Age :38
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Location: Boden, Sweden
carrier has arrived!
Commentary  /  29 Jun 2013, 11:08
Covering QuakeWorld
The past weeks me and darff have been busy covering and casting notable games from the rich history of QuakeWorld.
The reason for this blogpost is to bring attention to a project that has been going on for a few weeks. You might have seen the forum posts about new movies being released and the occasional spam on irc, but just to be extra sure this effort of ours (mainly Darff´s) doesn´t go unnoticed I thought I´d also add it in the form of a blogpost.

The goal of the project is to cast and cover as many games as we possibly can manage during the summer, as both of us will be more engaged in real life at the end of the summer. We will start by casting all the games that currently has no commentary and that we have the demos for. If you have demos, or know where to find them, there is a list of the demos currently missing that can be found here. Once all the grand finals of EQL have been covered, we will look into NQR, SmackDown, exciting Semi-Finals and so on. So apart from finding missing demos, you can also contribute by giving us feedback on our casting; what you like, what you dislike, what you think can be improved upon and what qualities we should keep up. Feedback on the videos themselves are also appreciated, as Darff is putting in alot of effort into bringing you an informative and entertaining experience. An experience that hopefully will catch the interest of people new to QuakeWorld and deserve a fair representation of the game.

You can find the content Darff has uploaded thus far at Darff´s YouTube channel. So please; subscribe, comment and don´t be afraid to shed some light on this project to your friends and fellow gamers.
Comments
2013-06-29, 11:25
What I have seen so far is very good, nice config etc., keep it up !!
Only thing I would like to see different is the clock counting up, like, you know, in real life
2013-06-29, 14:18
In real life timers go down and stopwatches go up. Normally you use stopwatches when you are not certain about the end time and timers when you have a certain time you want to measure. I believe switching it either way would confuse equally many people.
2013-06-29, 14:56
Definitely the oldskool commentators sometimes refer to the counting-down clock, though I think most players nowadays have it counting up? So when covering modern games I wouldn't be averse to having it count up
2013-06-29, 15:00
crazy to listen to sassa commentating
2013-06-30, 11:35
This is a really nice and well executed initiative. Even if this wouldn´t necessarily bring more players to qw (will anything ever really?), it feels like many great games are now reliably preserved and made easily accessible via youtube
And now lets proceed to the necessary whine;
While the config and hud are otherwise really nice and informative, i would - however - criticize the framerate of the youtube videos for not really making justice for the extremely fast pace of QuakeWorld 4on4. I understand that there can be some technical limitations in making all the videos 60fps. Still higher framerate would undoubtedly be a lot more pleasing especially to an untrained eye, which may now see nothing but a slideshow of chaos.
2013-06-30, 14:04
Thanks for the kind words, dmt!

Yes, bringing new players to QuakeWorld isn´t something simply done by posting videos on youtube, however well made. However, I think there´s an interest that can be sparked in individuals more easily with videos accessible through a source such as youtube. That´s not really the main objective though but rather perhaps an added benefit. In my mind Darff´s channel will act a little bit as a library; well organized, well put together and easily browsable.

60 fps is indeed preferable to anything QW ingame related. Youtube is capped at 30 fps though and making all of the videos 60 fps for either online watching or a regular download has to be a project for the future.

The newer games that has been recorded on the serverside on a later server version tend to be alot smoother though in contrast to the older games that feel alot more choppy. Not sure if anything can be done to redeem these old demos fully, as most of them were recorded as qwz.
2013-07-02, 08:56
Convert the .qwz demos back to .qwd with qizmo (-D option if my memory is correct). Then use qwdtools to convert .qwd to .mvd.

I think .mvd files are not smooth per se. I think they update 12 or 20 times per second (it is configurable, but I think everyone leaves it at their its default value). It is the client that interpolates the data to make it smooth.

These demos may still be affected by lag compared to server side recordings - but it may still be easier to look at than the original. YMMV.

P.S. I never tried this. This is more a suggestion and left as an excerise to the reader.
2013-07-02, 12:04
They are converted to .mvd through the process you described.

Let us know if there are further steps you can take to enhance quality.
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