Test Trials and Ol' Annoying Problems

Hmm... maybe I should just try a different game instead...

A quick update; I'm currently collecting some Fallout 3 footage. Might be a mistake though... as I'm playing it "raw" without any tweaks or fixes, but with some visual updates in the forms of retextures/replacers for various terrain and weapons.

It's been 3+ years since I've last installed Fallout 3, and I still remember it as the most buggiest Fallout game outta the bunch. Crashes left and right, sluggish performances (even though the com meets it's specs) and many more...

I have a small bunch of recordings from these moments, and currently trying to remember the various fixes and stuff I needed to do for this game to run smoothly... or at the very least to a somewhat stable level.

Yeah... shoulda tried a different game instead. Buuut I'm sticking with what I'm doing to for now, as it shouldn't be too hard to deal with the problems. Thought about getting some Killing Floor 2 recordings for the other blog, but couldn't be arsed to install such a large game back again. That will have to wait till I find something nice to play...

I think I'll do some recordings of smaller games after Fallout 3... they can't possibly be any worse than this buggy mess at the very least! Well, soon enough I'll be done with these Fallout clips... then it's off to some editing and then uploading to YouTube. Here's hoping they look much better than how my first Fallout 3 recording went some years back...

-Panzer Fist-

The Great Tank Race of 2019

And here it is...

Well, at first it was supposed to be 3 videos, but I figured just one will do... as they're pretty much the same as one another, aside from losing/winning and using different tanks.

The Great Race is a revisited game-mode from the past called the Chaffee Races, and I didn't partake in that game-mode (and many others) in the past due to being busy, lack of interest or I was just too late/didn't knew it was around.

The driving mechanics are rather simple, but the "drifting" is automatically done during corners, so it kinda feels... off... at least to me. Maybe I'm just terrible at driving in World of Tanks, 'cause in games like Burnout, Need for Speed and various other driving games I usually have little to no problem with the driving mechanics.

Anyways... here's the video!

Used the Leopard Sport in this replay... and that is the vehicle with the highest top speed, slowest acceleration and poor handling. It also has a machine-gun armament which takes 4 seconds to reload.

I mainly use the T-50 or Leopard Sport as I do okay in those, but not so for the Chaffee. The gun is single-load, but takes twice as long to reload compared to the T-50 and does a bit more damage. Maybe that's just not my taste...

Nothing much to add, as I'm still planning on putting up other videos aside from World of Tanks stuff. Not sure whether to go with Fallout 3, or something smaller... well, that's for me to decide... and so I'll be away till the next post drops...

-Panzer Fist-

Sudden Disappearance and MORE Delays

2... close to 3 months... yikes...

I figured I should at least put up a post before September ends... no need to wake me up for that, though.

Where have I've been? Nowhere, really. Just been so busy that I hardly had time to get things done here! But I was free these last 2 weeks, and been spending time collecting materials to record and post over to YouTube.

First off; some World of Tanks videos... specifically the recent Tank Race and some Frontline replays, no Steel Hunter replays saved as I didn't partake in a single battle in that mode. There's some ST-I replays saved so I can make use of those, too.

Been meaning to expand my horizons beyond just World of Tanks or Armored Warfare videos, although the latter had already stopped before it can even begun [see last post] and a few games come to mind; Fallout 3, and about 5 games that I've dived into it's game genre types before...

Still having some trouble sorting out the recording processes, as about 2 of these new games ran into problems with OBS; can't use Nvidia Shadowplay to record videos for them. Fallout 3 is a buggy mess that needs to be tweaked with a ton of mods and fixes before it'll be anywhere close to being somewhat okay.

Even now these few Fallout 3 clips I've recorded were choppy and stutter between various areas...

Maybe I should try recording some racing games, too. There's Burnout Paradise... not sure about recording any RTS games, as I'm garbage at them... even though I still like to play them from time to time.

Still not gonna be recording any PS2 games like Metal Saga though, those will need more than just videos...

And as for the other blog? That'll be Killing Floor 2 and perhaps the first Dead Space or Doom 3... as Dead Frontier is still the same old thing from before.

