Production update 2020-08-25

Hello everyone!

Apologies for a slightly late update. I typically aim for Mondays, but it slipped my mind yesterday. Anyway! I got some stuff done this week. Let's go through it!

First, I recorded all of the video on Tuesday and Wednesday. My new setup is nice, although I will try to find more ways to reduce reverb for future recordings. In the meantime, I also finished up Kosmic's Mainline Mario Marathon edit, and started working on the edit of the Credits Warp video on Friday. Things started up a bit slow in the beginning, but the pace is picking up now.

I hit a pretty big roadblock when I got to explaining hammer brother manipulation, a new strategy that wasn't in Mitch's run but that is in Zikubi's. I had to go more in depth into RNG and hammer bros, and during that whole process, I realized that hammer bro behaviour was not exactly like I thought it was. This led me down a very deep rabbit hole, out of which I came back with the conclusion that my calculation for the odds was wrong and needed to be fixed. 

Basically, when a hammer bro is at a T intersection, I thought that because it couldn't go up, it would go either Left or Right when initially choosing up as its direction. However, I failed to account for two things: 1. it was actually Down and Right, not Left and Right, and 2. the direction the bro initially chooses to face, which is fairly random (as in, random in a fair manner), actually influences the odds much more than I thought. I won't go into all the details, but in short, the 1/4, 3/8, 3/8 scenario actually only happens 1/4 of the time. For the remaining 3/4, all three directions are split perfectly equally. This means that overall, the odds were 10/32 Left, 11/32 Down and 11/32 Right, NOT 3/8 Left, 1/4 Down and 3/8 Right.

After that was fixed, I actually started to require After Effects a lot more. This video will make heavy use of the program. I'm trying to avoid reusing exactly the same visuals as Dotsarecool/IsoFrieze used for his Retro Game Mechanics video on the Wrong Warp glitch, because those are so clear and well-made that it's very hard not to follow the same tracks.

I'm happy with how much I was able to get done since Friday. I'm at the 6-minute mark right now, although that's a little misleading since the entire run plays out in the first third of the video and the rest is spent explaining what the hell just happened.

Here's what the video progress is looking like right now:

• Script 100% done
• Recording 100% done
• Editing 31% done

So, as you can see, I'm making good progress! I'm entering the real thick of things now though, so it might not be smooth sailing to the end from here. Technically, I only have 9 minutes left to edit, but it's gonna be a tightly packed 9 minutes.

I might still be able to finish the video before the end of the month (or almost), but I don't think I'm going to be able to release it that early. My best guess right now would be around September 2-5 for a release date. I'll keep you guys updated as the date gets closer and I have a better idea of where I'm at.

I also made an announcement this week regarding advertisements on my channel. If you haven't seen it, in short, YouTube automatically added midroll ads to my videos even though I opted out of them in the past. By choosing not to use midrolls, I thought that I was trading off some revenue for increased watch time leading to more views, and that in the end, those two balanced each other out, but it turns out that I was wrong on both counts. It's not "some" revenue, it's "a whole lot of" revenue, and people still watch my videos for the same amount of time that they used to before. I debated the idea and came to the conclusion that by not making use of midrolls, the only loser in this scenario was myself. So, from now on, my channel will have midroll ads. Hopefully, this doesn't disrupt your viewing experience too much.

The response was, surprisingly to me, unanimously supportive, and it reinvigorated me. I have a hard time actually comprehending the size of my following, and the outpouring of support was greater than I would have ever expected. So, I'm more motivated than ever to bring everyone quality videos that entertain and educate thousands, or even millions of people.

Thank you to all my patrons, old and new, and have a great week!