The ThaumCraft 3 Beta

As ThaumCraft 3 is finally in a public release, and completely 100% public downloadable, I feel that it's time to share some information about the week or two prior to the public release candidate:

I was a ThaumCraft 3 beta tester.

Azanor himself contacted me through YouTube a while ago and invited me to participate in the beta testing of the mod. Of course, I immediately said yes. ThaumCraft 2 was one of my favourite mods ever, so how could I pass up such a rare and cool proposition?

The testing came with a few rules. No distributing the mod, no telling anyone, and no videos. As I've said, she's public now, so I guess I can tell you. If not, sorry, Azanor!

We were given access to the mod in it's beta form, and the subsequent almost daily updates, bug fixes and changes, a changelog, and a super exclusive IRC chat for the beta testers, along with a server to share thoughts, and to report bugs. I remember now that I'd made an aspect generator on there. It was almost automatic.

You may recall that Azanor in his sneak peek videos made a crucible by putting a shard in a cauldron, then waving the wand. However one of the recent MC patches makes it so that items bounce on top of cauldron. Since, Azanor has let us just right click an empty crucible. One of my contributions to the mod. :) I spotted a couple of other bugs, but they mostly have to do with the researchable items. No spoilers here. :P

A lot of the items and machines from TC2 haven't made it to TC3 (yet), but a lot of stuff has been added that's new, such as Golemancy. I feel some things didn't make the cut. Seals have been completely removed. Taint's gone, vis plays a minor role. The research system has been totally revamped to incorporate aspects.

I wanted to get around to pushing the limit of the golems navigation skills, but I've been busy. For anyone interested, what I would've done is basically set up an obstacle course of sorts, with pressure plates and pistons, closing, opening, changing paths, and perhaps lifting or dropping the golem onto different levels. Yes, my brain is crazy. As a beta tester, your prime focus is to break whatever it is your testing. :)

From a survival gameplay perspective, here's my take:
Research can get tedious. Collecting items with as many varied aspects as possible is a good way to go early on, but I think in the late-game you'll want to turn your attention to bottled aspects. I ended up having a chest next to my table full of useful materials and essentias, to methodically sift through once the aspects I'm currently researching get greyed out.

There aren't very many things in the mod that'll change the way you play in general. Spelunking was overpowered in TC2, especially if you had nearly all the items, like I did in my LP series, but this mod adds just a few items, like a staff that blasts rocks to bits. Portals are gone, along with the concept of seals completely. Taint's gone, and Vis now plays a minor role.

Essentially what I'm saying is that the majority of the mod is inside your alchemy lab, filling small dusty phials with the essence of your items. I hope that Azanor adds something to make us want to explore, like the obelisks of TC2. Perhaps openable with certain aspects? Hm, that's actually a good idea. I might see if I can contact Azanor about that one.

A Lot's Happened...

Indeed it has, oh merciful title. I don't have time to cover everything, but I will cover the biggies:

We've reached 250 subscribers. I started this blog with just under 30 subscribers, and back then that was a pretty big deal. It was around the time of halloween, but I haven't had time to make anything fancy recently. The real world calls too, guys.

My EE3 video is a top search result. Astonishing, right? It has 1,000 more views than when I last checked, and that was yesterday, it's so many in fact, that my Analytics section hasn't updated yet. It says around 1,700 on analytics right now, but at least 1,000 more actual. YouTube's kinda famous for bein' laggy.

I should probably contact Pahimar, the mod author, and ask if the video can be on his EE3 forum post. I'm always a little nervous about contacting mod authors, because they're very busy people. I'd hate to drag him away from developing the mod, and generally being awesome for too long.

There's a few more things to say, but as I say, I'm strapped for time, and these are biggies.

Custom Thumbnails

I'm late by a couple of days on this one, but I've just discovered with my latest video upload I was able to also upload a CUSTOM thumbnail, that is to say, a picture that I can spruce up in an editor that takes the place of the 3 randomly generated images.

My first reaction was a huge 'THANK YOU!' The ability to make an inviting picture that stands out and looks professional, rather than an in-game Minecraft image is a powerful tool.

In recent weeks, having not been able to make custom thumbnails I was simply making the images to stick at the start of the video. I started this properly with my ongoing Super Hostile series. I've gotten a lot better since I started doing it, and I now use moving pictures in the background. So making the images really is practice, and knowing how to use your video editors.

