Special Demonstrations #18: Leiria -Stargazer- (12.6.23)

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Icarus
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Special Demonstrations #18: Leiria -Stargazer- (12.6.23)

Post by Icarus »

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Releases:

#01: Battle Garegga (T3-神威, 20.39mil ALL, Gain)

#02: Dodonpachi Daioujou BL (Prometheus, 2.52bn 2-ALL, A-Exy)

#03: Battle Garegga (T3-神威, 20.43mil ALL (?), Gain)

#04: Mushihimesama (PS2 Arrange ver. - Smraedis, 1.05bn ALL)

#05: Dodonpachi Saidaioujou (ver1.5 - RSQ, 151.45bn ALL, A-L)

#06: Mushihimesama Futari Black Label (God Mode - NAK, 7.18bn ALL, Reco)

#07: Battle Garegga (T3-神威, 16.63mil ALL, Wild Snail)

#08: Battle Garegga (T3-神威, 20.83mil ALL [WR], Gain)

#09: Rayforce (Jaimers, 8.01mil ALL)

#10: Battle Bakraid (Advanced Course - ciox, 100+mil+, Flame Viper & Buster Lizard)

#11: Battle Garegga (SDD-Kaede, 18.45mil ALL, Miyamoto)

#12: Pink Sweets ver1.00 (Arcade & Score Attack ALLs - Plasmo, Lace-A)

#13: Battle Garegga (T3-神威, 20.95mil ALL [WR], Gain)

#14: Dodonpachi (Jaimers, 638.2mil 2-ALL, Type C-Laser)

#15: Donpachi (SOF-WTN, 71.9mil 2-ALL, Type A)

#16: Gundemonium Recollection (Demonic Mode - BAF, 138.6mil ALL [WR], Eryth)

#17: Muchi Muchi Pork! (X360 ver1.01, Harahara Mode - Aquas, 248.7mil ALL, Momo)

#18: Leiria -Stargazer- (Hard Mode - twilightex, 3.70bil ALL + TLB [WR], Type A)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I'm proud to announce the release of the Special Demonstrations, what I hope will become a long-running and successful series of replay releases aimed at showcasing some of the best replays by the best players.

I'll give you a quick backstory of how this came about, slightly abridged for speed:
Icarus wrote:As you guys already know, I was at Stunfest 2013 this April, and I had travelled to meet the three Japanese players invited to come over and showcase their skills, and meet up with the Western shooting game players who would be at the event. The event itself was hugely successful, and everyone who attended the event had great fun meeting Kamui, NAK and TAC, as well as watching them do their thing on stage.

Towards the end of the final day, I exchanged Twitter details with Kamui and NAK - TAC isn't on social networking sites unfortunately - and I intended to keep in touch with the both of them from then on, to get to know them better, and to share things with them. My first message helpfully translated for me by blackoak, and was of "thanks for coming over such a long distance to France, and hopefully we can keep in touch". A few days later, both of them found me (probably via mutual friends) on Facebook, and sent me a friend request. I accepted, had a chat with them over the next few days. Kamui in particular was interested in the commentary on the video I posted of her 18.9mil run on the Saturday at Stunfest, so we got to talking about it, I explained some of the discussion as she was playing, and she explained some of her strategies she was using, and what differed from her plays released online a while ago.

A couple of days later, Kamui posts a couple of photos of her recent plays at her usual arcade, with the loosely translated comment "I finally got my revenge! K score!", and I thought to myself, "I would have loved to have seen those plays live".

Well, the next day, I got a private message in my inbox, with links to files served on a filesharing site of a series of .vob files taken from DVDs, with the (loosely translated) message, "Here's the replays recorded from the arcade recently. I wanted to send these directly to you. I hope you enjoy watching them. They're unedited raw footage, so feel free to edit them, share them, and add commentary to them as you wish."
And here we are.

While would have been quicker just to rotate, deinterlace and upload the raw footage for sharing, I felt that these plays she kindly sent me deserved better treatment. So I spent three days learning Final Cut Pro X, and put together something that hopefully resembles a commercial replay release. The final exports from Final Cut are in 720p HD at 10Mbps bitrate, with high-quality audio. I decided not to bother with baked-in commentary (as mistakes/changes would take ages to fix via re-encoding), so instead I'm using Youtube's annotations to provide commentary where required.

