EIGHT MONTHS + without a single post... it's almost as if I've completely forgotten about the blogs that I've had...
Last update was in April, and its even worse over at the other blog, with the last post on January 23rd. Why the long inactivity? What's the reason this time round?
A few things, actually... One: the unfortunate and 'unavoidable outcome' that has befallen on 2020 as a whole; leading to drastic changes in life... studies, work and whatnot. But it was actually reason number two that affected me more: shifting focus on some old, yet somewhat new experiences and hobbies.
Hell, even then it only lasted for a short while before something else took the reign...
Been at it since last year September, the earliest. Skill so far is not that great, and there's still a lot to learn and improve... so this means tonnes of practice and research. It's not video editing as I put that on hold since April to focus on this new thing... well, 'things' to be more specific; as its actually 2 of them at the very least.
All those months passed and I did have thoughts of updating the blogs, posts and also editing/uploading videos... but was hit with a combination of interest/focus on other things, followed by coping with enormous changes in life due to the state of the world in 2020 plus general laziness after getting invaded with waay too many assignments, projects and work.
In reality, the one thing that really screwed up my time was the abundance of work and changes that had happened lately... lots of sleepless nights and chasing deadlines... after all that ordeal, I just got tired and lazy... especially when there's like 2 different sets to worry about.
Now I took out some time from my schedule to give myself some free time, but its not that long though; only less that 2 weeks. Afterwards its back to endless assignments and work! Still adjusting to the new things that's been going on in my life; hopefully I can make Saturdays/Sundays free days next year, and not the mess that happened this year with too many nights staying up late and shit.
Sadly even with the 2 free weeks, I still have some work left to be done. Gonna shift those towards the weekend if I can for now.
Well... better late than never, I guess... and that's enough ranting for today I suppose.
But! There's some good news. I still have 3 videos from Acceleration of SUGURI 2 recorded back in March/April waiting to be edited and uploaded, plus some other games that I've recorded that can be posted here AND also the other blog. I think I can get at least one AoS2 and the other game posts before this year ends. Posts for the other blog might need to wait slightly longer though, but it will be plentiful soon, judging by the amount of zombie-like games recorded. Will be cross-posting this there, though.
Speaking of games... I think the World of Tanks stuff might be coming to a halt for now; my interest in the game has steadily been dropping off. Guess that means no more World of Tanks videos from now on. Like how Dead Frontier videos are no longer a thing in the other blog, too.
And I guess that's all that I wanted to type down as of now. Funny thing is, I was expecting this year to be the year that really change me... wasn't expecting all of this in the slightest....
Almost a whole month without a post... what is it this time?
No troubles or problems, actually. Just putting most of my time into drawing practice and picking up 3D modelling, too.
Video was recorded back on the 8th of March, and edited on 21st. Really putting more focus on drawing as I'm more serious in doing it this time... so less thought was placed on updates here.
But enough of that... it's video time! This time we're moving on to Sham. Shouldn't be too hard, right?
On an unrelated note; YouTube videos in 720p 60fps are now not considered HD!
Sham; one of the easiest characters to play...
It's all about keeping distance and taking it slowly...
...yet, why did I play extremely bad all of a sudden?
Was supposed to be a breeze, but I didn't do any practice or familiarize myself with her moveset. Thought it'll be a cakewalk, and ended up playing really aggressively like how I normally would when I use Sora or Star Breaker.
Severely underestimated this...
Well, that nearly ended me multiple times during gameplay... especially when I let my Heat run wild, sometimes even up to the max of 300%...
Playing as Sham should be all about staying away from the opponent as much as possible, while using blockades to make it harder for them to reach you... and also spawning as much minions as possible, too I guess.
A defensive/passive character, but I played extremely sloppy. Quite a lot of misclicks and not keeping distance, relied too much on dodging instead of using blockades and barriers if they get too close.
I mean... constant dodging is okay, provided you're good enough to avoid all attacks... which I'm not.
Figured that the -BONUS- scenes might be a bit too much, so I won't be doing that anymore. Guess I'll keep this more straightforward like the first video. Plus, it's a lot more stuff to add for what may be useless extra weight.
Maybe a different take on the -BONUS- scenes, not limited to showing the different moves the characters have? Like bloopers or fuck-ups that happened?
Not sure about adjustments to the flavor text, though... as sometimes it's hard to see them. Might need to just make them like the standard subtitle style, so that might work. Thought about shrinking the video resolution to get that 'movie bars' feel going on, but we'll see how that goes next video...
A bit of a short post for today, as nothing much goes on. Will continue to try out different things for the videos, see what works best and what doesn't. Unsure when the next post is gonna be up, but I'll try to not leave it up for nearly a month... if I don't forget, that is.
