#weirdphil

New laptop is here and it’s already proving quite useful. I may start testing my plans with the haupauge either tonight or tomorrow. In related news, we’re kicking off Christmas with our Xmas We Pway episodes. We’ve got a Megaman Christmas Carol, Duke Nukem in Nuclear Winter, and a few more as holiday exclusives (no plans to record them outside of the event) and we’re also running episodes of our Undertale sessions during AND beyond the event. Yes, we are also doing 2 episodes per day (at least until the event is over) as sort of a test to see how many more episodes we can crank out now that I have this laptop. It sucks being chained to a desktop while also rendering videos at the same time, mostly because I really can’t do anything else while I’m rendering in order to avoid issues with the renders.

That said, this is just a test for now for running two episodes a day. If I can keep up with the daily videos for We Pway, then 2 a day might continue later on. Again, we’ll see, we’re looking into it. But for now, here’s another link to the new We Pway channel. Check out our new videos!

We Pway

And here’s episode 01 of Undertale!

So, this is the part where I apologize to my friends for calling them idiots. I was impatient, and very stressed due to seeing a clear answer and somehow being unable to understand how they couldn't figure out how navigate through several stages while grabbing the gems and the yarn and ALSO making it to the finish in time to get the speed medal.

"Sorry."

Alright, now that that's out of the way, Battleblock Theater is a game that deserves a recommendation from everyone who has played it. I'm a huge fan of The Behemoth. I've played them all, from Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers, even Dad n Me if you want to technically call that a Behemoth game (it's on newgrounds, made by Dan Paladin). Each game they make plays a bit differently than the previous one, but BattleBlock Theater is almost a not quite different from something they've done. Sort of. Alien Hominid had a 4-player minigame you could access from the main menu, which was a PDA game of sorts. You could go solo or with friends, navigate a large block-filled level with enemies, boats, gems, and hazards, while attempting to reach the end of the level. This was something that you could jokingly call a building block, towards what would become BattleBlock Theater. It was much less colorful, there wasn't a ability to throw the other players; it was simple. Later versions of Alien Hominid would eventually have more PDA levels added. Alien Hominid was released on Xbox Live Arcade, but even earlier than that, it had been released on GameCube, Playstation 2, and the regular old Xbox. At the time of it's release, I was in love with Newgrounds, and loved the art style that Dan Paladin used.

While BattleBlock Theater stays true to it's old PDA-styled roots, it has added much more. I understand that Will Stamper was added to the project while late into it's development. Stamper provides an incredible performance as the Narrator of the game. His voice first pops up in an opening intro and it's so incredible that you'd find yourself playing the entire game straight through in a single sitting, just to get from one movie to the next. Almost as awesome as Stamper's voice, are the cats in this game. They are extremely adorable (yes, I used that word) but also evil. You see, you crash-landed on an island where you and your friends have been captured by cats, and forced to perform. Stamper's voice urges you to collect all the green gems and reach the goal. You'll repeat this for 9 levels and then move on to a finale level where you must race against the clock. I'm not kidding here, I've said horrible things to my friends while playing this game. You can check out my YouTube series I did on BattleBlock Theater where I streamed the entire game on Twitch and was yelling at my co-op partner the entire time. This is kind of the reason I only record while I'm playing with friends, because I would hate to be absolutely rude to random people AND record myself doing it. This IS one of those games.

That is kind of the big part of this game. The yelling you will do, to your friends, your best friends. There is only one other game that has made me do this. The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures on the Nintendo GameCube. That was a fantastic co-op Zelda game with one giant obstacle between you and good times. Rupees. The game counts how many rupees you pick up and tallies them up at the end of each level, so that you and your friends can bitch about who got the most. While the gems and yarn in BattleBlock Theater are collected equally, it's the attitude that you will exhibit while you're attempting to get by a robot, or those spikes, or that water, for the hundredth time. You will see a side of yourself that you never knew existed, unless you had played Four Swords Adventures.

Got some plans, some surprises as well, that I am hoping to do early this year. A few of these plans have a lot to do with building a community around my YouTube and Twitch.tv channels together with my Steam group. As we've been nearing 1000 subscribers on YouTube, I've picked up a Starbound server for my subscribers to play on, provided you already own Starbound and are a member of my Steam group. This is a public group, you can join here and you're certainly welcome to invite your friends. What sort of perks do you get for joining the groups? Access to game servers that I'll be putting up throughout the year, provided that I can afford them with my YouTube payments. The 1st WeirdPhil Starbound server is up and running right now, and you can access it by joining my Steam group, heading to my group's Discussions, and locating the Starbound sub-forum. That forum has a sticky post with the IP address and password for access to the server. I plan to add more servers for Starbound as well as other games. The next planned Starbound server will be located in Chicago, and the next game server planned will be No More Room In Hell (tentatively, it could change, but it's indeed on the table). My YouTube channel covers the cost of these servers as long as you awesome folks are viewing my videos. Don't refresh the videos over and over, that doesn't help. I understand that it's all based on "minutes watched" now, so you would need to have the video playing in order to contribute. Please whitelist my videos so the ads can play. If you're looking to have the video play in the background, Windows users can mute their web browser if they need to. Keeping the servers up will not require you to spend any money, only time having the videos play. This will allow the servers to be paid for monthly, servers to be upgraded for new locations or player slots, and more game servers to be added. Please share this with your friends. If you have any games in particular that you and your friends would like to play, I can consider it. New servers and games can be added each month, but the YouTube channel will need to continue growing in order to sustain the servers in the event that I am unable to cough up the money myself. All info on each server will be posted on my Steam group's discussion threads, so the information will be ready for you when you need it.

I'm planning on live streaming on twitch much more frequently, hopefully on a schedule even. Having a schedule will allow time for everyone to prepare for these events. With YouTube's Content ID changes, it may be possible to remove third party music from the broadcast when I post it on YouTube, making it more available to those who aren't able to make it to the live streams.

I would also like to be able to allow people to subscribe to my twitch channel if they so choose to. This will give me reason to remove the giant Donation button, which I should remove anyway because I'm not a charity. Then I can begin looking into selling merch and expanding on that. That's much later down the line though.

I greatly appreciate all of the kind messages I received from you all over the holiday season. I assure you, I'm not dead yet. Just took a little break. I've been sorting through all the new games that I've picked up, and I may need to make it a goal to start finishing my games, maybe by genre, maybe alphabetically, not quite sure. I really do need to work on them though. I have almost 500 games on Steam and I need to start finishing more of them. I haven't even touched Alan Wake yet, and I haven't played Dead Space since my old co-op partner left. I have more co-op partners planned since they have upgraded their PCs, finally...