u/Tripecac

Hey guys, I used to play lots of Roguelikes back in the '80s. My main time sinks were Hack (and then NetHack) and Moria (and then Angband). I tried a bunch more throughout the '90s, and even created a website about RLs, but haven't touched the site in ages, just like I haven't touched ASCII games in ages. I think once I got into 3D gaming in the late '90s it became REALLY hard to go back to ASCII, as much as I used to love it.

Fast forward a few decades, and the term "roguelike" is all over the place, with probably 99% of "roguelike" players never having played an ASCII game. I'm not complaining, just pointing out that, well, things change. Captain Obvious, right?

These days, I'm drowning in games and consoles, with more games in my libraries than I will ever finish (or even start) in my lifetime, but I've still yet to find games which do two things which I loved from the ASCII days:

The first is NetHack's ghost levels. It was always such a thrill to find my previous character's remains (and junk, though it was mostly cursed). I don't remember ever having that happen in a different game, unless you count Minecraft, but in Minecraft you're not really starting a new game when you die; you're just respawning, and then you need to go find your stuff. And it's usually just a few minutes later. But in NetHack, it could be days or months later, when you are not really expecting it. Very cool!

The second is Moria/Angband's strong sense of "(re)discovery". I don't know how else to put it. Each time you start a new character, you need to learn/identify all those potions, scrolls, wands, staffs, etc. When you figure out one, it's like "unlocking" a feature. And then at the same time, as you pick up tons of weapons and armor, you need to learn which ones have which bonuses. And then, if you are new to the game, or new to a depth, you learn what the various monsters do. I supposed the thing that comes closest is the Persona games (which are awesome). But in Persona we don't roll our own characters, and you're not necessarily going to play the game more than once, so once you identify things, they stay identified forever. The feeling of discovery is finite. In Moria/Angband, when you die and start a new character, you get to (or have to) re-discover all the potions, scrolls, etc. And it's a thrill if you discover a really useful potent or scroll early on; it gives you quite an edge. Also fun is returning to town and finding something really cool at a discount in the shop. In Moria/Angband the RNG can sometimes be your BFF!

Both NetHack's ghost levels and Moria/Angband's (re)discovery enhance the feeling of "character ownership". NetHack's ghosts are proof that we existed, and Moria's random "unlocking" of everything makes each run feel highly original, like only *we* know what it's like to discover a certain combination of items with a certain character build. Very individual, and memorable. I don't get that same sense of individuality in modern games, which tend to be focused on "set pieces" (hard-coded story lines, difficulty gates, etc.)

So, anyway, here's my question(s):

How are ASCII RLs these days? Do they still give you a feeling like your character is unique and that it actually exists in the game world? Do you still feel a thrill when you discover something "ahead of time" with a new character? And are the games still big enough for there to be a lot to discover?

Or are the "glory days" of deep ASCII RLs long behind us?

(It's hard for me to imagine programmers sinking tons of time into a genre which traditionally doesn't offer a financial reward. Why would someone spend hundreds or thousands of hours fleshing out an ASCII RL when they could instead focus that time on creating a game which they can actually [try to] sell on Steam? Programmers need to eat, you know! And ASCII doesn't exactly pay the bills the days. Or am I wrong?)

Anyway, I'm just curious how things are going in ASCII RL land these days. It's like driving past a neighbourhood I haven't visited in 30 years, wondering how things have changed (or stayed the same).

I film long (2hr+) walks, and always use Tilt Lock mode to keep the horizon level.

Occasionally I see something above or below the horizon which I want to film, so I use the joystick to slowly pan up or down.

To return to the horizon, we have 2 options:

1. If we try to recenter manually (via the joystick), it often leaves the camera slightly misaligned compared to where it was before. Repeatedly adjust the panning to get it "perfect" is very distracting to the viewer, so you really need to do it perfectly in one movement, and that's hard.

2. If we double-click to automatically recenter, it's guaranteed to work in a single movement, but the movement is way too fast compared to the initial pan, making the re-centering feel incredibly jarring and amateurish.

