I recently started making some let’s plays from some wise advice about monetizing your dopamine addiction.

As a big proponent of “do it poorly, then get better” I started just doing very, very basic videos. Cheap microphone, no transitions or graphics, just gameplay with some commentary. Well the audio was not great. In some videos you can’t hear me at all almost. Part of that is these are often done late at night or early in the morning and I don’t want to wake any one else in the house.

So time to start doing some minor video editing as part of “getting better.”

Step One: Switch OBS to record to multiple audio tracks

I made a major mistake when I first tried this.

I set my microphone to record on a different track than my game input. This is the right thing to do. However, I did not go into OBS’s recording settings and set the audio to advanced -> multi track recording.

Result was I have a 45 minute video with just gameplay sounds, none of my commentary was recorded.

Both steps are required to get multiple audio tracks in your recording.

Step Two: Choose a video editing software (or audio) that can do what you want

I knew about OpenShot as a free video editor so decided to give it a try.

It can almost do what I want, but not quite. While I was googling how to do things in OpenShot, I came across another opensource video editor called ShotCut that ended up being able to do exactly what I wanted.

Step Three: How to separate your audio tracks in ShotCut and increase the volume of the quiet one.

1. Load your video into ShotCut
2. Drag it down into the timeline
3. Right click in the timeline and choose detach audio
4. In the video part of the timeline, right click and select “Properties”
5. On the audio tab, set the audio to track 1 (or whatever track you want)
6. In the new audio only part of the timeline, right click and select “Properties”
7. Set the audio to track 2 (or whichever track your second audio stream is coming in on
8. To increase the volume of a given track, with the track selected click the Filters button at the top
9. Add a “Volume/Gain” filter to the track
10. Slide the volume adjust bar left for lower volume and right for higher volume as needed
11. Voila!

Hope this helps

Keep getting wiser, stronger, and better.

Game design can be hard at the micro level.

How much xp should it take to go from level 1 to 2? How about from level 9 to 10? Should this weapon do 25 damage or 30? How far should this unit be able to move? These questions are even harder if this is your first time making a game.

These questions can often be answered thru a lot of playtesting, but there is a way to save time.

Borrow from other games that already work.

I am working on a collection of turn based games.

Once common concept across these games (since they are ultimately meant to be joined together) is the idea of characters that can gain experience and level up. Instead of trying to design this very common system from scratch, I am borrowing ideas from existing games that do things the way I already like. They already did a majority of the heavy lifting.

Now I just tweak values to my liking.

Keep getting wiser, stronger, and better.