My 7 Wishes for Rimworld

1. Water Usage: including thirst, peeing, pumps, irrigation, toilets, fertilizer, dangerous floods after heavy rain, fishing etc
2. House Robots: at first only able to clean, but a separate research branch lets colonists program them to haul items, sow fields and even fight eventually (robot could become increasingly more intelligent and eventually turn into an AI), need to recharge in the sunlight or at docking stations 
3. More Traps: seriously, there must have been any advancement to deadfall traps in the future, right? Maybe something to catch prey and prisoners alive? Electricity/taser traps or even just ropes and nets?
4. Rubbish: lost side products to every fabrication process, can eventually be recycled or burned, influences the nature around you
5. Auto Lights: auto doors but no auto lights? Come on!
6. New Lifeforms:      a) Plants for greater food variety, tofu for the vegans

b) Aliens, many humanoid, of course, but also some truly strange ones like gas clouds, hive mind balls, god creatures like Cthulu demanding to be worshipped

c) Mutants, including vampires which act like humans on both Go-Juice and Luciferium but can be repelled by light and need blood for survival (which can be synthesized after some research)

7. Unearthly Conditions: strange phenomena like diamonds hailing down, sulfur fog, worm holes spitting out random stuff, moving mountains, acid rain, healing wells, meteor impacts (influencing the landscape, adding new ressources) etc

Hiatus... Again

Greentings!
I spent a few hours today creating a video that was supposed to be my last upload before I have to leave town for some months (again, yes)... but my old computer gobbled it all up and now there's NOTHING left. So... this is it. I have to depart once more and leave you guys alone.
I hope you'll have a splendid time without me and that you'll still remember me when I finally return somewhen in March or April.

Bear-bye,
Greenbear

Chivalry's dead

So here's the story how I quit playing 'Chivalry - Medieval Warfare'.

I joined a server as an archer and took position by a cliff, so as to support my advancing infantry team mates. One of them approaches from behind and kicks me in the back, sending me flying into the abyss. I die and it is counted as a team kill... for myself. Yes, I just killed myself and got a negative score for it. The other player then proceeds to initiate a kickvote against me. Everyone else sees my magnificently high team kill rate and kicks me out of the game while said other player mocks me. Just lovely!

A PC's Lament

Greentings, everybody!
I have returned to my home city and managed to move house quite well. However, same cannot be said about my computer. As it turned out, it broke down somewhere in the middle of the moving process. I planned on getting a new PC, anyway... but not like this. Never like this!
So since I'm currently broke (as usual), I will remain unable to upload new content until I can afford a new computer. My personal guess would be somewhen in September.
I am very sorry for all the disappointing news lately and hope you guys will stay tuned for further news!

A Farewell of Sorts

My dear subscribers, followers, viewers and friends! I have some rather bad news regarding my channel.

As most of you know, I’m in the middle of an apprenticeship and this requires me to go and visit a special kind of school… however this school is very far away from where I live, so my employers decided to send me there only twice… but for a period of two consecutive months! I will be living there in a boarding school with food, bed, education and entertainment provided. Pretty neat, huh? However, the downside of it is that I cannot take my PC with me and record/edit my Let’s Plays… and I barely have any spare episodes left due to all the stressful preparations over the last month or so. What I’m trying to say here is… in all likelihood you won’t be hearing from me until end of July. Yeah, I know, that sucks.

There’s one tiny glimmer of hope that might convince you not to click the unsubscribe button and turn your back on me, though: since I don’t have to pay for anything while being over at the school, I can save up a lot of money… and maybe use it later to buy a proper new PC with which I can record newer games, edit and upload faster and produce videos of greater quality! How about that?

I know it’s a lot to ask, but I hope you guys will forgive me and wait for my return in summer. Until then: big hugs from your old green bear!

Greenbear vs. Plants vs. Zombies

As some of you have probably witnessed, I was gone for about two weeks at the beginning of April, celebrating my birthday by going on vacation. I had some episodes prepared with me on a stick so that I could upload one every other day to keep you fellows entertained, but sadly the promise of an existing internet connection turned out to be nothing but wishful dreams.

So there I was, on my birthday in a new location and without the possibility to give in to my online addiction. What did I do to pass the time? I played the only game available on my girlfriend’s laptop: Plants vs. Zombies. 

