Well, I was really looking forward to playing the Guild Wars 2 beta today after I came home from work, only it turns out that the game is almost completely broken. Also it wasn't just broken for me, but for a lot of people as it turns out.
Where to start...
First thing, despite having only let a limited number of people pre-purchase the game as to prevent the beta servers from filling up...they were filled up anyways. It took me over an hour to finally log into the game, and even when I did manage to log in, the game constantly had me logged off every time I opened up certain menus. It makes me wonder how well the game servers are going to work on launch, since this time there was 'supposed' to be enough space for everybody. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't, but for the most part with all the traffic these servers were getting, it really bogged down the availability of the game. Once you were logged in then you were good, but if you had to re-open your game once or twice, then good luck getting back in.
Secondly, the game is pretty much broken performance-wise for anyone with modern hardware or high end PC's. I don't know how a problem like this could be overlooked even for a beta, especially when beta testing is meant to look for bugs and elements of the game to be improved upon. It makes it really hard to bug test a game when the majority of your customers can't even properly play the game. To sum up the problem here, the game pretty much switches it's priority for modern setups where it only runs off the CPU and not your video card. While I was in the game I monitored my GPU usage and it never went above 40% while also staying at idle temperatures the entire time. The end result was me and everyone else only getting about 15-25 fps on average, which is way beyond the playable range for any game out there, modern or old titles. Also changing the graphical options had little to no effect at all, which confirms what the developers have been saying that the game is primarily CPU bound at this point in time. It leads me to believe that there's something wrong with the software that the game is implementing in order to access your GPU's power, especially with all modern graphics cards like mine that are getting the exact same bad performance.
Now I knew beforehand that the game wasn't 'optimized' perfectly, but having a constant frame rate of below 20 is beyond a simple optimization fix to me. To me, that indicates that a game is simply broken if I can not achieve anywhere near 60 fps even by lowering settings. Especially on a rig like mine, if the game is unplayable and cannot even achieve 30 fps then it's broken.
It's really interesting to note how in all the press conference videos we saw of this game, leading to up to it's pre-purchase, not a single one of those videos I saw showed any kind of performance issues like the ones this beta is facing. After all those interviews not a single issues surrounding it's performance was addressed, and it makes me wonder how it was even possible that the game ran that well in those videos based on the feedback I'm reading from this beta. There are errors left and right, yet none of them are as numerous as the amount of people who can't play the game because of such low performance.
It's kind of sad that this whole weekend was hyped up a ton, only to be a massive failure that was unplayable by half of it's customers. I'm really hoping that they extend this beta once all the problems are fixed. I know the game won't be released for a while, but it's really concerning to see them release a 'playable' beta version of the game that is in fact no where near playable for the majority of people.
So I hate to say it, but there won't be any Guild Wars 2 videos this weekend like I planned. Maybe the next time there's a beta...
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Game updates!
Well after a couple weeks, finally finished another game which was supposed to only take a short amount of time to finish. Bad Company 2 actually gave me a few technical difficulties you all didn't see because I ended up recording a lot of footage that was unusable. The biggest part was the "Sangre del Toro" mission, which I started up again recording from that chapter and played for over 2 hours only to find out my microphone didn't record anything at all. Unfortunate so I took a few days break after being frustrated with that, and eventually finished up that series. The rest of it will be posted hopefully soon and before the weekend.
Speaking of which, this upcoming weekend is the first Guild Wars 2 beta if you've already purchased the game, and I am extremely excited about that. Providing I've got enough content uploaded by then, I'll have a video or two to upload by late Friday evening or early on Saturday. Too bad it's only going to last a weekend, but hopefully I'll still have a ton of content to upload from that, especially if I can find a buddy or two to play with during this beta.
Also this past weekend, in case you haven't already seen my recent videos, there was the Diablo 3 open beta which was also very entertaining although sadly I didn't get to play as much as I'd like. For those of you who don't know my schedule, my work days are typically always going to fall on a weekend for sure, and that kind of reduces the amount of time I can play some of these open/closed betas. Long story short I was able to get on early Saturday morning before work and record an hour and a half of gameplay, but when I finally had time to play again the servers were completely packed which made it impossible to play the game. It also doesn't help that because this stupid game is going to be "online only" so there's no way to enjoy the game at all if you can't log in to their servers. That along with the real money auction house are the two primarily reasons I am probably not going to get this game. I do love the game itself, but lately I have been having less and less respect for Blizzard.
