Great episode! I loved it! I was a bit concerned after Draven reads the Galnet news that he would crash his Cobra on a planet but thank God, he didn't!
You did compose the music? Are you doing that on a professional basis? Just curious...
Community Event / Creation DarkenSpace (dramatic ED series)
- Thread starter Draven Darken
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Great episode! I loved it! I was a bit concerned after Draven reads the Galnet news that he would crash his Cobra on a planet but thank God, he didn't!
You did compose the music? Are you doing that on a professional basis? Just curious...
Wow, I just love that voice for some reason!
As always, I did compose all of the music, yes. I don't do it professionally now, although at one point in the (now increasingly distant) past I did do so.
That's Charles Hubbell, a friend of mine who has been acting and doing voiceover work professionally and on a full-time basis for many years now. I agree, he does a great job for me on this, and I'm fortunate to have him participating.
Unfortunately I have to report that DarkenSpace is going on hiatus for the foreseeable future, effective immediately. Details can be found at http://darkenspace.com/news.html.
What a disheartening news :-/
Thanks, guys, and I'm sorry.
Actually, I completely uninstalled Elite: Dangerous last night, after fighting with it for over a week to try to eke out something like the same performance and visual quality I had prior to 2.0. But it isn't even playable on my iMac anymore, much less worthy of being captured to video. It now seems apparent to me that Frontier intends to let the Mac version die a slow death by performance degradation and unfixed bugs, so I won't be playing it again.
At least if I do find myself able to get/build a Windows gaming PC in the spring, the Draven Darken account will still be in the same state as where it was left at the end of episode 3, since I won't be playing the game anymore unless and until that happens. In the meantime I am going to concentrate on composing soundtrack music for where the remaining episodes were going (since the season was pretty well laid out in my mind at this point), so that if I am able to resume production of the series by late spring or summer with the Windows version, much of the soundtrack could already be done in some form and hence I would perhaps be able to churn out the remaining planned episodes a little more quickly (since the music was always the most time-consuming element). But that's looking too far ahead ... it is equally possible that in a few months time I'll be forced to hoard whatever money I have left (at this moment I dare not go into details about why that is a concern, not in an online forum).
Draven,
Just curious, what model of iMac do you have? I also registered on patreon.com but I'm not sure what I can do to help.
Late 2013 model, with a quad-core i7 and a GeForce 780M. Not exactly a slouch, I don't think, but the Mac 2.0 version just refused to run smoothly on it, after repeated attempts, whereas up through 1.4 the same system was rendering the game just fine (well enough for DarkenSpace overall, although I still had to cheat at times to get sufficiently smooth video out of it). After repeated attempts to resolve this, at this point I am certain it is the Mac client build that is just not up to snuff anymore. And as I have said before, a Bootcamp partition is out of the question for me, given what happened the one time that I tried that ... no, if I am to run the Windows version of ED at some point, I will need a good Windows gaming computer to do it. Which means not just a cheap Windows system that allows me to play the game ... I will need something that can run the game at high res and mostly Ultra graphics settings at the same time that it is capturing video from the game (probably using ShadowPlay) if I want to be able to make episodes worth watching. So it is a significant expenditure, especially since I don't own and will also need to purchase a high-res monitor as part of it.
The Patreon campaign was intended to allow the series to move into using the Horizons content at some point, by financing the required PC through episodes created with the Mac version. With the Mac version suddenly becoming unsuitable for capturing video (or even playing at all), that pretty much takes Patreon out of the picture. I'd consider a Kickstarter campaign, but the lack of interest in the Patreon campaign, combined with the steadily decreasing viewership numbers for each subsequent episode of the series even while I believe the episode quality (writing, editing, music, etc.) was steadily improving, tells me that the required level of interest just isn't there. So if I am able to continue the series at some point (which I want to, because I want to finish the story), it will have to be purely as a labor of love and if/when I am able to finance the expenses thereof out of my own pocket, and without placing my home and future at risk in doing so.
I'm using a late 2013 iMac at work as well. But it has the GeForce GTX 775M, I would think the 780M would be a little more powerful. But I'm not capturing video, I just run the game at work to load fortification documents every 30 minutes and then do one delivery during my lunch time. Still, the performance, compared to my MacBook Pro 17 from early 2011 is astounding. I haven't run the game on this iMac before the 2.0 release, so I can't really tell the difference. On my old MacBook Pro that I'm about to replace, I haven't seen much degradation when playing in Mac OS X so I'm a little surprised that the latest update did break it for you. What are you using to capture the video? QuickTime? What resolution?
