Catching Up

Lately, I've been doing a lot of YouTube uploading with no matching blog posts, so I thought this morning would be a good time for a status update, blog style!

But of course, no blog post would be complete without a few pretty pictures... and what better place to get some than a previous attempt at a status update!

In the days before our second baby boy was born, I was trying to record a video status update while playing a fast 1 vs. Hard AI game, shooting for around 5 minutes in real time.

After several failed attempts, I decided to take screenshots from one of the attempts with the thought I could start a draft post from a PC at the hotel and finish the status update on my iPhone later. I did start a draft and uploaded the pics, but the iPhone-authored post never became a reality, and as you know, much later, I actually did a video status update - using another replay.

But now those screenshots get a 2nd chance!

Game Time 9:03 - PvP on an old map I learned to play SC2 on, Agria Valley - my terrible attempt at a 4-gate. These zealots are actually my 2nd wave of attackers, trying to draw attention away from the probe that's building pylons elsewhere in the base.

Uploading Season 7 and 8

After being distracted by X-COM for more than a week, I have returned to this task and have uploaded the 3rd of these 5 games. I was quite pleased to upload my 1v1 qualifier for Season 7 - I had promised Morphius I would cast it, and it was great to be able to tell him in Battle.net that it was done (after 3 months of waiting!). I am also very excited to start playing again (as the Season 9 ladder locks next week!) and casting more recent games!

Game Time 9:27 - A pylon is finished and I warp in a set of 4 stalkers who start harassing the mineral line, drawing the attention of the forces who dealt with my zealots. I send the probe to the other side of the mineral line.

Ladder Aspirations

I have had some encouragement that I might actually make it out of Silver League! My Platinum League opponent during my 1v1 qualifier for Season 8 said I could get into Gold with a week of playing. And after watching the replay, if he's a typical Platinum player, then yes, with some more confidence in applying pressure and practice knowing when to build drones, I think it's possible - at this level, our mechanics are so inconsistent that careful decision-making could make the difference.

More recently, I was listening to an interview with Sasquatch, a player in the Complexity Academy (the B-team for the Complexity professional team), and he said that if you're in Bronze, if you play 2 hours a day, you'll make it to Masters. Really? Is that all it takes?

His general advice for lower league players - play a lot more and pick just one strategy per match-up. If you play infrequently and try to do something different each game, you'll never get better.

Surprisingly, I've been thinking along the same lines. My intention with mouse-only play with baby is to focus on a single build. I really want to work on my map awareness, and using only one build should allow me to focus more attention around the map instead of in my base!

Game Time 9:39 - My stalkers hold on just long enough for a second batch of fresh troops to get warped in and the scale tips in my favor.

A New Game, An Old Game & X-Split

After reading about "Let's Play" videos (videos of people playing through a game with commentary), I've decided to do a "blind" Let's Play of X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Since my intention is to capture my first impressions, it may not end up being a Let's Play in the strictest sense - in that I likely won't finish the game! But I thought playing as far as I can on a first try might be fun.

As part of this, I'm hoping to do a "context" video of the original X-COM, and since it doesn't use Direct3D, I'm going to use X-Split to capture the video and audio (Fraps only captures Direct3D video). Now the cool part is that X-Split is very popular with streamers and live casters - its main strength is live streaming - that it can record as well is a secondary feature.

So my diversion into XCOM may play a part in me using some more advanced tools for casting SC2 - and perhaps a step towards some low resolution streaming?

Game Time 9:44 - In the split-second chaos, the Hard AI focuses on the fresh stalkers, allowing my damaged ones to survive, giving me a numbers advantage. Soon after, his offensive forces return from attacking my base, but I warp in stalkers at another pylon in the base, and with some kiting, stave off the zealot portion of the force while sustaining minimal damage, and the Hard AI surrenders.

Bandwidth

With all these plans, I'm trying to keep aware of my limited bandwidth - both in regards to my free time and my Internet bandwidth!

With my current schedule, I typically get 1-2 hours of time in the early morning with baby and about 3-4 hours of uploading time - with my DSL connection, that results in being able to upload about 15-20 minutes of 1080p video.

At first glance, that length limit may seem terribly short, but I think it fits my current life stage well. I'm in no rush with any of this, and want to keep the balance on the fun side and away from the second job side...