In other news, I have actually removed my entire old playthrough of the Witcher 2, as the game was recently patched with a huge content update which adds like 4 hours of cutscenes alone along with other various improvements overall. I figure because of that, and the fact that I have a much better PC than when I recorded my first LP, this game deserved another attempt. Hopefully you guys can see in the first couple of videos, that the game does run very smooth on my set up and even for recording purposes the videos are overall much better quality. I think I also didn't have a good microphone during my first playthrough until about halfway through, so this time around the audio quality should be a ton better.
As for Metro 2033...eventually I'll finish the game. It is an amazing game, but I'm at a place in the story that I dislike very much because I am a chicken so I keep putting that game off.
Anyways, I'll have the Witcher 2 playthrough going on for a while now as it's an extremely long game, and I'm hoping to cover as much as I can, especially stuff I missed in my last playthrough. Bad Company 2 is technically finished I just still have a few parts to upload, admittedly it wasn't really one of my more popular series but I'm going to finish it out. In the meantime I'm looking for another game to play on the side. Like I said in previous videos/posts, I allow myself to have no more than 3 ongoing games for playthroughs, so I'm trying to pick something new again once the other game gets fully uploaded. I'm thinking of picking up on the Mass Effect series or get started with Dragon Age: Origins as I recently purchased the complete first Dragon Age game with all the DLC included. I've played that game so long ago, and without any of the DLC so I'm sort of looking forward to playing that game again.
If there's something else you want to see or you agree with some of my current options, then please shoot me a message on here or on youtube. Very little of you followers out there actually give me any feedback or let me know of specific kinds of content you'd like to see. I'm always open to suggestions but part of the reason I'm doing these playthroughs as of late is because I don't get any feedback for what you guys want to see.
Criticism is always appreciated as long as it's constructive, but in all seriousness please don't offer suggestions that aren't realistic.
Speaking of which, this upcoming weekend is the first Guild Wars 2 beta if you've already purchased the game, and I am extremely excited about that. Providing I've got enough content uploaded by then, I'll have a video or two to upload by late Friday evening or early on Saturday. Too bad it's only going to last a weekend, but hopefully I'll still have a ton of content to upload from that, especially if I can find a buddy or two to play with during this beta.
Also this past weekend, in case you haven't already seen my recent videos, there was the Diablo 3 open beta which was also very entertaining although sadly I didn't get to play as much as I'd like. For those of you who don't know my schedule, my work days are typically always going to fall on a weekend for sure, and that kind of reduces the amount of time I can play some of these open/closed betas. Long story short I was able to get on early Saturday morning before work and record an hour and a half of gameplay, but when I finally had time to play again the servers were completely packed which made it impossible to play the game. It also doesn't help that because this stupid game is going to be "online only" so there's no way to enjoy the game at all if you can't log in to their servers. That along with the real money auction house are the two primarily reasons I am probably not going to get this game. I do love the game itself, but lately I have been having less and less respect for Blizzard.
In other news, I have actually removed my entire old playthrough of the Witcher 2, as the game was recently patched with a huge content update which adds like 4 hours of cutscenes alone along with other various improvements overall. I figure because of that, and the fact that I have a much better PC than when I recorded my first LP, this game deserved another attempt. Hopefully you guys can see in the first couple of videos, that the game does run very smooth on my set up and even for recording purposes the videos are overall much better quality. I think I also didn't have a good microphone during my first playthrough until about halfway through, so this time around the audio quality should be a ton better.
As for Metro 2033...eventually I'll finish the game. It is an amazing game, but I'm at a place in the story that I dislike very much because I am a chicken so I keep putting that game off.