I finally managed to upload the next Acceleration of SUGURI2 Arcade Mode gameplay yesterday... even though it was supposed to be done on the 29th of last month, and the latest it would be posted is on the 1st of March.
I'll leave the ranting and bitching aside for now, as let's focus on more important things... the video! After playing as Tsih, I decided to play with a character that requires a bit more skill to use...
Ah, Alte. Her backstory is rather tragic, and her arsenal of weapons is also one of my favorites.
That Shock Rod is MASSIVE.
A bit more advanced in terms of skill to play using Alte... but not that tough. She's an all-rounder, and most of her weapons have a slight homing effect...this includes the melee weapon; the 'Shock Rod'.
This thing's just amazing; medium-range charge, partial homing and to top it all off... the stun charges!
Her weapons are not that accurate, though... this is why it's essential to activate her 'Searchlight' whenever possible, as it helps make her homing ability function a tad bit better, and also activates the homing ability for some of the weapons/skills that previously didn't have them, like the 'Shock Ball'.
I'm guessing this is due to her having one functional eye... so the Searchlight acts as her second eye, perhaps?
Probably the only character in which I utilize every skill available, aside from Shield and her Accel Hyper move. Her skillset is useful for every occasion; missiles and beams for crowding areas, sentries (or 'Claymores') for area denial, support and barricades...
...her "submachinegun" (looks like a minigun/chaingun) is good at stunning opponents, and also for constant damage. The 'Shock Ball' Hyper is amazing at stunning others, and the 'Salvo Fire' is a combination of beam and missile barrage... which works much more better when there's a Searchlight.
The 'Shock Ball' to 'Shock Rod' combo is still my go-to when playing as Alte. Sometimes I'll use the submachinegun instead of the 'Shock Ball' if I lack Hyper reserves.
My playstyle when I'm using Alte is to use the 'Shock Rod' whenever possible, and sometimes stun them or create a barrage first. Seems to work quite well for me. Some of her attacks are rather slow to implement, though... particularly the missiles.
And now, the behind-the-scenes stuff...
What happened? Why did it take a week before the next video was out? Well, let me tell you the "story" that took place on the 29th of February, the 1st or March and also the 5th - 6th of March...
Firstly... after recording the video, I noticed something strange in the video, specifically the very start... the video would either be glitched green or grey for 2 seconds, lag a bit and finally the sound was introduced in the video.
What happened is that the video got slightly corrupted after the usual recording session, and refused to run on the video editor I normally use...
Video lags, and there's no sound...
So I had to think of other means of getting this done. Thankfully, I had a backup video editing software I seldom use... even though I bought it on sale during one of Humble Bundle's deals...
Notice the weird glitch at the start?
...I think it costs $25, packaged with other video/music editing software...
Originally wanted to just cut out the corrupted parts using VEGAS Pro 15, render the file and use it in HitFilm Express 14... only problem is that VEGAS Pro's rendering speed is abysmally slow; nearly an hour's worth of waiting...
...and then I found out that it will only show the audio section of the clip in HitFilm. Seems to do fine when viewing it on my desktop, even on YouTube when I tried to test it further. Must be some strange compatibility issues among the two software, or my inability to do stuff properly...
So then I was forced to use VEGAS Pro for the edits this time. I preferred using HitFilm as it was much more smoother and the UI made things very easy and fast to do. Another downside of VEGAS is that it tends to crash... a lot.
I had about 5 instances of it happening, and plenty of slowdowns when using the preview to check my works... that was not fun.
Then, the work was done and I just had to render the project! Except that I forgot to extend the project's time limit, and had to render the dang thing AGAIN... both of this alone took 3 hours. FML
By the time I was done with the editing, crashing, slowdowns and just me fucking up at the last minute, it was already late in the night. Or morning, as it was 5AM at that time.
The video quality was horrid during the first render test, so I adjusted the parameters to a visually appealing level (at least to me). This makes the rendering time even longer, and I did check to make sure it was using the Nvidia graphics card to do the work instead of the integrated one... as it will take an hour plus if I used that one instead!
Strangely... in my time of using HitFilm Express, ESPECIALLY after the version 12 update, the program rarely crashes. Exporting of projects also didn't take a millennia to get done and the best of all is that the previews don't usually slow down, unless one uses 3D objects or FX stuff... which I don't use when it comes to these types of videos.
So I saved it and decided to upload 'em to YouTube when I wake up after bed, which was yesterday. And here we are today, with this post. Recording was done on the 29th of February, tried some adjustments on the day after... and only managed to have time to get back to the edits on the 5th of March, as I was busy with work and classes... assignments; just 2 months into 2020!
