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So after the talk the last week about highscorers streaming on Twitch, I've decided I'm going to do an experimental stream this Wednesday, at 1pm Eastern Standard Time. I'm probably going to do an episode run, picked out before hand as one that I have a good bit of room for improvement on, and one that hopefully won't have any levels that I'd be stuck on for an hour trying to get the route on.

So I do have a question for anybody who's considering tuning in: how much commentary do you want, and of what sort? i.e. should I try and talk about just what I want to do with the level/route, talk about whatever I want, or just stay silent and play with only game sounds coming through?

Any other comments towards this experiment is also welcome, and if anybody has streamed before and has tips for me it would be appreciated :)

Here's my channel for when the time comes - http://www.twitch.tv/golfkid

Stream's over, but we had fun! Watch the video here

golf wrote:So I do have a question for anybody who's considering tuning in: how much commentary do you want, and of what sort? i.e. should I try and talk about just what I want to do with the level/route, talk about whatever I want, or just stay silent and play with only game sounds coming through?

Definitely talk (about anything, even commenting on your body temperature is better than silence), turn off ingame sounds, and maybe put on some music. Try to test the volume levels before. Also no delay would be ideal if that's possible, so we can laugh at you in real time :D jk

I prefer the "whatever you want" kind of commentary; streamers who joke around and talk about random stuff instead of just the game are really entertaining. Do whatever feels natural though, that's the most important thing. (of course talking about the game is sometimes important as well)

if the dota stream taught me anything it's to have kittens boxed up on the side of your room and dedicate a camera to them

vankusss wrote:

golf wrote:So I do have a question for anybody who's considering tuning in: how much commentary do you want, and of what sort? i.e. should I try and talk about just what I want to do with the level/route, talk about whatever I want, or just stay silent and play with only game sounds coming through?

Definitely talk (about anything, even commenting on your body temperature is better than silence), turn off ingame sounds, and maybe put on some music. Try to test the volume levels before. Also no delay would be ideal if that's possible, so we can laugh at you in real time :D jk

*cough cough* I found this for this specific reason. *cough cough*

If you want to me to keep up a fairly consistent commentary about whatever, I'll probably need some chat involvement. I'm not real great at conversation even with other people, so I doubt I could power through it by myself either.

I'll be sure to contribute to the conversation in chat (assuming I'm able to tune in). Don't worry about it, if there's nothing to be said then silence is perfectly ok.

I'll be here too, seems cool :D Be sure to archive the recording of the first N highscoring stream ever :P

With commentary this could be much more interesting than I thought at first. I'll definitely watch when I can.

So with the help of Eddy, I think I'm pretty much ready as far the technical aspects of this goes. For anybody who has an interest in streaming this in the future, a word of warning. Neither of the streaming softwares I downloaded and tried (XSplit and Open Broadcaster Software [OBS]) recognized NReality's Flash player window as a valid game window to stream. So as a result, my setup will be somewhat less than optimal, I think, but it'll be good enough as a first try. As a somewhat related note, you will find out that van's concern

vankusss wrote:Also no delay would be ideal if that's possible, so we can laugh at you in real time :D jk

is completely out of my control. Twitch itself enforces a mandatory delay of several seconds on the stream, and there's nothing I can do about it. My setup will let you see that for yourself, since my setup will let you see the chat window on my screen.

▲▪►▪▼◄▲ wrote:*cough cough* I found this for this specific reason. *cough cough*

So Aids... I checked that out, and unless you pay $20 for a PPL certificate and 3-month registration, you hear a voiceover about every 15-30 seconds. That's not going to work. So, if you have an account already on there, would you be so kind as to PM me your login info so that I can possibly use that for music? Or somebody give me other ideas for a way to get music without a chance of being slammed by copyright stuff or whatever that falls under? If not, then we'll have to go music-less because I really don't want to take that risk.

Regardless, I'm still looking forward to this, and a little bit nervous about showing off my skills (or lack there-of) to what seems like will be most of the active community.

golf wrote:So with the help of Eddy, I think I'm pretty much ready as far the technical aspects of this goes. For anybody who has an interest in streaming this in the future, a word of warning. Neither of the streaming softwares I downloaded and tried (XSplit and Open Broadcaster Software [OBS]) recognized NReality's Flash player window as a valid game window to stream. So as a result, my setup will be somewhat less than optimal, I think, but it'll be good enough as a first try. As a somewhat related note, you will find out that van's concern

vankusss wrote:Also no delay would be ideal if that's possible, so we can laugh at you in real time :D jk

is completely out of my control. Twitch itself enforces a mandatory delay of several seconds on the stream, and there's nothing I can do about it. My setup will let you see that for yourself, since my setup will let you see the chat window on my screen.

▲▪►▪▼◄▲ wrote:*cough cough* I found this for this specific reason. *cough cough*

So Aids... I checked that out, and unless you pay $20 for a PPL certificate and 3-month registration, you hear a voiceover about every 15-30 seconds. That's not going to work. So, if you have an account already on there, would you be so kind as to PM me your login info so that I can possibly use that for music? Or somebody give me other ideas for a way to get music without a chance of being slammed by copyright stuff or whatever that falls under? If not, then we'll have to go music-less because I really don't want to take that risk.

Regardless, I'm still looking forward to this, and a little bit nervous about showing off my skills (or lack there-of) to what seems like will be most of the active community.

Great! Honestly, I wouldn't even worry about playing music (through the stream.) People watching can just run iTunes or something in background...