Anyways, I'll have the Witcher 2 playthrough going on for a while now as it's an extremely long game, and I'm hoping to cover as much as I can, especially stuff I missed in my last playthrough. Bad Company 2 is technically finished I just still have a few parts to upload, admittedly it wasn't really one of my more popular series but I'm going to finish it out. In the meantime I'm looking for another game to play on the side. Like I said in previous videos/posts, I allow myself to have no more than 3 ongoing games for playthroughs, so I'm trying to pick something new again once the other game gets fully uploaded. I'm thinking of picking up on the Mass Effect series or get started with Dragon Age: Origins as I recently purchased the complete first Dragon Age game with all the DLC included. I've played that game so long ago, and without any of the DLC so I'm sort of looking forward to playing that game again.
If there's something else you want to see or you agree with some of my current options, then please shoot me a message on here or on youtube. Very little of you followers out there actually give me any feedback or let me know of specific kinds of content you'd like to see. I'm always open to suggestions but part of the reason I'm doing these playthroughs as of late is because I don't get any feedback for what you guys want to see.
Criticism is always appreciated as long as it's constructive, but in all seriousness please don't offer suggestions that aren't realistic.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Borderlands Giveaway
In case you have been following me on youtube, yes it's true that we will be doing a Borderlands giveaway of the game on steam. I figure here is a good place to go into detail about it.
There really is no set deadline for when we will present this prize, as our only goal is to finish the game roughly the same time we do the giveaway. If it's taking us too long to finish the game, like longer than a month, then we will go ahead and award someone with the game around the beginning of next month. Again, this all dependent on our in game progress. We don't exactly play every single day, and the other thing is that I can really only upload about one video per day because I have kind of a slow internet.
Hopefully we will finish the game before May comes around, and if that happens we will acknowledge the game has been finished and then announce the giveaway is happening in the same video. Just a heads up though, once a winner is picked they will be contacted and informed first through youtube before we post a video saying who is the winner.
Lastly I figure it's important to note what you need to do in order to win. It's nothing complicated at all or even asking to 'like' us on facebook, twitter, etc. All you gotta do is be subscribed to my youtube channel and leave a comment in any of our borderlands playthrough videos, excluding a highlights clip. I might go ahead and make a playlist soon, so that way it will be easier to see which videos qualify and which ones don't.
So that's pretty much it, and the game is going to be ONLY a steam/PC version to avoid any confusion on that. I will not be purchasing another copy of the game for a console, first of all because it's more money and secondly because I don't want to pay any shipping costs on top of a disc based game.
Anyway I hope you guys will enjoy this little contest, but more importantly that you all enjoy the videos we're putting out. If this becomes popular enough with you guys and everything goes smoothly, I will definitely be glad to do some more occasional game giveaways.
Not to give away too much of a hint, but I have lots of games stored away in my steam inventory that are saved just for this purpose. :)
There really is no set deadline for when we will present this prize, as our only goal is to finish the game roughly the same time we do the giveaway. If it's taking us too long to finish the game, like longer than a month, then we will go ahead and award someone with the game around the beginning of next month. Again, this all dependent on our in game progress. We don't exactly play every single day, and the other thing is that I can really only upload about one video per day because I have kind of a slow internet.
Hopefully we will finish the game before May comes around, and if that happens we will acknowledge the game has been finished and then announce the giveaway is happening in the same video. Just a heads up though, once a winner is picked they will be contacted and informed first through youtube before we post a video saying who is the winner.
Lastly I figure it's important to note what you need to do in order to win. It's nothing complicated at all or even asking to 'like' us on facebook, twitter, etc. All you gotta do is be subscribed to my youtube channel and leave a comment in any of our borderlands playthrough videos, excluding a highlights clip. I might go ahead and make a playlist soon, so that way it will be easier to see which videos qualify and which ones don't.
So that's pretty much it, and the game is going to be ONLY a steam/PC version to avoid any confusion on that. I will not be purchasing another copy of the game for a console, first of all because it's more money and secondly because I don't want to pay any shipping costs on top of a disc based game.
Anyway I hope you guys will enjoy this little contest, but more importantly that you all enjoy the videos we're putting out. If this becomes popular enough with you guys and everything goes smoothly, I will definitely be glad to do some more occasional game giveaways.
