Let's Recklessly Play SWAT 4

[Spectere]

In this series I hope to play and finish SWAT 4 in a way that the developers probably didn't intend.

Mission #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxQAY5C43F0

[Bobbias]

You'd better make more of these, lol. That was awesome.

[Spectere]

I'm planning to release them as Spoony releases his legit playthroughs.  I actually have the first three missions recorded as of last night...not sure if I'm just going to dump them on YouTube or if I'll release them every few days until I catch up.

My recording setup is simply epic (and rather ghetto).  The in-game footage is, unsurprisingly, taken care of by Fraps.  I set up my Rock Band microphone in front of me on a mic stand to record my voice while I play (which works surprisingly well -- it's amazing how good of a mic it is, especially given the "quality" of the rest of the Rock Band instrument set).  I recorded the in-game audio and the microphone audio in two separate channels, pulled the video into Vegas, matched up the audio using the in-game audio from Audition, and...that's about it.  It took me longer to render the video than it did to do the editing, which is awesome.

Considering it was my first recording done like that I think it went very well.

[Bobbias]

Nice.

And yeah, for most non-music/zomg-need-$2000-mic stuff, cheaper mics tend to work great, and that rockband mic does work rather well. No distortion, or background noise or anything.

[Alice]

I was about to mention that Spoony was doing a playthrough or something of SWAT 4 as well, lol.  I'm going to check this out when I get around to checking his SWAT 4 videos out.

[Spectere]

And yeah, for most non-music/zomg-need-$2000-mic stuff, cheaper mics tend to work great, and that rockband mic does work rather well. No distortion, or background noise or anything.

Yeah, it really is a nice little thang.  That said, it is a Logitech USB mic.  I have at least two of those (an off-the-shelf version of it and the RB1 branded version) and they're awesome, awesome cheap mics.  I'm not sure if the RB2 one is a Logitech or not...I haven't done any real testing on it.

I certainly wouldn't mind getting a nice omnidirectional mic, or a good lapel mic, but then I'd have to put it through my sucky sound card.  While the "Intel HD Audio" specification is far better than the previous crap that they had, it's still noisy as fuck.  If I were recording in-game audio and the mic from the same card the noise would be quite noticeable.  Half of the reason that it's so quiet is because the game is loud and the audio from the USB mic drowns it out.  I also can't record from stereo mix and the mic at the same time.  However, I can record from stereo mix and a USB mic at the same time.

At this point, my next investment will probably be an X-Fi, both for gaming and improved audio quality across the board.  I'll have to keep the internal board activated for Linux until the ALSA project manages to hack together some X-Fi drivers, but I'm growing really tired of this noise bullshit.  I've been tempted to even put my Live! in this system because the noise level on this card is far too high for someone as picky as me to do any serious recording on this box.  While the Live! is certainly noisier than an Audigy or X-Fi, at least the noise is quiet, consistent, and can be silenced pretty painlessly.  The internal audio has a tendency to cackle, and activity going through the mobo (including stuff like hard drive accesses, USB activity, and network access) causes changes in noise level.  While I understand why this happens, it still sucks if you want to use it for more than listening.

I was about to mention that Spoony was doing a playthrough or something of SWAT 4 as well, lol.  I'm going to check this out when I get around to checking his SWAT 4 videos out.

Yeah, check that shit out, mang.  He's far more entertaining than I am. :p

[MortifiedocAlot]

Yeah, check that shit out, mang.  He's far more entertaining than I am. :p

Well, he's had the practice. Also I did laugh at that fat man in the woman's room and your reaction.

[Spectere]

Haha, yeah, that's one of the things that I love about SWAT 4 -- it's too random.  Like the random black guy standing in the hall, the, erm, fat guy in the ladies room, the guy chilling with the gunmen who were just randomly standing around in that one side room...et cetera.

If the game's enemy placement had any semblance of reality, every gunman would be upstairs, past the locked door.  You know, because they had a weapon modification and distribution ring going on and all.  Additionally, the BIG BAD BOSS MAN(TM) in charge of the ring wouldn't just stand behind an unlocked door like that.

Oh well, whatever.  It's still a fun game.  It's just that the more realistically the game follows the rules the worse little things like that look.