The problem here though is that some people are probably going to be abusing this power by putting up pictures that don't relate to the video. Way back when YouTube was a baby, everybody had custom thumbnails I think, but they took it away for this very reason.

I'm not stupid enough to abuse this gift. I need it to get more traffic to my channel. THE POWER OF THE THUMBNAIL WILL COMPEL YOU TO CLICK IT (or something). :)

In unrelated news, I've recently bought a Pop Filter for my microphone. A pop filter is basically a screen which protects the mic from extreme changes in air pressure. If you watch my videos you might hear the sound make a loud noise, then my voice goes quiet for a bit. It stops that. Hooray for more professionalism!

This specific model cost 70 bucks. Of the two I had to choose from, it was definitely better. The other one looked suspiciously like a knockoff, and it was worth $30. It was cheaper, but I think I've made the right choice.

I've just noticed a AA battery on my desk. Don't remember putting it there. Weird.

Welcome to My Shop!

I've finally decided to give the whole 'YouTube Merch Store' thing a thorough investigation to see how profitable it will be to actually use it. The problem that I foresaw before engaging on any of this was that there would be some kind of 'hosting cost' involved. I pay the third party so many dollars a month to keep my account active.

After a bit of digging through the possible third party hosts for the store, I realised I wasn't wrong. Amazon wants me to pay to be able to add items to their database, so that was prettymuch an insta-no. I abandoned iTunes early on, because one of the requirements to host stuff there is that the quality needs to be on par with DVD. What I have in mind is only 360p.

I did eventually discover that Topspin gives your account a 3 month plan totally free if you're with YouTube, otherwise a $30 value. It was free, and I figured what the heck, if this really works out and I make a reasonable profit, I would definitely be interested in staying with them a little longer. If it doesn't work out, at least it didn't cost me anything.

I've just made an account over at Topspin and have been learning the ropes there for the last hour. I eventually managed to make an item to sell: My very first video. In comparison with my more recent videos, this one is pretty ugly, but it still has me and my charms. :)

In addition to the subscription, they also take a cut of the earnings from the item. Fair enough, they've got a business to run. I'm sure I would break some kind of agreement if I gave out numbers here, but let's just say the cut is verging on significance.

The video itself is currently for sale for $1.99 US. I always hated when retailers did the '99 thing,' but hey, it almost works, and you save 1 cent. :)

I just have to wait until tomorrow for the YouTube search thingy to update so that I can find it and host it in my Merch Store. I'll be making a more formal announcement over on YouTube that the store is active. I'll probably say something like that it's a donation, with a free piece of nostalgia. :)

So there you have it. An experiement to see how charitable my viewers are. I would need to make at least $30 to make the whole thing worth it. So a little bit over 15 copies need to be sold (remember Topspin's cut) before I theoretically make a profit. YouTube gives a free 3 months, so right now I haven't paid for anything, but hopefully you will. *Wink wink nudge nudge*

Update for Yall

First off, I'd like to announce my YouTube channel has achieved and is now firmly in excess of 200 subscribers! We got to 200 a couple of times, but people unsubscribed, but as I said, were comfortably past the milestone to make it official! This is the part where I say thanks and all that, but it's starting to get boring and repetitive. In place of this, I'll say that I'm speechless, cuz really I am. :D

This is only the beginning for me, though. I came into this 6 months ago with a lot of ambition. I want to grow this channel to the point where people will write comments in other famous YT gamers and readers of those comments to know who that refers to. We're still quite a way off, but I'm not dissuaded!

I just uploaded a video detailing that I'll be livestreaming Guild Wars 2 on my livestream channel in the nect beta weekend, this weekend, in fact.

Getting the key itself was remarkably easy, actually. I clicked an ad on the Minecraft forums. Wow. And people buy those keys? Win them? Ha!

Not much else to day on that front really, the client is still downloading, but hopefully it'll be ready for the weekend. If it's not, well, I did recently start playing Borderlands. So that at east would keep people happy for a few hours.

In an update to my previous post, YT did get back to me, just a few days after I sent the Partner request. Regretfully, I already knew that this meant nobody had even looked at it. It was considered spam. Sure enough the email incredibly formally states that I got declined. This leads to believe that there is indeed some kind of account threshold you need to have, otherwise you get chucked away with the rest of the spam applications.

