Quality of gameplay videos

[Master]

Considering the amount of videos there were, think a good amount of commendation and respect is due to Jonster. Thank you for your efforts in getting the RayWiki channel and for linking to the Wiki itself.

[Hunchman801]

It took some time, but the result is certainly worth it!

Many thanks to RayCarrot, dr_st, Master, The Jonster and Haruka for their help with this. The links would still be broken if it weren't for you guys!

[RayCarrot]

I'm a bit late, but thanks a lot to everyone involved to help this get finished

[Steo]

Same here, thanks to everyone who helped get everything sorted and have the links up and running again!

[The Jonster]

I'm really late, but thanks to everyone who was involved! Big special thank you to Hunch, for giving me this opportunity to help, and to Haruka for allowing this to be possible by giving her permission to archive the videos in the first place! It was definitely a lot of work to be done, but we did it and I enjoyed being a part of this project.

[lyndo64]

I'm very very late, but congrats to everyone who helped to get those videos preserved!

[hoodlumsworld]

I just reverted some changes on the wiki that replaced the links to the RayWiki playlists with some of the original ones, which appear to be back online?

Like I said there, it took 5 people 4 years to replace all the links that died when the original channel was taken down without notice. Out of respect for their effort and to ensure we don't get another 4 years of dead links, we should agree on the approach first.

[RayCarrot]

Yeah Haruka did recently make some of her older videos public again and she is planning on redoing some of her older playthroughs. I however think that now that we have a dedicated channel for RayWiki that it'd be best to keep the links to those videos. It makes it more consistent, and also avoids situations like these in the future if she decides to private them again.

[Master]

As far as I know, RayWiki hosts the videos through agreement, so while I can understand the potential concern with plagiarism, this isn't the Wiki just taking the videos. It was done with permission and for the sake of preserving and providing information without issues of it being lost outside of its control.

As such I'm in agreement, we should probably stick to what's under Wiki control. Though honestly redoing the playthroughs isn't a bad shout, technology and hardware capabilities have come a long way, and I suspect redone videos will do a lot better quality-wise.

[RayCarrot]

Yeah it was in agreement with Haruka. She sent us all her original video files which we uploaded. She's also credited in all of the videos and I believe most of them have her watermark too.

In regards to the quality, yeah that's something I've been thinking about for a while too. A lot of these videos are recorded in very low quality, and some using older, more inaccurate, emulator versions. It would be nice if we could re-record some of these eventually, imo with nearest neighbor scaling for the older 2D games.

[Master]

Yeah, though I'm curious as to what our policy would be for recording playthroughs, I know our current quality framework for images tends to be for authenticity over inherent quality. So I imagine if we were to follow that approach, the preference would be to get clean captures over legitimate hardware rather than emulate.

[Hunchman801]

I wasn't even aware that some of the videos were back online, but I agree that it would be safer to keep the links to the RayWiki channel, as the videos were provided by Haruka, uploaded with her agreement and she was credited everywhere. Of course, it's probably fair to consult her anyway.

It's also true that a lot of them should be re-recorded in a higher quality, but that's a whole new project!

[The Jonster]

I wasn't even aware that some of the videos were back online, but I agree that it would be safer to keep the links to the RayWiki channel, as the videos were provided by Haruka, uploaded with her agreement and she was credited everywhere. Of course, it's probably fair to consult her anyway.

It's also true that a lot of them should be re-recorded in a higher quality, but that's a whole new project!

In fact, Haruka's channel has been active again since March. From what I've seen, most, if not all her videos have returned for the time being. But it's nice to have the ones on the Wiki's channel in case something happens again.

[Haruka]

I first want to apologise for the mess back then, it's a complicated story. There are two walkthroughs I have yet to bring them back online (Origins and Legends) but only once I manage to check one by one to update text descriptions. I'm actually surprised that even after all these years no one else carried on with the project of creating a video library of detailed Rayman gameplays.

My most recent project upon my return, aside promoting the fantranslation update of European Portuguese Rayman 2, consisted in a finished 100% walkthrough of Rayman 3's N-GAGE port given that by then this system's emulation only became possible very recently to record something with minimum quality standards (and less physical strain too). It's also the first Rayman walkthrough I recorded with Full HD image resolution.

The original walkthroughs of my channel are a product of their time. HD capture cards were a novelty and expensive equipment, videos took an insane amount of hard drive space and YouTube was even downgrading the image quality. Computers had a different hardware and some emulators either didn't exist or had a long path to walk to correct performance and graphical bugs.

I'm pondering the possibility of remaking a few of them, although I can't promise flawless gameplays (damageless, for example) like I managed in the past, they're quite laborious to record. It's a matter of future motivation.

[Haruka]

It's a double posting, but I take the chance to inform that all my Rayman videos are back to the channel. The recent rumours and leaks encouraged me to handle the Origins and Legends videos that are now again on public mode.

I'm already paying attention to the potential news in the incoming days. I can say I have a capture card that can help out for newer projects ...

[Hunchman801]

Great to hear that your historical channel might experience a revival! I look forward to it.

[Fifo]

That’s great to hear!

I can say I have a capture card that can help out for newer projects ...

What manufacturer/model, out of curiosity?

[Haruka]

Great to hear that your historical channel might experience a revival! I look forward to it.

When I brought it back in early 2025 I signed that return by uploading all at once a full Rayman 3 N-GAGE walkthrough because thankfully emulation has developed since my original recording attempt. My arm and neck muscles remember how bad it was that improvised setup, they begged me to stop that first version of the project . The N-GAGE version is fully catalogued in my channel, including the port's exclusive levels which are interesting technical solutions for the shrunk device screen.

I also created a full walkthrough of V2.0 European Portuguese fan-translation I did of Rayman 2: The Great Escape (PC), although I did more updates to the translation files afterwards. The videos are in better image quality than the English ones.

Although it wasn't originally planned as a walkthrough, I'm also finishing the last videos for the playlist of the European Portuguese fan-translation version of Rayman (PS1). There's the advantage of the image quality being better and no music glitches.

Other things I'm considering in medium-term are:

• Rayman Revolution - Featuring Full HD, widescreen ratio, HD Texture Pack, and French VA, maintaining English text. Emulation seems to have developed enough in order to fix performance issues. This allows to keep the original English videos for archival purposes.

• Rayman Origins: Enhanced Edition - Nintendo Switch 2's version unless a PC port is announced, entirely recorded in a capture card for the best image quality possible. This allows to keep the original PC walkthrough online also for legacy.

That’s great to hear!

I can say I have a capture card that can help out for newer projects ...

What manufacturer/model, out of curiosity?

I don't have an Elgato card but I read mixed reviews about their software for the device so I'm not sure if it justifies an "upgrade". The one I have is low-budget and it can be paired with either Bandicam or OBS software. The little tests I did, non-Rayman related, seem to prove that the card does its job correctly: