Tips for the first serie?

[stepbystep]

Hello everyone,
I wanted to make a youtube serie for a long time, thought about it a lot but never did.

Having recently rediscovered xcom thanks to openxcom I'm getting really excited at the idea of starting an openxcom serie.

The serie would be in italian. A classic playthrough, leaning a bit on the tutorial for the first episodes. I still don't know how much effort I'll be willing to put into editing but I'm toying with the idea of cutting a lot of the "planning" and maintenance phases and comment the tactical decisions on camera just before executing them... and blame it all on the rng afterwards, obviously 

I would appreaciate any kind of tips/tricks/suggestions on topics such as:

How/where to find music
How/where to find, select, employ additional art (I have basic skills in ps/gimp and a pinterest account)
How to properly address attribution and the legal stuff in general, I'm really scared of receiving a cease and desist because I used the wrong image or mp3.

Also resolution, video length, pacing, whatever.


I've seen some awesome series coming from you guys and I'm looking forward to hearing from the masters!
Thanks in advance.

[Starving Poet]

For the music: Youtube has its own collection of free music - some requires attribution, some doesn't:

https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music

[stepbystep]

Thanks for the suggestion Starving Poet, I remember listening to a few of those tracks a while ago but will surely take some time to dive a bit deeper.

A topic that I forgot to mention previously is mods:
I would like to include a few as long as they don't change the original feel too much, things like the combat knife, incendiary granade and the like, also the bandages would be nice to use from the start. I'm not sure about the little scout cars I've seen on both Meridian and Ivan's lets plays as they seem to provide a very big advantage compared to the original game.
Do you have suggestions on some small items / changes that can enhance the gameplay without changing the feel too much?

I'm also really interested in ways to obtain art for splash screens and such, do you guys make those yourselves or do you ask actual artists for permission to use their cg paintings?

Thanks a bunch!

[Lion66six]

Great news that you are considering starting a lets play, here is a few of my findings from starting my first one 4 or so weeks ago.

1) Try not to think too much about it, spend a day or two working out what you think will work and then jump in. Any more than that and you start to doubt yourself.
2) Try not to be perfect at the start of the video series, just know that you will improve on the videos as the series continues. No one had this stuff mastered in the first instance, and no one has now. (Ok perhaps Meridian \ Starving Poet \ Ivan and a few others!)
3) Always do a test video or two before you start actually recording. Make sure you get the right balance of sound between the game and your audio in the recording. Make sure the quality of recording is good enough.

In terms of post production, I use OBS to do the actual recording. I have three screens on my machine, main screen for the game, 2nd for OBS and then the 3rd for random stuffs. It helps as I can use the hotkey to pause OBS when I'm making long decisions like selling stuff, and I can actually see that in OBS the recording has stopped. This often results in me having between 3 and 5 individual mp4 files to combine.

I then use AVS4You software to combine and re-encode the output to be suitable for youtube in HD. Feel free to google this software, you do have to pay for it unless you know of places that you don't have to :-) I often find on my machine that re-encoding takes about an hour for a 30 minute video, and then uploading to youtube takes about an hour per episode. I normally record a number of episodes in one sitting and then do the encoding and uploading when I have time. Normally at the end of the day when I'm about to goto bed I will start an upload to youtube and then use the following windows command to turn my machine off after two hours : 'shutdown -s -t 7200'

So I upload a number of videos to my playlist but set them as private, and then release them on a regular basis by making them "public" on youtube. For me, this makes things a bit easier for my schedule.

Finally, the number one thing. Enjoy the process. If you don't enjoy doing it then its not the hobby for you (But do give it a few weeks to see!)

[Warboy1982]

i once asked a wise man the meaning of life.

he responded: "research heavy plasma"

[Solarius Scorch]

i once asked a wise man the meaning of life.

he responded: "research heavy plasma"

60% of my modding effort is making this more complicated. :3
(not sure if it worked)

[Hobbes]

i once asked a wise man the meaning of life.

he responded: "research heavy plasma"

I once got in a fortune cookie: "stockpile Elerium and never sell it"

[Meridian]

I would appreaciate any kind of tips/tricks/suggestions on topics such as:

How/where to find music
How/where to find, select, employ additional art (I have basic skills in ps/gimp and a pinterest account)
How to properly address attribution and the legal stuff in general, I'm really scared of receiving a cease and desist because I used the wrong image or mp3.