My original premise with the blog and casting was that with just a bit more time, I could take something I already do (play games and watch replays) and turn it into content. And with my tendency to expand scope (as I've already done), it helps to remind myself of this original intention.

Speakimg of such, wow, this post sort of exploded size-wise! Perhaps I should focus on shorter, more frequent posting as well? ;-)

First Video Status Update!

As promised in my last post introducing baby Caleb, here is an update on where things are at on this blog and my YouTube channel and my plans for the next few months - especially given my new nighttime schedule!

And for those of you that would rather read than watch, here's the summary:

• I have cast both showmatches, Ethereal511's 2v2 submission, and all 10 games played in Season 6 of the Blizzard 1v1 Ladder (2012 Season 1). (Special blog note: I do plan on doing blog posts for each of these. If you can't wait, check out the YouTube channel - otherwise, be assured they will trickle in!)
• I have also cast all 4 games from Season 7 and my single game from Season 8. These games haven't been produced/encoded yet, but I hope to upload them in the next week.
• For the next 4-6 weeks, I'll be playing SC2 with baby Caleb in the very early morning with only the mouse - and will be trying 1v1 in addition to 4v4!
• I might do some videos of a game I just bought with the kids - X-COM Enemy Unknown!
• After Caleb starts sleeping longer and I get time in the evening to cast, I still hope to cast all of the games played by the Colorado School of Mines in Season 5 of the Collegiate StarLeague (CSL). (I'll actually cast less than the 66 mentioned in the video - not all the replays were available.)
• Season 6 of the CSL will start in November, but it's not clear yet what opportunities community casters like me will have... now that they have a big, international sponsor!

Well, it's past my bedtime - see you guys in the next blog post!

28 Tweets, 5 Videos, 1 Blog Post

Well it's been almost 3 weeks since my "I'm back!" post, and despite the lack of posting, I have produced some results - 28 tweets and 5 published casts!

I also qualified into Silver for Season 8 (2012 Season 3), though I must say that the game was quite the embarrassment... don't worry, you'll get to see it in all it's glory when I eventually cast it!

I've enjoyed tweeting on Twitter - it has done exactly what I hoped it would - provide an quick way for me to send updates and small thoughts, and keep some activity on the blog between posts.

Right now it's been a lot of tweets about my work casting, producing videos, and how I really need to catch up on the blog!

On the video side, it's been an adventure - I've been doing work of some sort on videos pretty much every day I think.

It took me around a week to produce Game 1 of that showmatch vs. RaZe, but the result was awesome. I think it rivals the Welcome Back video as far as production complexity and definitely in the hurdles to make it come together. You can see the entire showmatch on YouTube now, but I will also be doing a blog post for the showmatch - and some tricks I learned about uploading to YouTube!

Over a few days I finished casts of my showmatch with the QuailGang YouTube channel - and started a practice of trying to do the segments of a video (intro, game, closing) in one take - a crucial practice if I hope to cast with any regularity.

After that I cast Ethereal's 2v2 and then 2 ladder games, all in about an hour. The next night I cast another ladder game. But afterwards, felt in the rush to start a backlog of videos (so I could post from the backlog after my son is born), I missed the intent of the ladder casts - reflection on my play/strategy in preparation of playing Zerg in the current season.

So I'll be re-doing those casts, starting with my 1v1 qualifier tonight - I will be uploading it after this post!

So I'm a bit behind on the blog - but it's an exciting time - both on the SC2 side and at home, with a new baby coming in the VERY near future!

GosuDad is Back!

After a long break from posting, and an even longer break from casting videos, I am back!

For those that don't like watching videos, here's a summary of what's going on:

1. I am back to blogging and casting!
2. I have a bunch of casting coming up:
   • Two showmatches - one against RaZe, one against Aaron from the QuailGang casting trio.
   • My first 2v2 cast - sent by Ethereal511
   • 10 games from Season 6 of the online ladder - my final games as Terran!
   • 4 games from Season 7 - my first games as Zerg!
   • Games from Season 8 - continuing to play as Zerg
   • Games from Season 5 of the Collegiate StarLeague - capturing some Colorado e-Sports history!
3. Lots of shout-outs to my YouTube subscribers, blog readers, my wife and kids, and a random kid I met at Benihana's
4. I am now tweeting on Twitter as GosuDad!

