Zedutchgandalf's State of Mind

Camtasia.

Hey guys!

It’s been a long time since I’ve made any videos. Well, to be more precise, since I last uploaded something to YouTube.

This is because I normally use Camtasia to film all of my videos, but a week or so ago, Camtasia decided to not start up again. Ever. I was working on a complete new series (that even had nothing to do with Kongregate) but I’ll have to postpone that apparently.

I haven’t made any badges of the day for a while since there was something wrong with Kongregate’s launching of the BOTD. As some of you may have noticed, Kongregate launched them at totally random times, sometimes having the same badge for over 48 hours, sometimes having a new badge within 12 hours… I could not make a daily vid because of that ( I actually do have other things to do, believe it or not :P).

Also, University has started last month, so I don’t have time when the BOTD gets released to record and publish it immediately. I will however continue doing those new badges, your requests and challenges (maybe even some quests). And if I have any time left, I’ll try to do some other, random badges. That is, if Camtasia decides to work again, someday…

I’m sorry I couldn’t show you how to do the Skyrim quests, as those were/are probably quite challenging for some people.

That’s all I wanted to say. Thanks for reading, and I hope I get to make a new vid very soon! (I already contacted TechSmith - the company behind Camtasia - several times, but they don’t answer support apparently…).

Doing the Worm Badge, medium

Today I present you with a new format! :D

I’ll take a look (as much as possible) at the latest added badge on Kongregate. I film the first time I play the game, so you get all the weird stuff and my weird reactions to things. There might be some cutting around if things get to boring or if I die and have to start all over all the time. But I won’t cut if I die once (or twice or more, as long as it doesn’t get boring).

And today is the first episode in that brand new series (I don’t have a name for it yet, so please suggest :p).

I’ll do the BOTD things starting from tomorrow (or possibly the day after, but I’m aiming at tomorrow :-) ).

And furthermore, this is the first video where I audio-commentate. I hope my voice doesn’t bore you to much or anything.
Please react to all these changes and I’ll make sure to take every single comment into account for the next video!

Here’s the link to the latest vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyMKaKK1hqg

Exams, music and more!

Hello guys!

Exams are over so I’ve finally got some more time to dedicate to YouTube etc. Well, this weekend I don’t have all that much time actually, because me and my band are making a new demo (that we can send to people in order to get some more gigs). I have been busy the last month, however. I’ve come up with some great new ideas for series (?). I’m also going to start audio-commentate the ZKBOTD series (when I’ve got something to make my microphone work with my MBP - damn you, line-in!) and I’ll try to come up with some sort of intro vid. I’m not quite that sure about what I want as intro to be honest. But I’ll figure something out.

I’ll dedicate some more time to you guys and I’ll try to make at least one video each day from now on. If you’ve got some spare time, please check out the other channels listed on my YouTube channel. They’re great people that I believe will make it one day or another :-). Also, if you’d like to receive an automated message whenever there’s a new ZKBOTD, please subscribe to my channel. If you have some great idea for a series or you want to co-op on something, leave me a message (Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, whatever, it’s your choice).

I don’t know exactly when the series will start again, but I think it won’t be all that long. Perhaps a few days ;-).

Until then, stay cool!

About Kongregate’s Badge of the Day.

Hey guys,

you may have noticed it’s been two days since I have posted anything at all on the internet. This is because I’m having some trouble IRL. That’s why we’ve decided to put this ZKBOTD-series on a hold for some time. There won’t be any new videos or blog entries the following week(s). We’re not really sure how long this will last, but it won’t be longer than one month. That I promise.

In the meantime, you could (re)read some of the old tutorials I wrote for this series as they contain some valuable hints and tips you can use for most of the badges.

You can always try to tweet me if you have a specific question, but it could take a day or max two before I answer.

Good luck with all coming Badges of the Day! I’ll speak to you guys in a few weeks.

Kongregate BOTD (07/08): Whale of a Tale, hard.

Today’s game is Moby Dick, a game based very loosely on the novel by Herman Melville. Actually, the only resemblance between the two is the white whale and the boat. But nonetheless it’s a great game. It’s a bit like Dolphin Olympics, but without the dolfin and the olympics (lol). Goal of the game is to survive. You have to breath every now and then so you can’t stay underwater forever. And you have to eat in order to still your hunger and to grow. Pirates will try to kill you so you have to body slam their boats (just swim against it).
The Badge of the Day is the hard badge. Goal of that badge is to get 500k points. This isn’t easy. At all. You can only get points by eating living creatures, destroying boats or eating bonus items.