Oops, I didn't realize that you had to pay. I have a Pandora account that you could use, but you might get in trouble for it. A good backup is Archive.org seeing as they have hundreds of live concerts to choose form. Maybe you'll find something else though.

Alright people, one minute to go! :D

Tuning in.

I think this went very well as a first try :) I was a little surprised to see as many old faces of the community show up, like blue_tetris, GamingWolf, and Yahoozy (yes I know you posted here, but that was an hour into my stream! How was I supposed to see that?) Hopefully this can inspire others to start streaming, and maybe we can do some different things with it too. Worst part, I think, was the stream delay, but I was expecting that to be the case and there was nothing I could do about it.

The archived video on twitch is up in the first post, and I will put it up on Youtube as well at some point here soon once I figure out the best way to do so.

It was fun to hang out and chat with you guys, something I would definitely do again :)

I've been thinking about perhaps trying out streaming N and/or Spelunky to have fun, practice my English (and talking in general) and have an easy way to record epic moments without it taking all my hard drive space. It might never happen for a number of reasons but it's a thought I've had for a while.

It's a shame I missed it. (It was 3 in the morning my time; so maybe next time you could stream at night?)
I might watch some of the archived stream later.)

Edit: I've just skimmed through the stream... I found it quite fascinating... thanks.

I was at work so I could not join live, but I just got through watching the archive of the stream. It looks like it was a lot of fun. I wish I could have joined in on it. the discussion looked like fun. I think Golf you did very well with the commentating as well as keeping a good pace for entertainment.

To answer a few of the questions you posed during the stream.

I think episode highscoring is a perfect format because you get the feel of what highscoring is like for the top players, but do eventually move on to a new level. There is also a little less pressure from level to level.

I also think column speedrunning or NUMA mappack running would fun to watch. I also think if we could get several people together in a teamspeak (and possibly a multi-stream going) to compete would be a lot of fun.

I don't think anything felt too boring. I thought your pace was good.

So thanks a lot Golf. I hope the experiment continues and maybe we can get others to do a stream.

Thanks for the feedback TRO. I'm also in the middle of uploading the video to Youtube, because there's no guarantee on how long the Twitch archive will be kept available. I agree that I hope others will be encouraged and try out a stream of their own, or be able to do some sort of a short, live competition.

ska wrote:It's a shame I missed it. (It was 3 in the morning my time; so maybe next time you could stream at night?)
I might watch some of the archived stream later.)

Sorry about the timing ska, but I had this scheduled during my day off of work from my main job, and my evening job is all 5 weeknights. If I do another stream I'll try and do it on a weekend night, so that maybe you (and other Ozzie/Kiwis) can join in on the fun. If I time it right, maybe we can even have it be morning for all the Europeans too :D Hope you get a chance to watch the recording and enjoy it.

Just in case you missed my edit: I did watch it (albeit skimmed in about 45 minutes or so), and it was certainly a interesting experience. I know you said in the stream that you usually have another instance of NReality open to watch top runs. I was surprised that you didn't for this episode. Personally, I can't remember the last time I attempted an episode highscore without looking through at least some of the levels in another window; if only to keep the route fresh in my mind and make sure I don't miss any key tactics.

I didn't have a second window open because of the setup I had to use for the stream. I tried both XSplit and OBS, ended up using OBS, but neither of them would recognize the Adobe Flash Player window as a valid "game". So what you saw was basically my desktop, and anything I did on my screen would show up on the stream. So I suppose that maybe it would have been a good illustration of how we look at routes as highscorers, and compare other runs to what we're doing, I felt like that would have taken away from the stream. Also, most of the levels had pretty simple routes; 81-4 was the only one that I thought I might need reminders for, so I drew up a little diagram.

golf wrote:81-4 was the only one that I thought I might need reminders for, so I drew up a little diagram.

Wahahah. That's some serious dedication, right there.

I didn't get a chance to watch this live, but I've watched a little bit of the replay.

While I enjoyed listening to the commentary of how you go about episode runs, if I'm perfectly honest the gameplay got a bit boring to watch after a while.
The problem is that there's just too much dying and restarting, and I don't think even Eddy could get consistently good enough runs to keep my attention.

I personally think column speedruns would be much more fun to watch. If you haven't yet I suggest watching this to see what I'm on about.
Even though the actual standard of play is much lower as you don't want to risk dying, its much less repetitive.
(Although I can imagine it would be much harder to commentate while you try and remember what level is coming next).

I'm going to do another stream in a couple days! This time the focus will be on column speedruns, at least the 00 and probably the 10. We'll see how things go from there on what happens next. May just do some completely unpracticed column runs, may just fool around on userlevels, or just chat with the stream, or even all of the above. :) Planning to start Friday night at 10pm Eastern. Click the link for a handy countdown I created to hopefully stop the confusion of what time this is starting like the last one had.

golf wrote:I'm going to do another stream in a couple days! This time the focus will be on column speedruns, at least the 00 and probably the 10. We'll see how things go from there on what happens next. May just do some completely unpracticed column runs, may just fool around on userlevels, or just chat with the stream, or even all of the above. :) Planning to start Friday night at 10pm Eastern. Click the link for a handy countdown I created to hopefully stop the confusion of what time this is starting like the last one had.

Just upgraded my comp to 16GB of memory, so I should have no issue screen capping and playing. It'll have to be N 1.4 as NReality lags for me, but I was thinking we could organise a simulcast race? I don't have much experience speedrunning columns, so I'll likely get pummeled, but it could be fun :)