Since I was using VEGAS Pro to edit, I figured I might as well make full use of it, making the video as similar as possible to the last one. The -BONUS- section was supposed to be cut out, but I wanted to try adding something different, to see how it'll look like. Not sure if this type of stuff will make a return in future videos.
But alas, everything was finished in the end. I don't like what had happened, I preferred to have all this done by 29th February or 1st March as stated before. I'm personally hoping that the same problem doesn't happen again, as when I record a clip, I would want to use it together with a video editing software that can make my work go by faster.
...plus, I'd rather not do another recording session just because the video got corrupted or something. That's gonna take a lot of space, and a retake would lose some of the things that happened in the original video... like obtaining the 1cc star, for example. I did do a practice match beforehand, but like I mentioned in the video, I had no clue what I was doing besides spamming missiles everywhere.
And that should be the end for the rants...
I guess I'll have to do more training this time round... as I'm still pretty stiff when controlling the movements, dodges/dashes and attacks. Seems like I tend to stop my dashes, then attack. Then again, I prefer to play defensively in this game as I don't like to get my HEAT up to above 100% if I can.More HEAT = more damage taken... and if not careful, can get you killed very quickly.
It seems like these 'setbacks' are happening waaay too often... this is some grade-A luck right here that I'm having right now, with how the last video.post also running into problems...
Alright, that's enough of that! For now I'll stick to doing Arcade Mode matches, 1cc'ing them if I can for all characters... this includes previous characters that I had 1cc'ed before the start of all this. So until then, stay tuned.
Hopefully the next one doesn't run into any mishaps... here's hoping for a smooth operation.
Could've been only two days actually, as my internet modem decides to go kaput riiight on the day I chose to upload the edited video to YouTube... what luck. I could've also uploaded it to YouTube immediately after editing, but the edit was done late at night, and it was already 4AM then...
Yea, yea; excuses. But enough of that! The first gameplay video of Acceleration of SUGURI 2, in the flesh... since I haven't played the game in a long while I figured I should do something easy, like an arcade match with a 'noob-friendly' character.
I wanted to play on Easy difficulty, but since I normally used to play the game on Normal I figured I should get myself normalized back to the old difficulty I played with... normally.
Nanora! One of my favorite characters in 100%Orange Juice, Sora and naturally in this game too!
A lotta rocks... a lotta damage!
Now, Tsih is one of the more easier characters for me to play, alongside Sham and Nanako... her playstyle is more 'direct' and you can usually brute-force your way through just by slinging rocks everywhere!
Random fact about Tsih: she's listed as 28 years old. A big surprise...
I don't usually utilize her stealth ability, but it does comes in handy when fighting against Alte... particularly due to her searchlight.
This gameplay shows how much of a scrub I am;sticking to mostly one attack pattern when it works, pressing wrong buttons resulting in wrong Hypers used and sometimes forgetting to use a mix of physical/beam/melee attacks...
In this game, your Hyper bar/meter gets higher each time you do an attack. So in theory, if you attack with both beam and physical attacks it'll go up faster than just sticking to one side just because it works. Yet I still stick to this habit...
When playing as Tsih, I tend to just sling rocks or bash them when the opponent is close... so I rarely use the beam attacks. Why waste time putting up beams when you can just hurl a lot of rocks?
Though having Hyper stocks faster is an invaluable thing to have...
Now that I have some bearings back, I can finally look into trying out other characters, or even start doing the Story mode for some of them. Perhaps try doing them without dying? I remember only 1cc'ing some characters for either Arcade or Story mode. The rest were done only after a ton of continues or were either played on Easy difficulty.
Oh... and "1cc/1cc'ing" stands for "1 credit clear" or "1 credit clearing"; same term as "no continues" used as your clearing the game in one sitting without seeing that "continue" screen which only appears when you lose.
All the characters' Story mode were done in Normal as to get achievements, but with continues used. Some of the characters in Arcade mode were completed in Easy difficulty, if I remember.
Well, now I gotta make a choice then... perhaps I will do all the character's Arcade mode first since I've already started things off from that mode.
I tried a different approach when it comes to the video edit, and tried to add some flavor text at certain times. Not sure if its good or bad, but I wanna experiment with things and see what works for me. So far it seems okay as it's not that intrusive. I won't do panning/zooming shots or inserting extra sounds/pictures as that'll be too distracting. Maybe the end/ranking scene could be cut off?
Well... whatever it is, I have some planning to do for the next Acceleration of SUGURI 2 video. I guess it's time to get a little serious with things now, eh?
