Dark Souls: Remastered – Getting Setup
Just a few days ago I was thinking out loud about playing to a schedule. And my bemusement/jealousy of those that can do it consistently. I toyed with the idea of picking up some small element of this myself as an experiment. And now, here we are.
I think I’ve found something that can work even with my typical need to rebel against structure in my gaming. The idea simply being to play one ‘episode’ worth of content each weekend. Probably on a Saturday, but the accompanying post I’ll let go on a Monday (my time)1 giving me some flexibility in the ‘schedule’.
I’m still going to count this very much as an experiment, though. Similar to Krikket’s ‘Play to Satisfaction’ concept for gaming — I’m explicitly giving myself permission to drop this whole thing should any feelings remotely similar to resentment for the time or perception of too high an opportunity cost arise. So we’ll see. In the meantime though, while it lasts I’m also looking at recording the game sessions.
In large part to give me something to refer back to instead of taking notes while playing, but also because hey, why not? Uploading something to YouTube again could be fun!
Encountering Some Issues…
Although… Yep. This process hasn’t exactly been trouble-free just yet. Everything is complicated a hundredfold by my super ultrawide (5120×1440, 32:9) screen. Did you know most video formats actually can’t have a pixel width (or height) of over 4096?
I didn’t. Until I tried to actually do it.
The first recording session defaulted to halving my output to 2560×720. Combined with an underspecced bitrate and suffice to say… It didn’t look particularly good.
My next run I instead scaled to the maximum I could while maintaining aspect ratio: 4096×1152.
This looks amazing locally — but YouTube (so far) displays it just as poorly as the original recording even with a much higher bitrate also being specified. However, this isn’t conclusive yet, as HD (I assume in this case 2K since 1080@60 is already available) and 4K resolutions are still processing.
All this to say — I have some things to work out, thus the prologue post today rather than Part 1. These video quality issues are one, but also I learnt a few things from throwing together the rough thumbnail image (set as the featured image of this post)!
For example, putting the episode or part number down in the lower right is a bad idea. In most places where the thumbnail is visible, the length of the video is displayed over the top.
For another, the super small form factor these thumbnails are often viewed at mean your text has to be a large portion of the image and high contrast to boot.
I’m 100% certain all these things are YouTube 101 for anyone who has done even a cursory degree of research. I’m just surprised I’m here learning any of these things as I never thought I might someday be uploading anything remotely like this.
So far, I’ve been pretty avoidant of actually narrating the video — in part due to the New Zealand accent and in part simply not wanting to do it while the family as around with the frequent interruptions and background noise that would result.
I’m not sure yet how much I’m going to worry about voicing over the videos. I know that preferably they should be… But then one must also consider I’m only really doing them as supplemental material to the posts here. One of the main things I started out wanting to do with the video was to make short gifs, like this:
Although as you can see — these don’t come out particularly well with my current process. I would much rather be able to natively load them here rather than relying on a player. With that player, I can’t expand the size or even have it centre correctly as requested. Not without digging into some code at least, which I have nil appetite for at the moment.
With how many of the problems here are stemming from the super ultrawide resolution, I think the simplest answer might just be to play in a 21:9 or even all the way back to the more ‘standard’ 16:9 window. I’ll have to give it some more thought and experimentation over the week. Worse come to worst, can always just go back to static screenshots too. ;)
The Game Plan
I’ve never finished Dark Souls 1. In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve cleared past the first major boss (I’m not counting the Asylum Demon in the starting area).
But I have done that starting area, a bit of exploration around Firelink Shrine and most of the first Undead Burg area in the past. Not for a long time though.
So take 1 had a certain amount of character to it that was lost in running it again so soon for take 2. The whiffed drop-attack I mentioned above being one amusing example. Heck, that fight in general was rougher in take 1. I still beat it in one try but it took a few chugs of Estus whereas take 2 while still not perfect was over in no time at all.
I think if take 2 still ends up having poor quality, on take 3 I might try to emulate some of that feel. Maybe. I’m of mixed minds about this. I’ll just have to see what feels right when I go to play it.
In any case! The plan was to complete the asylum and do the initial exploration of Firelink Shrine in part 1. Basically, reach the point where I’m ready to head up to the Undead Burg and stop. Within Undead Burg there are one or two bonfires I remember where I might stop depending on how long it takes me to get through it. If I’m really speedy I might do the first boss in part 2 as well, but I expect that to be more likely a part 3 thing.
Beyond that, I have no idea!
The only other thing I know is I’ll be playing this cleric build. Every Dark Souls game is a little different in how they handle stats, poise, dodge rolls, etc. So I’m making a concession in the way of following a build rather than making my own.
However! I won’t be following a walkthrough more generally. Or at least… I don’t intend to. If I get really stuck I’d rather use a walkthrough than stop. But majority of the time? No walkthrough.
So… That’ll be exciting. ;)
