Minecraft Ranting

WOW! That was quite the event, wasn't it? 

First, let us say thank you to everyone for everything! Thank you to our wonderful helpers Brenna, Jeremy, Hachemi and Kayla. Thank you to all our wonderful guests for skyping in. Thank you to all of you who donated, tuned in, tweeted and came to give us any form of support. You're all fantastic and make this so much fun to do.

We are honored to support such a wonderful charity like Child's Play. Over $2,500 was raised in just 33 hours. Amazing!! We are up to just over $5,200 for the year. Only about $2,000 till we reach our goal! Our hearts are filled with such pride!

Though we had some technical issues at first, we were able to bounce back and continue on in high spirits. It was a bit sad to lose the creative server we spent months on making mini-games, but we pushed on. Kelly wrote a great post about it below so Im not going to dwell on it.

Dan spent over 125 hours coding our wonderful modification and did an outstanding job! Aaron also coded and debugged his heart as well. I am beyond impressed with their dedication and abilities. Way to go guys!

Kelly worked really hard on creating fun mini-games for our bucket, Charlie. She is so creative!! :D Amazing fun was had. She also worked with guest speakers to organize skype calls as well as writing up player/sleep schedules and event times. So organized! Great job, girl!

Keith did our pre-event press like Facebook and Twitter. He has a way with words and humor. You're a regular cut-up!

Chris has finals this week, and was still able to be a part of our great minithon! We do a lot of prep work and meetings, meaning his studies had to wait, and we're sure it was hard sometimes but he still made it work! Also, congratulation on your upcoming graduation, Chris!

Brenna is always an amazing helper! She led the way and took great care of us and our viewers! You're amazing, Brenna! Our helpers Jeremy, Hachemi and Kalya also deserve a huge round of applause for taking time out of their lives to lend helping hands. Thanks guys, your epic!

We had a list of fantastic guests that joined us: Directional Pad, Jetforce Gemini, Sound Defence, Tofuboi, Solnus, Malfunt, Trymantha, Edroach, Pongo Sapien and the guys from Mario Marathon! It was great to hear your voices and have you join us in game. It was also really great to hear why Child's Play Charity is important to you. 

I love this charity, and I love the community that we have become a part of. Im so glad we can do this for the children stuck in hospitals. It really is a hard life being trapped inside, and being poked and prodded by doctors and nurses. Im so happy we can help provide them an outlet, something to take their minds off the smell of bleach and illness they are suffering from.  While its fun to play games and be entertaining, the most important thing is all this is the children. We must keep them in our minds and hearts.

Ill always remember the first time I was really sick for a long time, and the game that got me through it. Mario 3 on the NES. I was lucky enough to have a mom who saw the importance in having something to keep my mind off where I was, and what was happening to me. Even to this day when I fall ill, I have games to keep me company. I want this for all children, no matter what circumstances they come from. We will continue to work hard and raise what we can for this fantastic origination! Thank you so much for all your help everyone!

We look forward to our next marathon!

-Jenny 

So What Was That All About?

To go into details on the technical issues, essentially we had a survival mode server (for those who don't play minecraft, that just means a random world is generated in which we start off with no supplies and have to build up weapons/tools/resources to "survive" in a world full of enemies) and a creative server (in which all supplies are available to you unlimited, you can fly, and you can't die). The survival mode we did not touch because we wanted those viewers who hadn't seen Minecraft to watch how you can go from having nothing to building a base, making intricate items and exploring the world in confidence.  However, the creative server we had was worked on for months prior to last weekend. We each made our own extravagant mini-games such as FPS maps, races, and puzzles.

As far as our modding in minecraft went, Dan and Aaron spent an extensive amount of time modding the game to make a "spectator", who was essentially a ghost that could go from one person to another in a split second and show what they were doing. The spectator could also run/fly/walk around himself so that the audience could see all sorts of views. This way, if one of us was yelling about being chased by a creeper, we could immediately switch to that person to see the action. This was especially nice for minecraft, since there isn't always an exciting thing happening to one given person, but someone else might. A really nice addition that Dan and Aaron made was a tag on the left side of the screen that had an image of the person's avatar face and their username so you knew who we were spectating at that moment.

