Video capture from PS3

February 21st, 2010

UPDATED: Better upload here,

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I just captured a 720p video play of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Just wanted to test the quality of the capture card called Blackmagic intensity pro.

The originally capture video is MJPEG avi file. The size is 311MB. I just uploaded whole thing and let Youtube converted it to whatever it wanted. The newly created Youtube video is MP4 file and the size is only 8MB.

Interesting thing is, somehow, the MP4 (which was solely converted by Youtube) has interesting interlace-kinda artifacts. These are screen capture of two files being played by windows media player.


MJPEG (click to enlarge)


MP4 (click to enlarge)

The blade on the left part of the screen clearly shows there is a problem with conversion. The question is, does MJPEG has originally recorded as interlaced version? or some information got lost during the conversion. I guess I need to learn more about MJPEG and video conversion.

UPDATE: This link has a good conversation about the interlace problem. It seems the option in the MJPEG decoding is confused depending on decoders.

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Bonehead moment in ggaming – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

February 8th, 2010

Another proof that I am a border-line idiot:)

The Wind Waker is a slightly different Legend of Zelda game. The world is basically flooded and only has islands. You have to sail through big ocean to reach the next island.

When I got the boat first time, I did not read the explanation of how to control boat carefully. I started sailing and noticed how slow it was. It almost feels like drifting/floating on a wooden plate. It took roughly 20 minutes to arrive on the next island. After playing more and reading the manual, I realized the boat has a mast and with that you can actually sail really quickly. I believe the 20-min island was more of a couple of minute sailing.

Yup. I am stupid… and patient … enough to endure the 20-min-floating.

The very beginning of the video shows the ‘sailing’ explanation that I didn’t bother to read carefully.

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Shoot’em up Memory (I-am-old topic)

January 23rd, 2010

In the arcade era (80’s), my major in gaming was shoot’em up (Raiden and all other variations, etc.) One time (maybe 1986-7) I was playing this game, Darwin 4078, with awesome bat power and everything. I finished whole round and continuously playing the second round (or third). Kids were surrounding me with jaws dropped. It must have been about an hour or more playing the game (with one quarter). Suddenly the owner of arcade came to the cabinet and reset the machine. I was shocked and looked at him. He just tossed me a quarter and walked away. He didn’t say a word but his eyes were clearly saying ‘get a life’. Yes. I was that good.

Fast forward to 2001. There was a game called Ikaruga. It was very good game but too hard for me. I was good at shoot’em up if it is mostly based on reflexes and twitch game play. However Ikaruga requires enormous strategic playing to get a high score.

First, the ship can change color black-white to absorb same-colored-enemy-bullets and double-damage opposite color enemies.
Second, in order to achieve ‘chain’ killing, you have to kill same color enemies three at a time.

I simply couldn’t excel in this game with this much of thinking involved. Enjoyed game though. One day I saw this video, a guy, called ‘VTF-INO’ from ikaruga.co.uk, playing two ships, one hand each.

This is beyond human. Not only he is controlling two ships to handle two types of color attacks, he does not miss ANY CHAIN for each ship. The first video is Chapter 5, the last chapter. The second video is Chapter 4, which considered as the hardest chapter in the game. Whenever I see other game videos I can tell myself, “hmm, if I practice really hard, I am sure I can do that.” However, this one is beyond that, as if his brain is wired completely differently. Even if I were 25 years younger, I do not think I can play like that even if I practice like crazy. This guy is certainly a Newtype (old Gundam reference.) Yes. I am old.

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Trailers that sold me game

December 24th, 2009

inFamous

I love watching good game trailers. A particular good one this year was inFamous trailer. I had been only mildly interested in the game before this trailer. The game mechanic was not terribly original. Shooting seems a little bit weak-sauce. Just… mildly interested. Then I saw this trailer.

This changed my perspective of the game. It connected all those different elements of the game very well and presented in a very good fluid form. Nice music and nice edit/slow-mo around actions. I bought the game and enjoyed it for sure.

Heavy Rain

The most intriguing trailer this year for me is Heavy Rain trailers. Again, I was not that much interested in the game. Already saw the gameplay videos (again), just a string of QTE. Nice graphic… a little bit awkward animation. The animation was all motion captured but, it was more of watching acting not action.