Hopefully some videos will be up either later today, or latest by tomorrow...

-Panzer Fist-

Errors, Bugs and Glitches

Ooohh boy, this just keeps getting better and better...

Well... if ya haven't figured it out yet, the damn Armored Warfare recorded footage bunch ran into some problems. Was working fine previously, but decided to show its problems again like last time. 

I'd never asked for this... I'm still unsure if it's the problem stems from the game, the computer or both. But now I'm starting to think it's a little of both.

Reason? Well, another game that I decided to record worked fine (most of the time): Killing Floor 2. The game also ran into some recording issues before, but fixed when I decided to transfer the game to a portable SSD.

Supposedly, Killing Floor 2 would function better if it's placed in a Solid State Drive... and for the most part, there were improvements. One of the most notable improvements was that the game loading times got drastically better/faster.

A portable HDD was used to store recorded footage, as it takes the load off the CPU to do two things at once on the same Hard Disk Drive [running the game while recording footage... on the same drive]. At least now the CPU workload is split at least by half.

So... this is the only game to run into massive problems. Either a recent update in both the recording software and game changed things, or I might need to optimize my laptop better...

I did not go empty handed, however. Decided to make the best with what I've got... but I decided to upload one gameplay footage instead of 4, as the other two were unbearable to watch.

The first one had TONNES of stoppages, hiccups and lags... even though it didn't lag the slightest when I was playing the game. The second was just a black screen but with gameplay audio intact. Now who the hell would wanna watch that?!

The third one was the most "stable" one; little to no lags/hiccups, but the recording software decided to stop recording by itself halfway through a match...

I think that ATGM shot from that enemy AFV did something... must've been one of those high-tech "hacking missiles"...

Again, I wasn't experiencing any in-game lags, stutters or any of that... I just noticed that the recording was saved while I was playing.

The fourth one was probably the worst... the video was corrupted, but the game had an... interesting bug.

One hell of a mirage...

I think the ground is turning into glass from the heat...

Hell, this happened while I was in the garage as well...

Radioactive sands...

...as far as the eye can see!

Yeah, I pretty much gave up after I saw these...

I guess it's back to World of Tanks, huh? Well, at least that one doesn't give me tons of trouble... and I also have some Killing Floor 2 footage that worked out well, so there's something.

Anyway... didn't mean to rant there a bit at the start, but this can get pretty frustrating when it happens occasionally. Maybe I'll try some more Armored Warfare recordings down the line, but for now...

...it's best to just move on to greener pastures. Well, at least one that doesn't look like the pictures above, that is.

-Panzer Fist-

Delayed, yet again...

Wow, two months without a single update...

Remember how I  said that there'll be upcoming videos? Yeah, that didn't work out... reason for this? Busy, just overall been busy these few months... sorry

Things seem to be clearing up soon, as it's just one more week before I can finally relax... I've been meaning to post some stuff here, and also to the other blog to some extent.

Since I've made some extra time for myself this weekend and also had some time off for some of the days next week, so I can finally get some posts done here.

Seems like some stuff happened while I was gone from World of Tanks, but not much in Armored Warfare. I've also tried my hand at recording some games, but had some issues with some of 'em again... slowdowns, stutters and such.

A few fixes and some fresh new equipment later, and it was all okay! Not totally fixed, but the footage is much more better than it was last time. At least the unbearable lags and stutters/video stoppages are gone...

Some of the games I've been testing were Armored Warfare, Crossout, Killing Floor 2 and several other old games, and the last group gave me quite a number of problems as the recording software couldn't detect them.

But I'll figure things out. It's high time I put out something, and there's gonna be one later... so stay tuned...

...and this time, there'll be something to show for, at least!

-Panzer Fist-

Upcoming Armored Warfare Videos

Waited till the ass-end of March, eh?

Been busy, don't even have that much time to spare due to work/studies...

But made some free time to myself recently, so all is not lost. Seems like the Special Operations in Armored Warfare has finally been concluded, with the addition of another two parts...

