Dark Wizard (the end)
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For the few who are curious about how it came about, this Dark Wizard Let's Play was kind of a fluke. Basically, I wanted to play the game again, but decided to involve others in naming the units. People wanted to know how their units were doing, so I decided to make an LP of it.
It started at the Mabinogi World Forum, but I also brought it to the Ragnarok Wisdom Forum. However, the MW forum underwent an upgrade, and many of the users did not stick around after that. Then, the RW forums died completely. After that, I kind of abandoned the idea, but then my friend Rikkuni pushed me to continue it, all the way to the bitter end. So I ended up posting it here, instead. It's a bit sad to think that the original players probably didn't see it, but that's the nature of life, isn't it?
Regardless, I learned a lot (mostly that LPs are hard work. I probably won't be doing something like this again any time soon). I like to think that at least a few people learned about a good old game, too. I mean, Dark Wizard isn't a great game, but it's still fun to me, even though a lot of it is nostalgia. I recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind old-school graphics and who likes strategy games. Since it lacks permadeath that Fire Emblem etc. have, it's not a hard game, either.
For those curious on the technical aspects. I used Fusion364 emulator to play the game. Every time I played, I used the emulator's built-in recorder to record the game, making more or less a video for every in-game turn. Then, I'd convert the video into a lossless avi using Virtualdub and the Lagarith lossless codec, just because seeking using the original encoding is very slow. Then, with the new video, I used Virtualdub, paused on the frame I wanted to capture, and used the "copy frame to keyboard" option (hotkey control +1) and then pasted the frame into whatever image editor and saved the image as a png.
Originally, I had used the emulator's screenshot feature, but it wasn't very efficient since I had to play the game very slowly and often missed taking pictures that I wanted. Taking a video was much better, and, in the end, actually faster since I didn't have to worry about pausing the game while playing it. I could just play the game naturally without worrying about taking screenshots or missing good shots.
Anyway, after I gathered enough screenshots for an update, I used Irfanview's batch processing to remove the black bars that the game has on the top and bottom. Open the batch function in Irfanview (hotkey B), and then select batch conversion, set it to png output, and click the advanced option and choose "auto crop borders" and then run the batch. Irfanview is also useful for batch renaming files. You just reorder them in the "input files" window
After this, I would go through the screenshots again, removing the ones that weren't interesting, or that I forgot why I took a screenshot of it, or that didn't fit all that well into the story. At this point, I also cropped down the dialogue-only images and combined the multi-page dialogues.
Gifs were easy to make with virtualdub. Use the half arrows (tool tip "mark in" and "mark out") to specify the start and end point of the animation. Then Video -> Filters and Add a "null transform" then click "Cropping" and the cropping window pops up. Navigate the video to where the planned animation is, and then drag the window to center on the animation until all you see is what you want to see in your gif. The excess will get cropped off in the formation of the gif. Close out of these windows and make sure your Compression settings is on the default (not Lagarith) and then File -> Export -> Animated gif and presto, you've got a gif.
The gif from Virtualdub tends to have a large filesize, so I used Trout's Gif Optimizer to reduce the filesize.
In making the video clips, I used virtualdub (obviously). I'm not sure if this is the best method, honestly, but I used "mark in" and "mark out" as in making the gif to set the clip I wanted from the main recording, Then I did File -> Start Frame server, saved the file it prompts you to make to the desktop, then drag and dropped this file into zarx264gui program and used the middle option. It then makes the video for you. You can turn off the frame server after it's done. zarx264gui was designed for anime music videos, but I found it worked fine for me.
All these programs are freeware or donationware so you can do it too! It seems complicated but it's really not that hard. I'm not really in the mood to find the links to all the programs, but I hope the name is enough to find them if you're interested.
If you wanted to play Dark Wizard yourself, just google "Dark Wizard Sega" and you should be able to find it from any rom hosts that show up.
I haven't been able to find a game like it. Brigandine on the PSX is vaguely close (emphasis on vaguely. It has hex-based combat, at least). The Battle for Wesnoth looks similar (also hex-based), but I haven't yet played it to make an assessment. The Fire Emblem games are also kind of close (but not hex-based), but I never found myself really liking them. Shining Force are good, too, but have to watch out for the action rpg variants. Fantasy General is also supposed to be close, but like Wesnoth, I've yet to play it.