Not to give away too much of a hint, but I have lots of games stored away in my steam inventory that are saved just for this purpose. :)
Monday, April 9, 2012
35 Minutes rendered in 23...
I'm not sure what I did, but now adobe after effects renders out videos really fast even in 720 HD. It used to be a little bit longer than real time while rendering, but now it's pretty damn fast.
Earlier today I rendered out the final part of Homefront and it only took 23 minutes to render out a 35 minute 720p video.
Rendering can be ridiculously fast when you have your adobe programs configured to make use of all your available resources.
For those that aren't quite following, I set After Effects to make use of 5 of my 6 CPU cores along with 13 of my 16 GB of memory to render out multiple frames simultaneously. The result is crazy fast rendering.
Earlier today I rendered out the final part of Homefront and it only took 23 minutes to render out a 35 minute 720p video.
Rendering can be ridiculously fast when you have your adobe programs configured to make use of all your available resources.
For those that aren't quite following, I set After Effects to make use of 5 of my 6 CPU cores along with 13 of my 16 GB of memory to render out multiple frames simultaneously. The result is crazy fast rendering.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Homefront is finally finished...
So it turns out I take a long time to actually finish playthroughs on games. It's not always because I'm busy, but mostly because as soon as I record and render out a few videos in the series, I won't play the game again until I run out of parts to upload.
Anyways I rendered out the first 6 episodes of Homefront a while back, and since part 6 was uploaded the other day I finally got around to playing the game again since I was out of episodes to upload. Turns out after only an hour and a half of playing I was able to beat the game, It was a lot shorter than I thought it would be.
Overall it's going to be a very short series in terms of episodes, I'm rendering out the rest as I type this and I think it's going to be about 9 episodes long. I find it interesting how despite all the rage moments I have had in this game as well as numerous deaths, it still turns out to be a short series.
Anyways now that's out of the way and I can finish the Bad Company 2 playthrough, and that shouldn't take too long either. Also I still have the Metro 2033 playthrough to finish out, which I keep putting off because I'm about to face some seriously scary shit in the game, but I promise I'll get it done eventually.
And as always, if you have something you want to see me play or upload, then let me know either through PM's, comments, or even on here and I'll make it happen. I don't get much feedback on my videos but it's always nice to know what kind of stuff you guys want to see.
Preferably not Minecraft though...
Anyways I rendered out the first 6 episodes of Homefront a while back, and since part 6 was uploaded the other day I finally got around to playing the game again since I was out of episodes to upload. Turns out after only an hour and a half of playing I was able to beat the game, It was a lot shorter than I thought it would be.
Overall it's going to be a very short series in terms of episodes, I'm rendering out the rest as I type this and I think it's going to be about 9 episodes long. I find it interesting how despite all the rage moments I have had in this game as well as numerous deaths, it still turns out to be a short series.
Anyways now that's out of the way and I can finish the Bad Company 2 playthrough, and that shouldn't take too long either. Also I still have the Metro 2033 playthrough to finish out, which I keep putting off because I'm about to face some seriously scary shit in the game, but I promise I'll get it done eventually.
And as always, if you have something you want to see me play or upload, then let me know either through PM's, comments, or even on here and I'll make it happen. I don't get much feedback on my videos but it's always nice to know what kind of stuff you guys want to see.
Preferably not Minecraft though...
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Computer upgrade time again!
Well it's not so much an upgrade for my computer, as more of a side project I'm working on where I plan on building a second computer that will go to my sister. For those of you who don't know, I have a sister who is just finishing up high school this year and like everyone else in my family went through, she's probably going to need a decent computer when she goes to college.
The good thing here is that she falls into the age group where she can either be in the school year ahead of her birthday or the one behind her, as she was born in the summer. So there is some time to properly build something before she goes away, as my mom plans for her to do a year of community college before actually going to a university. It's going to get her used to the college experience, and it's also a way for my parents to save up some more money for when she actually goes to a university.
Anyways back on topic, she has a laptop that she got through her high school but that thing is falling apart at the seams. It has a keyboard and touch pad that doesn't work, it's extremely slow, and it doesn't boot up unless she has the power cord installed in a certain way. Long story short, it's a computer that would make any PC enthusiast cringe just from looking at it.