Hey, look... it didn't take me more than a month before a new post arrives!
...even though I could've made and posted this 1-2 days ago...
A new game post, and that game is Acceleration of SUGURI 2.
AoS2 Logo.
Technically not *new*, as I played this back in July/August of 2019. Last year was the moment where I started playing a bunch of games from Orange_Juice... they've made a lot of really interesting games, and I never thought I would play a bullet-hell or even shoot 'em up games in my life!
A small indie game company...
Not my first foray into 'bullet-hell, shoot 'em up type fighting' games, as that honor goes to its predecessor; which is Sora. Before I go run my mouth about the game, I might as well show the gameplay test first...
This video is an old replay from when I first started playing the game back in July/August 2019. Not sure how my skills would fare now...
The game ran into problems when trying to record some game footage. The first problem was the need to use another recording software, as the one I usually use doesn't work with this game. The second was screen resolution issues; the game will run slightly slower than usual when recording, but changing it to 1280 x 720 instead of using 1920 x 1080 fixes that.
Anyways, back on track; Acceleration of SUGURI 2. A really fast-paced fighting/shooting game, kinda like a bullet-hell game but with some interesting game mechanics. For starters, you can dodge (or more specifically negate damage) incoming projectiles by dashing through them, but only works for non-physical projectiles, like laser beams... so anything like a missile is out of the question.
Dashing would also produce a 'rainbow ring' like effect which also has a purpose; any projectile that passes through those rings will give you additional power for your 'Hyper' bar and also heals any lost health... but only limited to the red portions only.
'Hyper' is like a 'Super Power' type of thing that you'll usually see in fighting games, and you can have up to 3 of them total. Can be combined with various attacks to produce a different type of Hyper. There's also the 'Accel Hyper' which is the ultimate move that uses 3 Hyper slots.
You can utilize shields in the game, but I generally don't use them. They'll only take half of a Hyper slot, though. Very useful for blocking incoming fire, and also to cancel out other player's Hypers.
Plenty of characters to choose from, each with their own playstyle. They're from the SUGURI and Sora universes.
A really fun game; very fast-paced but also hectic. I find the game to be easier than the predecessor (Sora), but that's probably due to the balances placed as this is a game with online capabilities... while the other is solely a singleplayer game.
This is the most recent game entry in the SUGURI universe, so its the most updated version when it comes to this type of gameplay. I'm slowly making my way through the games, though... so I'll be at a point where I reached the first game made with the same gameplay. Probably should've started with the older games first, but whatever...
My first exposure to Orange_Juice's games was through 100% Orange Juice, which I also started playing last year January... but I knew about the game waaay back in 2013 from looking up game background music (BGM) and original soundtracks (OSTs).
I won't go into the backstories of the other games and my history with them here... as that'll be in their own separate posts. Yup... planning to do the rest down the line, too. There's quite a collection of games to go through, but its not that many.
For now we'll be starting things off from this game. I haven't played the game after some time... so my skills might be worse than before!Well, not that they were great before anyways... always played like a scrub...
I'll try to get my bearings back into this game soon. So the next video would be my first gameplay after not playing for some time... I just hope I don't suck too much...
And also posted on the day where the update is already available on the live server...
Yep, that late. The edited videos had already been uploaded to YouTube about 4 days ago, and the recording was done last Tuesday...
Been rather busy lately, not to mention quite lazy and tired... and it's just the first month of the year! The workflow should lessen after January, as is the case since 2018; the near the start/end of the year is always the most busiest of periods.
...and when it comes to relaxation time/vacations, I tend to slack off a bit too much to the point of forgetting things...
But enough about that! This World of TanksCommon Test version brings us Russian Double-Barreled Heavy Tanks, about 3 of them to the Tech Tree. Obviously not counting the recently added Object 703 Version II which is obtainable through lootboxes. Such greediness...
A double barreled 112...
So, the first things first... the new line consists of 3 tanks, Tiers 8, 9 and 10 respectively... and they'll branch out from the KV-3.
The first tank on the list is the IS-2 II... and from the name, one can guess it's an IS-2 with 2 guns, or with a tutu. Unlike the 703 II however, you don't have the 122mm guns available to use, which is rather odd... considering that it's an IS.
Since it's essentially an IS-2 with another gun, the armor of the tank is still the same as it was in Tier VII... which is not a good thing. The 100mm isn't that bad and there's plenty of ammo to spare... just kinda disappointing that there's no 122mm gun, which I think they conveniently left out to make the 703 II more powerful... not to mention the superior armor it has over this tank.