So there you have it, I'm not dead - but rather getting back into grassroots e-Sports :)

And yes, this is the 2nd time that I have refuted rumors of my death - the guys at QuailGang were concerned about me earlier this spring!

Progress, Difficulties, and Ladder Lock!

Despite my lack of posting over the last two weeks (ugh!), I have made some definite progress towards my goals.

On the casting front, I was able to get a CSL account and now have the ability to post videos on their website! (You only need a student email account if you want to actually play on a school team.) I also got permission to use the CSL logo in my casts as long as I give them and their sponsors a shoutout. I've noticed some casters actually putting the logos of the sponsors in the video - so that may be an option also.

On the hardware side, I finally installed a 100% legit copy of Windows 7 on my new PC and also installed some new RAM. I initially had some trouble with the new RAM working with the existing RAM, so I had to remove the old RAM to make things happy. With being busy with other things at night, that whole trial-and-error experimentation process took much longer than I wanted it to! I'll post some pictures later - my daughter helped me with the final install :)

So all that's left is for me to work on some intro graphics/tools and I'll be ready to start casting CSL games regularly!

On the weight loss side, as of this morning, I've lost 4.6 pounds since I set my goals - thanks to a few sessions with Jillian Michaels (30-day shred), but mostly due to eating lighter in the evenings. Which is great because...

The end of Season 4 is in one week! The ladder is being locked this Tuesday morning - so I highly expect to stay in Silver league - and the season ends a week later on Dec 20 when they do their weekly maintenance Tuesday morning. I've only played 8 games, so I'd have to play 22 games in 8 days to reach my goal of 30 games for the season.

I think it'll be tight - especially if Battle.net keeps having me play Zerg - those games always seem to last forever!

There's so much more I want to post about, so hopefully I can post more often this next week!

Changing Channels

Well, here I am again not posting in over a week! I'll attempt a quick post...

Last week, Season 3 of the Blizzard ladder ended, and I put in an evening of ladder games in a last ditch bid for the top 25 of my division. This was complicated by my recent decision to play as Random - which apparently means I play a lot of Zerg and Protoss. I do intend to review that experience in a later post so I won't spoil the ending ;-)

After that, I switched gears into getting my new YouTube channel up and running (www.youtube.com/gosudad).

So now it has a nice theme and background image. I also re-rendered all of my old StarcraftDad videos and added banners and merged 2-part videos into single videos (YouTube decided to lift the 15-minute time limit if you verified your account with your mobile number), uploaded the re-done videos to my new channel, and updated all the blog entries to point to the re-done videos. Whew!

Oddly enough, over the last several weeks, my old channel (www.youtube.com/thestarcraftdad) has gotten a bunch of new subscribers, despite my lack of posting!

So my next task is updating my old channel to direct subscribers to my new channel. Last night I decided that it might be fitting to have the last video on my old channel and as StarcraftDad be my final game of Season 3.

I was hoping to cast that game this morning - but spent too long on false starts. I'm not nearly as time-efficient when there's something specific I want to say in a cast. My hope is to cast that game tomorrow morning - so it should be on my old channel by Friday and on my new channel by Saturday.

I've also done some planning around intro/summary screens for my future casts - and may be writing a little .NET app to automate that and the creation of YouTube title/description/tagging text.

My hope is that all this will result in less effort to produce casts - and I can get back to playing and casting - and blogging ;-)

Lots of Changes

I haven't posted in about 2.5 weeks, but as you might have guessed, there has been a lot going on! And the longer I delay this post, the more I have to write about!

New Opportunities
Shortly after my last post, I decided to finally take some action on an idea I've had for several weeks - to cast games from CSL (Collegiate Star League) replays. I also noticed that (at the time) the CSLTV webpage didn't have very many casts of recent games - if my videos were on there, I could suddenly get a significant increase in visibility - this made me a bit nervous!

I emailed the CSL about using logos and posting my casts on their website (since I'm not a current student, I'd need a workaround), and at the same time, they added a post asking for volunteer help (though not specifically asking for casters). Their social media guy replied to my email with how they handle live casting, which isn't quite what I'd be doing (casting from replays). But with all that's been going on, I haven't gotten back to him yet!

