illusorywall

Elevator Glitch I found in Dark Souls 2

Unrelated to anything I'm working on, I found a funny glitch in Dark Souls 2. I found that despawning this elevator in Shulva, while it's still during its animation of returning to the top position will confuse the game. When you warp back to the area, it'll descend on its own when you get back to it. And in addition to that, if you rest at the bonfire after warping back there, when you call the elevator back up it'll be broken. Its switch will no longer work and you can't use it. This is fix...

New Video Soon!

I've got another Dark Souls 2 video on the way, this time a somewhat shorter one, exploring the time that seemingly everyone thought that player messages were blocking illusory walls and got annoyed by it.

Here's a sneak pick at the Interaction Amalgam™; Something cursed I modded into the game to do some testing with interaction prompt priorities.

Right now I'm expecting the video to be uploaded tomorrow or Monday!

2025-02-08 20:30:17 +0000 UTC View Post

New Video Almost Done (and episode topic revealed)

My next video should be completed by this weekend, or if not, sometime early next! It's all about the pickaxe quest in Dark Souls 2, and other pig secrets. Originally intended to be a shorter video, I found that there was surprisingly quite a lot to talk about. It's going to be in the ballpark of 45 minutes long. I'll be excited to have it done soon, and I've also figured out the topic of the following video. Which will ACTUALLY be a short one this time, so the wait for that one shouldn't be ...

The video should be up tomorrow!

It's finished and currently uploading! But with the large filesize and my pitiful upload speeds, combined with the time needed to process on youtube, it most likely won't be ready until Friday now. Just wanted to let you know if you were waiting & expecting it sooner!

Really looking forward to this being out there. Soon!

New Episode Coming in a Few Days!

I don't have an exact ETA, but I believe this should be ready by Thursday at the latest if there aren't any major hiccups.

I made another long episode, this time all about the invisible walls of Dark Souls 2. I've been having a blast exploring the game using Debug Manager, something I didn't previously have access to in my older Dark Souls 2 videos. It's another incredible toolset to have for messing around in the game, so it's likely there's going to be a bunch more DS2 related stuff ...

The Dirty Colossus invades Dark Souls 1

A little behind the scenes clip back from my Retrieving Lost Items video that I meant to post here. For part of that video, I talked about how indictments are infinite use and I wanted some footage of the misleading indictment count that gets displayed in the indictment usage prompt.

So I fired up DSR on my PS5 and loaded an old character way back from launch, that I made to help re-test the level ranges, and just waited to be invaded. At SL32 I might've been a little underleveled for ...

Juggling multiple episode ideas!

I got four pages into the script of what should probably be episode #20 of Dark Souls Dissected, but it's another very mechanics-focused discussion. I realize that's what most of my videos are, but after the last video, instead of making two videos in a row that feel kind of same-y to me I've had some other video ideas I've been wanting to make so I'll likely do one of those first.

I liked making the "Oolacile is Darkroot in the Past" video. One that didn't have "Dark Souls Dissected" i...

Working on Improving the Discord, Tier Bennefits

Hey everyone! I'm happy to have finally gotten the lost items video up. My computer had a hard drive failure and I had to reinstall windows, which delayed the video by about a week!

In the next couple days I'm going to work on making better changes for the Discord. Patreon will have proper integration to send automatic invites, roles will be added based on Patreon tier, and I'm going to start considering more perks particularly for Evil Vagrant backers.

Please bear with me as I ...

What's coming next?

I'm almost done scripting my next Dark Souls Dissected, which will be a somewhat shorter video on the Lost and Found items chest in Firelink Shrine. It won't be a very meaty episode, but I firmly believe it currently stands as Dark Souls most misunderstood mechanic, something I'll explain in the video.

In the meantime, here's a handy flowchart that helps inform you if the chest can replace a missing item for you:

2023-12-28 01:50:47 +0000 UTC View Post

Next Episode Topic

I've been working on a few episode ideas simultaneously, and I initially planned on another topic being my next video. But I've now made up my mind, the next episode is going to be all about Seek Guidance and the Hidden Developer Messages of Dark Souls 1.

