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Let's Fail
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So you want to fail on the Internet
This guide will help you go from failing in solitude to failing in full view of the Internet. It is largely compiled from a thread on SomethingAwful maintained by Maxwell Adams, with input from other goons. All information will be attributed to its author.
The Games
There are several options to finding the perfect(ly awful) game to play:
- A game you already own, or can rent, for a console you also already own, or can steal. Obviously, you won’t be able to get a high quality recording of this onto your computer with basic hardware, but there is a very affordable solution.
- A computer game you already own, can buy, get a demo of, download a freeware version, etc.
- Online (Flash, Java or Shockwave) game.
- Old/Abandonware
- Emulation and Roms. Basically, search for the console/game of your choice and either of these two words in any search engine (“NES emulator”, “Super Lode Runner rom”). Legally, in 99% of the cases, you must own a physical version of the game to download a rom of it, and even then I’m not sure.
The Equipment
I won’t list the obvious crap (I need a keyboard?).
All set-ups:
- Microphone: Your microphone can be a headset mic, built-in-to-the-monitor mic, a pair of headphones you plugged into your mic jack (yes, this works, but not well), or anything that you are able to get good sound quality from. Personally, I use a professional studio mic with a Korg portable studio as a preamp, but that’s because I am an idiot. While you could just rely on the hilarity of your character’s running into a wall for two minutes to make a statement about controls, nothing makes a good Virgin Live Play like a good “What the fuck?” every two seconds, especially when said with a non-American accent.
Computer/Online/Emulated Games:
- If you are running Vista and recording emulated games, you will not be able to record speaker output such as game sounds and music [named "What You Hear" in XP] unless you either move the speakers close to the mic or tape the head of the microphone.
Console Games:
- The trickiest part is going to be getting the video and audio from your TV screen to your computer with no lag and no giant investment. If you have a TV tuner card that accepts the standard Red White and Yellow cables, you’re set.
- If not, Maxwell Adams suggests the Adaptec Gamebridge. Note: This is currently not supported by Vista. Originally $60 (and over $100 for some reason on Amazon), $2 is a hard price to beat, even with shipping upping the cost to < $10. It’s gotten good reviews, and Maxwell Adams lauds it’s ability to deliver quality without lag, which is a must for video games. I’ve ordered one and will update this FAQ once I’ve tried it out.
The Recording Software
Here are Maxwell Adams’s software suggestions:
Maxwell Adams said:
- Camtasia (commercial, 30 day free trial) – a fully featured screen recording studio. This program is so good that it costs $300 and sometimes people buy it.
- Windows Media Encoder (free) – recompress video, broadcast video over the internet, and capture onscreen video. Not recommended for realtime video capture unless you have a dual-core processor.
- Virtualdub (free) – This program is hard to figure out because it does so much awesome stuff. Editing without recompression, audio stream swapping, video joining and splitting, and even onscreen video capture.
- Mediacoder (free) – a great program for recompressing video.
- Audacity (free) – Whenever someone posts in SH/SC asking about good audio editors, three guys immediately jump in and and suggest this program.
Personally, I use both Camtasia and Audacity and can vouch for them both as being user-friendly and full of useful (and useless but fun) features. I will post more about the programs I have tried later.
I will experiment with Mediacoder and post more information about that as well. Anything that hacks away at the ridiculous upload times is okay by me.
Multiple Players/Commenters
Playing with yourself too much? Even if you decide to play old NES roms on your computer, you can still play with internet friends, no matter their distance or true gender.
Maxwell Adams and fellow goons outline some techniques below:
Maxwell Adams said:
1. What is this about?
There are many emulators out that that support netplay over Kaillera. Usually, people all connect to a third-party Kaillera server, and everyone plays with lag. By running a Kaillera server on your own machine, you can play without lag, and people can connect to you and watch you play.
2. Requirements
Everyone will need the same emulator; one which uses Kaillera for netplay. They will also all need a copy of the same rom.
3. Procedure
Download the Kaillera server and unzip those files into a folder somewhere. Edit the .conf file so Public=0 and AllowWebAcces=0. That isn’t necessary, it’s just better to run it that way. You can also change the server name and message stuff however you like.