You can control Moby Dick with the mouse pointer. If you click while your boost meter is full you’ll get a boost (swim faster). You can use this to jump up from the water to eat birds or to get some achievements). Eat hearts to restore your health, eat air bubbles to restore your air meter and eat pills to grow. Once you’re bigger, you’ll do more damage to boats but the whale will get harder to control. There are also star bonuses and lightning bolts. The stars will make you temporary invulnerable. It’s best to attack the biggest boat you can find right after eating this, since the bigger boats will give you more points. The lightning bolts will completely fill your boost meter.

That’s about all I can tell you I guess… The only thing left for me to do now is to wish you guys good luck. So, good luck!

Kongregate BOTD (05/08): Life, Love, Understanding, medium.

Today’s game is ELEPHANT RAVE. It features an elephant, thus who other than the great jmtb02 could have made this? This is the only elephant name he released under his own name, though. All others have been released by ArmorGames.

The goal of this badge, is to survive the game/rave. But since the lasers are randomly, I think (they are always in time with the music though), I can’t really show you guys a way to make it through. I can however give you some hints.

Move using the arrow keys. When you proceed further in the game, things will start “rolling” down the floor too (not exactly rolling but I don’t know a better word atm), so beware those and jump over them in time. But don’t forget to dodge the lasers while doing so. This can be tricky sometimes, but it’s nothing impossible. It takes you about a minute to reach the end of the rave.

You’ll probably gonna have to try a few times, but you’ll get it eventually. Either way, I wish you good luck surviving this rave!

ZKBOTD, Google+ & Seymour Duncan

Hey guys,

I’m sorry there was no ZKBOTD yesterday, nor will there be one today. And I’m not sure yet about tomorrow.

There wasn’t one yesterday and there probably won’t be one today because I am way to busy. I did see however which badge it was today, and you can find it here. The easy badge to Racing Comrade is really easy. Just run and click all food you see lying around. Whenever those three guys aren’t watching (as far as I can remember Karl Marx was one of them? - I finished this game two days after it came out, quite some time ago now) you can take the cigarettes and booze and whatever else that has got a red border around it. Also, make sure you only use the kicks and bites etc only when those guys aren’t watching. (You could try it when it’s foggy or raining, but there’s a small chance they do see you).

Like all these games, it’s rather hard to get much money at the start, but - like most of these games - once you’re set, you get tons of money (it’s really hard to get this right - trust me, I’m a rather experienced programmer myself).

That’s about all I’ll be able to help you with. If I had more time, I’d show you guys.

Next, I’ve got a Google+ account since a few days! I’d post a link to it here if I knew how to :/ . So, if any of you guys know what link I have to post (I found one in the form of “plus.google.com/” and then a lot of numbers (like 20 or so). But isn’t there a shorter link? One that has my name instead of these numbers for instance. If any of you guys know, please let me know!

And last but certainly not least, I bought these amazing Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro pickups last week and finally installed them yesterday (did it myself - it’s really not that hard to do actually) and they sound amazing! My old pickups were the originals in my guitar, thus they were like 28 year old Gibsons (or whatever they put in SG’s at that time). They didn’t sound that bad, but every now and then they used to “lose” the sound a bit. Also, they amplified the sound of my pick on the strings way to much. And they made this kind of buzzing sound whenever I wasn’t playing (always thought that was because of my amplifier, but apparently it’s not). But these new pickups don’t do any of that. And they really sound amazing - distorted and clean. So, if you happen to be looking for some new pickups or yours are really old and you’re into this metally kind of guitar sound (they sound rather heavy when distorted), then these are the pickups I’d definitely recommend.

If everything goes well, we’ll be back tomorrow with another ZKBOTD (actually I kind of did one today, didn’t I? :-P), if not, I’ll try to post something. And if I really have no spare time at all, I’ll see you guys Friday!

Good luck with today’s Badge of the Day! (and tomorrow’s).

Kongregate BOTD (1/08): Mama’s Boy, medium.

Today, the game is K.O.L.M. a beautiful game telling a story about a robot and his “mom”. This is a game produced by ArmorGames, but made by Antony Lavelle, who also made the sequel to this game, K.O.L.M.I.A.M. (not on kongregate - yet) and who’s behind the two Kongregate hit games, Upgrade Complete and Upgrade Complete 2.

The game is pretty self explanatory, all controls are explained ingame.

The goal of today’s BOTD is - again - “Escape the lair”, which means as much as “Complete the game”. I could do a vid about this (and I probably will later on), but that would take me way to much time to be able to release it today. I do know, however, how the entire game goes, so if anyone has a question for me or is stuck at a certain point, just ask me and I’ll help you out.

