Yea I finally rendered out the next 7 or so parts of Minecraft, which should be going up soon. I suppose I should also mention I fucked up my audio on the next 14 or so parts of FF6, so it's gonna be quiet but not inaudible. For some reason apparently my voice recording seems much quieter while I'm recording with fraps compared to when I'm not using Fraps. I have put my decibel boost back on my mic and that should fix that issue, but then it creates peaking issues when I'm shouting so really there is no happy medium with this microphone where it's at a level I would consider audible without peaking. It really kind of pisses me off but it's either that or going back to my old mic and forsaking the 9 months I've spent with this mic and all of the trouble it has caused me (from forgetting to turn it on, the audio quality either being too low or peaking, and me having to build my own pop filter to reduce the air hitting the mic which was causing peaking).
The only issue I have with my old mic is it literally picks up every damn little sound in existence so I'd have to tweak it a bit as well but you'll hear my keyboard, mouse, and controller quite a bit and people tend to find that irritating. The main reason I've stuck with my current mic is it eliminates most of that sound so it's barely audible compared to before but I've pretty much had it with trying to get it to do what I want it to, which is record at a decent fucking audio level so that people don't have to turn up their speakers to hear me. I'm gonna try some last ditch stuff to attempt to work out my issues with this mic (such as maxing the decibel boost and moving my mic way further away to see if that somehow creates the happy medium I desire), but honestly if after rigorous testing it still acts like shit then I may switch back to my old mic and see if I can properly set it up to be less annoying than it used to be. Just to be clear, my current mic always had a decibel boost of 10dB (except for parts 84-97 of FF6 which will be going up over the next week or so), so what you guys have been hearing is my voice boosted to be 10 times louder than what my mic normally picks up (which should tell you that my mic is stupidly quiet for no damn good reason). Boosting it up to 20 is something I tested a long time ago but it was peaking everywhere so I never tested it further by adjusting the mic placement, but now I'm finally committed to spending an hour figuring out what my mic can and can't do and finding the best place to locate it to get the ideal range of sound I want without peaking.
In other, more interesting news, Killing Floor updated to the Halloween update yesterday (while I was in a night class so I didn't get a chance to play it till today). I haven't recorded it yet since I haven't had an opportunity but I played in solo mode (since I was uploading at the time and with shitty internet my ping was 300-600 due to the upload). I tested out most of the new guns and bought the DLC guns (which I haven't tested most of them yet). I only tested them on beginner so I have no idea how practical they actually are but for the most part they seem to be fairly useful. Because I was playing alone I didn't get a chance to test out the new medic health grenades but I'd imagine they'll heal for around 25 health to each player within their radius. I also noticed that the price of bullets for the M99 sniper rifle have been raised to be 10 times more expensive, which means it'll cost $5000 with a level 6 sharpshooter to fill the ammo after buying the gun (which is stupidly expensive, but then again you'll probably only get 6 shots off anyways before dying). Before I get too far I'll divide this into what changes I've noticed about each class so far, so here we go:
Medic: New health grenades, that's pretty much it. Haven't tested them yet but they seem really useful for sticky situations.
Support Specialist: New gun called Vlad the Impaler (which is a nailgun). The nail projectiles can ricochet at least once off a surface so it could be very useful for hallways and small rooms, but I can forsee it being banned on friendly fire servers because of how unpredictable the ricochets can be with many projectiles bouncing back towards the player. It also doesn't seem that strong (and this was on Beginner where I was messing around so this could be a useless gun on harder difficulties, though I'd need to test it further).
Commando: A couple new guns, the MKb seems like a decent enough low power assault rifle. I don't believe it's as accurate as the bullpup but I'm fairly sure it's more powerful, and it has less recoil than the AK. I rarely use the commando class so I'm unsure of whether it's really worth it, but really anything is better than that shitty recoil AK when it comes to headshot accuracy. Wasn't really paying much attention to it's capacity, like I said I was just kind of messing around so I'll get a better feel for them as I do more tests. Haven't tried the DLC weapon (the Tommygun) yet, but I'm sure it's probably got a lot of power, and a lot of recoil.
Sharpshooter: no new guns, but I guess you could use one of the berserker's DLC weapons (the Buzzsaw Crossbow) as a sharpshooter weapon. Haven't really used it much though asides from a fight against a beginner difficulty patriarch while screwing around in the new map so can't say much about it asides from the projectile speed seeming a lot slower than any other gun in the game (but I only took one shot so it could have just been lag on my end or something).
Demolition: Also no new gun, so nothing to say.
Firebug: Two new Firebug weapons, starting with the Trenchgun. It's a 6 round shotgun that reloads one shell at a time, and has fire damage added to it. Basically it's the shotgun version of a MAC10, so there's no longer a real reason to use that thing. It does have a slower reload speed due to it being 1 shell at a time reload but the spread and firepower of a shotgun really help it out with setting as many targets on fire as possible. I'm also pretty sure it's got decent penetration abilities so it could be used in crowded hallways and to deal more damage to scrakes and FP's without having to rely mostly on the burn damage and the stun period associated with it. I'm not sure how useful it would be on higher difficulties due to it's weight being fairly high and I'm not sure you can take a flamethrower with one (but I was carrying the other new weapon at the time so that could have done it). As for the other new weapon, it's a DLC weapon (Flare Pistol). Like other pistols, you can dual wield it if you really want to kill your accuracy just for more ammo. I haven't really used it much but I could see this being a case where dual wielding is actually somewhat useful because of the added burn damage. I'll have to play with it a bit and see.