Hopefully this series will take off somehow. I'd dearly love to get in touch with the other top players of the other selectable ships, probably with the help of adversity1, Prometheus, Erhune and any other Western players who are in contact with the top players, and with the help of Kamui herself if possible. But for now, Kamui herself has assured me that she will try and continue to supply me with footage as she works towards hitting 21mil with Gain. I can't wait to see it when she does.

While I do want to continue to center the Special Demonstrations around Garegga, I am open to working with high-level players of any shooting game. I believe that great players deserve great quality replays, and hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Enjoy the release! There is more to come. ^_-
Last edited by Icarus on Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:10 pm, edited 20 times in total.
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z0mbie90
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by z0mbie90 »

Sounds cool. Haven't have time to watch it yet, but gonna grab some popcorn later on and hopefully have a blast :)
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by DJ Incompetent »

presentation-like-woah.

Thanks for packaging this together.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by CloudyMusic »

If I didn't know better, I'd think this came from a real DVD. ;) The annotations are really well-done, also. Thanks a lot for taking the time to put this together, and thanks to Kamui for supplying the gameplay.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by shmuppyLove »

DJ Incompetent wrote:presentation-like-woah.
Oh man, is that a Black Rob reference?

WOAH
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by PROMETHEUS »

This is cool Icarus!
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by Tyjet »

This is really nice. Kamui's skills are amazing :shock: . Thank you for sharing this!
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by Deca »

Very, very cool. Thank you so much for doing this, I'm going to get a lot out of these.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by jepjepjep »

This is awesome :!:
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by chempop »

Just watched up to the Flamingos, pretty amazing stuff. Thanks so much for putting this together!
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by BIL »

Marverous. Favourited the hell out of. Great work on the presentation, you definitely did the replay proud!
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by wnka »

WOW on all fronts
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by Blackbird »

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Looks gorgeous.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by beatsgo »

This is unreal, awesome job Icarus!
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by opt2not »

Great job on the presentation, very pro looking!

subscribed. ;)
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by enjirube »

I absolutely loved it, thanks Icarus :)
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by TastySoil »

thanks for posting this, and good work!! Looks amazing!
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by Softdrink 117 »

Absolutely awesome work on this Icarus. Great presentation, good commentary, and phenomenal replay from Kamui.

Can't wait to see more.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by CStarFlare »

Does Kamui know Archer? Let's get some Ibara special demonstrations.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by blackoak »

Yeah, this was amazing to watch--the option control especially was awe-inspiring. I'm really glad the fellowship from Stunfest is continuing. The format looks really clean and professional, nice job... would love to see more like this from other Japanese superplayers. Did it take that long to put together? Since KET took his Garegga vids down, this is especially valuable now.

This was just the spur I needed to get working on those 7 superplayer interviews I have sitting here, haha...
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by zlk »

This replay was awesome! Thx!
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by BPzeBanshee »

Excellent stuff Icarus and T3-Kamui! I watched up to stage 4 boss, very impressive run.

I feel kinda stupid now when versing Stage 3's boss now. Kamui makes it look so easy. :oops:
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by Icarus »

Thanks for all the comments guys, it's appreciated. I've been keeping Kamui up-to-date with the feedback too, and she's really happy that everyone has been enjoying watching her plays. She is pretty flamboyant, though, so I guess being an exceptional performer comes with the territory. ( ̄▽ ̄)

I am mindful of the quality of the first release, however, and will be looking to improve it for the second one onwards. Is there anything that could be improved with it? I've had a couple of comments here and there about the duration of the annotations being a bit short - do they need lengthening? I think they could probably do with being a bit longer, but I don't want them to overrun. And is there enough commentary to go along with the footage?