And what can I say? It wasn’t all that bad. I played it quite a lot and soon started to get a hang of it, learned the stats of all my plants, worked towards achievements and hated the music for its catchiness. I beat the game once, but admittedly turned my back on it the moment internet connectivity was established. Such a silly, pointless game, but still… thank you, Plants vs. Zombies! Thank you for entertaining me for otherwise I would have been forced to face real life on my birthday…

And the Oscar goes to…

Well, not me for losing my Oscar bets this year. You probably remember from last year that I upload my predictions via YouTube and challenge viewers to contradict me. Two users did so… and I lost against both of them. However, the small number of challengers can be seen as  a good sign. And really, while I was right about only half of my picks last year, I made it to an incredible 16 out of 24 categories properly predicted this time around! That’s 2/3, guys! I’m rather content, honestly.

However, a bet’s a bet and I agreed upon certain punishments should I lose. Let’s take a quick look at all the categories and where I was wrong:

Best Picture: "12 Years a Slave"

Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, "Dallas Buyers Club"

Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o, "12 Years a Slave"

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, "Gravity"

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, "Dallas Buyers Club"

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, "Blue Jasmine"

Best Original Screenplay: "Her"

Best Adapted Screenplay: "12 Years a Slave"

Best Animated Feature: "Frozen"

Best Foreign Feature: “The Hunt”

            Instead: “The Great Beauty”

Best Visual Effects: "Gravity"

Best Cinematography: "Gravity"

Best Costume Design: "American Hustle"

            Instead: “The Great Gatsby”

Best Documentary Feature: "The Act of Killing"

            Instead: “20 Feet from Stardom”

Best Documentary Short: "The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life"

Best Film Editing: "Gravity"

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa"

            Instead: “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Music (Original Score): "Gravity"

Best Music (Original Song): "The Moon Song" from "Her"

            Instead: “Let it Go” (“Frozen”)

Best Production Design: "Her"

            Instead: “The Great Gatsby”

Best Short Film, Animated: "Get a Horse!"

            Instead: “Mr. Hublot”

Best Short Film, Live Action: "The Voorman Problem"

            Instead: “Helium”

Best Sound Editing: "Gravity"

Best Sound Mixing: "Gravity"

And here are my two challengers:

CnAFilmsandAnimation:      Best Foreign Feature: “The Great Beauty”

                                               Best Makeup and Hairstyling: “Dallas Buyers Club”

                                               Punishment: I have to do a haiku about them

Seargent363:                         Best Picture: “American Hustle”

Best Foreign Feature: “The Great Beauty”

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling: “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Music (Original Song): "Let it Go" (“Frozen”)

Best Production Design: “The Great Gatsby”

Best Short Film (Animated): “Mr. Hublot”

Best Original Screenplay: “American Hustle”

Punishment: I have to sing and dance to ‘The Gummy Bear Song’

So expect some more random awkwardness in future videos!

My Thoughts on: 'The Wolf Among Us Episode 2: Smoke & Mirrors'

Spoilers ahead!

So the second episode of TellTale’s magnificent cartoon point-n-click adventure ‘The Wolf Among Us’ has been out for some time now and I finally got around to watching an LP of it. While the player’s decision has a heavy influence on the developing story, I’m assuming certain aspects remain the same. Still, I will focus on the conclusions in the very end of the episode and throw out a few wild guesses as to what they might mean.

As you know from watching the second episode (or will know now from ignoring my spoiler alert), the body of Snow White found at the end of the first episode is actually not Snow herself, but instead some random troll lady covered in magic (aka ‘glamour’) to make her look like Snow. The murder site is quickly discovered, where someone seemed to have re-enacted the classic fairy tale from the brothers Grimm, with a half-eaten apple, a pretty dress and flower petals all around symbolising the glass coffin. Serving as the big cliff-hanger for the episode, the sheriff discovers an envelope below the bloodied bed with several pictures of ‘Snow’ sleeping on the still-clean bed and then one photograph of Crane (a sort of mayor of all the fabled characters and boss of Snow White) groping under the sleeping Snow’s skirts with a disgusting smile. Crane himself watches the discovery via the magic mirror and proceeds to smash it. End of episode 2.

Now of course the case is clear as day, right? Crane had a thing for Snow, but being the weirdo he is, he paid a hooker to act out his fantasies with her instead… until he murdered her in rage for not being the right woman. Someone needs to stop him!

But hold on! Ignoring our meta-knowledge that they probably won’t reveal the true killer at the end of the second episode (of 5 or 6 parts all in all)… why would Crane bother to sever the troll’s head, dump it in front of the apartments, proceed to hide the body in a river but forget to clean the room? Why on earth would he leave some pictures of him at the crime scene? And for that matter: who took the picture of him getting intimate with the troll? Certainly not himself.