The setup of the room was challenging considering we have never done a LAN-based marathon before. 7 computers were running in one room, hooked up to 9 monitors, and at all times there were at least 4 laptops on top of that! We had a Starfox-esque communication setup where all of us were in google hangout and when one person spoke into their headset, their webcam would show us talking through the feed in the lower left hand corner. We also had an overhead view, to which when the narrator/spectator was talking, it would switch to the overhead view so you could see the whole room interacting. 

Testing went well the night before...we had normal issues such as sound echo and occassional google hangout drops. However, these were minor issues and while broadcasting, we seemed confident to begin the marathon the next day.

However, when we started broadcasting on Saturday, we immediately experienced issues with choppy feed and sound issues. Dan decided that google hangout was taking more bandwidth since all of us were in google hangout on one LAN that was also hooked up to the minecraft server, the broadcaster, and all of our other setup programs. We resorted to switching to a single area mic in the middle of the room and having one camera angle default, which was the overhead view. It wasn't personal..it wasn't pretty. As if the communication screen wasn't small enough, that angle had 90% computers showing and 10% people, so many complained that it just wasn't as fun without that more personal touch of seeing everyone's faces close-up. Unfortunately, we had to sacrifice that in order to get a decent feed.

We proceeded to begin our survival mode adventure, building up a base and collecting items. We then went over to the creative server because Kelly had a game called "Capture the Obsidian" (essentially a minecraft version of Capture the Flag). We were having a blast playing that, but unfortunately the feed was still doing wacky things. Then, we all got kicked from the server and devistation hit: Dan's server running Minecraft crashed.  As part of the crash, we couldn't boot up the computer or even get to the data. This was tragic, for Dan struggled to get the server back up...and could have lost everything he had on that computer, which didn't just have our creative server info that we had been working on for months...but all of his code for his work and years of information.

Dan spent a good rest of the afternoon attempting to fix the problem off-camera, and luckily Aaron booted up a new survival server from his computer so that we could still carry on with the marathon. This became our new server and we went from there to make this area our new home.

I wish I could say the rest of the marathon went smoothly, but unfortunately with the last-minute setup, we still experienced problems with sound, feed choppiness, and other bugs. Not to mention the devistation in the back of our minds due to the unsure loss of all of Dan's information, AND the lack of mini games we had because we could not access the creative server.

Luckily, we have some very loyal viewers who stuck with us the whole time and helped us through it all. We made over $2500 in 33 hours, an incredible feat especially considering the circumstances. Dan is still working on his computer, and fortunately his latest update is that although windows is not working, he has found the drivers and all the data on them!

Our plan is if he is able to get everything running at least close to 100% again, we would like to host a mini mini marathon, where we will go back to our creative server and play all of the mini games we spent all that time creating. That way our viewers can see our hard work paid off! Keep an eye out for when we plan that, because hopefully that will be coming up very soon!

Also an incredible thanks is in store for everyone who watched and dealt with our craziness: this mini marathon took possibly the most preparation of any other main marathon, and even so a lot of that preparation went out the window because of last minute issues. Thank you so much for staying loyal to us, and for helping us raise several thousand dollars to Child's Play Charity! We love you!

Banjo Kazooie Ranting

Let me just say that although Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie are great games, there were (..are) some parts that just make me want to pull my hair out. Here is some of my banter (is that a word? ...it is now) about Banjo Kazooie. Banjo Tooie will have to wait until tomorrow.

In talking with the whole 72 Crew, EVERYONE seemed to have taken a long time on Treasure Trove Cove.

Usually with games, the further you get, the levels take longer to complete, either due to difficulty or a more expansive/involved area. However, Treasure Trove Cove is the second level in the game, yet it took longer than most levels in the game. At first I thought maybe it was just one person having trouble finding everything in the game (since the world is rather large, and you can get turned around a few times), but 2 of our other players reported spending more time than they expected on this world. This level is awesome, but left us scratching our heads at why this seemed to be much longer than half the other worlds.

Clanker's Cavern should be named Cranker's Cavern, mainly for my sake. I didn't like that level at all. That level made me so cranky. I guess I'm not a fan of the dim, rather dark layout. I'm more of the "ooh look at all these bright colors!" type of player. Eh, guess it's the girl in me. It's a good level, I just didn't like it.

