped drastically.

 

Your voice and the commenting is ok, one could feel your panic in the moment when 7 soldiers died by one alien grenade.

 

I learned that lesson ^ myself, now my first two or three rounds are reserved only for peaking out of the sub and running back, no kidding. Sometimes I even do only open the doors and do not leave the landing craft at all

 

Good work so far (technically), just watch out for those alien bombs, will ya?

[Catwalk]

Uploaded another 4 videos from my next mission. Sorry to report that I'm not done losing men to grenades yet :/ Also, I had to restart from an earlier save as the game crashed and wiped out my progress.

[Bomb Bloke]

Interesting fact: There's a certain gap in the Let's Play list...

[Catwalk]

Erm... I got butchered But fear not! I'm game for another try, and THIS time I shall triump gloriously in T'leth as I shall have Bomb Bloke by my side.

 

It was a lot of work figuring out how to do this video, so I'll start over with better preparations. I'm still not sure what the best screen recording app is, I've tried CamStudio and the in-built DOSBox recorder. Both have their quirks and are quite cumbersome to work with, especially concerning audio.