Then this trailer completely hooked me.

The music immediately blew me away. Then the guy’s face. The sad face with such emptiness in his eyes simply made me watch it again and again (maybe because I am a sad person). His expression and subtle gesture were just perfect.

Then another trailer (contains nudity). BTW, this is in Polish.

The shout at the end just gave me a chill. Can’t wait to play this game.

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Trophore…

October 13th, 2009

Spent some time to get a couple of trophies before I succumb to Uncharted 2 and Demon’s Souls.

Platinumed Infamous, Batman, and Killzone 2.

Killzone 2 weekly 1% (I know. I should get a life.)

Killzone2_1percent

Also somehow I became the number one in Critter Crunch challenge mode. Yay!

I feel sudden tightness in my e-pants 😉 (Not for long I guess, but still tighty.)

CritterCrunch

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Why Apple has to be an iAsshole?

September 11th, 2009

Well, I have been using Apple machines for 12 years (not counting Apple II 20+ years ago), PowerPC 9600MP, Pismo, Titanium PowerBook 15inch all for personally and PowerPC G5 , MacBook Pro 15inch and Intel MacPro for professionally. Loved the products. Recommended Mac to many friends and relatives for past 10 years. (not anymore though)

I did not like the Mac vs PC ads from the beginning. As a software engineer, I have million different complaints about Windows AND Mac. Neither are perfect. I just use them for my work. Why the ads had to be so childish? Can’t you focus on your good things only?

Now, why am I talking about this in my gaming blog? Because of this picture.

This is a shot of Apple presentation the other day promoting the iPod touch/iPhone as a gaming device. The presenter explains that PSP/DS has no features like iPod touch/iPhone. I am fine with thier promoting  products but do they have to do like this? As far as I see, the iPod/iPhone games are more or less comparable to the flash games on the web. Yes, they have some cool 3D stuffs but the point is that the most games designed to be casual/snack type games. One quote from the event is “There are 21,178 entertainment titles in the App Store.” Wow. 21,178. How many are worth more than 5 bucks? or 5min of my time?

  • No Multi-Touch user interface – the current games are not geared toward to multi-touch. Joypad cannot replace multi-touch AND multi-touch cannot replace joypad. What is the point of saying that “ooh, they do not have this fancy multi-touch for gaming”?
  • Games are expensive – yes they are. I want to have cheaper games all the time. However those games are expensive for the reason because some games really do have some high quality production values. God of War, Crisis Core, Castlevania… Again, out of 21,178, how many games are worth more than 5bucks? Metal Gear Solid Touch (iPhone) vs Metal Gear Portable OPs (PSP). One has clearly more value and is expensive than the other. But comparing them is idiotic.
  • No App Store – good. you have the nice lock-down on how to sell games only through your store. It is convenient for the consumer. I guess nobody wants to download gigabytes worth of game data through the wireless LAN. However, most good games on PSP/DS are fairly big. I am sure they certainly more than 100MB or even 1GB. App store is perfect for small games but not for big games.
  • No iPod – this is a completely different point. Gaming machines tend to not play MP3 (except they do as a secondary function). This is more like, “PSP/DS cannot play music you download from iTunes store because we do not allow. and they cannot be synced to iTunes because we do not want, just like Palm Pre“.

I get it. The games for iPod/iPhone are cheap, plenty and easily accessible. So is the MacDonald burger. PSP/DS games are geared toward to a different market. The gaming has been one of the weak point for the Mac. Nobody made a fun of it (okay, maybe some people) because that’s like making fun of a handicapped kid. I used/use Mac because of many good things about it. I will buy iPhone (someday) and buy all those wonderful snack type games from the App Store if I want to play those snack type games. If I want to play some epic games I will still buy games for the PSP and DS. Apple, don’t be an asshole dissing other devices from other industry (I think Apple is not in the gaming industry. yet.) and do your job of making a good platform for the casual games.

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PS3 Slim in da house

September 2nd, 2009

Got the new PS3 slim by opening Sony credit card. Did backup and restore thing to copy data from the old one to the new one. It did not work as I expected.