Am I deterred? Of course not! If anything, it just means that the next time I try I'll be much better, funnier, and hopefully bigger.

In the famous words of prettymuch every Rock legend: 'Stick it to The Man.'

At an afterthought, I thought it'd be a good idea to also put in that ThaumCraft with Birdtross has been officially finished with the death of the enderdragon. The journey isn't over! In my next series I'll be playing with a bunch of mods again, a few addons, and maybe even something else cool (I have no idea what I mean by this. I'm trying to create suspense amongst the readers. BE SUSPENSED!)

Partners Cont.

Just a few hours ago, completely by chance, I stumbled across a YouTube comment which helped out a lot.

When you try to access the Become a Partner section of the YT website (at the bottom of every page, creators and partners tab) you get looped back to your video manager. In my case, the monetisation page where you're forevermore congratulated on monetising a video (the novelty of reading that wears out :P).

Keyword here, loop. Loopity loopity loop. I kinda figured your channel needed to reach some sort of threshold requirement to see something a little more interesting, like I don't know, some kind of application process.

My guess is that the threshold is probably in the neighbourhood of 1000 YouTube subscribers.

But that was the past, as I said, I've come across an awesome tip off which actually allows for that application process I was looking for. The page url is none other than:

youtube.com/partners/

Wow. Yep, an actual step in what's hopefully the right direction. I've completed my application just now. What am I expecting out of this? Some kind of email in two months time (that's at least how long it took Etho's application to get a response from) giving me further instructions about where my mouse should point to carry on the Birdtross Partner Saga.

As a side note, this website is owned by Google I think, so these words are probably going to reach the eyes of whoever gets to fire that email into my inbox. Talking directly to you, good sir/madam, I would like to say that I think my videos are more entertaining and funny than some other partners I've seen. Just last night I watched a video of a Partner who's doing something almost identical to me, but they're dead boring, you can hear their computer fan whirring in the background, and overall it didn't look to me like a professional production. Sure, I have less than 200 subscribers right now, so consider Partnershiperising me an investment. :)

In reality, as I've already mentioned, I like the custom thumbnails and channel banner aspect of it rather than the money. Don't get me wrong, a bit of extra cash is exactly what I need right now, but it's not exactly... fruitful shall we say.

Partners

It'll be no secret to anyone who's been reading these ramblings, but I feel like mentioning this again: I make money from my YouTube videos, via ad revenue. There's no shady business or anything behind the scenes orchestrating this, it's done right through the YouTube watch page, with full YouTube monetisation options available.

YouTube contacted me that my account was now eligible for monetisation in mid December with a short email stating this and that I would find further instructions in their help pages. A few short hours later, I've set up an AdSense account and received an email congratulating me for successfully enabling my account for monetisation.

New options appeared when I uploaded my videos, giving me a sense of control over the sorts of ads that appear, whether they be those little banners or fullscreen TV-like commercials.

I've done a bit of research into this, and it seems that the only way to make money via ads on YouTube is to have a Partnership. This puzzled me, because here I am, with all these options for ads, but I don't get any of the really cool stuff Partners get, like custom video thumbnails, and a banner at the top of your channel.

This email came on December 12th. At the time I had probably around 30-35 subscribers. I had not shown any interest towards YouTube as a company that I'd like this kinda ad revenue thing. In other words, it seems I got lucky.

Someone in the YouTube offices must have somehow amazingly stumbled across my tiny channel and said "this guy's pretty entertaining, he might have an interesting future..." and fired off the email which results is my sole source of income. I'm sure I'd break some kind of contract by giving specific figures here, but I think I can safely mention that the revenue is nowhere near enough to live off of, even now, with my channel having over 150 subscribers.

So yeah, seems I'm technically some kind of YouTube Partner. Whoopie.

I was always interested in partnership for the custom thumbnails and channel banners, because it makes it sooo much easier to get noticed. But I guess I have to have a bigger channel or something.

Backtracking a bit to research, I eventually came across a blog post by YouTube about 2 weeks ago which announces that they're opening up the Partnership doors a bit to make it easier for newer people to get in. My country (New Zealand) was on the list of countries that would get this benefit.

I just want to point out an important face here: THEY contacted ME, it wasn't the other way round.

