I also use Bandicam 😀

Stick with Motion JPEG 100%. That setting never let me down.

And yes, stick to what you know works.

My AVerMedia card allows recoding commentary and it saves it as an MP3. But in PowerDirector once you do a few splits, the length of the commentary ends up being too short. The solution is to save the MP3 as a WAV file first 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Stick with Motion JPEG 100%. That setting never let me down.

Wow, that uses a MASSIVE amount of HD space... x_x;

I did a ton of testing this morning and have concluded that the present version of Bandicam is unsuitable for directly importing captured footage into my editing software, but considering VirtuaDub can read the files created by Bandicam without issue in any format it can utilize, I think the solution in the future would be to treat any video captured by Bandicam as draft footage to be converted by VirtuaDub into the formats I typically edit and archive, same as how I handle footage from DOSBox. Doesn't help me right now though because to convert all the footage I have would take far too long at this point given that I'm running late. :P

For now, I'm just gonna have to be cautious to avoid cutting in footage Movie Studio has issues with and will convert any specific parts I can't work around.

Yes the files end up large but that shouldn't be a problem. You can try 90% compression setting but don't go lower. MJPEG is recommended for video editing because it is frame after frame. Very "easy" on the editor.

For quick tutorials that I can email someone I use bandicam first. It produces several GB. Then I use handbrake to make it tiny. Works quite well when files have to stay tiny. But I don't do that for YT. Here it goes through PowerDirector and then as a fairly high bitrate H264 to YT.

But then I use a different editing package so who knows...

Well, the editing's done and the rendering is going as we speak. Estimated rendering time: 1 1/2 hours... on a system powerful enough to handle a typical ADG episode in just 15 to 20 minutes. :P

Ah well. I cover a ton of ground in this filler, ironically without showing a single real pinball machine... technically. ;)

Hopefully there's no major issues which would require me to re-render, but there's still plenty of time left in the day... though there's a threat of thunderstorms later in the evening and even right now it's raining, though not thundering. >_>;

Ancient DOS Games Filler #40 - All Things Pinball is FINALLY online! :D

...and once you all see the 36:33 time stamp, combined with the technical difficulties I ran into, it'll make all the more sense why I'm a day late with this. Took just over 3 hours to actually upload this on my wimpy 800 Kbps upload bandwidth. :P

But yeah, given how much I've been getting back into pinball lately and considering that pinball is becoming more and more popular now, and because I touched on it a little already with a couple old DOS games, I felt it was time to finally do it justice and cover as many aspects of the game as I possibly could, given the fact that I don't own a real pinball machine... yet. ;)

...no time soon either, they're NOT cheap... :P

I'm curious to see how many people are really interested in all this info too and I'm looking forwards to the feedback I get to see what everyone's thoughts are. :B

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Filler #40 - All Things Pinball is FINALLY online! :D […]
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Ancient DOS Games Filler #40 - All Things Pinball is FINALLY online! 😁

...and once you all see the 36:33 time stamp, combined with the technical difficulties I ran into, it'll make all the more sense why I'm a day late with this. Took just over 3 hours to actually upload this on my wimpy 800 Kbps upload bandwidth. 😜

But yeah, given how much I've been getting back into pinball lately and considering that pinball is becoming more and more popular now, and because I touched on it a little already with a couple old DOS games, I felt it was time to finally do it justice and cover as many aspects of the game as I possibly could, given the fact that I don't own a real pinball machine... yet. 😉

...no time soon either, they're NOT cheap... 😜

I'm curious to see how many people are really interested in all this info too and I'm looking forwards to the feedback I get to see what everyone's thoughts are. :B

😳

Can't believe this pinball special is getting no love!!!

This is easily the best ADG filler yet.

I watched it all the way through and found it pretty informative.