Any and all suggestions are welcome.
blackoak wrote:Yeah, this was amazing to watch--the option control especially was awe-inspiring. I'm really glad the fellowship from Stunfest is continuing. The format looks really clean and professional, nice job... would love to see more like this from other Japanese superplayers. Did it take that long to put together? Since KET took his Garegga vids down, this is especially valuable now.
It didn't take long to put together, surprisingly. While I have a lot of experience with video processing (as I have been making a lot of replays over the years), actual non-linear video editing is completely new to me. However, Final Cut Pro was extremely easy to pick up and use, and there was a lot of really helpful tutorials to accelerate my learning. Effect automation in particular was something that I found FCPX made surprisingly easy, as it is handled in the same way as Ableton Live's automation with control envelopes. I have a very good workflow for making these now, so they can be churned out with a couple of evenings worth of effort.

Encoding takes 12hrs at this resolution, bitrate and audio quality, though. ( ̄▽ ̄);;

I'm hoping that this goes on. I already have another run from Kamui being processed, and a collaboration with another player for another game (both of which I'm keeping under wraps for the time being ( ̄▽ ̄) ), but I'd really love for this to blow up into something bigger. I remember saying to Kamui that Garegga footage is especially hard to come by - just look at how quickly that Golden Bat replay vanished from Youtube - so I wonder if that was the spur for her sending me the replays originally, as I certainly didn't ask her for them. ( ̄▽ ̄)

In any rate, I'm hoping that some of the other top Garegga players are receptive to this and are willing to contribute. The first thing is to try and get in contact with them, somehow. I'm also open to collaborating with high level players of other games, too.

(By the way, thanks for helping me out originally with translating those messages to them, you've been a great help!)
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by BPzeBanshee »

I agree with the sentiments regarding the comments, they could've been *just a bit* longer. Like anything though I guess it's a matter of getting the balance right. From what I watched, the content of the comments looked large in some spots (so I guess they could've been split in two), but generally was spot-on.

Is there a way to actually download YouTube videos with YouTube comments?
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by ciox »

Not much to add, great play and editing, and great to see Glow Squid eat it at the end.
BPzeBanshee wrote:I agree with the sentiments regarding the comments, they could've been *just a bit* longer. Like anything though I guess it's a matter of getting the balance right. From what I watched, the content of the comments looked large in some spots (so I guess they could've been split in two), but generally was spot-on.

Is there a way to actually download YouTube videos with YouTube comments?
I have a very strong hunch you'll need to record your entire screen while watching the video start to finish, if you're lucky you might be able to get Fraps or Playclaw or something to only record the actual YouTube screen and nothing else, I remember that was possible a few years ago.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by coturnix »

A million thanks for this video. Good quality videos for Garegga are indeed very rare. Didn´t know that option shoots had yellow aura until i saw this video for example. It´s also the first time i can appreciate the quantity of shit it is thrown at you in later stages (last stage i considered a transitional one for the bosses, but oh my how many bullets!! I couldn´t saw them in the other videos). Commentaries are awesome, i do concur some of them would need more time (i´m a fast reader and couldn´t finish reading a couple, but you can always pause).

I think Kamui plays as you say she is, very flamboyant and flashy. It gives me the impression she´s having a lot of fun, always like seeing her replays. The last stages are insane, but the rank must be absolutely through the roof. Glowing Skid is just beyond insane :shock:

Now wishful thinking :mrgreen: : videos for Dimahoo (another one where superplays have dismal quality), and Donpachi (tell SOF-WTN we would be happy with small potatoes, 70-75 million would suffice :mrgreen: ).
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by zakk »

A suggestion specific to garegga: annotate every death, except maybe ones on the last boss or something. I know enough about garegga to know why most suicides are happening; but something like this is great to point newer players towards, so just a quick 'that was for more weapon bits' or 'that was for rank control', or 'oops!' would be helpful. Especially in the cases where it is really obviously a suicide.
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by cools »

Goes to show how much years of practice contribute to play ;)
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by Illyrian »

I must also request longer annotation durations bro, seriously though awesome work.

And yes, Dimahoo if you can please :P
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Re: Battle Garegga: Special Demonstrations (replay #1 releas

Post by Smraedis »

Such great play really deserves such a well made video. The quality from the PCB capture is really nice looking too.
I think I should spend some time making my own videos look a bit better too, it really makes them more appealing.
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