I compiled the list of all the hidden messages for wikidot way back in the day, and did some testing in debug way back to learn more about how it all works. It's something I've been meaning to talk about for a while, and though I have...

Progress Update, Problem Solving

The episode about Dark Souls 1 prototype maps is coming along nicely, the video is past the 20 min mark and I'm expecting it to be done no longer than a week from now!

I was originally hoping to mod the prototype maps to help brighten them up, because exploring them in-game can be problematic. They're really, really dark. You have to rely on the light surrounding the player-character to help li...

Next Dark Souls Dissected Script Completed

It was supposed to be a shorter episode but the script is 18 pages long! I'm not sure how that'll translate to total length but we might be looking at something more like a 30 minute episode (or longer) instead of a shorter ~15 min I had in mind. But that's okay! I think people are going to dig this; I'm back on my analyzing-map-design game for this one.

This includes some stuff I've been meaning to show for a while so it feels good to get here. Tomorrow I'll begin recording vocal audi...

Dark Souls 1 has some weird test maps...

One of my upcoming projects, probably my next video, is going to explore a bit of prototype map content of Dark Souls 1. I can get some of them to load in debug, but the maps are very dark and don't look the best, so I'm looking into modding them to brighten them up...

After 10,000 years, I'm free!

Demon's Souls Compare-Through Part 3 is done! Not only am I happy to have it wrapped up, but I'm excited to be able to move forward with other video ideas I've had in mind. My goal is to make at least 2, if not 3, shorter vids before I take on a bigger project again. Partly to feel like I can make up for lost time, but also because they're subjects I've been thinking about and I want to cover these topics anyways.

So expect to hear more soon about the Dark Souls 1 vids I have in the pi...

Progress update; I'm still alive!

Sorry things have been a little quiet here lately, been dealing with some medical issues that have demanded a lot of attention over the last few months. I'm okay, but someone close to me has required assistance and it's been my primary focus.

Things are looking up and I'm getting back into the swing of things though; The Demon's Souls Compare-Through video file currently sits at the ~50 min ma...

Launching a Discord Server! Comment for an invite link!

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been a bit quiet here. Things have been a bit hectic but I'm still chipping away at the Demon's Souls Compare-Through:

But more importantly, I've finally launched a discord server. I wanted a place to better-organize testing and multiplayer help for when I'm working on videos, but figured I also might as well create a general hang-out space.

Let me know if you'd ...

Strange Memories of Death 2011, Retro VGM Stuff

Hey everyone! Progress has been a bit slow with the Demon's Souls Compare-Through. I've had to deal with some kind of serious stuff going on that ate up a lot of time these past couple weeks, but things are okay and should be back on track soon!

I was stoked to learn that an old, unreleased cover of Mr. Gimmick music I played drums on just recently resurfaced. A couple friends and I had the intention of making an album of VGM covers but we never got around to seeing it through, and I b...

DeS Compare-Through Part 3, Progress Update

Feeling better and back in the swing of things! The script for the Stonefang video is currently 27 pages long, so we're looking at an episode that will probably be over an hour and fifteen minutes in length.

I'm only part-way through 2-2, but these videos tend to be heavily front-loaded with content (remember how I zipped through 1-2 pretty quickly in the last video) so this means I'm almost finished. Most of what's remaining to script are just comparisons for the Flamelurker and Drago...

DeS Compare-Through Part 3, Progress Update

Content Warning: Health Issues/ TMI

Last week I made some solid progress towards the next episode, the script is currently at page 13. I'm excited about some of the extra datamining details we didn't have access to previously, like the Hoplite Shield's exact drop rate (it's ~0.55% at base luck).

Unfortunately I've been battling a kidney stone for a few days and that's completely ground progress to a halt. The pain isn't at 100% all of the time and I've been able to have pretty d...

