Invisible character - animation oversight for 30 fps video and streaming

[Cactusblah]

When you take damage or use the phase locket, half of the animation frames are a completely invisible character. It's every other frame, so half the time it syncs up with every other frame not shown for a 30 fps video or stream. Basically, the character seems completely invisible half the time on 30 fps video. Considering that this game will probably be at the next AGDQ for a speedrun, I think it's important to change this so that viewers aren't confused.

[JPU]

I feel like more people would have an issue with the game being downgraded to 30 FPS rather than it not being able to be recorded/streamed absolutely perfectly.

Youtube is implementing 60 FPS video soon anyway, which would fix this issue while improving Youtube at the same time.

[Cactusblah]

Well of course, I switched my stream to 60 fps because of this. Lower qualities on the GDQ stream other than "source" are 30 fps by default, though.

[JPU]

Well, I feel like downgrading the FPS would be a lot to ask of the devs, considering they've worked on this for a long time, and that there are lots of other issues with the game that need to be solved, and that they're only like six guys.

Besides, if you're talking about a stream like GDQ full of gamers familiar with these kind of games, it likely wouldn't cause a lot of confusion.

[Cactusblah]

Woah, I never suggested that they should downgrade the game to 30 fps, that would be ridiculous. A simple solution would be to change the animation when taking damage and using the phase locket so that it's not 100% transparent between frames, or make it happen every three frames instead of every two.

[Doriphor]

Or just add an option to switch between flickering transparency and real transparency?

[YinYin]

True - but to aid the viewers once speedrunning this live goes popular a little graphic option to switch between flashing and transparency would be good.
Cause it's really confusing to see the character vanish for quite a while without the player panicking.

[JimZiii]

i'll rather have an invisible character for a few seconds while watching a stream and having it look and feel like it should, an 8 bit game, when i play it myself than have a perfect stream and something thats not what it was supposed to be when playing it myself because of streaming. sure an option to change between the both modes i'm ok with but changing it all the way i feel would upset alot more people than whats upset right now.

[WhiteZero]

This is pretty typical for any NES-style game where you character blinks. You see it on steams/YouTube videos all the time. So if anything, it makes the game more authentic to the NES aesthetic. :D

[JimZiii]

yea thats the reason they did it like that, thats a big part in what i meant with look and feel like an 8bit game :) because without it, it wouldn't feel like a old NES game

[RicePrezPip]

It's happening to me in-game. I can't beat the final boss because I keep turning invisible.

[Major Gnuisance]

That's the streamer's problem to solve.

You should probably set up your streaming pipeline so that each final frame of the 30Hz stream is a combination of two frames of the original 60Hz source, instead of simply dropping every other frame.

[Major Gnuisance]

Originally posted by RobotPrezPip:

It's happening to me in-game. I can't beat the final boss because I keep turning invisible.

That's odd.

What's you setup like? Are you playing it using some kind of video streaming, like Steam's in-home streaming?

[JimZiii]

Originally posted by RobotPrezPip:

It's happening to me in-game. I can't beat the final boss because I keep turning invisible.

sounds really strange, this is a problem when streaming not playing the game ordinary on your monitor.

[YCG]

Hey guys,

I agree that this is an issue! We want to remove any kind of abnormalities for broadcasters, streamers, or someone that just happens to have slightly different hardware!

We're planning our next mini-big-update to include a "record friendly" video option which would change these flicker effects to instead use 50% opacity. The end effect is totally not NES-y, but will look pretty much the same and is far less frame reliant!

[JimZiii]

Originally posted by Yacht Club Games:

Hey guys,

I agree that this is an issue! We want to remove any kind of abnormalities for broadcasters, streamers, or someone that just happens to have slightly different hardware!

We're planning our next mini-big-update to include a "record friendly" video option which would change these flicker effects to instead use 50% opacity. The end effect is totally not NES-y, but will look pretty much the same and is far less frame reliant!

thats really kool, as long as i have the option to turn it off since i'm not streaming i'm satisfied