Bubblegloop Swamp. I personally liked this one, but one of our players, Aaron, just was not having it on this level. Combined with an off-brand N64 controller that only worked part of the time as well as the somewhat confusing layout (admit it, you got lost the first few times you played that level), he rage-quit several times, and almost didn't want to start up again. ....but the croc transformation is SO CUTE!! :D

Another Banjo-no..ie..is stupid Rusty ****-it Bay. NOBODY in the 72 Crew likes this level. I have yet to find someone that was like "yeah, I actually really enjoyed almost dying getting a jiggy that is hidden behind a ship's fast-moving propellers." WHO PUTS A JIGGY THERE?!?! And that stupid dolphin jiggy...just...don't get me started on this level. I'm sure you all will enjoy the rage that the players will surely show during this particular level.

SO EVIL.

The levels we all enjoyed? Mumbo's mountain because you can get through it in like 15 MINUTES. So easy.

My personal favorite: Click Clock Wood, although Jenny is not so fond of it taking so long and being so involved...when she have to finish it in a reasonably fast pace while everyone is watching her, I can't blame her! I like taking my time on that level, and having to do a speed run of it would probably make me uncomfortable. I'd probably fall off that stupid tree a million times.

Mad Monster Mansion. That world is just freaking awesome! the pumpkin involvement as well as the house, maze, and chapel? Amazing!

Gobi's Valley I feel had a great amount of everything..puzzles, platforming, flying, swimming, timed games, everything. If this game were being demo-ed? I would use this world to show all the different abilities like flight, swimming, running, etc.

Other rantings:

Now..I don't want to say that I WANTED to have Mumbo in every single world, but he specifically doesn't show up in several worlds: Treasure Trove Cove, Clanker's Cavern, Gobi's Valley, and Rusty Bucket Bay. It would have been cool to see what we would have transformed into for those worlds. My thoughts? WELL, here is what I think would have been cool to transform into in each of the worlds:

Treasure Trove Cove? Although it's piratey/beachy, I wouldn't want anything swimming-related. Rather, a crab would have been cool so you could snap enemies and crawl on the bottom of the ocean, or even a seagull so you could reach those higher areas.

Clanker's Cavern? How awesome would it be to be a small robotic shark, similar to Clanker? Although they would have needed to incorporate more involved jiggies with swimming rather than on the platforms and inside Clanker. ...or you know what? A spider would have been cool. You could walk around, (although I know many spiders don't actually do this) walk on water like Water Striders, but also shoot webs at enemies, and even shoot webs to "grapple" onto platforms and walls! SO COOL. If only. 

Gobi's Valley? A Camel would be cool, but I have no idea what it would do besides walk around and..be cool. Drink water? eh. Maybe not a good idea. A mummy would be freaking adorable (I know, I'm weird), but also seemingly useless. A genie would be genius (alliteration!). You could fly around and "summon" small things to help get items or turn on switches. Although that might be too powerful, so maybe a snake would do. A snake could bite enemies, slither around and spring into the air like Donkey Kong Country. Okay, my vote is for snake. That's more adorable than a mummy.

Rusty Bucket Bay? ..eh..I hate this level so much I don't even want to think about adding transformations..I guess something inanimate such as a submarine (I know that's a transformation in Tooie already). You know what's fun? Rubber band balls. Just change Banjo into a Rubber Band ball. He can bounce around, go underwater (because rubber bands don't BREATHE. GENIUS.) and he can lose rubberbands (or gain some) like the snowball effect in Tooie's Hailfire Peaks in order to be heavy enough for some buttons or small enough to fit in smaller areas. HAH. Didn't think I could sell that one.

SOPA and PIPA

As many of you know, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are currently being pushed through the Senate and the House of Representatives.
These bills would allow the U.S government and its copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against the websites that traffic in "infringing, pirated and counterfeit intellectual property". SOPA was introduced to the house by Representative Lamar Smith, along with a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors in late October of 2011.
If passed, sites that are accused of copyright infringement will be blocked from Americans' access, and people could serve time in prison for streaming content online. Our Justice Department would have the authority to seek court orders on search engines, ISPs, and other sites to cut off any website they have deemed "rogue". An allegation submitted through the proper channels would be sufficient enough to start the process of legal action.  
This affects the Internet as a whole. Websites like Youtube, Reddit, Ustream and so many more will be censored or shut down. 72 Hours Remain and other charity gaming marathons would be illegal in the U.S and shut down. We ask for you to stand with us, and tell your representatives "NO!" to SOPA and PIPA!
Please contact your Congressmen and Representatives, and sign the growing petition. Below are links to help you in the good fight.
House of Representatives Directory: http://www.house.gov/representatives/
Senate Directory: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Online Petition: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/veto-sopa-bill-and-any-other-future-bills-threaten-diminish-free-flow-information/g3W1BscR?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

Thank you
Aaron B., Chris K., Dan F., Jenny W., Kelly O. and Keith F.