For the few who are curious about how it came about, this Dark Wizard Let's Play was kind of a fluke. Basically, I wanted to play the game again, but decided to involve others in naming the units. People wanted to know how their units were doing, so I decided to make an LP of it.
It started at the Mabinogi World Forum, but I also brought it to the Ragnarok Wisdom Forum. However, the MW forum underwent an upgrade, and many of the users did not stick around after that. Then, the RW forums died completely. After that, I kind of abandoned the idea, but then my friend Rikkuni pushed me to continue it, all the way to the bitter end. So I ended up posting it here, instead. It's a bit sad to think that the original players probably didn't see it, but that's the nature of life, isn't it?
Regardless, I learned a lot (mostly that LPs are hard work. I probably won't be doing something like this again any time soon). I like to think that at least a few people learned about a good old game, too. I mean, Dark Wizard isn't a great game, but it's still fun to me, even though a lot of it is nostalgia. I recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind old-school graphics and who likes strategy games. Since it lacks permadeath that Fire Emblem etc. have, it's not a hard game, either.
For those curious on the technical aspects. I used Fusion364 emulator to play the game. Every time I played, I used the emulator's built-in recorder to record the game, making more or less a video for every in-game turn. Then, I'd convert the video into a lossless avi using Virtualdub and the Lagarith lossless codec, just because seeking using the original encoding is very slow. Then, with the new video, I used Virtualdub, paused on the frame I wanted to capture, and used the "copy frame to keyboard" option (hotkey control +1) and then pasted the frame into whatever image editor and saved the image as a png.
Originally, I had used the emulator's screenshot feature, but it wasn't very efficient since I had to play the game very slowly and often missed taking pictures that I wanted. Taking a video was much better, and, in the end, actually faster since I didn't have to worry about pausing the game while playing it. I could just play the game naturally without worrying about taking screenshots or missing good shots.
Anyway, after I gathered enough screenshots for an update, I used Irfanview's batch processing to remove the black bars that the game has on the top and bottom. Open the batch function in Irfanview (hotkey B), and then select batch conversion, set it to png output, and click the advanced option and choose "auto crop borders" and then run the batch. Irfanview is also useful for batch renaming files. You just reorder them in the "input files" window
After this, I would go through the screenshots again, removing the ones that weren't interesting, or that I forgot why I took a screenshot of it, or that didn't fit all that well into the story. At this point, I also cropped down the dialogue-only images and combined the multi-page dialogues.
Gifs were easy to make with virtualdub. Use the half arrows (tool tip "mark in" and "mark out") to specify the start and end point of the animation. Then Video -> Filters and Add a "null transform" then click "Cropping" and the cropping window pops up. Navigate the video to where the planned animation is, and then drag the window to center on the animation until all you see is what you want to see in your gif. The excess will get cropped off in the formation of the gif. Close out of these windows and make sure your Compression settings is on the default (not Lagarith) and then File -> Export -> Animated gif and presto, you've got a gif.
The gif from Virtualdub tends to have a large filesize, so I used Trout's Gif Optimizer to reduce the filesize.
In making the video clips, I used virtualdub (obviously). I'm not sure if this is the best method, honestly, but I used "mark in" and "mark out" as in making the gif to set the clip I wanted from the main recording, Then I did File -> Start Frame server, saved the file it prompts you to make to the desktop, then drag and dropped this file into zarx264gui program and used the middle option. It then makes the video for you. You can turn off the frame server after it's done. zarx264gui was designed for anime music videos, but I found it worked fine for me.
All these programs are freeware or donationware so you can do it too! It seems complicated but it's really not that hard. I'm not really in the mood to find the links to all the programs, but I hope the name is enough to find them if you're interested.
If you wanted to play Dark Wizard yourself, just google "Dark Wizard Sega" and you should be able to find it from any rom hosts that show up.
I haven't been able to find a game like it. Brigandine on the PSX is vaguely close (emphasis on vaguely. It has hex-based combat, at least). The Battle for Wesnoth looks similar (also hex-based), but I haven't yet played it to make an assessment. The Fire Emblem games are also kind of close (but not hex-based), but I never found myself really liking them. Shining Force are good, too, but have to watch out for the action rpg variants. Fantasy General is also supposed to be close, but like Wesnoth, I've yet to play it.
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