That’s about all I can help you with today, I guess… Anyway, good luck trying to get the badge!

Kongregate BOTD (31/07): Unstoppable, medium.

Another game by BerzerkStudio today! That’s the second one this week (GunBot was the first one). But hey, who cares? Most games by BerzerkStudio are addicting and fun.

Today, the game is Mechanical Commando 2. The goal is to survive wave 10 in Survival Mode. The waves are randomly generated so I can’t show you very much. That’s why I’m writing this. When I say randomly generated, I really mean RANDOMly generated. The enemies don’t even come from weak to strong. Although the ratio strong/weak increases as you get to the higher waves. As does the amount of enemies on-screen. I suggest, however, that you try to complete the first mission before trying the survival thingy. This will help you understand the game and it will make you stronger (the game works with an exp-based levelling system). To try survival mode, go to the world overview screen (the one with all the planets on it) and locate the red dot surrounded by a red circle on the uppermost planet to the left (it’s on the same planet as the Defence 1 side-mission).

If you have some spare time, I suggest you do some missions first and then buy some stronger weapons (in the “Hangar”, you can find a button on the bottom of this planet overview screenlike thing) before tackling survival mode.

Once you’re trying to get the badge, you’ll notice that the waves pass quicker than you probably would have expected. Mainly because you can barely notice that a new wave has begun (except for the new swarm of monsters trying to blast the s*** out of you). In order to receive the badge, you should finish wave 10, thus you have to reach wave 11 or higher.

Controls can be found in-game (there’s a tutorial at the start of the first mission and the first time you try survival mode). You can use your main weapon continuously so you shouldn’t worry about that and just hold the left mouse button down all the time. (unless you’ve upgraded it, then I suggest you try it out on a simple mission first). Use your shoulder weapons as much as you can, but try to take notice of it’s flaw. Some weapons can for example only hit the enemy when you’re close enough.

So, try some weapon combinations out before trying to get the badge. If you play some missions first, you shouldn’t have to much trouble with this badge. And you probably will get that easy badge in the process (kill 100 enemies). Anyway, good luck to you all! And most importantly : don’t focus to much on getting the badge, focus on enjoying the game instead ;-).

Kongregate BOTD (28/07): Hex Hax, medium.

This is the second time I Am An Insane Rogue AI is the game which provides the BOTD since we’re making these series. But I don’t think anyone will really care since IAAIRAI is a fun game (although there are a lot of rather undiscovered really nice games out there). This time, the goal of the BOTD is to get 16 trophies (yay, another badge which doesn’t require us to simply complete the game :D)

If you followed my previous vid on this, you should have five trophies by now: 1, 2, 8, 11 and 19. So we only need to do another 11 trophies instead of 16! Hooray! Now, for the lazy people among us ( :$ ), you can just start the game up and go for a walk or eat something or do whatever else you like. Why should you do this? Well, to get that ingame timer running. If you play the game for one hour, you get three extra trophies (16, 17 and 18). You don’t have to play one hour to get the eight (!) remaining trophies, so it’s best to let the game run longer than you play. If you take a break of 30 minutes or something, that should be sufficient to get al 16 trophies right after the hour passes.

When you return, you shouldn’t focus on trophies 3 and 4, they’ll come when you play the game. Instead, buy some upgrades when you’ve got the money. Start by buying all the blue ones since they’re the cheapest, then go on to all the yellow ones and finally all the red ones (but you don’t really need those, it takes you way to long if you just want this badge). That’ll give you trophies 5 - 6 (or 7). Try to get trophies 9 and 15 too, they’re a bit harder but not to hard. Leave trophy 12 alone if you want this to be quick. In the level I did in the vid to get that pacifist rating, it was really easy to do, but as you get further in the game it’ll become harder and harder to not harm any human. Trophy 13 will come as you play the game, as will 20.

Now you still need one trophy. If you find you’ve got enough money, you could buy all red upgrades. If not, you could try to get $5000 in one level (this is rather hard imo) or try trophy 10. Or, if you still haven’t got trophy 18 (so you still need 2 more), you could try to get the 10 pacifist completions (trophy 12).

Anyway, this isn’t a really hard badge (that’s why it’s rated as a medium, ofc) so don’t spend all your time trying to get one trophy you can’t get.  A lot of the trophies you’ll get as you go along the game. So if you just complete it, you’ll probably have most of them already. (and you’ll get an extra medium badge).

Good luck trying to get this badge! And if you happen to have any questions, tweet me please!

These are the 16 trophies I got first: 1 - 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 - 13, 15 - 20