I also looked up pinball places in my area and saw that one of the places listed had gotten rid of its machine, then I think I drove by that place by coincidence a day or two later 🙁

HunterZ wrote:

I also looked up pinball places in my area and saw that one of the places listed had gotten rid of its machine, then I think I drove by that place by coincidence a day or two later :(

You know, if your location data here on VOGONS is correct, there's a league in Seattle: http://spl.wapinball.org/

The great thing about league play compared to location play is you not only get a lot more gaming in for a lot less money, but you're typically around other people who enjoy pinball and are also playing on machines that are being well kept and thus play near-perfectly. :D

We may have over 100 members in the league I'm in, but some of them only come out to maybe one or two league nights a year when they feel like playing, and that's perfectly OK. ;)

...mind you, to compete in playoffs at the end of the year we have a qualifying requirement that a member must have attended and played in at least four regular league nights. :B

I'm actually a ways out from Seattle; it's just the nearest city that everyone in the universe knows (except maybe Redmond these days, which isn't any closer).

It's neat that the SPL league does handicaps to encourage new players to participate, though.

HunterZ wrote:

It's neat that the SPL league does handicaps to encourage new players to participate, though.

Actually, I think it's more so that newer players, or players who aren't as skilled, can get more play time in. ;)

Playing with people who are significantly better than you can still be fun because you know your chances of winning are extremely small, but you learn more about the game in question by watching those people play. The trouble though is that because they're better than you, they also get to play for longer, which means more waiting for your turn. :P

At my last league night my group of 3 was in the middle of the pack in terms of finishing our score sheet. The last group to finish didn't finish for another hour and was made up of more skillful players. I'm not 100% positive but I think the people we get grouped with is related to how we're doing in overall ranking for the year, though it may also be a little random too to keep things interesting. I'd have to ask one of the people in charge. :B

I took a look at pinside.com. I was surprised to find that there is apparently a restaurant with 6 pinball games not too far away (and some arcade games as well!). I should probably take a look sometime.

The irony of where I live is that there's a little over half a dozen locations to play in the area, but each only has a single machine and they're not all in the greatest condition, whereas private owners in the city culminate to over a few DOZEN machines! :O

...no idea how that happened. :B

Ancient DOS Games Episode 146 - Nitemare-3D is online!

This game surprised me in more ways than one. I was surprised at the lack of blood and gore, I was surprised at the scripted events, and I was surprised at some of the puzzle aspects. That said, it didn't take long before I felt I was gonna hate the game, but then it didn't take long for me to get into the gameplay, then I started hitting more snags, seeing more fun stuff, then getting completely stuck on the final puzzle for the first episode and I eventually realized this game was going to be incredibly difficult to comment on. x_x;

...so hopefully I did a good job of it... and hopefully next week's game will be a little more clear cut in terms of quality and features.

Looks like a Wolf3D clone released a year after Doom. No wonder I wasn't even aware of it. I played the main Hugo games back in the early '90s though, and those were just added to GOG.com I think.

HunterZ wrote:

Looks like a Wolf3D clone released a year after Doom. No wonder I wasn't even aware of it. I played the main Hugo games back in the early '90s though, and those were just added to GOG.com I think.

*checks GOG* :o

*compares with Gray Design Associates website* ...!

It's cheaper to get the Hugo trilogy on GOG than on the actual company's website!

...Nitemare-3D however isn't available on GOG. At least, not yet. :P

Actually, I have a very odd story about the Hugo games. One day back in late 1999 when using my Dad's old 486DX2/66 Packard Bell system, I was doing a directory scan and noticed a folder containing the entire Hugo trilogy. I never put it there, Dad certainly didn't put it there, and I'm fairly certain they didn't come with the system, so how they got there is a complete mystery. :o

It was the Ghost in the Machine 😮 !

(starts humming "Spirits in the Material World" very quietly |-] ).

Hugo's Hard-drive of Horrors?

Ancient DOS Games Episode 147 - Blood is online! (Please note that this is a mature rated episode.)

...and because I'm really tired, I'm going to bed now. :B

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 147 - Blood is online! (Please note that this is a mature rated episode.)

...and because I'm really tired, I'm going to bed now. :B

Blood is fun 😁 just sad, that not all build engines has their source code released. And well okay, make an MK2 reference. And every one will have a laugh. Anyway great episode 😀