Is there any way to slow down the re-centering?

Ideally, we'd be able to select a "re-centering speed" within the options, or at least have the re-centering speed equal the joystick pan speed, for consistency.

It's crazy that you can pan away from center slowly but then to return to center the camera jerks abruptly back into place. It's so frustrating!!!

(Sorry if I sound grumpy about this. This is my only real annoyance with the Pocket 3. I love it otherwise. I'm surprised and annoyed that DJI hasn't released a firmware fix for it yet, since it's such an obvious problem. To me, at least! But I see from videos that the Luna Ultra also has "instant" re-centering, with apparently no way to change the speed either. Why does this have to be so difficult???)

Are there other ways to re-center the Pocket 3/4 smoothly and accurately (while filming)?

I had a bunch of track volume keyframes in my project, and then decided to edit an earlier part. I did some ripple deletes, but for some reason the volume keyframes didn't shift along with the underlying clips, which meant I had to manually move them, which as a pain.

Is there a way to force track keyframes to shift along with the clips when you ripple-delete?

Alternatively, is there a way to force track keyframes to "stick" to their underlying clips, or perhaps to convert track keyframes to clip keyframes?

The reason I'm using track keyframes instead of clip keyframes is this:

Sometimes I need to replace a short section of audio within a long clip. For example, let's say I'm filming a walk and suddenly cough. To fix it, I "simply" replace the cough with another piece of audio from earlier or later in the walk (copy and paste).

I put "simply" in quotes because with Premiere Pro, I've found that I actually need to do some acrobatics to get around the fact that audio is "linked" to video, so I do the following:

1. slice (razor tool) the audio/video clip a second or two before the cough (this cuts both the video and audio)

2. slice the audio/video clip a second or two after the cough (so now the cough has its own audio/video clip)

3. "unlink" the audio from the video in the "cough" clip

4. delete the audio from the "cough" clip (video is unaffected since it is no longer linked)

5. slice the start of the replacement audio (this will cut both its video and audio clips)

6. slice the end of the replacement audio (so now the replacement audio has its own audio/video clip)

7. unlink the replacement audio from its video

8. copy the audio portion to the gap where the "cough" was (video doesn't get copied since it was unlinked)

9. resize the replacement audio to completely fill the gap where the cough was

10. apply fades to the start and end of the audio patch (to blend it nicely)

11. use track volume and/or pan keyframes to make the replacement less noticeable (perhaps by gradually lowering the volume in the few seconds leading up to the cough, and then gradually bringing it back up later. The point is, the track volume/pan keyframes often start and end outside of the replacement audio, so clip volume/pan keyframes don't cut it.

Is there an easier way to remove, move, and copy internal segments of audio like that, while leaving the video untouched?

I've been going through the Casiopea discography chronologically and notice that the sound for some of the 80s albums is really trebly, bright, and almost sterile. "Photographs", despite containing some great songs, is particularly hard for me to listen to.

What's interesting is that compilations will often have better sounding versions (to my ears) than the original albums, even at lower bit rates. So maybe lossy compression smooths out some of that crisp digital harshness?

Anyway, I'm wondering where I can hear the best sounding versions of these albums. I'm still in the "first listen" phase right now (and there's a lot of ground to cover), but at some point I will want to start collecting individual releases. I just need to know a good starting point for that. (Unfortunately, Ototoy blocks Casiopea from my region)

Hi, a few month ago I got into Fishmans, and after listening to all their stuff started exploring Fishmans-adjacent bands, and then started sampling Japanese music in general and then somehow I stumbled into Casiopea and WOW!!! I am absolutely loving it. I'm a big fan of jazz/rock fusion, like Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, and George Benson... and so Casiopea sounds like my favorite moments from those bands. Amazing that this music has been around since the 70s and I have never heard it until now!

Naturally, I want to collect it all. :) The discography is huge, though. The completionist in me is excited but also a little intimidated. And skimming the recent topics here in reddit I am seeing references to generations of the band (P3, P4, etc.) So it seems there is a bit of a taxonomic learn curve as well.

