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[steel jackal]

ive never done a lets play before and dwarf fortress is one of the few games that im good at that i havent seen many LPs of

my questions are:

is the music royalty free or should i mute it and replace it with something else?

how long should my videos be? 15 mins seems like a good amount of time but DF can be really slow since you spend a lot of time paused

would it be good to cut out sections where my dwarves are just hauling stuff around, and when im designating large builds?

i want to do a challenge, im thinking of doing a monastery challenge i saw here a while back, but dose anyone have good addon suggestions?

finally, would you watch it? just to see if its something interesting and possibly give some feedback

i have pretty good experience in DF so its not like im gonna instafail, but im also not a seasoned vet so im bound to mess something up eventually

[BNDR]

Dwarf Fortress is a horror to Lets Play to some extend lol. Too little action over long periods of time, even when in a terrifying biome and such. Maybe a bit of action at the start and here and there, some fights here and there, but most of the time is standard Dwarf Fortress gameplay, watching the fort prosper, building and digging.

Some die hard people like me can watch 7h streams of people building a fort, but the thing is, I myself and many other viewers are playing at the same time, so the video runs in the b/g.

Ok back to topic:
The music, most people get copyright infractions because they use XYZ's song that is in the top 10 charts, or some old-timey songs that are heavily safeguarded by the overwatching companies holding the rights. Video game sound tracks made specifically for a game, and not sold as records or held by a record company, are not automatically considered 'copyrighted' and therefore forbidden by youtube, if it doesnt exclusively state so. There are of course games like GTA which contain licensed songs (held by some company), and even there, because the OST is part of the game, it could be allowed.

Mostly there is a note saying which soundtrack is used in the video, title and interpreter. In the vids I've uploaded the best I've seen was said note telling the viewer what the song is called.

I'd do 15min parts, in intervals. Build up the fort, then play 'offline' for a while, when something happens, record it, then turn off and play 'offline' again, and so on. That's what I'm doing at least.

I would certainly give it a try for sure.

[steel jackal]

Dwarf Fortress is a horror to Lets Play to some extend lol. Too little action over long periods of time, even when in a terrifying biome and such. Maybe a bit of action at the start and here and there, some fights here and there, but most of the time is standard Dwarf Fortress gameplay, watching the fort prosper, building and digging.

Some die hard people like me can watch 7h streams of people building a fort, but the thing is, I myself and many other viewers are playing at the same time, so the video runs in the b/g.

Ok back to topic:
The music, most people get copyright infractions because they use XYZ's song that is in the top 10 charts, or some old-timey songs that are heavily safeguarded by the overwatching companies holding the rights. Video game sound tracks made specifically for a game, and not sold as records or held by a record company, are not automatically considered 'copyrighted' and therefore forbidden by youtube, if it doesnt exclusively state so. There are of course games like GTA which contain licensed songs (held by some company), and even there, because the OST is part of the game, it could be allowed.

Mostly there is a note saying which soundtrack is used in the video, title and interpreter. In the vids I've uploaded the best I've seen was said note telling the viewer what the song is called.

I'd do 15min parts, in intervals. Build up the fort, then play 'offline' for a while, when something happens, record it, then turn off and play 'offline' again, and so on. That's what I'm doing at least.

I would certainly give it a try for sure.

so what your saying is that i should do more of a video log of interesting things and highlights of building my fort, rather than what one would call a typical lets play?

and on the topic of the music, since its a part of df and its not an external thing (that i know of) it should be fine for youtube?

[BNDR]

A video log sounds good, but it's completely up to you. I would do it that way, but it depends on the embark as well. You may have a nice difficult embark with constant kobold attacks, it may be worth recording every second of it.

I would record the first year or so, and if nothing new happens for a while, play until there is some grand idea you come up, like a dwarven reactor, or some huge building project.

I wouldn't mind about the music honestly, you COULD ask the devs if it is ok, but I doubt every Lets player does ask the devs if is ok to record, game developers and publishers often see it very relaxed (many of them do not care the least bit), they actually enjoy it if a Lets play series drives more people to the game, and in case of DF, maybe some good new modders, or some guys donating and such. The more the merrier.

[Edward_Tohr]

Oh boy, it's not often I get to talk about LPs outside of Something Awful.

Ordinarily I'd say that the best way to handle DF would be a screenshot LP (see, for example, any of the entries here), but finding a good image host can be tricky, between upload limits, bandwidth limits, and replacing your images if they go a while without being viewed.

So that leaves us with video. Which means we have to figure out how to keep a video of the notoriously-slow Dwarf Fortress entertaining.

The golden rule here is: If in doubt, cut it out. Long stretch of designating bedrooms? Cut. Game chugging along at 5 FPS while your cistern fills? Cut. Trade caravans, noble appointments, and the usual day-to-day running of the fort? Cut, cut, and cut. Wereiguana shows up out of nowhere and starts chewing on your legendary brewer? That can probably be kept in. Unless it's happened before.

Speaking of cutting, that's where Avisynth comes in, along with its good friend AvsPmod. Avisynth is tricky to learn, but it's free and worth the time investment.

Finally, since you'll be editing the video to HFS and back anyway, you might as well just re-dub the music on top in a nice, unbroken loop, and do your commentary after your editing, and dub that in for the final render.

Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, this will take time. But this is applicable to any game you'd want to LP.

Oh, and one last thing. There is no reason, ever, for a facecam, and that goes triple for a game like this. Focus on the gameplay, chop it down to just the exciting bits, and set the foundation for a good-quality Let's Play.

/goon

[Salmeuk]

the above poster has quality advice, though I think a face cam would be fairly appropriate for certain styles of LP - just know that unless you're particularly attractive or expressive than it's fairly pointless. Consider your motivations for creating a LP - you will never ever score thousands of subscribers via DF, so creating the series for practice or just because you want to share might make more sense.

DF is excruciatingly boring to watch when the person playing is less than experienced with the menus. What I do in a minute becomes five minutes of menu-slogging. Cut out everything except the story and the results. I personally believe that an experienced player with quality storytelling and editing skills could make something genuinel entertaining; from my finnicky perspective I have yet to see this happen.

You probably want to consider two kinds of audience: experienced players who want to see creative and sciency sorts of things, like megaprojects and roleplay tomfoolery, or people who are new to DF and want the archrypical fortress-arc of rxpansion followed by death and destruction. You could cater to both, but DF is all about how you choose to play it so editing to a certain audience would get you further.

[martinuzz]

As for the music, although it's probably not legally required, you could ask Toady One if it's okay, that'd be a polite thing to do. (The DF song is him playing his guitar  )

[sirdanilot]

so what your saying is that i should do more of a video log of interesting things and highlights of building my fort, rather than what one would call a typical lets play?

and on the topic of the music, since its a part of df and its not an external thing (that i know of) it should be fine for youtube?

Yes.

I don't know why people watch 'lets plays' so much, to me it is uninteresting to see a non-edited video of someone playing a game I could also play myself.
What is interesting to me, are edited videos about playing a game (e.g. cutting out boring moments, or tutorials, or stories, or record attempts, speed runs etc.). I think you could certainly make interesting DF videos if you were going to do some sort of megaproject, and you would edit out boring segments of your game play, and you would properly narrate, also give some insights on the individual dorfs, their character, spice it up with some detail etc.

That could potentially be very interesting.

But a boring 'k so Urist is going to dig out Z-level 95' and after 15 minutes 'urist is halfway done now, there is some galena and diorite' is not gonna cut it.