FA(F) and You. A series on how to play the best game ever

[Gowerly]

Right.

Following on from the Mentoring thread, but moving slightly off topic from it (so I won't fill it up with this), I would like to do a series on how to play FA(F) and would all of you to help me!
I know how to play the game, so I can start off on how things go and what they all mean (I have done a noob-cast already, with "This is your ACU, these are your resources, these are your upgrades"). However, I would love for you guys to:
- Give me suggestions on topics to cover.
- Suggest replays for me to cast and go into detail on the stratagies.
- Join me in casts and talk about the game!
I'm thinking on one cast every 2 weeks on this, on a weekday (I'm usually busy weekends at the moment) evening UK time.

Sound like a good idea?

[uberge3k]

One idea Pilot had was for a series of replays showing basic skills and various tactics; these would be built-into FAF in a "how to play" section - essentially building our own improved tutorial for FA. I had done the first basic-BO one (check the contributors section of the forum) but had stalled on the rest due to not being able to find anyone to help setup scenarios to "cast". Perhaps we could collaborate on that portion?

As for your livecast idea, I love it. I think it'd be a great addition to help new players, especially casting high-level games and describing what's going on. When I was first starting, watching these types of casts and reading walkthroughs of hypothetical situations was extremely helpful.

[pip]

Casting informational replays is a great way to explain how the game works.

Maybe the elive platform can be useful for that. It uses videos on youtube and the caster can comment the action going on. You can do live replays but it also stores teh replay on the site, for future viewers / listeners. So even replays already casted in french can be commented again in english for instance, or english replays already existing can be commented in german, etc...

http://www.elive.pro/en

Here is a Starcraft cast so that you can understand how it works with an english cast (most casts are in fench for now) :

http://www.elive.pro/en/watch/QQQVSpM8KgfO

[Gowerly]

Maybe.
I took a look and it doesn't offer me much that I don't already have with FMLE, so I will probably just stick with that (or move to Xsplit if I cast bigger games).

[pip]

Maybe.
I took a look and it doesn't offer me much that I don't already have with FMLE, so I will probably just stick with that (or move to Xsplit if I cast bigger games).

The benefit is mostly the fact that you don't need to upload anything. You just launch a video and comment, write stuff on the screen on the fly, very user friendly. But I believe that for an experienced caster, it's just a matter of saving time by skipping the upload aspect.

[Gowerly]

That and you need an existing video to comment. It sounds very convenient to commentate on existing casts, which is a great way for people to get started with doing this kind of thing (so I recommend it to all would-be casters!).

If quality is a problem, I will look into doing the day[9] route and having VoD quality and live quality casts. I would just need somewhere to upload the videos then.

[Ze_PilOt]

If you use youtube, it would be easier to integrate the video into the website and/or the lobby. Maybe other services allow the integration of a playlist too, have to check.

[Gowerly]

Wow that was staring me in the face. I forgot that they allowed for bigger videos now.

[Ze_PilOt]

Worst case scenario, we have 1 to of space available on the server...

[Gowerly]

First lesson will be on Tues/Weds.
I'm going to go and redo my original noobcasts.

Lesson one will be on:
- Introduction to RTS
- Introduction into FA
-- Game Objective
-- What the basic units are (ACU, Land, Air factories)
-- Differences between Supcom and Starcraft/C&C Style RTS games
- Demonstration of a basic game
- Introduction to FAF Lobby and Client (unless Zep decides it's not ready for that)

This should last 30 minutes to an hour.
I will do this one by myself, as it's a very basic one and even I know the basics