Also resolution, video length, pacing, whatever.

Music: YouTube creator library, or some dedicated sites which offer royalty-free music (incompetech.com, soundcloud.com, newsground.com, ...)
Art: deviantart.com

If you're not absolutely sure some music is free, just upload it to test.
You will receive a message from youtube very soon if it's not... and no worries, you don't receive a strike anymore, you only won't be able to monetize the video. After the test, just delete it.
As for pictures, I don't think they test that... just use common sense. If you know, who the artist is, ask for permission.

Resolution (for OpenXcom): 1280x720, filter raw or disabled, 1/2 battlescape, 1/3 geoscape
Length: 30-60 minutes
Pacing: anything you are comfortable with... just be yourself, that helps a lot

Other tips:
- audio quality matters a lot (buy a microphone which costs more than $20 )
- game volume should be low compared to your voice
- skip repetitive things (do them off camera), e.g. equipment before mission
- enjoy or quit

[stepbystep]

Those seem all really great tips!
Will try to implement for sure.

Thanks for the links for music and art. I had a deviantart account for a very long time but didn't realize most artists include some kind license with their works and some of them might be usable just like that!

I installed OBS and tried the hotkeys and it looks like a really useful tool. I think I will make a couple of test runs to get the hang of "cutting" in the proper places.

Thanks a bunch guys! 


Anything on the "unobtrusive-enhancement-mod" side?
I'm interested in things that are missing in the base game but "would make sense" like:

• Combat knife (will put that in for sure)
• Some kind of low-tech medikit, like the bandages from piratez
• A melee demolition weapon, like the handheld ram some military and police forces use to assault buildings
• Other military equipment that would make sense for a special response team to have in 1999...

[Solarius Scorch]

Anything on the "unobtrusive-enhancement-mod" side?

This is a very hard question. But I think you should decide either on vanilla or a particular mod, otherwise you may get items that are unbalanced against each other. Unless it's a purely cosmetic thing, like Cooper's smoke.

[Starving Poet]

Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up Solarius - I know it's personal preference, but I highly recommend Cooper's smoke - it makes everything easier to see.

[ivandogovich]

I'd highly recommend the Improved Handobs mod as unintrusive, but great bang for the buck.

https://www.openxcom.com/mod/improved-hand-objects

[stepbystep]

Cooper's smoke and improved handobs, added to the list thanks! 

I was also considering using OXCE as the executable as I understand it includes some of Meridian improvements, but when I try to use that I get an error (also I weren't able to download from the official mod download page, only from the forum page).
Is there any chance I can use OXCE or OXCE+ for a more or less vanilla game?

[ohartenstein23]

Yes, you can - I've been playing TFTD with OXCE+ for a little while.  What's probably happening is that there are slight differences in the vanilla ruleset files since OXCE+ is based off an older nightly version.  You can get the correct ruleset files for OXCE+ from Meridian's github repository.  Although before mucking around with your files, what was the error you were getting?

[stepbystep]

Yes, you can - I've been playing TFTD with OXCE+ for a little while.  What's probably happening is that there are slight differences in the vanilla ruleset files since OXCE+ is based off an older nightly version.  You can get the correct ruleset files for OXCE+ from Meridian's github repository.  Although before mucking around with your files, what was the error you were getting?

Ok so, I'm getting there I think but I might need a little bit more help.
I downloaded the zip from the git repository, branch 3.3, took the bin directory and copied it on my desktop.
Then I downloaded the windows exe file meridian provided in the relative thread in xpiratez forum and copied into the same directory.
It works and I'm able to play, only I have some missing strings, for example corresponding to the new config options and for the stats shown in inventory screen.

Have I done something wrong?
Is there anyway I can get those out of xpiratez?

I also noticed I was able to access savegames made with a normal openxcom 1.0 install so it seems like it is reading those from my user folders, is that ok?