Berserker: Two new weapons, both are DLC only. The first is the scythe, which I haven't had a chance to use so I don't know anything about it. The second is the Buzzsaw Crossbow, which I've only fired one shot with, and it was as a Sharpshooter class against a beginner difficulty patriarch. It has a weird looking scope that has a reticle that looks like a sawblade's side profile, so I guess this weapon has a wider range because of it. It also seems to have a slower projectile speed (probably a bit faster than the speed of the flames from a flamethrower), so at longer distances it's probably less accurate unless you lead the target. Really I could see this as both a sharpshooter and a berserker weapon in that it can deal with scrakes and fleshpounds from a distance rather than having to kite them around on harder difficulties (Suicidal and Hell on Earth). I'm honestly not sure if the projectile counts as melee damage or projectile damage, or both. I'm assuming it would have to at least have projectile damage just so that the sharpshooter and commando buffs can still apply to the weapon.
As for the new map, Hillbilly Horror is a smaller map that's mostly got one elevation, with the exception of a few roofs and second floors. Because of its size, this map could become very chaotic very quickly if you get cornered in an area. I'm not entirely sure of where all the spawns are located but the amount of tree foliage and debris scattered about the level along with a slight hint of mist make patriarch encounters harder to survive due to long distance pipe bombs. Also there seems to be an issue with the patriarch being able to literally spawn within 30 feet of you on the map which makes it even tougher to survive because he'll have a head start. But yea I did find at least one feasible spot to hold out on the map assuming you have someone to weld a door for your team. There's one house just past the slaughterhouse that is literally only one room with two doors. If you weld the door on the long wall of the house you've basically created yourself a funnel point to lay down continuous fire upon the legions of Zeds, with windows on the same wall as that door so you can pick off any stray zeds who may come knocking. Considering how small this map seems to be, it's probably the best bet for surviving the map. It's not as small as the Doom2 custom map, but it's probably the smallest legitimate map in the game (only offices is smaller, but that map has multiple floors while this one is mostly just a single floor). This map also has a trampoline that actually works quite well for jumping onto a roof in emergency situations, but you will take fall damage if you miss your landing.
Asides from that, the tripwire team has added a bit of an easter egg hunt in this map, where there's 25 garden gnomes scattered across the map who's souls need to be "liberated" (by shooting them), for a nice little achievement that counts towards unlocking the new event costume. I did spend about 20 minutes on beginner mode searching for them all and I did eventually find them but some are pretty well hidden. My advice for anyone attempting this is to play a short game on beginner difficulty in solo mode and choose a berserker class and just kill all but one clot in the first wave and then just run around the map searching. Berserkers can't get grabbed by clots so this makes it easier to avoid them, plus the extra melee speed is nice for outpacing him. Most of the gnomes are hidden in the random piles of junk around the houses but a few are quite well hidden, so I'll throw out the most well hidden ones I can remember:
There's a gnome on the top floor of the barn, in between the haystacks on the far side (look closely, he's a bit hard to spot at first, though you could use a grenade if you're lazy).
Outside of the barn beyond the border of the map are three gnomes in the field, easy pickings assuming you have a few pistol rounds to spare.
There's one in the back of the truck near the last 3 gnomes, not hard to find but I remember it so might as well mention it.
In the slaughterhouse behind the barn (near the trader), there's one in the rafters above you if you look up inside of it (remember to use the flashlight on your pistol, makes a lot of these easier to spot).
Past the slaughterhouse is a house with two doors, a gnome can be found in the cooler in that house (hard to spot without jumping, took me a while to find this one).
Outside of this house in the garden there's one hidden in the plants that is easy to miss if you aren't looking.
On top of the hill by the slaughterhouse there's a small wooden structure, a gnome is somewhere in that structure (around one of the walls).
Check the water by the house with the dock/porch, he should be floating in it.
In that house by the water gnome, there's another one in the rafters. He's by the door leading towards the middle of the map (flashlight helps).
Just a bit further down the shoreline from this building is a small dock, with a gnome standing by it.
There is a garage with a few cars in it, there's a gnome in the drivers seat of one, and another gnome not far away in the drivers seat of another car. Both need to be shot from the drivers side window (seems to be an invisible wall on the passenger side and back sidewindow in the garage).
In the trader by this garage, there's a gnome in plain sight behind the counter's bulletproof glass. You have to jump shot it to hit it (which is why I recommend beginner mode for the extended shopping time since this can take a few shots to get). I guess a grenade could work too, if you were lazy.
In the large house (by the trampoline) there are at least 3 gnomes that I can remember, one in a cupboard, one on a desk, and one under the bed on the top floor.
There's a gnome to the right of the deck of the large house
There's a gnome in an oversized dog dish (or maybe it's a dog bed, it's big enough), by the large house.
Somewhere by this large house is a forklift with a gnome in the driver's seat.
I think pretty much all the other gnomes are hidden in the random mounds of rubble around the map, so be sure to check those from all angles. Either way I managed to remember where 21 of the sneaky buggers were hiding just off memory, so that's pretty good if you ask me. I might have missed one in a car somewhere but I'm sure you guys can find the 4 that I haven't mentioned if given enough time.
Anyways with all gnomes set aside, I'll try to record the Killing Floor special on Saturday (if I can't record it on Friday). I'm probably only gonna play for an hour or so but I'd like to get some practice in beforehand and do some work towards the achievements (since I only got 2 of the 7 needed for the new character, even though I clearly got 3 achievements... I guess the MKb one doesn't count or something). Either way I'm terribly excited to play the new map for real on a challenging difficulty so I hope you guys are just as excited for the new map because it's more than likely gonna be a bit crazy.
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