So what I've been doing is saving up some of my spare parts from older PC builds, that way it will save some money on her build or enable us to use the money saved from those parts to buy some good quality products to stick in her pc. My dad is pretty cheap but since my sister is still young he loves to buy her stuff, doesn't' give a crap about me or my brother anymore, so I know he's going to want to mostly pay for a computer that's going to her.
Here's a list of the parts I have so far, from my very first build I have an XFX Radeon HD 5770 video card which is still in great condition. It has one minor problem where it randomly crashes 1% of the time but otherwise still works perfectly. I'm working on sending it in for an RMA and get that issue checked out, as I have a lifetime warranty for that card. XFX is awesome for that by the way, you can't beat a lifetime warranty. Anyways if that works I'm going to buy a second card for her and use them in crossfire mode. I also have a 550w OCZ Fatality series power supply from my first build as well. Strangely enough I bought both these items at the same time from newegg. The downside right now is that this particular power supply is 'broken' but I recently found out I had a 3 year warranty on that, so I'm working with OCZ to try and get it RMA'd and either fixed or replaced. It's actually a very high quality power supply so I have no doubt it can run two 5770's as they don't really have a high power consumption anyways, they only require one six pin power connector each to run.
Those are really the main two items I have readily available for a new PC build at the moment, but I will have a few more extra parts in the near future. The funny thing is that I'm using this project as an excuse to get myself some new computer parts as well, which in turn will actually benefit this second build as parts of my current computer are going into this new build. I will be getting a new computer case for myself in this process, and I am looking at purchasing a Raven 3 from Silverstone, so my sister will be getting my Azza Helios 910 case. It's a very big mid tower case, almost on the verge of a full tower in overall size so there won't be any issue with room.
So there's the case that she'll be using, it's a very solid case and I would recommend it to anyone building their own mid-range gaming PC. However the overall airflow design of the case is not all that great, so I probably wouldn't suggest using it for a high end setup with dual video cards. That's partly why I'm upgrading to something different, I have major concerns about heat with two high end video cards in this case. Also the cable management could be better, the area behind the motherboard really isn't that big at all and not all my cables can be hidden in this one.
As far as other parts go, I'm thinking of maybe getting myself a bigger hard drive and she can use my older 500 GB drive, which is plenty space for her. Hard drives will be taken care of at that point, so that will save some money for both of us.
Lastly I'll list a couple of the parts that will need to be purchased. I know she won't need anything ridiculously powerful as my machine, but my goal her is to give her something minimal but still very solid and reliable for years to come.
So for a processor I've decided to go with Intel on this, as it's been a while since I've done a build based off their chipsets. A core i3 processor should do just fine, as it's minimal in the amount of power it consumes, yet still very decent for gaming based on reviews I've read.
Link 1
For a motherboard I'm going with something that's crossfire/SLI enabled. For those of you who don't know, she actually does play games. Mainly Dragon Age and WoW stuff, but with a dual 5770 setup I think that will be all the power she needs for games and like I said earlier the 5770 isn't a very power consuming graphics card.
Link 2
In terms of memory, I think 8 GB of DDR3 should do just fine. I need a lot of memory on my system for encoding purposes, but apart from that my sister does a lot more multitasking than I do on a practical basis. So I think more than 4 GB is necessary, and 8 GB should be just fine for everything she does.
Link 3
And of course, with all the operations that may be going on in her PC you gotta have a CPU cooler to maintain cool temperatures and prolong the computer's life. I think this one is very suitable, but when I do buy all these parts I may decide just to buy on a price to price basis, whatever is cheapear but reliable at the time.
Link 4
As for everything else, I think we'll let my sister go out and buy her own peripherals for this PC when it's time. We do have a spare computer screen and DVD drive to send with here but everyone has different likes when it comes to speakers, keyboards, and mice. Maybe later on she'll even decide that she wants a blu ray drive like I have on my computer, but she can buy one herself.
The good thing here is that she falls into the age group where she can either be in the school year ahead of her birthday or the one behind her, as she was born in the summer. So there is some time to properly build something before she goes away, as my mom plans for her to do a year of community college before actually going to a university. It's going to get her used to the college experience, and it's also a way for my parents to save up some more money for when she actually goes to a university.