I was capturing with Screenium 3 at 1440p res (2560x1440), the native monitor resolution. Any other resolution choices would have fallen below the 1080p threshold and resulted in low-res YouTube videos. Are you running with Ultra settings, or lower settings for performance? If lower, then remember that I didn't just need to be able to play the game ... I needed to be able to capture video of sufficiently good visual quality to interest other people to want to watch (especially when they have many Windows-based Horizons HQ videos as viewing alternatives).
I just gave a shot to Ultra at 2560 x 1440. I am getting a solid 20fps in station and 35-40 fps in open space. But I was not capturing video so I'm sure that factoring in the video capture, that would be too low of a frame rate to be useful. I know that video would consume a lot of processing. Too bad...
Yes, video capture certainly adds some cost. However, even when I wasn't capturing video, I was getting more like 12-15 FPS during both space combat (which is where it really matters) and in the station. The FPS was substantially higher when I was just flying through space by myself, but that isn't all that useful for a video.
In case anyone is still following this thread but hasn't visited my other social media outlets, DarkenSpace is back in production now on a brand new gaming PC, with episode 4 well on its way to completion. As usual, I'll post it here once it is uploaded.
Yoo hoooo! I can't wait!
Episode 4 has finally been posted (see top post for embed).
I just watched it! Awesome, good to see you back in business, Draven Darken!
Although, I pitied you when I saw you mining, scooping up every single fragment. I did some mining so I know a bit about it. At least, you had a prospector!
I was not sure how your last fight would end, specially after you lost your canopy. I always cringe a bit when I see someone using fixed lasers. That was more apparent without a canopy as the HUD was no longer there to help you align your target. I tried fixed beams on my FdL but I found that even though I would hit from time to time, I was missing more shots than putting shots on target.
Not sure if you have tried 2.1 yet with the "new" NPC AI but I guess you'll have to be careful now. I'm dangerous in combat and always interdicted by elite NPCs flying full kitted out Anaconda or FdL. Not sure why but now that I think about it, I haven't seen a single NPC anywhere flying an Imperial Cutter or a Federal Corvette. I guess it's better that way.
Good job on the last episode. I'll be watching the next one to see what Draven will do to make his family known and reveal the truth. Good job by the way, for hacking the Galnet. It was quite well done.
Although, I pitied you when I saw you mining, scooping up every single fragment. I did some mining so I know a bit about it. At least, you had a prospector!
I was not sure how your last fight would end, specially after you lost your canopy. I always cringe a bit when I see someone using fixed lasers. That was more apparent without a canopy as the HUD was no longer there to help you align your target. I tried fixed beams on my FdL but I found that even though I would hit from time to time, I was missing more shots than putting shots on target.
Not sure if you have tried 2.1 yet with the "new" NPC AI but I guess you'll have to be careful now. I'm dangerous in combat and always interdicted by elite NPCs flying full kitted out Anaconda or FdL. Not sure why but now that I think about it, I haven't seen a single NPC anywhere flying an Imperial Cutter or a Federal Corvette. I guess it's better that way.
Good job on the last episode. I'll be watching the next one to see what Draven will do to make his family known and reveal the truth. Good job by the way, for hacking the Galnet. It was quite well done.
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Draven very often speaks with my voice, including in the opening scene where he talks about enjoying piloting his ship in close to the asteroids. That came right out of my mouth, and is one of my favorite things about mining. I don't worry about the fact that I am not making credits as fast as possible that way ... it is the experience of maneuvering around the rocks with thrusters that I crave, more than the virtual money.
To date I have almost exclusively used fixed weapons in the game. Gimbaled and/or turreted weapons feel like a bit of a cheat to me, which is one reason I dislike CQC where everything seems to be gimbaled and hence the ability to aim well is not really rewarded. However, the time may be coming where I try something a little bit different in that regard.
I have tried 2.1, absolutely. It is definitely tougher, but I don't mind it (most of the time, that is!). I've not yet been interdicted by an elite Anaconda, fortunately ... I'd definitely be running like a scared rabbit if I was, at least while I am still in my little Cobra Mk III.
As far as hacking Galnet, I'm not sure that's actually possible (and kind of hope it isn't). Instead, I mocked up the Draven-related news story with some graphical layers laid atop of the original game video using Motion 5 and with matching fonts and colors. The trickiest part was removing the original title text from those news story image backgrounds in a way where you couldn't see any traces of the original title having been there ... Affinity Photo came to my rescue on that one.
Interesting point of view about piloting around the asteroids. I can see it now.
When I mentioned hacking, I didn't imply you did something that changed Galnet, I was just trying to congratulate you for the work you did which you explain in your reply. That's what I thought you did, modified the original one and add the fake one. Well done!
Ah, I see. I guess I assumed that most viewers would think I somehow hacked this story into the game to get it to appear in the list, so when you said "hacked" I jumped to an incorrect conclusion. If something like hacking the Galnet feed was actually possible, it would probably be way easier than the way I had to do it.