The Desert Bus Roundup

[Evil Jim]

I realized I donated a grand total $1,820. I'd never buy that much worth of video games all at once for myself as it would feel ridiculously unnecessary & self-indulgent, but being video games for "tha chillunz" made it seem all right. Now I wonder how many X-boxes & PS3s that works out to.

[Keith K]

Not as many as we'd like. But it's quite a few DS'. It's a hell of a lot of Teddy Bears. Thousands of toy cars. Gallons upon gallons of paint. A couple hundred DVDs. One hell of a nice TV.

[AgentGray]

So, missed the end of desert bus...i know they probbly taped it, but does anyone that's actually going to get around to editing it anytime soon have it recorded as well?

[Yaxley]

So, missed the end of desert bus...i know they probbly taped it, but does anyone that's actually going to get around to editing it anytime soon have it recorded as well?

I don't think "editing" and "Desert Bus footage" really go together. My guess would be that whatever they recorded from the stream would be uploaded as is. If I'm right, that means it could happen as soon as they recover enough to upload it.

If I'm wrong, well, I'll be so disappoint.

[Lorithad]

They said they weren't going to edit it per say. When they said they'd have to edit some stuff, it just means cropping out the parts of the recordings that involved them getting ready to do whatever they were recording for.

[epocalypse]

Some of you might already know this, but I've been working on a commemorative/memorial to awesome poster for a few days now. I was inspired on Monday by the Value Added one and the other Crafters, and had since started talking to the guys and showing them my spec and initial pencil line work for the poster. Graham and I realized pretty early on that it probably wouldn't be done in time for this year, but we agreed it <i>must</i> get done. I'll be uploading preview images to my deviantart scraps as I work (already quite a few) and Might Additionally Do several smaller prints based on the initial line components, and who knows? hopefully you'll all be seeing more of it...

...IN THE FUTURE!
here's a pic of the current mock up (sorry for how rough it is):


you can see the rest over there as i work on them!

[Evil Jim]

That looks good so far. Except, when you finish it, instead of drawing Matt, just leave the egg placeholder labeled with "MATT."

[epocalypse]

That looks good so far. Except, when you finish it, instead of drawing Matt, just leave the egg placeholder labeled with "MATT."

Jim, while I think that might be a minute bit unfair to Matt, I'm also aware that it would be unfair to you if there was not a version where Matt was still an egg.

I will keep this in mind, but please remind me!

[CommanderKeen]

As for changing up the game/players stuff.

Don't. By changing the core of DB you change the entire fundraiser. Desert Bus is entertaining because of the absurdity of it. I mean eight hours for a point? Madness. It's entertaining to tune in a see if the bus has crashed yet. I mean people were asking up until the bitter end if the bus had crashed. As various drivers remarked, it's not hard anymore, most of them can do it by sound alone, and that takes away the challenge. So switch up the drivers. Make the game harder, take away audio perhaps? It's entertaining to see people paranoid of crashing the bus. so perhaps five minute hotseats of various people at the moonbase.

I had a few other ideas, but i sent them to [email protected]

[Master Gunner]

For James, Morgan, Jer, and Bill it doesn't seem to be really frustrating to them until you make them go for 6+ hours (which isn't feasible on a regular basis). So I say keep the 4-hours/4-drivers (although a couple more drivers wouldn't be bad), but get different drivers. Swap Bill out for Tim, for instance. Some new blood will make it more interesting.

[CaptainBerry]

My First Desert Bus
by CaptainBerry

Wow...just wow. I think we all knew that this year would top last, but by THIS MUCH?!?!? It blows my tiny bussing mind!

I fell ill on sunday, so Desert Bus For Hope kept me sane and concious. Being In England, the times that I would watch our boys (and girls) on the bus would generally be the night shift. I knew they'd be tired, but they still kept that entertainment bus a-rolling.

As for favourite moment, how can you narrow it down?!?!

Any auction: Octopimp brought the house down everytime, but my favourite bidder HAD to be Nima! Did Nima win anything in the end? If not, it'd be a crying shame.

The bi-hawk: Being about for when Morgan debased himself for the greater good is ALWAYS a plus.

Actually, I have a fav moment now that i think about it.
Pauls dramatic reading of "My Immortal". I was in tears.

Glorious days friends, glorious days.
A massive thank you to EVERYONE that made this year happen, and for all those that donated SOOOOOOO much in a "difficult year"

Here's to 230k in 2010

[epocalypse]

For James, Morgan, Jer, and Bill it doesn't seem to be really frustrating to them until you make them go for 6+ hours (which isn't feasible on a regular basis). So I say keep the 4-hours/4-drivers (although a couple more drivers wouldn't be bad), but get different drivers. Swap Bill out for Tim, for instance. Some new blood will make it more interesting.

Let's be fair though, it's not really the new blood as much as the non bill blood.

Bill, I love ya man, but you crashing first is the only clear statistical trend of point failure.

[AgentGray]

to the DB crew:

Last year, when Penny Arcade linked to the concept of Desert Bus I was amused, and very interested.

What I was in store for was almost 5 days of massive massive entertainment. These were people, strangers, doing insane absurd things for hours on end to make just a handful of dollars for one of my favorite charities.

What I watched was a handful of very talented people astonished at others' generosity all the while ignoring the fact that they had put their lives on complete hold for DAYS to try to scrape together enough to move on to the next hour. FOR THE CHILDREN.

Over the following year, I'd like to think I came to know you pretty well. I watched EVERY single vid in your archive, listened to the podcasts, and even, doing something I hadn't done to myself (outside of work) for several years, signed up for the forum to post a handful of comments.

What I experienced in 2008 was a heartwarming story. What I witnessed this year was the triumph of some amazing people, who I care about and respect a great deal.

Thank you, sincerely, you guys are awesome.