Run the Kaillera server, which is just a command prompt looking thing. Fire up your emulator, get Kailerra netplay started, and connect to 127.0.0.1:27888 (this means you connect to yourself). Make sure your connection type is LAN – 60 keyframes. Now find out what your ip address is. Add ‘:27888′ to that address. Now you’ve something that looks like 275.68.210.219:27888. That is the IP address you want people to connect to so they can watch you play. You get no lag at all because you connect to the server with 0 ping and update the controls 60 times per second without fail. People can see what you’re doing and it works fine for some reason.
Krakhan adds:
Yay, I got this to work on my setup, even when I’m behind a router (sort of).
I’m using a Link DI-524 router, and even when I tried to set up the appropriate port forwarding the act as the Kaillera server, I can see connections coming in, but they never get accepted. =/
Once I put my computer in the Demilitarized Zone (i.e. out in the wild ferocious internet), I was able to get people to join without any problems. Make sure in the config file you set public=0 if you don’t want random people joining your server and making random games and other crazy things. Is there a way to make it so that you can just the port forwarding and virtual server options on the router to make sure the connections get accepted though?
Oh ya, and I confirmed zero control lag, as I was able to breeze through Mega Man X as noticed by slowbeef and another goon, curbcheck.
Casao adds:
Both players need SNES9k and Hamachi installed. One of you(you, for this) needs the Kaillera server installed.
Turn off Public and AllowWebAccess like above in Kaillera and run it.
Create and join a network in Hamachi. Click on the second icon from the right, name it, and maybe password it. Give this info to your buddy, and watch him join.
Start up SNES9k and click Netplay>Options. Change the “Ask server to pause when [] frames behind” option. I had it set to 30 and it was basically perfect. Then, click File>Play Kaillera Game(or whatever the menu choice is, it’s similar). Note that any roms need to be named the same and be unzipped.
Have your buddy type in your Hamachi ip(it’ll be on the buddy list) to his client and join. I find it’s best to use 127.0.0.1 when hosting, my Hamachi ip didn’t seem to work for me.
You’re in the game. Have fun. Save often to avoid desyncs. You can also use private Vent servers(the demo server works perfectly fine for this), and anything else you want. Hamachi’s an incredible program for gaming in general. I find running Vent with a PTT hotkey on my R2 button to be perfect for the game.
The aforementioned Hamachi is free for a basic version, and allows you to convince to computers connected via the internet that they are on the same LAN. Can come in handy for the odd older computer game.
Uploading
There are a number of sites which allow for free video uploads after user registration, each with it’s pros and cons. Any site which enables embedable video is fair game. These include:
- MetaCafe
- GoogleVideo
- YouTube
- MyspaceVideo
- DailyMotion
- FileFront
I plan on updating this section with specifics of each once I have tried them; additionally, if you are familiar with a service, or would like to suggest one not listed, feel free to write up a quick list of pros and cons and submit it in the comment box below.
Submitting
The basic format for a new video post is this:
Post Title=Game Name(s)
Post Content=Embed code (see below)
Tags=Contributor(s)
Category=Platform/Console/System
The embed code can get wonky if you have visual editing enabled. To disable it, click on the “Update your profile” link above. The option will be at the top of the page.
Embed code is about a paragraph long; if your code is only a sentence long it is probably a link.
Example 1: FileFront
(object width="450" height="338")
(param name="movieID" value="http://static.filefront.com/ffv6/player/vp_embed.swf?v=173740&autorun=false")(/param)
(param name="wmode" value="transparent")(/param)
(p)(embed src="http://static.filefront.com/ffv6/player/vp_embed.swf?v=173740&autorun=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="450" height="338")(/embed)(/object)
(p)(br/)(a href="http://files.filefront.com/gemfire.avi/;7474280;/fileinfo.html" title="gemfire.avi")gemfire.avi(/a)
Example 2: GoogleVideo
(embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7384844288893847584&hl=en" flashvars="") (/embed)
Anyone who requests such information will be mocked.
If you have any section you would like to see expanded/included, have additional questions, or would like to add your own input to this FAQ, please let me know either by email or the comment box below.
where can i get some of these games
where can i get some of these gamez?
Hello
Very interesting information! Thanks!
G’night
WILSON
I disagree with some of your details, but your main point got me thinking. It actually reminds me of some music that my music download service just gave me for free.
Free Recording Programs Windows Vista
no kidding!