Another thing that bothered me was the ‘coffin’. The troll was asked to lie down on the bed, surrounded by flower petals. Apparently that’s where she died, given all the blood on the bed. However, the circle of petals was only broken at the foot of the bed, indicating that the body was dragged off here. But how could someone (especially someone as weak as Crane) chop a woman’s head off without her struggling and thereby destroying the ring of petals? Wouldn’t the bed or mattress be destroyed where her neck was if he had chopped through her throat? Or did he drug her somehow just to go through a careful operation removing her head without touching the surroundings?

Also: if Beauty was working as front clerk while the troll got slaughtered in the hotel, why didn’t she recognise Crane when he walked in? Was Crane using glamour to hide himself, as well? And why would he want to draw attention to Fabletown by dropping severed heads on his own doorstep, just to bail the sheriff out with more expensive glamour?

I’d say the pictures are just a distraction. Fair enough, Crane’s a pervert and has a thing for Snow White. Doesn’t really prove anything. However, someone murdering fables and then conveniently leaving proof at the site of the murder all pointing at Crane so as to send the sheriff on the wrong track sounds like a good strategy. What appeared to me as the single-most valuable piece of information we got in this episode was TJ’s observation of one person dumping the troll’s body in the river and then ordering a possibly second person to suppress their laughter. I can’t really think of any classical fairy tale characters whose laughter is their prime feature, maybe apart from Rumpelstiltskin. So this shall be my guess until I get more information in the third episode. Any objections?

Gothic Hiatus and New LP

As promised in one of my early channel posts this year, I am working on a new Let's Play, with the first episode going online tomorrow. It's an adventure made by Telltale, but not the title you're thinking of right now.
Also, I might be taking a small hiatus from my Gothic LP. Despite the Gothic franchise still being one of my favourite video games series, I never really liked the last third of any of Piranha Bytes' games. I tried a few recording and they all ended with me giving up dead as a doorknob and completely frustrated. I might have to spend a few training days off screen once more before I'm ready to continue with the main story line.

'Tis the Season...

... to be quite stressed out.

Work's hell for me at the moment. You (hopefully) noticed that I haven't been uploading anything in the last few days/weeks. I do still have a few spare episodes lying around, it's just that I'm never at home. Lately it has been all 'Sleep - Work - Buy Presents - Sleep - Work - Meet Friends - Sleep - Work - More Bloody Presents'. I was planning on a special Christmas episode with me doing something traditional christmas-y in my usual awkward slowliness, but this project shared the same fate as my planned scary video for Halloween... meaning it has been delayed for next year, of course!

However, things will get back to normal somewhen after the holidays. Hope you're alright and have a great time! Merry Christmas!

Videos vs. Melancholy

I've had a pretty awful day. Watching funny videos on YouTube sometimes helps, but to be honest, my list of favourited videos that I keep consulting in such moments is rather small. So do you guys have any funny favourite videos that always cheer you up? If so, send them to me via YouTube or send me a link to cptgreenbear@gmail.com!

November News

Some news regarding my channel:

1. I'm currently on vacation far from home. I was smart enough this time around to prepare some episodes and take them with me so as to upload them from my new location. However, I wasn't smart enough to take the correct episodes with me, so Gothic -72- will be skipped in favour of uploading the next one in line. No worries, that video will get online as soon as possible and nothing significant happened in those 15 minutes other than me trading items.

2. Therefore, there will only be an upload every other day or so... and no thumbnails for now. You may still contact me via comments, PM, Gmail, Twitter etc. In fact, please do so. I have a lot of spare time on my hands right now =P.

3. YouTube is changing its policy once more. The change comes with a heavy emphasis on copyright and apparently my partner programme (TGN) is quite anxious about it. Over the last few months I kept receiving copyright complaints regarding my Saboteur LP. I deleted the first few episodes in question and tried to summarise their content in the next videos' descriptions, but the complaints keep coming and I fear I would have to delete the majority of this LP eventually, anyway. Since I always thought that the Saboteur LP was my lamest one I am not sad to announce that I will now delete the entire bloody thing to avoid any future hustle with YT and EA.

Hope you people are alright.

Help?

I've got a little problem on my hands that I cannot solve on my own. Maybe one of you knows a solution?

