#delta squid

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Tragic Floor

Last time on Chaosville, Buncible was about to be dragged kicking and screaming into a floating anomaly of eternal disappearance. Tune in to the latest chapter of ‘Save the Planet’ to find out if that is a thing that actually happens!

Available to read now on VGToolbox.com.

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Ursanus Minor

Over on the VGToolsite there’s some writing that I did. It’s called Ursanus Minor, and it’s the fourth chapter in Save the Planet.

This marks the 50% completion of Episode 37. I hope you’ve been enjoying it so far! The second half is in a rougher state, so who knows when I’ll finish that, but it feels good to finally be ejecting all these words that have been clogging up my mindspace for so many months.

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Friendly Returns

Bunce receives help from a returning character in the next chapter of Chaosville: ‘Friendly Returns’.

VGToolsite

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Reminisquid

Ok, so...

I’ve been slowly chipping away at writing the next episode of Chaosville for literally nearly 12 months, in between bouts of crying and singing ‘Why can’t I move on?’ on hotel balconies. And it’s sort of approaching completion.

I’ve had a remarkably shit couple of years, but it has been nice to return to creative writing every now and again, whenever it doesn’t fill me with guilt and anxiety. And when it’s done, I’ll publish it. Hooray!

So as a testament to my commitment to “Save the Planet”, here is the prologue.

Expect the complete Episode 37 to be released whenever I feel like getting around to it. :)

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Bureaucracy Building

I thought I might provide some insight into what goes through my little Buncible brain when I'm putting together an episode. Back when Liam and I recorded regularly, it was a case of showing up and messing about without much of a plan, but because Chaosville has reached the turning point from LP to machinima, hopefully I can provide an added dimension for you to appreciate while I get to offload some clutter from my head. And, y'know, I like talking about what I do because I enjoy it so much.

I wanted to tie into Bunce Brand Beer as soon as Jamie told me about his idea for a series. I love having connections and cross-overs between channels, and I wanted to help promote Jamie's videos because I enjoy them, he's a good guy and a great friend. It's a shame it took eight months to get to that point, several times the lifespan of the series I was linking to, but if I was going to see Chaosville through to completion (and I will), this was a vital step along the way.

I knew I wanted to end the episode with a "behind-the-scenes" version of Jamie's Bunce Brand Beer prologue. Apart from my own voice, I still had the footage from that recording; all I had to do was re-dub my lines, then splice in some comical office mishaps. Nipde used Morph to play the part of me while I directed and filmed. Nipde is great at helping me with acting and set building, and I couldn't have done even as much as I have in the last few months without his assistance. There are a couple more sets as-yet unseen that he's helped massively with.

I also needed a bit of LP for completing the tartarite armour (thus letting the Delta Squid storyline move forward from the next episode onwards) and summarizing the setup of the episode: "I need to construct an impressive building so I can contractually stop Jamie and Septimus farming for anyone but me." This was the last bit recorded because the long take just wasn't possible until I'd fixed my memory problem. It had been so long since I'd sat in front of the mike, I had cold feet and kept putting it off a while longer.

But those two segments together still wouldn't form a complete and satisfying episode. I needed to show the building itself, but I sure didn't want a building montage. I did those in Season 1 with the "Let's Prettify" episodes, and while I was super pleased with how those turned out, they absolutely took it out of me. I spent about a week on each of those. Obviously I changed my mind, and ended up with a montage that took me just two days to film and edit. Placing the picture from Glitch's bedroom alone took two hours for the right image to come up (thank you random paintings), but with the magic of editing I hope it ends up being a touching little moment.

The Bureaucracy Building already had a style and partial shape set in stone from its debut in Jamie's prologue: one long corridor with my large office at the end. But it needed more to it than that. It had a have a reception at the opposite end of the corridor for symmetry, and it had to have two warehouses. I put together the building's plan with pixel precision in Photoshop of all things, just to make sure everything would work out geometrically. The entire first/second [delete as applicable according to your region's storey-labelling norms] floor is pretty much superfluous in terms of what I needed out of the building for storytelling purposes. If I'd known just how extraordinarily long I would labour over that building, I'd have cut out the offices, conference room and call centre without hesitation. It's a shame they probably won't get featured or used in any way.