-Agent Gray

[CtMolloy]

Epocalypse:
That is going to look so great when it's done!

I think the 4 hour shifts are good, Perhaps more scheduled drivers would be a good idea though, guest drivers are always fun, and the more different people that drive the more risk of crashing maybe, which makes it a little more exciting... as exciting as desertbus can be to play.

I really enjoyed it this year, So many funny moments, great images, songs, memes, how i loved the memes and I rather enjoyed making milestone pics.
I watched with my brother for most of it and even my mum watched for a little, she enjoyed it... I was totally bummed at getting banned from the chat for a couple of hours, even though i could still watch. the audience interaction is AWESOME. The only thing i didn't like was that watching so much streaming video will totally rape download limits, so i had to ration my viewing for the last couple of days during on peak hours, so i had to miss Ken Steacy's third visit
I have less than 300mb downloads left for onpeak time now, and maybe 5 gig offpeak. Australian internets = disappoint.

Maybe they could start later in the month or earlier if alot of people have a monthly bandwidth cap? though i don't think there'd be enough to warrant that.

I am SO appoint with the lrr crew and everyone who helped.

[Keith K]

I was quite fortunate to be able to pawn off a lot of the data load to my work IP. About 36 hours of it. That was a personal improvement over last year. My ISP bills at the beginning of the month, so by the end, I too only have so much left before getting dinged by additional fees.

[CtMolloy]

I don't even get the option of additional fees...
set amount of data allowance for teh month, for a stupidly high price and they won't even allow you to pay for more per gb. I inquired about it and they were inflexible.

Worth is for the mighty desertbus though.

[Evil Jim]

My IP renews the 17th of each month. I don't know why it's right there in the middle but it makes timing things a little odd.

[TorachiKatashi]

CommanderKeen... I'm confused. Are you for new drivers or not? o.0

A couple of people said it already, but there was one thing that was bugging me - not a critique in the sense that anything can be done about it, if anything it's just a sign of the whole thing getting bigger, but just something that disappoints me - with so many more people in the chat this year compared to last year, it made the whole thing a lot less personal. Last year you could pretty much always get any question you had answered by only posting it once, hell, the drivers used to get annoyed during the slow parts of the day and ask the chat to ask them questions because there wasn't much going on, whereas this year you had to spam the chat fifty times and MAYBE they would see the question, if it wasn't immediately swept off-screen with the amount of talk going on, and that was pretty disheartening, especially since a big part of the fun for me last year was getting to talk to everyone. Unfortunately, that's just a side-effect of the charity drive getting so popular and there's not really anything that can be done about it.

A couple of things I think we need to fix/revamp for next year:

Challenges. While the PMing worked in theory, I think, especially from what people in the moon base were saying, it ended up being very overwhelming. Knowing who to PM got confusing, and because whoever was in the chat had so many PMs lined up, it made it very difficult to get in contact with someone there for time-sensitive problems or offers such as for food or anything of the like. There were also issues of the chat on their end freezing or crashing numerous times, probably often a result of massive numbers of PMs coming in, and of course these crashes meant losing those PMs. Someone mentioned a separate e-mail for it which seems like a good idea to me, and that way PMs can be left for things that require the immediate attention of whoever is there.

Auctions, ARGH. I had to start muting the driver cam and leaving to do something else during auctions for how frustrated I was getting. Seriously, how can you be old enough to type and not old enough to understand the concept behind "If you're not bidding, shut up"? Do you need a Masters in order to rub two brain cells together and figure that one out?

Until people start figuring it out next year, I think there seriously needs to be stricter rules during auctions, even if it means giving Op to a dozen or two LRR fans. Talking during bidding, ban. Repeating bids, ban. Fake bids, ban. Retracting bids, permanent ban, or at least, blacklisted from bidding in any LRR auction again ever in existence till the end of time.

Really, I felt so bad for poor Graham. I was pretty sure he was going to lose his shit after the second guy retracted his bid. I know I did on my end.

[Vaughn]

I'd suggest just having separate channels for Challenges or Auctions and General Chat?

[Rikadyn]

One solution would be have the auction in a seperate channel that's +m and have only people who are for sure going to bid on the item get the +v. sorta like registering to bid before an auction.

it's an idea...

I also find it funny that they used 4hr shifts, cause in FIA Endurance racing that is the maximum 1 driver can drive before needing to get out of the car for minimum of 8hrs...

[CtMolloy]

Talking during bidding, ban. Repeating bids, ban. Fake bids, ban. Retracting bids, permanent ban, or at least, blacklisted from bidding in any LRR auction again ever in existence till the end of time.

I think thats pretty harsh, and lame. sure excess talking while auctions go on is a bit annoying. But people can't help getting excited. kicking people who are spamming questions or whatever during auctions would be fair enough though

I logged on at one point and was excited to see that they were over $100k or something, i couldn't see the feed and wanted to convey my excitement but didn't know there was an auction on, someone was all weh weh stop talking... fair enough. i probably would have left if it was anything else... but to be banned for that? lame.

[Evil Jim]

That's why you pay attention to the Driver Cam and/or the chat for a while first before bursting in. Always knock first, lest you walk in on your parents having sex.

[Keith K]

Quite an analogy.

[Metcarfre]

Maybe instead of complaining about the chat, we should be excited that Desert Bus attracted enough people to raise $132,000 in just six days!!! I mean, that's insane! Frankly, it's a little selfish to whine that some question doesn't get answered. Desert Bus isn't for US, it's for the CHILDREN.

And if you really want to ask the crew a question, just offer to bring them coffee - or a pie!

[Graham]

I still wnat to know who the LRR booty shorts went to and how much they went for

I'm not sure off-hand (I'll check) but no pair went for less than $70.
I know one went for $150, cause I was there.