Anyways back on topic, she has a laptop that she got through her high school but that thing is falling apart at the seams. It has a keyboard and touch pad that doesn't work, it's extremely slow, and it doesn't boot up unless she has the power cord installed in a certain way. Long story short, it's a computer that would make any PC enthusiast cringe just from looking at it.
So what I've been doing is saving up some of my spare parts from older PC builds, that way it will save some money on her build or enable us to use the money saved from those parts to buy some good quality products to stick in her pc. My dad is pretty cheap but since my sister is still young he loves to buy her stuff, doesn't' give a crap about me or my brother anymore, so I know he's going to want to mostly pay for a computer that's going to her.
Here's a list of the parts I have so far, from my very first build I have an XFX Radeon HD 5770 video card which is still in great condition. It has one minor problem where it randomly crashes 1% of the time but otherwise still works perfectly. I'm working on sending it in for an RMA and get that issue checked out, as I have a lifetime warranty for that card. XFX is awesome for that by the way, you can't beat a lifetime warranty. Anyways if that works I'm going to buy a second card for her and use them in crossfire mode. I also have a 550w OCZ Fatality series power supply from my first build as well. Strangely enough I bought both these items at the same time from newegg. The downside right now is that this particular power supply is 'broken' but I recently found out I had a 3 year warranty on that, so I'm working with OCZ to try and get it RMA'd and either fixed or replaced. It's actually a very high quality power supply so I have no doubt it can run two 5770's as they don't really have a high power consumption anyways, they only require one six pin power connector each to run.
Those are really the main two items I have readily available for a new PC build at the moment, but I will have a few more extra parts in the near future. The funny thing is that I'm using this project as an excuse to get myself some new computer parts as well, which in turn will actually benefit this second build as parts of my current computer are going into this new build. I will be getting a new computer case for myself in this process, and I am looking at purchasing a Raven 3 from Silverstone, so my sister will be getting my Azza Helios 910 case. It's a very big mid tower case, almost on the verge of a full tower in overall size so there won't be any issue with room.
So there's the case that she'll be using, it's a very solid case and I would recommend it to anyone building their own mid-range gaming PC. However the overall airflow design of the case is not all that great, so I probably wouldn't suggest using it for a high end setup with dual video cards. That's partly why I'm upgrading to something different, I have major concerns about heat with two high end video cards in this case. Also the cable management could be better, the area behind the motherboard really isn't that big at all and not all my cables can be hidden in this one.
As far as other parts go, I'm thinking of maybe getting myself a bigger hard drive and she can use my older 500 GB drive, which is plenty space for her. Hard drives will be taken care of at that point, so that will save some money for both of us.
Lastly I'll list a couple of the parts that will need to be purchased. I know she won't need anything ridiculously powerful as my machine, but my goal her is to give her something minimal but still very solid and reliable for years to come.
So for a processor I've decided to go with Intel on this, as it's been a while since I've done a build based off their chipsets. A core i3 processor should do just fine, as it's minimal in the amount of power it consumes, yet still very decent for gaming based on reviews I've read.
Link 1
For a motherboard I'm going with something that's crossfire/SLI enabled. For those of you who don't know, she actually does play games. Mainly Dragon Age and WoW stuff, but with a dual 5770 setup I think that will be all the power she needs for games and like I said earlier the 5770 isn't a very power consuming graphics card.
Link 2
In terms of memory, I think 8 GB of DDR3 should do just fine. I need a lot of memory on my system for encoding purposes, but apart from that my sister does a lot more multitasking than I do on a practical basis. So I think more than 4 GB is necessary, and 8 GB should be just fine for everything she does.
Link 3
And of course, with all the operations that may be going on in her PC you gotta have a CPU cooler to maintain cool temperatures and prolong the computer's life. I think this one is very suitable, but when I do buy all these parts I may decide just to buy on a price to price basis, whatever is cheapear but reliable at the time.
Link 4
As for everything else, I think we'll let my sister go out and buy her own peripherals for this PC when it's time. We do have a spare computer screen and DVD drive to send with here but everyone has different likes when it comes to speakers, keyboards, and mice. Maybe later on she'll even decide that she wants a blu ray drive like I have on my computer, but she can buy one herself.
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