I've been mulling over all the facts in my head over the past couple of days, and while no official documentation exists for this, I like to think of myself as a 'Junior Partner.' I have access to ad revenue, and stores (which I'll get to in a moment), but that's about it. Then you have people which are kind of established like Hat Films or something. I would consider these guys 'Standard Partners.' They get the benefits of custom thumbnails and channel banners.

Then you have the big names. The Yogscast, Machinima and prettymuch anyone else with probably over 500,000 subscribers. I would consider these guys 'Premium Partners.'

'Premium' is a term I've borrowed from the famous Minecraft inventor Etho. In one of his LP episodes he describes how he received an email from YouTube telling him about this ascended form of Partnership. All I remember him letting slip is that under this guise, your videos are automatically approved for revenue sharing upon upload. No review process.

Please note these terms, Junior, Standard and Premium, as far as I know, have never been used in the context of levels of partnership anywhere else where you'd be able to read about it publicly. No YouTube help page I've ever seen details Partnership like this, and they probably never will. My guessing is that terms like this would be used in-house by YouTube employees away from the public.

But anyway, (lol, wow) time to talk about what I actually started this post for! About a week ago I go to my YT channel page and find I have a fourth navigation tab. Normally you have Featured, Feed and Videos. Guess what this new tab was called? Store. Yes, really. Store. It seems people can sell their products through their YT pages now. It has to be done with the help of a third party, like Amazon. And better yet, a quick search reveals that this option is only available to partners.

I love being proven right in my beliefs sometimes. Especially if I can make money from it.

You wont see it cuz it's only visible to the public if something's in there. I don't have any merchandise and it's unlikely I'll have feathered hats for you any time soon.

FPS issues with recent episodes

I r being novice Fraps user.

I normally set my FPS capture rate to 20, and it seems that it'll automatically record at higher frames if it's feasible. This used to work fine, but my more recent videos show very choppy footage after its compressed.

With the latest episode of ThaumCraft, I've ramped the capture FPS thingy all the way up to 60. This probably overkill. I might try 30 and see how that goes.

It's a shame the video was already pretty laggy. :P

Oh Wow some cool mods I've come across

As with many things in our world, this little batch of goodies was an accidental discovery of mods that I've always wanted in Minecraft. All you need is that chance encounter for you to start thinking "what if..." :)

Birds
7 or so new mob types, all in the winged variety. :D Each type spawns in a specific biome, they have custom animations and sounds. It's pretty polished.

Trees+
Adds several different kinds of trees to the game, actual different species, varying widely in size. Have their own saplings.

BigTrees
Kinda like the previous, except only using vanilla logs. To be honest, you're probably best to choose between this and Trees+ for your fav, to make forests a little more consistent. I haven't tested, so IDK.

The Seasons
The game chronologically cycles through our 4 favourite seasons, each season affecting the landscape in a different way. Has its own tree growing / killing mechanic too. :)

Dynamic Lights
Holding a light source in your hand (torch, glowstone, lava etc.) generates light. Yes, really. The item entity (the drop) also emits light. Mobs on fire emit light. It seems like it works in SMP with just the client version. I've always wanted something like this, but it seems your framerate will take a big hit.


Now what I think would make these mods twice as cool, is if they worked with NO (Nature Overhaul). You know, that mod which makes trees grow automatically. Then your forests would truly come to life. Along with birds in the canopy, what more could you want? :D

Fraps

I'VE BOUGHT IT.

Now hold on, before you say "oh Bird, you coulda got it for free!" I would just like to point out that that's illegal . :P

I have noticed a significant improvement in recorded video quality with it, and I can even record Minecraft in fullscreen 1080p at 20fps no problem. It even looks smooth. Nice.

My only qualm is that the file sizes are simply massive. In 3 minutes of recording you've suddenly got a gigabytes worth of video. Ouch.

I guess quality comes at a price... of $37 US.

So I saw that Azanor has subscribed to me...

For those who aren't aware, Azanor is the CREATOR of ThaumCraft.

Yes, it's quite humbling. :D

I'd say more, but I'm pressured for time right now, I have an appointment in about 30 mins.

Oh, and another one Ive just thought of

Forestry
The day has finally come where you can watch idly by as machines punch your trees for you.