Hating montages so much (for how much harder they are to edit), I made sure the opening only covered the first few stages of construction. If I'd recorded the whole building's creation, not only would I have more footage than my hard drive could handle, I'd also have a much bigger headache editing. I made an executive decision to make it easy on myself, and thought I could get some extra mileage out of including snippets of just where the materials came from. All that was put together so that hopefully you didn't find yourself thinking anything like "Hang on, where'd he get that much mazestone?" but maybe for a fun moment you thought "Hang on, what's that sheep got to do with the building?". And as a consequence of the selective filming, I'd given myself a fun opportunity.

If you saw the Bunce Brand Beer prologue, there's a chance you recognized the Bureaucracy Building while it was still in its infancy. I was aiming to tell an origin story for the great set Jamie and Septimus built for that, re-creating the same chisel patterns and furnishings. I'm a fan of engineering dawning realizations. Just like I gradually showed the connection between a sheep and a building, I was gradually revealing my blank plot of land (which was originally where Glitcher was going to build a bank) as the prologue setting. But the opposite can be just as much fun, and I really liked establishing the small, contained rooms only to reveal that those are just parts of a much bigger construct. I was trying to lure you into a sense of satisfaction with the completed office so I could then pull the curtain to awe you with the real deal.

The tour montage was inspired by daytime property programs with their flowery descriptions over sweeping shots of whatever building they were selling/buying/renovating this week. There's not really much to say about the script. It's got a tiniest hint towards the What's Going On and yet another prideful callback to that time Will Strife said my park wall actually looks really nice, but otherwise is quite straightforward and took no rewrites, only small additions to fill time. I had to be careful not to catch on camera the set of the prologue, which is still sitting at the far end of the park, but even ignoring that, filming was tedious and annoying. But I was editing to the timing of music, which I really enjoy. For me, the last twenty seconds of this trailer I made for work were so exciting to fit together.

And that's pretty much that. The only smidgeon of creativity left to exact was the thumbnail. The building could have made a killer thumbnail, but it would have spoilt the effect of the video. I'm happy with how the episode ended up. There'll always be things you'll wish you could have done better, but the quest for perfection can leave you exhausted and, without an end product to show for it, disillusioned. I should have installed Camera Studio to get better footage, but it's ok to use F1 + F8 + /speed fly 0.1 if your enthusiasm for a project is at stake.

Bureaucracy Building was, despite being steeped in roleplay, light on story. It was there to fill in gaps more than drive things forward, hence I have mostly practical things to say about its development. But it is an important anchor point for the ongoing plot, and since subsequent episodes with Tedizrul are starting to home in on What's Going On, I'll talk more about story in another one of these long and self-serving posts.

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Christmas livestream

For the second year running, I'll be livestreaming videogames with Septimus216 from Delta Squid on the evening of Christmas Day. There won't be presents or tinsel or even mistletoe, just the both of us getting drunk and playing games.

If you're going to be bored or lonely or miserable, or if you're not, you're welcome to tune in for the company or the fun or any reason you like.

We'll almost certainly be playing the Don't Starve Together beta, who knows what else, suggestions are welcome. Can't confirm the channel or time at this point, but I'll tweet details when I can.

As a warning, I'll be my usual respectful self (with swearing and innuendo, because those are fun), but Septimus will almost certainly be using ableist terms because I haven't yet managed to get him to cut that out.

[ceranovis]

Yay! CraneSong showed up in Chaosville again!

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ComputerCraft

The things I always enjoyed creating most of all for YouTube were stories. I miss the ComputerCraft tutorial series a lot. They were clearly popular and did us very well. I remember the decision-making and the hard work, figuring out - and arguing quite a bit - how to do things before we had anyone to ask for advice. But they'll always mean more to me than numbers or nostalgia.

We planned for the longest time to bring it back. Every few months we'd make a fresh dedication to each other, we would find the time to return our attention to what we'd previously been able to knock out once per weekend, somehow. We even had a couple of sets built, massive courtesy of Delta Squid.

We had a big world we wanted to explore, and a lot of situations we wanted our characters to find themselves in. Things that might have sounded like throwaway lines to those watching would have turned into huge points. In particular, Buncible and Glitcher had distinct and complex relationships with the Science Division, which would have slowly unraveled as they journeyed  to and around Testiville. Preiss had his own relationship with the Security Division.

I have big Google Documents describing all of this, the characters, their histories, how the world worked... it wasn't going to win any awards, but it was ours, it brought us a lot of joy, and we never got to share that. Maybe I'll start sharing some of those documents publicly.