...but what's more important is the arrival of French Tanks! Hoorah!!!

Finally I can get my hands on the AMX Leclerc series of tanks, as it's not just one. Prototypes included, plus the AMX 30 and 40... and also the AMX 50.

Not the 120mm gun variant with the lowered hull, but the 100mm gun prototype for the AMX 50 tank. And the AMX 40 isn't the infamous 'duck tank' from the 1940's, but actually a progression of the AMX 30 tank from the 1980's.

So far only a few tanks have been added to the game, and the higher tiers [tier 7-10] will be added in the near future. Some tanks might get shifted around, like the Italian OF-40 and Ariete, as the new dealer is home to French and Italian vehicles.

Well, time for some recording work... I got plenty to cover, so it's gonna take some time...

-Panzer Fist-

The Second 'Armored Warfare' Post

It's done, and I'm back...

As the title says, this is the second Armored Warfare post in this blog. Kinda funny, actually... after all this time, there's only been one made so far... back in 2016.

One of the reasons for the lack of Armored Warfare posts was that I only play PVE modes in that game. The ping in the game was enormous; 100+ milliseconds, so that was enough to made me NOT want to try PVP or Global Operations.

So playing PVE only will result in endless loops of the same scenarios, as there's not a lot of content there. I mean, there's the Special Operations... but even those will have about 2-4 'campaigns' or parts, and will usually last for about some months before the next Special Operation batch arrives. All of this happened last year, though.

The normal PVE 'contracts'... well, there's quite a number of them... now, that is. Back then there wasn't much that was offered, about 5-6 contracts, and they don't rotate, meaning that you'll be stuck playing that same contract until the next day.

Anyways, enough of that... it's time for the test recordings that I did recently. The first one's gonna be the result of using the in-built battle viewer that's in the game.

That shot that was fired a few seconds when the battle started... that wasn't a 'real shot', as I clicked the mouse button at that point of the recording, which for some reason results in the cannon firing.

I might not be explaining this properly... but in simpler terms, that was a 'ghost shot', didn't happen while I was playing, but happened here in the replay as I clicked the mouse button.

There's quite a lot of missing features when using the battle viewer. Some of them might be really obvious, if you've seen plenty of World of Tanks replays before.

The cursor broke at one point, which was really bad... had to switch to another player to fix that. It also only tracks the player's movement when you go into 'sniper mode', where you're zoomed in to make more precise shots.

I guess the only use for this battle viewer is to see other player's perspective, and to also get scenic shots or moments... I guess. They just seemed to buggy for me... as in one of my earlier recordings, the vehicles sometimes would just stay at the spawn point, even though they clearly moving during actual gameplay.

There's more bugs than that though, I bet...

Anyways, on to the next video [which was recorded first]; record n' play. I play the game while it was recording...

And here you can see the immediate differences. Plenty, I can tell ya...

The obvious one would be the loadout at the mid-bottom of the screen; what ammo I was using at the time, the capacity, the consumables brought... y'know, essential stuff you need to see in games like these.

Then there's the dialogue in the game; you can see all of it. Everything from the tank crews, the tank commander currently in used and also the contractor's instructions / information.

Plus... the cursor doesn't 'break' at all, as this is live gameplay. Recording this while playing doesn't impact the game that much, about 5 FPS loss... from what I've seen.

So overall, record n' play wins. No surprises there...

There's a problem that both of them share, though... that is the mission info screen [or 'loading screen'] can take a long time to load when the game is being recorded. It contains some info too that must not be left out... like debriefing info and backstory, for example.

Not included here as this is just a test... end battle results were also excluded.

Downsides to using the record n' play method? Gotta record it juuust before the game starts, which means while the game is still at the loading screen. Then there's the 20-30 waiting time. This also means that I'll have a ton of replays piled up, eating away precious disk space...

Ah well, it's what I've chosen to do anyways.

Not sure how or what to put out next for Armored Warfare... I guess I can make videos about the Special Operations, but we're currently at the third batch. Well, we'll see what happens...

-Panzer Fist-