Minecraft Mod Wishlist

You know you have one. Here's mine:

GLSL Shaders - Dynamic Shadows
The YouTube cinematics just keep on blowing me away. 'Tis a shame my piddly little second hand computer has trouble playing MC with its 16*16 texture pack. How could it ever survive the awesomeness of dynamic shadows?

Water Shaders
Reflective, distorting, transparent beauty. And it seems by their very nature these first two mods clash heads in a bout of crashes, at least from what I've heard; these modular titans are incompatible.

MAtmos
Something my computer can actually run. Why isn't it part of the vanilla game already?

Nature Overhaul
The environment manages itself. Watch as trees take over your world.

Some kind of motion blur effect
A lot of the GLSL shader videos on YouTube tend to show off a bit of motion blur. Its probably due to editing in post-recording. Still, having it as a mod, while impractical, would be cool.

Some kind of multi-coloured lighting
I've read into it a bit (and by this I mean reading Eloraam's ramblings) and it seems a modder would have to do a lot of work to get this up and running beacause of how all the code works. Blue lights: coming soon: in 2020 ftw?

So yea, i want MC to look purdy.

Thaumcraft
A type of magic I actually like, based around crystals and balancing good vs. bad magic.

And now we get to mods which can make lives easier

Industrialcraft2
Introducing a hole heap of complicated machines that do stuff. Introduces its own energy source: EU.

BuildCraft
Send your items who knows where. Fundamental in any automated system.

RedPower
Currently incomplete, but already revolutionary. Advanced systems of redstone to lag your world to bits.

Equivalent Exchange
I kind of magic I don't like quite as much as Thaumcraft, but the end-game items are simply amazing... and overpowered. I like overpowered.

Capes
You people who went to MineCon are lucky, but at least my cape is customiseable! :D

Flower of My Heart

Well it's been almost a month since the last post. Has much happened in that time? Probably.

We have surpassed 50 subscibers, and the number is still rising. As always, thanks to those who find my videos instructive, creative or just plain hilarious.

We also now have over 10,000 video views. This is quite simply amazing.

And now for the main attraction: Flower of My Heart

This was the first time I've ever published a cinematic/short-film/machinima video before, and I am astonished at how professional it all looked once it passed through editing. Even a normally moody Princess was impressed and immediately started churning out ideas for the next machinima we should make. As usual however, this petered off after about 24 hours, and has returned to her usual activity in my videoing of decidedly not wanting to be involved. No, well that last statement isn't true. What I meant to say is that I just find it faster and easier do it all myself. The case in point is of course Flower of My Heart. She agreed to film the explosion, but if I'd just stood by and let her, the release date would've been pushed back by 2 days, all for just 8 seconds. So one night before I went to bed I though "you know what, I'll just do it myself." Within 20 minutes the scene was shot, added to the rest of the footage and was uploading to YouTube. I am apprently more passionate about it than she is. :P

And rant time:

I made a thread for the Minecraft public server that I play on showing players how to play 1.2 and still join the server, which is 1.1. And then, almost rudely now I discover one of the server mods decides to make their own thread. This particular mod likes to shout. Every in-game sign they've ever made literally is in all caps, as is half this post.

I've actually heard his voice when we were on Mumble together a while back and he's a nice guy, really. It's just their text version of themselves is rude.

I guess I'm selfish really because his thread had a discussion going on about exactly the same thing, and my threads been out at least a week longer than his, and has just 1 reply. My thinking is that it's purely because he's a mod.

No elitism in the server? Yeah right.

My First YouTube Medal Award Thing

Moments ago, I realised that I do indeed have an award medal thing from YouTube. You know, kike those number 8 most subscribed all time things. Well mine is:

Number eleven most watched comedian today in New Zealand.

So basically, tomorrow we can all forget about this. :P

Livestreaming. Its fun

No seriously, its far better to watch someone live, and be watched live.

Only I'm not really up to streaming for longer than say 30 mins. I could go for an hour, but I probably wouldnt talk much. The best part is the interaction.

[Insert rest of post here]

General News (An Excuse for Not being Able to Think of a Decent Title)

A title-less blog post, brilliant. I do however know what I want to talk about: Video Uploadage.

For some reason lately I've been recording videos one day, then uploading them the next. It's been a while since I released two videos in two days, and to be perfectly honest, I'm sitting on material that I want to get out there. I'm looking at you, Nostalgia.

