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sunshineandlyrics · 2 years ago

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I saw "LouisTom" aka 'All Of Those Voices' this evening. Just a mix of thoughts which contain some SPOILERS ..

I haven't been to the movie theatre for about 2 years. The last movie I saw was either Parasite or Mulan live action. Only Louis could entice me back to sit in a public room surrounded by strangers for over an hour.

I really loved the behind the scenes in the studio, Louis talking about music and sharing FITF with his band, and all the interactions with his team. Lottie's comments shows how much she admires and loves Louis. The more you hear about Louis, the more you admire him.

The parts when Louis was talking about his Mum, and around Louis performing Just Hold On on the Xfactor were really hard for me. And Grandpa bless his heart.

Theo Hutchcraft really looks like a cool Vampire.

Oli is a gem. The most understanding friend and goofball mate anyone could ever want. I get why Louis has Oli with him all the time.

Mark Tomlinson quoted Louis saying something of an epiphany while during his Grease days (which reminded me of the Vanessa Hudgens' Austin Butler/Elvis epiphany).

One of my favourite moments was of Louis with his team on the yacht. The beautiful visuals, the chill, seeing some of the food, the band sharing their thoughts about Louis.

I heard Oli and Chris Frewin talking full sentences for the first time, and Oli's voice is not as I imagined and I understood him easier than I do Louis.

Louis has had to overcome his emotions and outside obstacles over his entire career. The documentary shows us the bumpy ride, from getting picked on Xfactor but dismissed and feeling insignificant, then overcoming that by contributing with his songwriting. He was shattered by the break, feeling lost on his career path, the family tragedies, then it's years to make his debut album, only for his tour to be hit by Covid, then tour starts again and his career is eventually on a roll. We already know the history but it's seen with some new insights. His Mum truly raised a man of good character.

The teary eyes didn't make me emotional for a few reasons and didn't make me change my mind because I've been here from the start of this stunt. Louis could've spent so much time between 2016-now (like during XFactor Judges), and especially during the lockdown with the kid but he didn't. Not even the dangerous Californian bushfires inspired Louis to visit the kid, and his team was like no comment on an article.

The scenes with the kid were cute but a bit awkward, and it raised more questions for me. Like why is Oli ALWAYS with them? Why didn't his family travel to America to see him more often if they miss him? Why does he hardly visit the UK, and only for the last 2 Christmases and the only clue of it was via the same pic we saw already posted by one of the sisters? Why is there a lack of unseens of Louis or his family with the kid from between 2016-2021? And the only baby pics were the ones taken in 2016 and already overused in the tabloids.

And my Dude, if 'it gets harder to leave the kid every time' and you get teary eyed talking about it, you should've gotten a lawyer to get full custody, or at least 50/50 years ago. Why does Louis need to travel 20 hours each time to LA for such little time with his own child? Also why none of his American family were with him backstage after the LA concert, just this other kid friend and a guardian (and remember the 'grandparents' and 'uncle' were there but sat separately from him, and potentially had to buy their own tickets to the concert).

It's funny hearing Louis being called both Lou-ee and Lew-is (Doncaster v non Doncaster people).

Given the amount of time I saw Oli and Louis spend with the kid and how they both interacted with him, it would not surprise me if it was later revealed that Oli was the Dad. That would explain why Oli hasn't spend more time in America with him, how the child hardly visits his family in the UK, why he hasn't hired a lawyer for better custody arrangements, because remember people, Oli's only on a PA's salary. And what the hell was that place Louis and Oli were supposedly staying at with the kid. Total opposite of the infinity pool house.

And after I heard Charlie talk twice about the filming having been organic, natural, not set up, etc and watching the 2 sections of the stunt in the docu, it just felt the opposite. Charlie was definitely trolling when he said that. And honestly for me, if these sections with the kid weren't in the film, it would not have been missed because Louis' own grandparents, siblings and childhood friends confirmed to us Louis' love for family and his personal journey. It defiantly felt like filming the kid was an afterthought, rather than preplanned or in the vision Louis or Charlie had in 2019.

Sadly no new insights about either broken arm incidents, no Louis hair and skincare discussions with Krystle, no fashion discussions with Helen, and no Clifford.

They celebrated Steve's birthday too hard in Iceland. His band is funny especially Matt. Mark Gillespie was seen backstage at Louis' LA show.

Familiar frequent flyer 'fans' were interviewed.

Louis loves his Louies, and his whole team appreciate us too.

There was only English subtitles for us. No local language because it was probably not worth translating for a limited screening that could only be used in 1 country.

I left feeling exhausted and heavy hearted seeing his journey, and very proud of Louis for how he kept going to where he is now, and how he has stayed a sweet person, and happy seeing he is surrounded by good people now. It's clear that Louis is loved and respected by those closest to him. As a One Direction fan and Louie, I enjoyed and appreciated this documentary.

This documentary is about a journey, and not a blockbuster, exposé film.

Now I feel so super ready for the tour to start because seeing Louis in concert again makes me miss those loud and fun times.

And remember, Louis is only getting started ...

(22 March 2023)

#proud of Louis 💙#I hope it is going to be streamed somewhere so I can rewatch and it will reach a bigger audience #Jay and Fizzy would be so proud #I am so happy to see the people around Louis now #I fell asleep trying to write my thoughts while they were still fresh #I read people shading the film and saying it was predictable and we know his history already but what were you expecting bec I knew that #spoilers #AOTV spoilers #22 March 2023 #about AOTV #thank you for reading and bless you if you got to the end #I had not planned it to be this long #stunts #bg #long post #me #mine

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quicksilversnails · 23 days ago

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Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

#og post #wildlife #grian #impulse #impulsesv #skizz #skizzleman #imp & skizz #mc meta #wild life smp #wlsmp #life series #trafficblr #traffic smp #<- dunno which life series tags are most commonly used but i hope i got all the major ones #long post #“i should write down the behind the scenes!” i thought. “it'll be quick!” i thought :')#as someone who did had some critiques about the structure of the season #i found it really insightful to hear about the design decisions from a behind the scenes perspective #digging into why it was made the way it was and what exactly about it worked/didn't work honestly helps me to appreciate #it more for what it was!#and it helped to truly understand and appreciate all the work that went into it #i probably included more details than needed but i just thought they were all really fascinating #like trivia bot being designed to have the option to give lives in case the early sessions were too deadly!#i was also surprised that the snail merch wasn't planned ahead of time #and i also tried to keep all the credits grian listed bc i think it's important!#i would recommend watching the full podcast ep! i didn't include a lot of imp & skizz's commentary since i was focusing on the technical &#behind the scenes details but they had lots of great insight

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