As mentioned before, I got auto-connected with Google+ some months ago. G+ was kind enough to create a brand-new page for me that is essentially just mirroring everything I do on YouTube. Owner of this page is my old G+ account that I created with my real name back in the day when Google+ came out and some friends thought we should give it a chance. Since then, I haven't used G+ for anything. The account is just lying around like dead meat and same goes for the auto-created CptGreenbear-page.
Of course I could just ignore this waste of webspace, if it wasn't for the fact that this forced marriage significantly messed up my YouTube website appearance. My inbox was hidden in favour of half a dozen G+ features that I don't need or want.

Using Google (oh the irony!) to search for a solution shows me that I'm not the only one with this problem. 
The simple answer: disconnect the page via YouTube settings.
The tricky answer: this option only works within 14 days of the forced connection. Afterwards, it is permanent. This, of course, is nowhere mentioned on any Google support pages. Oh, and did you ever try to contact the Google support? They state on their feedback side that while they cannot answer any requests personally, they will make sure to mind the feedback in future updates. Yeah. Right...

I then thought I might be able to just delete the page itself. You know, since I'm the owner of the page and all. But no, G+ tells me (and this must have caused quite some laughter at their evil headquarter) to either delete my YouTube account or disconnect it first. The latter being a link that leads me nowhere.

So this is where I am now. I really want to get rid of this connection without sacrificing my YouTube account. I own the YouTube website, the Google+ CptGreenbear page and the old G+ account that funtions as owner to said page. The latter two may get deleted for all I care. Any ideas? Let me know on YouTube or via cptgreenbear@gmail.com!

No Conclusions

At the end of my Risen 2 LP, I told you about a special video I planned with my personal conclusion and review of the entire game. What I was planning was something like the 'Movie Sins' videos, with me listing all the things I liked and disliked about Risen 2 - Dark Waters and supporting my points with video material running in the background. While my spoken text was quickly done, it was quite difficult to collect video material for all the features mentioned. To be a bit more precise, I have been working on this for several weeks already and feel I'm not even half-way through. Now, with my work and the according lack of spare time, I really started dreading this project of mine, especially in regards to the fact that Risen 2 has been a rather unpopular LP of mine and I wasn't very happy with the game myself, either. Now who would like to hear me point out every single bug, glitch and logical error of a game you have already watched me play for over one-and-a-half years? You, sir? I don't think so. And where is the point in working on a video I do not enjoy making and you guys won't enjoy watching when I already have little time to do the videos I/you actually care about?
So why am I writing this and not just forget about my promised video? The main conflict for me here is this: on the one hand, I would like to show you as much of the game as possible (good and bad) and help you make up your mind about it. On the other hand, a video so full of negativity will only pull you down, would always be subjective and still fail to actually summarise the game in its entirety. And who didn't get a chance to make up their minds about this game after my overly lengthy LP, anyway?
So I decided this: I will abstain from adding individual reviews at the end of each LP and instead just state whether I liked the game or not and name the main positive and negative points. Should be sufficient to clear things up, right?

Availability

With me being really busy lately I'm even more forgetful about the messages I have to reply to on YouTube. And it has been pretty bad before, I can tell you! So sorry to all those still waiting for my answer. The thing is that YouTube has one of the worst messaging systems I've encountered so far and it got even worse lately with my new (involuntary) linking to Google+. I do not get any visible updates for new messages or comments at all anymore on the YouTube standard page, but have to click through three subcategories before seeing whether someone messaged me. Also, there's no option to mark messages as 'unread', so I have to reply at once... or never! It's ridiculous, really.
So please: if you want to ask me anything or want to discuss a game or just feel in the mood to chat, refer to this mail address instead: cptgreenbear@gmail.com
Or, if you want to stalk me, check out my (rarely used) Twitter account: https://twitter.com/CptGreenbear

Working Bear

'Look at that lazy bear! Aspiring to be a proper LPer, but taking break after break from YouTube, not uploading anything ever! I WANT MA MONEY BACK!'

I probably just quoted about 90% of my viewers and you're right. Here's my apology to you. As you might know, I have been unemployed for quite some time, so I was able to upload every day despite my really crappy Internet speed. This has changed now. I finally found employment and am now working in an awesome book store, selling literature and sometimes actually talking English with tourists! This is amazing for me and quite exciting, but also incredibly exhausting after my long time of doing nothing at all. Plus even if I was in the mood to work on my YouTube apperarance after a long shift of dealing with customers, I wouldn't be able to... because an upload usually takes several hours, which I simply do not have. So here are the three options I have right now:

Option 1: I start an upload when going to work, which means my PC will run the entire day with no one around, wasting energy and possibly dying in the heat for nothing.