Resuming the Demon's Souls Compare-Through, Already Made a Discovery

So I'm finally returning to the compare-through, and I've already made a discovery that's new to me. Maybe someone has seen this before, but I've run it by a couple people deep into Demon's Souls datamining and it just seems to be easy to miss, it's new to all of us so far. This is perhaps due in part to the map viewer being very noisy with a lot of overlapping junk in this spot.

In Stonefang 2-1, you have this gear mechanism that has a bunch of minecarts on it, runnin...

The Eye of Death Quivers

The Gravelording video is in its final stretch! I'll likely have it ready Saturday, but Sunday is a really solid and very conservative estimate if there's a minor delay for any reason.

I updated my video editing software, I'd been using Wondershare Filmora and didn't even realize I was a few updates behind. They very recently had a debacle where previous "lifetime" license holders weren't going to be entitled to the latest version, but there was massive backlash online (rightfully so), ...

More Gravelordin'

The project expanded in scope a little bit, climbing up to roughly an hour-long episode! The vocal editing is done & finished and today I finally started the actual video file, with the introduction completed. Full steam ahead!

Gravelording episode update.

I've finished the script and begun recording my voice! Over the next several days I'll continue recording and editing vocal audio. The script is ~23 pages long so right now it seems to be on par with some of my longer episodes; I'll be surprised if this is under 45 minutes. Can't wait to get this one out there but it may be a couple weeks still.

The next episode topic...

The next episode topic has been decided, it's another Dark Souls 1 Dissected video and the subject is Gravelording!

This has been a long time coming. When I first started this series I assumed this was going to be like my third or fourth episode. I'd done a lot of research into it in the past and wrote a good bit about it, both on wikidot and on my old tumblr blog. This is amon...

Next Episode Topic and Progress Update

I've got another Dark Souls 2 video in the works, this one is all about the time limits in multiplayer. In Dark Souls 2, phantoms get kicked out of a host's world after a certain amount of time and it's a surprisingly interesting mechanic.

In researching for the video I've learned something new about the Name-Engraved Ring that wasn't previously known by the general playerbase (it wasn't talked about on any of the wikis), and I've also done the deep dive into how much time every defeate...

So I'm making a Dark Souls "lore" video of sorts and it's about...

Vagrants. I recently finished recording and editing my vocal audio and started the video today. It should be a pretty quick ~14 minute video, so I'm expecting to have this ready by next weekend at the latest.

They really don't have any concrete lore whatsoever, so this is a sort of funny topic to broach. But nonetheless I've thought of two primary questions about them that I'll try my best to a...

DS2 video - Progress Update

Yesterday I finished editing my vocal audio and today I got a few minutes into recording and editing footage for the next episode of Dark Souls 2 Dissected, which is going to be all about the weird timed events of the Majula Mansion Chest.

It's going to be a pretty quick video, around 12 minutes in length. But I'm actually very excited about this one because I have something special and kind of...

Juggling a couple episode ideas...

Earlier today I spent some time answering more follow-up questions about poise in the comments of the latest video, but I'm ready to start scripting the next episode soon.

I have multiple Dark Souls 2 video ideas in mind but I also just had a sudden idea for a Dark Souls 1 that I really like. I've been meaning to show DS2 some more attention though so I'm thinking the next episode will most likely be about this:

2022-10-06 04:29:53 +0000 UTC View Post

Poise Follow-up Progress Report + Misc Resources

I think it'll be ready this weekend! I originally wanted this to be a pretty quick follow-up video, but in reviewing questions and trying to decide how many to include, I wasn't satisfied in picking just 10 or 15 (the original plan) and instead built it around answering 20 questions!

There's also a couple short sections that'll follow the Q&A section. It's really surprising just how much th...

The Bugged Wolf of Radagon

I'm working on a Q&A follow-up to the Elden Ring poise episode, and someone mentioned that they never broke the stance of Radagon and were wondering if a critical attack was available.

At first I was going to say yes, because I remembered seeing the orange glow following the stance break:

But then I kind of remembered only having whiffed it a couple times, never actually landing ...