Production
I've been meaning to improve my summary screen production process so it takes less time. But all this CSL talk got me thinking about adding an intro screen (or video!) and even image overlays. So I started looking at more powerful video editing software, and I quickly discovered that it would take hours to render/encode a single game with these more fully featured apps on my Core 2 Duo.

I remembered a friend of mine doing some video processing work, so I emailed him for his thoughts. He did some testing which revealed that if I got a newer PC, I could reduce that encoding time to minutes. As luck would have it, he also builds PCs as a side job - and one of his recent customers didn't pay him for a PC - so he offered it sell it to me for essentially half-price...

Birthday
During the week after my last post, my son had his first birthday! So between getting nervous about the CSL and debating about video editing software and a possible PC upgrade, I did some gift shopping, some gift wrapping, and some tidying up of the house (my wife and mother-in-law did much more for the party!). I also got to rescue my wife from a flat tire - ok I got to call for a tow truck and learn from the tire place how the tires were getting ripped up due to bad wheel alignment - but that's another story for another blog ;-)

My son's birthday was great - everyone had a great time and Isaac has suddenly become a toddler - it seems like he's learning a new word every day now!

Upgrade
The day after Isaac's party, my wife, her mom and my daughter all took a "girls day out" and went to IKEA and dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. I decided to take Isaac out on a "boys day out" after his nap - to get a new computer. We packed his diaper bag with lots of provisions and drove about an hour up to my friend's house (who lives on a farm in Greeley, CO).

His wife was out doing a photo shoot (they also have a photography business), so it was truly a boys-only get-together. We spent the evening hanging out and talking about computers, fatherhood and of course, Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 - and Isaac got to play with some boys for once (my friend has 2 little boys, one of them is very close to Isaac's age) and eat mac and cheese :) We had a great time and came home late with a cool new toy!

Isaac with the new PC. My daughter Madeline found a great use for the CPU box: a ducky pedestal!

Name Change
And of course, I can't forget the name change! With the possibility of a more public role in grassroots e-Sports, I was reminded that having the trademark "StarCraft" in my casting name and blog title may be an issue at some point. For starters, I could never have a Battle.Net ID of "StarcraftDad" as it includes a trademark! And would other casters call me "Dad" for short? So after much internal debate, I decided to cast as "CuePhoenix", my old, classic gaming screen name - and change the blog title to "Gosu Dad". Think of it as "I'm CuePhoenix, and I aspire to be a gosu dad".

I hope to add an About page describing the history and thoughts behind both names as well as the stats of my new PC - but one thing at a time! That and I really want to get back to casting (and playing!) StarCraft 2!

So yeah, a lot has been going on - and apparently, this is only the beginning!

Back in Business!

Well, after some testing, I confirmed that the microphone on my headset is completely dead - I'm pretty sure it was the cord being rolled over by the office chair too many times.

I tried using our webcam to cast, but besides picking up everything else in the room (including whatever show my wife was watching on Netflix), it also over-emphasized my S's when used with Fraps. I could try to use Audacity to edit the audio after recording - but I didn't want to add more time to my video production process.

So I started looking for a new headset.

After some online research and a personal recommendation from CmdrTallon, I settled on a Tritton AX180 headset. It's "universal" and will work with my PC, XB360 and PS3.

There have been reports of it breaking above the earphones, so I'm eager to cast a lot over the next few weeks - hopefully if it's going to break, it'll happen before my return period ends.

I've only had it a couple of days now and it seems to work well - I'm so excited to get back into the casting seat!

I need a new mic!

This morning I made several attempts at recording a videocast, but after an hour, I still have no final product! The first try was longer than the 15 minute YouTube limit. The second try got interrupted - but upon listening to part of it, I discovered that I'm getting a lot of static from the microphone! I tried recording a test and it seemed ok. So I recorded the full video again (under 15 mins!) and was about to encode it - and it's got static all over it.

I'm pretty sure it's the headset cable. My son Isaac loves cables and often pulls the cable out in front of the PC. We have a rolling office chair near the PC, and so the headset cable gets rolled over a bunch.

I had some trouble with static when I first started publishing casts, but it's been fine since. So maybe tomorrow it'll be fine.

If it's not ok, I'll try using our webcam mic until I can order a replacement. I'm not quite decided on whether to get a mini-plug one or a USB one. Whatever I get, I'll be sure to keep it away from the kiddos - and rolling office chairs!

Any recommendations for a headset with a microphone?