Option 2: I start an upload right when I come home, giving you the usual daily videos but in the late evening (around 10pm GMT or later), leading to me being unable to blow off some steam in online games because my ping is going through the bloody roof.

Option 3: Alternating uploads either in the morning or the evening right before and after work, which is really confusing and messy, so there will be days when I just forget about it.

Best one is probably number 3, however, there won't be any more uploads for a few more days. Reason being that I haven't edited any new episodes yet because of the same lack of time and energy.

Sorry about all the inconvenience. Veriax is still doing great LPs, so you might want to watch him while waiting for me to grow up and get used to work life.

Chivalry Noob Guide for Archers

Some years ago I was dreaming about an online FPS that involved medieval combat, including melee weapons as well as ranged ones, soldiers trying to get into a castle and others trying to defend it by all means necessary. Kind of like in Mount & Blade but with real players working together.

Now I found something very similar to this idea in ‘Chivalry – Medieval Warfare’. The game features a small amount of maps and game modes, as well as four different basic classes with a variety of weapons that can be unlocked by killing enemies. The tutorial is great and introduces all the classes, but still I decided to mainly focus on the only ranged class available and while there are both bows and crossbows in this game and I’m very well aware of the major difference between these two, all ranged combatants are always referred to as ‘archers’. I will now attempt to give you a brief summary of my experiences as a crossbowman in ‘Chivalry’.

 

Yep, I’m a crossbowman, alright. They are the weakest unit in the entire game in regards to their defence. They can be one-hit-killed even without head-shots, so it is essential to stay unnoticed, move around a lot and be aware of one’s surroundings. Bow users are just as vulnerable to attacks, but their great advantage is that they can move around while notching a new arrow (aka ‘reloading’), whereas the crossbowmen must stand absolutely still for the one or two seconds it takes to reload their crossbow. They also lose sight of their surroundings during this time, since they have to look down, so during the reloading process they are an easy target for any class. Best way to act for a crossbowman is to aim, crouch, fire at a target, then run for cover and reload. If an enemy is coming for you and is already closer than 15 metres, reloading becomes pointless and one should try to block all hits with the sidearm (short sword or dagger) and retreat, hoping for some team member to stop by and help out. Just turning and running away works only if an enemy knight or archer pursues you, since both the vanguard and the man-at-arms class have a jump attack that lets them kill an escaping target easily.

The great advantage of crossbowmen over bow users is their increased damage and range. Their bolts fly further before dropping/arching and they can therefore stay further behind the battle line, avoiding melee combat and bow men alike.

There is one more small detail making a crossbowman’s life unpleasant and I’m not yet sure whether it’s a bug or an intended feature. If a crossbowman gets hit by a ranged weapon (arrow, bolt or throwing weapons), there’s a certain chance of losing the already notched bolt in their own weapon, causing the character to automatically reload (which, as stated before, makes them completely vulnerable). It doesn’t happen all the time, but veteran fighters will use this to their advantage when approaching a ranged combatant, throwing their knives or axes at them, thereby stunning them into utter uselessness just to finish them off in close combat.

Speaking of melee, the ranged fighters are (obviously) quite useless in close combat. Their short swords or daggers have a much smaller range than any other weapon in the game, so exact timing and a whole lot of luck are required to take down any enemy. Best way of fighting in close combat is to support other ‘proper’ melee fighters by flanking enemies and casually stabbing at them.

You have probably noticed by now that the way of the archer is not the most honourable one and indeed basically any other class user hates archers. Few rounds go by without anyone complaining about ranged fighters and their noob way of fighting. Interestingly enough, some users claim all archers are over-powered and should be downgraded during the next patch of the game while others are sure that archers are way too weak for the game and should be removed because they don’t pose a threat but rather a nuisance. As an archer, one is constantly the target of insults, team kills and general hatred, while trying to cope with the classes actual problems (especially on laggy servers aiming is downright impossible while blindly slashing at enemies still works).

 

A good feature to help out troubled archers is the enabled kick vote option. One can initiate a vote to exclude any given player from the current game and all players will see a small pop-up indicating the player’s team kills in percentage as well as their idle time. This helps a lot to decide whether the user in question was misbehaving and is a burden to its team or whether the initiator of the kick vote was just frustrated or even confused him with someone else.