Is there a primer or career-spanning intro somewhere? A starting point?

Thanks!

I record walks in 4k @ 60fps and render in CBR 300 Mbps. Each hour ends up being about 85-90 GB. Up until now my longest walk on YouTube was 2.5 hours (225 GB).

I've read that YouTube limits uploads to 256 GB or 12 hours (whichever is less).

I'm currently working on some walks that are 3-4 hours long. If I export them in CBR 300 Mbps, these walks will exceed YouTube's 256 GB limit.

My options seem to be to either:

a) split the walks into multiple parts

b) render at a lower bit rate

Neither of those solutions is ideal, so before I commit to one of them I'm curious if anyone has actually verified the 256 GB limit, or found ways to bypass it.

Prowalk Tours has many walks which exceed 4 hours. His recent Venice walk was close to 8 hours! Does that mean he's exporting a lower bit rate? For me, CBR 100 Mbps is about 45-50 GB/hour. So 8 hours would be 360-400 GB, which is well over YouTube's 256 GB limit. Does that mean Prowalk Tours is exporting at something like 60 or 70 Mbps??? It does not seem likely, since his videos look so good.

So what are your thoughts?

Is the 256 GB limit real?

Are popular channels (like Prowalk Tours) exempt from the 256 GB limit?

Is CBR 300 overkill?

It's been several months since I used Premiere Pro. I just got back from a trip and this morning wanted to start editing some of the video I shot. Premiere Pro updated itself (to 26.3.0 build 93), and then I started a new project, imported some video files, and was immediately shocked by how sluggish Premiere Pro was. Not only was the playback horribly choppy, but the UI itself was incredibly sluggish. Just changing the "now" time, dragging the edge of an adjustment layer, or even finding the Premiere Pro version number took several seconds, because I'd click on something and have to wait several a few seconds for the UI to respond.

Restarting Premiere Pro helps for a few minutes, but then within a couple minutes it becomes sluggish again. Unusably so. I've been using Premiere Pro for years, and this is the first time I've seen it struggling like this.

Quick system notes:

1. Windows 11, nVidia RTX 3080 Ti, 64 MB RAM
2. Files are 4K 60fps, which is what I *always* use, so nothing new there.
3. I have HW acceleration on.
4. I have not changed any settings since I last used Premiere Pro.
5. I get the choppiness even with a little 5 minute clip, which is nothing compared to the 2+ hour projects I usually work on.

I don't know if this is related, but I can see (via Task Manager) that Premiere Pro's memory usage keeps increasing, but not smoothly. When I first open my project, Premiere's memory jumps to 8 GB (within a few seconds), drops to 3GB, jumps to 9, 12, 11, 13... And it keeps going up, without me doing anything... 20... 30... 37...

And then if I start playback, memory will suddenly drop... Just now it was above 30 GB, I started playback, and it dropped to 6 GB. Or sometimes it drops to 11 GB. And then when I am idle again, it starts going back up. Really weird. (And yes, the waveforms have completed drawing).

I haven't noticed any connection between memory usage and sluggishness, however. The sluggishness seems to get worse when I'm actually doing things (like editing text boxes or repositioning clips). However, I haven't done extensive testing because it is so frustrating to be trying to work on a project and then the UI slows down to snail speed.

Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a fix?

Thanks!

I've been trying to clean up my Fishmans collection, removing duplicates, correcting live dates, etc.

One of the things I've realised is that there are some vastly different masterings of many of their tracks.  Some of the early CDs seem too quiet and tinny, other later versions (especially compilations) sound too loud and overcompressed, some are in the middle, which I guess is the sweet spot. 

(The strange thing is, some of these very different masterings have the same DR value!  Weird.)

Anyway, for those of you who have collected multiple versions of Fishmans songs over the years: what are your preferred masterings? Ideally, digital ones (for those of us who don't do vinyl)?

Also, is there an online store where we can preview and purchase the best-sounding FLACs?

(For some reason, Ototoy doesn't let me access Fishmans material without a VPN, even though Polaris was fine.)