A while back, I mentioned somewhere… probably several somewheres… that I was working on a Mod Deep Dive video for the Create mod. And I am. Still. And I apparently will be for some time. So what gives?
First and foremost, the Create mod is by far, the largest and most complex mod I have ever worked with for this channel. I thought Supplementaries was a bear… but it’s just a cub compared to the Create mod. I realized this when I first started writing the script for the video. I start every script with a fairly detailed outline of what I want to cover… and the outline for the Create mod was huge compared to all the ones I had written before. Then I started writing my first draft of the script… and after four days of work, I looked at what I had written… and it was more than I had ever written for a video script before… and then I looked at the remaining items on my outline and realized that I had hardly put a dent in it. Yeah… this was going to take a LOT more time than I was used to.
And that presented a kind of problem. Besides making nerdy and geeky gaming videos, I also have a life with family, career, time off, and all that jazz. So I typically try to have 3 or 4 videos queued up and scheduled for release at any given time so that I have some flexibility to also do all the other stuff without having a big ol’ gap in my release schedule. That also gives me some cushion for working on big projects… but the Create mod is so freakin’ big that even if I focused all my time on it and only it, I would probably still burn through all my queued releases AND have a gap until the next release. So… I had to move the work on Create to the side and I work on it here and there as I have time. At the very minimum, I devote one full day of work on it after I schedule a new video for release… and after I finish this post, that is what I am doing for the rest of today.
So… it IS going to happen. Just not today… or this week… or even this month.
While I have been struggling to figure out how to create this monster project, the size of it has introduced some other considerations as well. I have been trying to wrap my head around how to best present this at release. I have a LOT of material and at the moment I am guessing that the video will probably be at least two hours long. Editing a video that long is going to present all sorts of problems for my poor old open source video editor… but technical issues aside, how is that going to fly with you… my audience?
I threw a poll out on the channel community page asking about this very question. I expected an overwhelming response to break it into smaller bits. However, the actual results surprised me. It was nearly 50/50 with a slight edge for releasing it all as one huge video. Of course, there were only seven responses, so I don’t think the data is sufficient to make any hard decision, but I do think it is sufficient enough for me to go with my gut and proceed with making one big ol’ honkin’ video… but to make sure that there are good and frequent chapter headings. This will allow folks to sift for the bits they are particularly interested in and after all, if somebody stops in the middle of the video, Youtube will keep track of where they left off and return them to that same point when they return to the video.
Of course, there is a bunch of other stuff going on at this end. I have been pressing forward with my plans to jump Gryphon Manor from 1.19.2 to 1.20.1 and I just scheduled the video with details for that plan. I am also thinking of changing the format from what is essentially a vlog to something that is more like… or even completely like a let’s play format. There is still a lot of work left to do to explore those options before I make a decision, but I am pretty sure that most of you will like the end result. At least I hope you do.
And that is all I wanted to say today. I hope this finds you and yours in good health, good spirits, and a touch of good fortune. Cheers!