BTS: Crash On the Run (149) (Patreon)

G'day legends, sorry this Behind the Scenes post is running late. If you've been keeping up with update posts here on Patreon, shit has been real messy. The same can be said for the process to get this video completed so let's break it down!

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How did this video come to be?
From the moment On the Run soft launched in May of 2020, I knew that I was excited to talk about the game after being the first person to review ALL of the older mobile Crash titles in a single video. A new game to add into that collection was honestly super exciting for me. It was just a matter of waiting almost 12 months for the damn thing to officially release. As a result, I feel like the topic lost all of it's momentum but given the channel has been performing so low throughout 2021 due to a number of factors. Seeing the this episode do better than that was a nice feeling as the road to get there was mental.

Difficulties with Game Capture:
This is something I've struggled with for a while. Forever and ever ago when I made that original Crash Mobile Games episode in early 2016, I needed to figure out a way to capture gameplay off of a portable device. In order to capture gameplay of CNK 2 on iOS, I had to use my cousin's Mac and stream it to that which was a mess but it worked. So fast forward to 2019 when I bought a smart phone for the first time just to play Tony Hawk's Skate Jam, I also picked up a Lightening-HDMI cable that plugs directly into an iPhone and outputs the screen into a capture card. It worked super well for that game but upon prepping in 2020 for On the Run, I discovered it only works in landscape mode.
For a vertical game like Crash, the frame rate completely TANKED and there was no fix for this I could find, no alternative cable or anything convenient. Thankfully, it took until March of 2021 but someone informed me that iOS devices all have built in screen capture as of some update and that was the method I had to use. It was a constant battle to manage storage space on my phone but it got the job done in the end!

Rather than blurring the background to fill the background space like usual, given there was so much of it. I opted instead for a static image comprised of some old elements I whipped up for N. Sane Trilogy related content. Worked pretty well I think!

Creating the Logo!
Crash logos are always the most fun to work on and I'm slowly but surely adding to my collection with new releases and revisiting older games. On the Run actually had a better logo to work with than Crash 4, given it had a background and other elements. Typography and fonts are always the easiest part. The green blob for the background was traced from the actual one used in the original logo but for the potion bottle, I was forced to get creative. Given there don't exist any clean renders of the official one used and nothing else I could find was suitable, I decided to make my own image from scratch.
By tracing out the object into various shapes and creating multiple layers, messing with emboss to get a glass look and glows for the liquids in different tones to create shadow. The end result worked extraordinarily well if I do say so myself for a quick thrown together job. This entire logo was made in about 45 minutes so yeah, super proud of it! 😁

Life gets in the way...
So... this bastard was a complete nightmare far beyond what I expected. For starters, even the nature of progression through the game proved challenging enough given you need to grind in order to continue. I knew what was ahead and did my best to reach the elemental mask fights and Uka Uka, but I was incredibly disappointed that I was unable to make it up to the Native Fortress and Road to Ruin levels, which featured Mr. Crumb who was a big talking point of the game and the episode too. But that was the least of my worries.

Recently moving back into my old bedroom from the apartment was a huge life shakeup that hit me a lot harder than I was anticipating, but I did my best to get on and be as productive as possible. Filming in the old room was a strange but familiar feeling and I had a lot of fun getting on camera again and feeling good about myself... however it didn't take long for things to fall apart.

I originally left in 2020 due to a toxic environment that had greatly improved in the 12 months I was gone. But coming back home was an abrupt shift that proved things may not have been as stable as they seemed prior to moving in. So after filming the episode, out of nowhere... I found myself on foot at night getting the hell out of there.
Where I ended up was in a rural area with a family member who took me back to grab all of my computer gear so that I could continue working at their house, prior to leaving the following week to go across the state again for a little escape as a 'reward' for getting my On the Run video finished... problem was it wasn't finished yet.

Without any actual internet, it was next to impossible to get things done. I didn't have everything I needed for make the video, the full game soundtrack needed downloading along with a lot of images for various things, let alone the task of how I was going to upload the video when it was finished to hit the release date I had planned.
At this point, the game had been out for a month already and had lost a lot of steam so there was no missing this deadline. So I had no other choice but to travel to the "Local Online Access Centre" which is basically a computer lab. While I was there, a local band of maybe 10 people broke out their guitars and started having a jam session WHILE I WAS TRYING TO GET WORK DONE. Shit was such an overload on the senses that I almost broke down into a seizure!
In the end, the entire 20 minute episode was edited in a single 7 hour sitting which is without a doubt, the fastest I've edited a video in a very long time, especially one of that length.

I took all my computer gear BACK to my old bedroom to upload the episode and schedule it, prior to rushing to the bus station to head off on my trip. It was all very last minute!

Video release:
I feel like the right choice was made to upload the video as planned, even though Early Access patrons missed out on their Early Access. The day my video went live, it was announced that The Noid was going to be added into the game as part of a promotion with Dominoes and then later in the week, FemTropy from Crash 4 was also announced. Had I waited to upload it, then the video would have been going up out of date which is never something you want to see. Cut it very fine!

It was nice to get out and escape reality for a bit knowing the episode performed a little better than normal as of late, but I was still upset knowing I had NOTHING else to upload until my next Every Level Ranked could be completed when I got home (still a work in progress as of writing this).

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That's a WRAP!
For a super dooper rush job, I'm quite proud of how the final episode turned out. I like to think it's a great blend of funny and informative, which is mostly thanks to playing through the game with my partner together and taking the piss. Being back home helped with naturally fitting back into a normal filming regime but yeah... just wish things had been smoother and more enjoyable to make in retrospect.
But anyway, that about does it people. Please let me know if you have any further questions, very curious to hear what people thought of the finished video and until next time, I hope you have a great fucking day. Cheers! 👍