And I think I know why this trend has begun: I like playing games. :P Specifically at the moment, I'm playing Dungeon Defenders an awful lot. I'd be happy to record it... if I didn't get 3 fps while doing so.

The bottom line is, I need a new computer. I need a decent one. One that was built for gaming. One that costs thousands of dollars and is packed full of state of art green plastic and solder. Unfortunately, I'm not rich. But then again, CaptainSparklez's first videos weren't that great quality. But then again, he's always had a decent computer.

And all this makes me realise: the key to sucecss here is not niche videos, but variety. I'm sure somewhere I've spoken about falapasta, a fellow MC video maker. He makes variety. And while he has less video views than I do, he has almost 3 times as many subscribers. Why? Because he posts stuff that lots of different people like to see.

I think once the Nostalgia series is done and dusted I can begin a new segment for mods or something. I can start simple, with TooManyItems or something. I already realise the most important thing about videos like that is a SCRIPT, or NOTES. I have to know what I'm saying.

I enjoy talking about all this :D As I don't keep a RL diary, its my only opportunity to lay the thoughts out there. After this I think I've developed a plan of sorts.

So... I need to play less, record more, record more variety, record more NEW variety, write notes for videos

EDIT: The Nostalgia series sucked balls anyway, I might can it. Yep. Canned.

Steam Group

While a little over 30 YouTube subscribers is hardly much of a fanbase, I've gone ahead and made an official Steam group. The Legion of Birds. For the moment that's a temporary name until I can think of something better.

Anyway, it makes it look like you can have say, 20 people all voice chatting together. That'd be pretty nice to have in a livestream video.

Being an admin is a bonus as much it is a bummer. You get access to all the adminny areas, and I realise, with an eventual goal of being a *bit* more popular, I'm going to be finding myself having to ban people from the chat, and so on. It's a shame that most of the gaming community that I've been exposed to is pretty nice, but I realise that there are also undesirables out there. I'm looking in your corner, trolls. :P Nah, just kidding, you guys are alright as long as you don't make too much mischief.

Co-op with Falapasta

I decided to approach Falapasta, one of my subscribers who also makes videos (and has a similar number of subscribers). And we've agreed to record some co-op Minecraft mapping stuff together.

The idea here was to mix or communities a bit and gain a few subscribers on both sides.

Secretly, he definetely has a different style to me. The 'comment, rate, subscribe' thing and all that. People who are reading this will probably already know my standing on this. :P

So yeah, if this goes well, which it probably will, you can expect more collaboration with small-time video makers!

Capturing those Golden Moments... and a general rant

Being a successful YouTube video maker is all about the golden moments. In most cases people go to YouTube when they want to see something funny, informative, or simply awesome. Kickstarting a subscriber fanbase is all about hitting the right chords in the videos you watch. Take the Yogscast for example, probably the most entertaining gaming coverage there is on the internet. They have close to 1.4 million subscribers, and they're self admitted idiots. Why? Because amazing stuff always seems to happen to them. I am of course referring to their Shadow of Israphel series. It's not planned by them, but it is planned by other members of The Yogscast. My point: once you 'make it' it gets easier to 'keep making it.' The tricky part is getting there.

I've always had the firm belief that having more than one person talking in a video is a good thing. It gives the people a chance to bounce off one another, and people have different ways of looking at things, which induces conversation, which makes entertainment. Diehard fans of mine (from a fanbase of 35, this would be amazing) will be aware of my multiplayer exploits with Princess_Block. Off camera we can have some amazing discussions and giggles, but between you and me, she isn't in to this as much as I am. The case in point is my poor CPU, which had to run Minecraft, Skype, the recording software AND a Minecraft server. Frankly I'm astounded it managed 10 fps. Meanwhile all she has to do is run Minecraft and Skype. I've pointed out the unfair tax on my CPU, but she hasn't exactly taken to the idea of hosting a server.

To sum it all up, she doesn't like new things.

The first day I discovered the Yogscast I said to her, "hey, you should watch these guys videos, they're hilarious", and she just shrugged it off. Ya can't even discuss this concept with her, because she flares up :P

If anyone actually reads this, you may be the next candidate to go on a custom map adventure with me. :)

(I feel the need to point out I ended up not talking about what I wanted. Is that normal in blogs?)