72 Hours Remain Raises $1274.56 in 27 hours

As you tune into the charity event, you see someone playing a game for hours, while everyone else dances as a cartoon cat flies across the screen and a catchy song plays.  Even though this doesn't look like a normal fundraising event, the song and dance only happened because someone just donated over $50 to Child's Play - so there's a great reason to celebrate.

72 Hours Remain is a gaming marathon that plays video games for extended periods of time, encouraging people to donate to Child's Play Charity (a charity providing games, books and toys to patients of hospitals worldwide).  The first marathon in December 2009 lasted for 3 days straight, which led to their name, "72 Hours Remain".  After the success of the first event, another 72-hour event followed in August 2010.  Over the history of 72 Hours Remain, over $9,600 has been raised for Child's Play through their events.

"Another Quick-Draw round!" shouts Kelly O'Neill, Creative Director and co-founder.  For the most recent event, 72 Hours Remain played through "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" to full completion.  "Majora's Mask" led to the name of the organization, so it was only a matter of time before an event occurred dedicated to the game.  To encourage viewers to donate, after collecting a mask in the game (of which there are 28 to collect), the first person to donate recieved an entry in a raffle to win a sculpture made by O'Neill herself.

After raising an impressive $1,500 in December 2009 during its first 72-hour event, it was clear they wanted to continue that success in supporting Child's Play Charity.  After the second marathon in August 2010, "72 Hours Remain" continued on, with a 12-hour Holiday marathon in 2010, and 72-hour event in June 2011.  The group recently finished their "Majora's Mask" mini-marathon on September 24th-25th, 2011.  Recorded video of all these events can be seen on their Ustream page (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/72-hours-remain ).

"We need more fan art!" says O'Neill, reminding viewers about the raffle prize for fan art, which was also created by O'Neill.  Every piece of fan art was posted to the site ( http://www.72hoursremain.com/pictures/fanart/ ), including everything from photo-manipulated fan art, to hand-drawn art, to art submitted by a 4-year old.  Fans and viewers are what help grow the group's outreach - all donations are given by people who tune in, so 72 Hours Remain makes sure to keep them entertained.  Over the years, 72 Hours Remain has managed to gather a group of loyal viewers, and the players are as excited to see the viewers as the viewers are to tune in.

As for the future of 72 Hours Remain, there's plenty to look forward to.  The group plans on several "mini-thons" a year, as well as the annual 72-hour event.  "Adding more events allows us to connect with our viewers more often, and the shorter events make it easier to do more,"  says Daniel Frandsen, Technical Director, as well as another co-founding player.  This season (from August 2011-July 2012) they hope to raise $7,200 for Child's Play Charity. Following their first event they're on track to meet and exceed that goal. 

The next event, "Dueling Banjos" will take place starting on January 14th at noon EST, where the group will be playing through "Banjo-Kazooie" and "Banjo-Tooie" for the Nintendo 64.  72 Hours Remain raises donations for Child's Play Charity all year long, so you can donate through our website at any time, not just during the event!  Tune in the new year and help support a great cause!  In the meantime, don't forget that you can still help spread the word, watch older videos, and support a great cause!

Original Press Release Link: http://www.prlog.org/11674116-72-hours-remain-raises-127456-in-27-hours.html


Child’s Play charity (www.childsplaycharity.org) is a game industry charity that started in 2003. Since then, they have received over 7 million dollars in donations of games, toys and books to children in hospitals worldwide. Child’s Play relies heavily on contributors, especially through gaming marathons. This is where the team from 72 Hours Remain hopes to make a difference and help patients in hospitals everywhere.

72 Hours Remain is a charity gaming organization that coordinates marathons throughout the year to raise money for Child's Play Charity. Child's Play is a charity providing games, books and toys to patients of children’s hospitals around the world.