2024 Stream update & plans

 

Without getting into too many details, my short-term plan is to try to find some work to sustain myself while LLK and I continue to work on our game (an isometric puzzle platformer that we will hopefully be revealing more about in the near future!). I have had some incredibly bad luck finding ethical work that can accommodate my sleep disorder, so the best option was to get a part-time job and cover the rest with streaming. The schedule is working out nicely and it seems as though I’ll have time to work and also ramp up stream and work on our game.

So, that being said, I have a few plans for spicing up some of the stream content and giving back to you all for your support:

• I’m reinstating subscriber incentives! I’ve been hesitant to do this ever since bulk gift subs became a thing, but it is the easiest way to track and display monthly goals. I’ll be setting up just one goal for the month instead of a large list of numerical milestones, but I may add some bonus “stretch goals” for the month if that seems necessary. Past sub goals can be found on the Support Page and current goals can be found in the section below.
• Ghosts ‘n Goblins nights (weekly/biweekly). Murph gave me some equipment to directly capture audio/video from the cab, but I’ve been running into some complications getting it set up. My eventual plan would be to dedicate one night per week or every other week to doing some marathon-settings attempts to try to beat my best of 29 loops. If I can’t get the direct capture to work, I can just use the webcam setup I tested previously.
• The return of speedruns! I’ve been itching to get back to speedrunning lately, and have a lot of ideas that may or may not be fun. I’ll elaborate more in the sections below.
• High score runs. These will be a lot less common, but there are a few games that I really like that have some unique score mechanics. Phalanx (SNES) and TMNT4 top the list. I have several other ideas but need to vet them a bit more first.
• Ongoing mystery Mega Man Battle Network challenge. Need to think more about the details of how I want to run this series. I’ll be openly brainstorming, so it’s not intended to be a secret for long.
• Crowd Control streams of SGnG or Mega Man. I have some reservations about using Crowd Control, but I might test drive it and see if it’s something that we like. I fundamentally don’t like the idea of content that doesn’t work without paying more, so I’m leaning more towards “no”, but it’s an option. It would be infrequent if I do it.

Equipment upgrades

It’s going to look silly to have an empty section here, but truthfully I am very happy with my stream setup/quality. I’d rather use the money to help cover my expenses and survive until my game’s completion and launch instead of marginal quality improvements. The main thing I’ll be looking to pick up in the near future, though, is a Gamecube HDMI Adapter. There are a handful of Gamecube games (and maybe GBC/GBA…) that I am really excited about playing on stream, and this is the cheapest and easiest solution for high-quality Gamecube streaming. I may also consider re-opening my P.O. Box if people are interested in that, but I am a bit leery of over-promising.

Monthly sub incentives

I’m only going to have one sub goal for each month, because I much prefer stable totals instead of getting a surge in one month.  If the sub total is met at the end of the month, I’ll be doing whatever has been promised during the next month. I’ll make sure that it is scheduled in advance so people can plan accordingly. If the goal is surpassed substantially, I will likely be adding additional content to the reward to account for the fact that there isn’t a running list of sub rewards.

Speedrun plans

 

I don’t want to promise too much here, because some speedrun prospects end up actually being awful runs and some other runs end up taking so long that I can’t get around to others. I do like to keep some things a surprise to make things more interesting, but I’ll at least share some of the considerations.

 

A few “definites”:

• Mega Man 6 Complete Works. This run is awesome and needs to be improved. I currently have a 31:34 with one death on hard mode. I really want a more optimized route with zero deaths that is faster than the best easy mode time of 28:43.
• Krion Conquest. This is an impossible Mega Man-like on the NES. I want to at least commit to learning the route and giving it an honest shot. BadBrakes has an unbelievably strong WR in this, so I might not do serious runs, but I’d at least like to try it more seriously.
• Bionic Commando JP 100% (and maybe any%). I did runs of the JP version nearly 10 years ago and haven’t touched it since. There have been a lot of improvements since then that can cut nearly 1.5 minutes off. I never recorded a 100% run of this version, and it is quite a bit different than the US version (likely 4 minutes faster?). It might be time to finally do that.

 

A few “maybes”:

• Brain Lord “all dungeons”. I made a preliminary route for this a few years ago, but only did one finished attempt before shelving it. It’s a really cool run and deserves at least a slightly better run.
• Lagoon any% improvement. Several years ago I found a few optimizations that total to about 2.5 minutes. I’d really like to improve this run, but it is an incredibly stressful run and extremely random. I’ll at least do some more testing but won’t commit yet to doing serious runs.
• Mega Man 3. My PB is a 35:16, I think. Even back then, my potential was 34:3X or so, and the route has improved since then. I’d really like a better time, but this game has a bad habit of destroying my NES controller.
• Bionic Commando any% improvement. My PB of 13:56 had about 4 seconds of mistakes, and I think there are another ~6 seconds of route improvements possible. I’m not sure if I care to go for those or not.

 

A few “you better hope nots”:

• Mystery SNES Block Game. It’s a secret to everybody.
• Mega Man X3 (low% (PS1). This category skips all 8 maverick stages and goes straight to the Doppler levels with no upgrades and no weapons. It’s actually a pretty neat category…
• Claymates…