And now, the IS-3 II; a Tier IX IS-3 with two guns... finally, we get to use a bigger gun!
...although it takes quite a lot of combat experience to get the 122mm gun, though... the last 122mm gun available, that is.
The first 122mm gun is pointless as it leads to nothing, not to mention it's not that much of an upgrade aside from bigger caliber and damage output. you're better off researching the last gun instead.
The 100mm gun still isn't that bad though. Penetration might be a bit shite for this Tier, but ammo capacity is still great... and yes, it still retains the large ammo pool for the 122mm guns as well. So one can have a healthy amount of all three ammo types!
Armor is so-so with that pike-nose hull, but turret armor is okay, unlike the glass double cannon from before. The tank is very looooong, too... like a limo!
And finally we have the ST-II. Pretty much the same tank but with an extra gun...
Now this tank, I don't enjoy that much...
Sure, it's somewhat historical... but World of Tanks threw that out of the window a long time ago. There's nothing special about this tank; it's like a carbon copy of the ST-I. Even has the same ammo pool that the single gun variant has.
And here's the part where I start bitching...
Overall, the tanks don't feel that special. Perhaps the most interesting tank was the IS-3 II, and even then I feel like that should've been a Tier VIII vehicle. The whole line feels very off...
You've got a Premium Tier VIII can clearly perform better than the Tech Tree counterpart, not to mention it looks very similar to an IS-3 but with a flat angled front plate... but at Tier IX we have a Pike-nosed tank. Although I guess that can be overlooked as this particular Tech Tree's focus is on the double barreled gun capabilities...
Hell, the KV line also has it's problems, too.. the last two Tiers specifically. The ST-I is clearly an experiment to an improved IS-4, but it's a tier lower. If anything at all, the IS-4 should've been a Tier IX like how it was back then.
The Tech Tree variant for the Tech VIII tank should've been something else rather than the IS-2 II, in my opinion... maybe the IS-3 II or something similar to the 703 II. The Tier IX could be the ST-II or IS-4 II (a made-up tank?! Preposterous!) and the Tier X... well, I have no idea.
The Tier VIII should have the stock gun as 100mm and several 122mm gun upgrades... sharing similarities to the regular IS-3 variant BUT no BL-9 to make it in-line with the 703 II. This tank will have its damage output go from 250 to 390 and penetration values from 175 to 215.
The Tier IX should have the last (or second last gun) researched 122mm from the previous Tier and some upgraded 122mm choices, which will end with the M62-T2 gun... making it similar to the IS-4 or ST-I. This tank will have its damage output starting from 390 to 440 and penetration values from 215 to 240-ish... shouldn't be as high as the IS-4 or ST-I.
The final tank should have the last researched gun as its stock, and perhaps a 130mm gun upgrade to really bring out the tank. 152mm is overkill as 750 x 2 is devastatingly high for a Heavy Tank as compared to 490 x 2. Perhaps the gun will be more in-line with the IS-7's gun, as damage values of other guns close to 130mm (mainly the 12.8mm from Germans) is around 560... still too high. Keeping the damage values just under 1000 I think is better, as RNG will and can decide if one rolls above just 1000.
Now this tank will have the 130mm's gun with better penetration from its 122mm gun, unlike the IS-7, more like the Object 277... because just 50 (or 100 if doubleshot) damage increase, but is offset with worse penetration sounds like downgrade... not to mention that it'll have much longer reload, aim time and probably worse accuracy.
Speaking of which... this Tier X will have it's damage output go from 440 to 490, and penetration values from 240-ish to 255+... better than the IS-7, but not better than the Object 277... somewhat similar to the ST-I or IS-4.
The ammo capacity will shrink when moving to higher calibers, as it would make sense. So for the final tank, one has to make a decision to use a bigger gun with better penetration or a smaller gun with more ammo pool.
Guess the most comfortable Tier would still be Tier IX, as all it's guns are 122mm, the same ammo pool throughout all guns and is just a progressive upgrade with no drawbacks or second choices... just a bunch of guns to research like the Tier VIII tank.
Well, at least that's how I see this mini-tech tree addition should be. It's somewhat mixed, just like French 'Heavy' Heavies; mediocre Tier X, an okay Tier IX and horrible Tier VIII... but with an exceptional Tier VIII Premium Tank variant. Huh... almost like a carbon copy...
Eh, whatever. I think I ran on for too long, now. Quite disappointing, but not that it matters anyways... the next post is most likely not gonna be World of Tanks, as I've posted quite a number of times that I wanted to try other games... just hoping that they don't fall apart like Armored Warfare did. Let's just hope it doesn't take me a month plus to update...