 

The bad thing about this type of kick vote is that people just glance at the percentage of team damage said player has committed so far and then decide about their fate. Let me use an example that happened to me not too long ago: I entered an ongoing game, ran forward close to the battle line and shot a few bolts at some enemy archers without hitting anything. Then I noticed multiple enemy melees pushing through our lines to the right, so I aimed at them, waiting for my own comrades to either step away or perish so that I had free line of sight. When this was the case, one of our own knights stepped in front of me, facing towards me and not the enemy, crouching down so as to be exactly in my way when aiming. This happened quite fast, so my one and only shot at the advancing troops hit him instead. Knights don’t die from a single shot to the chest and though I was sorry for the team damage, I decided not to apologise for it, since it was clearly his fault for trying to block me. However, once the enemies were down, he initiated a kick vote against me and then immediately started slashing at me with his sword. Since my team damage was stated at 100% at this point, I was kicked so quickly I couldn’t even explain my situation.

 

This was not an isolated incident. Melee troops often attack archers from their own team, claiming poor excuses like ‘They were standing in my way!’ or ‘He shot at me once!’. However, in a game where team damage is not only always enabled but an essential part of fighting and approaching opponents more tactical, the ill logic of their behaviour becomes obvious.

 

A unique gadget crossbowmen possess to benefit the team is their shield. It’s too heavy to carry around much, but one can place it anywhere and then hide behind it to reload and recover from wounds. Especially in the game mode ‘Protect the King’, this item becomes invaluable, shielding the king from enemy archers. Sadly, the crossbowman’s shield is also one of the most buggy items in the game, often crashing into nothingness when touched, so one mustn’t come too close when hiding behind it.

 

All in all, I’m sure there are lots of features that could be improved about the archer class in ‘Chivalry’, though the greatest downside of the game is still the other users’ inability to work together and appreciate class diversity.

Break

I'm rather fed up with certain things regarding YouTube, LPing and other matters, so I will take some time off.

Thumbnails

A while ago I wrote a lengthy article here about my struggles to become a YouTube partner. When I was done with that several-pages-long piece of work, I realised that it was wholely about me whining and held no entertaining content whatsoever, so I deleted it again. Plus I actually did gain partnership shortly after. However, becoming a partner granted me only few of the promised advantages, the most important of them being: individual thumbails.
Seriously, people: this was the main reason for me to become a partner and it was absolutely worth it! Creating interesting, personalised thumbnails for each video has become one of my new favourite things related to my LPing career. It's so satisfying to have a little piece of art smile back at you, advertising for your videos instead of the random convoluted piles of mess YouTube offers non-partners as thumbnails. It looks a lot more professional (though the content of the videos certainly didn't improve) and attracts viewers much more efficiently than any exciting title ever could.
However, as Spiderman's uncle said: with great power comes great responsibility. Theoretically I could create any thumbnail I wanted. Of course, what comes to mind first are half-naked women pushing their various humps into the viewers face. Research has shown that YouTube viewers do indeed instinctively click on these videos more often than on others. And in fact I have done just that... twice now. Once for a Thief 2 episode named 'Hookers' because of a supposed hooker I knocked unconscious and then once more for my Gothic Erotica video, where I featured the in-game picture of a half-naked lady. So you see that - though I had the opportunity - I used this cheap trick only on videos where the thumbnail accurately descripted the content of the video... and not just to generate views and distract from my lack of humour/entertainment/general purpose in life. Don't want to point fingers here, but since you're all familiar with YouTube there's a good chance you know who I'm talking about. Gosh, how I dislike that guy. Goes to show that the path to the dark side is way easier to travel.
Another tricky thing about thumbnails is that you can't just march off into the depths of the Internet, grab any picture you like, drag it back home and then alter it for your purposes in order to create some fancy thumbnail. Generally speaking, EVERY picture is protected by copyright. Using it without the explicit permission of the owner is actually a crime. There are some ways around this problem, however. Of course you could just ask an artsy friend to draw all the thumbnails for you or give you permission to use their work and attribute them in the video for it. If you have an artsy friend, of course. And if they are willing to work for your benefit just like that. OR you could check out the huge database of royalty-free images available at various websites (wikimedia is my personal favourite so far). You still have to check every image you find there for its specific copyright status, but most of them are free to download, alter, distribute etc without having to credit anyone or being worried that the NSA sells your criminal arse to the local authorities. Or, in turn, uploads your private pictures on their website without your consent...

Risen 2 Rises!

Good news everybody!

Nevermind that last blog entry! Turns out the simplest solution was the most effective one: just deleting and re-installing the game fixed the corrupted files. Huzzah!