Things that were copied/restored,

  • All custom files like music, picture, video clips.
  • Save files for the games.
  • Had to resync PSN account and trophies.

Things that were not restored,

  • Any download from PSN, purchased videos, purchased games, demos, add-ons (like Rockband song download). Basically the game folder was not there and the game data folder was empty.

Now I have to re-download all games I purchased from the store again. Kinda pain.

Other than that, it worked out pretty good. The new one is of course slimmer/lighter. Virtually no noise. The old one is connected to the monitor in my room (which has a window to the living room).

I setup the whole account so that my wife and I can play online hard-way 🙂

We tried Fat Princess and it was pretty fun. My wife could leisurely avoid battles and focus on chopping down trees while I was more focusing on killing.  Occasionally we could team-up to rescue the princess. This was against bots, of course. Need more practice to really play online.

Games we are going to try, (more like games “I” like to try, of course this will be very costly)

  • Sacred 2 – my wife agrees that having the separate screens will be very good.
  • Burnout Paradise – only if she likes the idea of cruising around the Paradise city. (which she thinks stupid so far)
  • Resistance 2 Co-op – kinda tempted to teach her FPS but…can be very frustrating.
  • Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Co-op – will be very interesting.

Hmm… anything more?

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Bonehead moment in ggaming – Bushido Blade

August 13th, 2009

As a simple-minded person (or border-line idiot), I tend to play games in a very thickheaded way. So many memories, but, this one captures the essence of ggamdori.

About 10 years ago, 1998, there was a game called Bushido Blade for PS1. A sword fighting game without a health bar. You have to kill the opponent with a critical blow. Without a CB, the battle can drag on and on.

Anyhow, there was an extra stage (kinda practice stage), where you have to kill 100 enemies without dying. I tried to beat that many times but whenever I reached about 80-90 kills, my focus was low, hands were shaking… basically nervous breakdown was imminent then I got killed. So I was talking with a friend one day, who does not play a video game BTW.

me: Man, I cannot beat this stage. I got so nervous when I reach about 80-90 kills, hands got tired and I always screw up.

friend: Hmm. Why not pause the game and take a break?

me: …

friend: …

That night, I beat that stage.

Youtube of someone else beating that stage.

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Fat Princess and Fat Joystick

August 4th, 2009

Got Fat Princess last week, which is awesome. Pure mayhem with 32 players running, jumping, killing, healing, building, freezing, burning, bombing, stealing, kidnapping, chickening…

There are some network issues with joining games but I have not had any other problems like a disappearing princess bug. Each game can be pretty long depending on the teamwork. It is just fun to go around with bunch other players and killing 🙂

One time, I was approaching the metal rock thing to harvest some materials. The enemy worker just produced one material after multiple chopping. I picked that up and deposit it on our post. Went back, the guy was chopping the rock again, and just produced a new material. I picked that up AGAIN, and he started chasing me to our post area. He got killed by my teammates of course. Fun time.

Fat Joystick

I was eying on this for a while but the price was too high. After hearing my friend’s description, “It’s bodaciously awesome!”, I could not resist it anymore. Got one from Frys, $129.99. Loving it. Freaking heavy and sturdy. For all other sticks, I tend to worry about my inputs because the stick keeps shaking when I violently move it. That tends to suck my focus out of the game. With this fat stick, movement is much better. The stick is so fat, my fat ass cannot disturb it…         … joke fail.

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Being Old and BlazBlue

July 14th, 2009

Got the BlazBlue LE the other day then realized that I am really getting old. I used to play a lot of Street Fighter II during high school years. That game only had one bar to worry about, a health bar. Not many crazy moves to remember. Using small moves to shave off opponents health bar. More of mind games between teenage boys, if that is even possible.

Now this game has four bars to worry about, a health bar, a barrier bar, a special move bar, and a block bar which is shared with the opponent. And those crazy moves to pull out. Man, I am too old I guess. On the positive side, I am enjoying the 2D art-style, maybe, it is a nostalgic thing. Kinda make me feel like a teenage boy who just want to beat the shit out the opponent …… then got beaten by a 9-year-old boy… then… crying for mommy 🙂

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