pouët.net

Hello internet,

for a couple of weeks I have been wondering, whether it would be a good idea or even feasible to capture and broadcast the creation of a fast-prod on twitch. The upcoming deadline-party might be a good target for a small release and I could explain one or two thing about tooll.io on the way. The whole thing might be totally boring or even embarrassing. But on the other hand, maybe it gives me some new creative insights and ideas.

Since I'm a total newb when it comes to live-streaming you can probably help me:

1. What do you think about the idea?
2. Do you have any experience with twitch?
3. Any suggestions for software, hardware, and setup?
4. What's a realistic time-frame or schedule?
5. Anything you want or don't want to see?
6. Are voice-over or video-views required?

1. yes
2. some
3. OBS is what you need, it captures the screen 60fps if needed, and can overlay whatever you need, mix you microphone, etc... see youtube tutorials, you'll have it running in no time.
4. not sure, but make a schedule what works for you. e.g. 2-3 times per week, in the evening.
5. go wild!
6. definitely voice-over, you need to explain what you're doing, what's your ideas and even when there is nothing to explain, it's good to keep some conversation with watchers.

btw, there is #programming or #gamedev subcategories in "Creative".
take a peek, find a channel that is interesting to you, and do the same, only with a demoscene content.

1 great idea if you can bear the nonsense and spamfest that is most twitch chatrooms

2 been streaming on and off myself, playing games and producing music live in the creative section (twitch won't mind you not playing games as long as you stream in the appropriate section)

3 Go with OBS, period, it will cap framebuffers of different programs easily and it's easy to add overlays and interactive things like alerts and notifications

4&5 dunno

6 there's a chat delay of about 30 seconds so having an open mic really helps if you want to interact with chat ... if you type things in chat it will seem disjointed most of the time

echo echo echo ;) what bonefish typed faster ;)

1. Dafür! :)

i considered that aswell when i was first planning mdt9k, i think it would be cool.
i would do multiple twitch sessions swapping from coder to musician to graphician. and maybe have multiple feeds at the same time and group discussion of where to progress from what you got.

Pixtur: I'd love to follow that (both because it would be interesting, period, but also because I'd love to learn more about tooll).

I'd say don't even worry about making it a "thing". If you sit there and make stuff like you normally do and mumble over it, people _will_ watch, and it'll be fun. For twitch, that's really all you need :)

Really cool idea!
Go with OBS, it's really simple to use once you figure out the basics and you can do quite a lot.

For hardware, you really shouldn't worry about this unless you plan on going with more complicated capture card setups and separating stream/work machines.
There are however some nice things that make your life easier:
If you can afford to spend a tiny bit on even a slightly decent microphone, I'd recommend it.
For typical use, USB headsets or microphones are easy to go with since those avoid potential grounding issues that introduce audio buzz.
If you have a dual monitor setup, utilize it!
Helps a ton to just capture the other screen and having a chat open simultaneously.

I highly recommend narrating on what you do, Personally I find that it might be harder to concentrate building something from scratch while talking so I suggest planning a bit ahead on what you are doing so that you can think of the trivia / breaking down the whole stuff a bit in advance.
Plus chat interaction is one of the things that people always appreciate, keeping the delay in mind. Twitch also records chat activity so watching old records is less awkward than without :)

Make sure that you have local recording enabled and I'm not 100% sure on twitch settings these days but you have to enable video recording there too.
One trick to get more lifetime for a recording is to highlight it, be it a 1-2hr highlight :)

But what Ferris said, have fun while doing it and keep it natural / casual!

hello internet,

thanks for these quick comments. I really appreciate it. I set up OBS and finally got some stream working. My internet-connection is super bad: I have an average upload speed of 700kbs, so the stream might not be the best quality.

@oasiz: Can you elaborate on "One trick to get more lifetime for a recording is to highlight it, be it a 1-2hr highlight :)" ?

I'm too tired tonight, but I figure I will start "twitching" (do you actually say that?) tomorrow around 12:00.

:) awesome!

I had been thinking about this as well, but there is one thing I don't get: Can you just sit down and start being productive? Make a time slot beforehand and then just jet going? For me, it mostly goes like this:
Open the editor. open a file with it. Open a browser and check twitter and reddit and pouet. Go back to the editor. Realize I'm hungry... etc etc. maybe, HOURS later I'll start becoming madly productive, but maybe it won't happen today at all. Point 1: nobody wants to watch me procrastinate. Point 2: If I waited until it happened and announced "hey, I'm having a creative streak, here's my twitch", I fear I'd be ending my productivity this way, interrupting myself. Or slowing myself down by explaining stuff, instead of using the precious little flow-time I get. Point 3: There are phases where I scribble stuff on paper or walk around the room thinking, which doesn't work on a stream.
Can you really PLAN that kind of activity? I can't even remotely imagine how someone could do that. Will watch your twitch to see it for my own eyes.

Works perfectly in one hour compos. ;) It's not that you plan it, you just have to get your creativity going, but of course that's easier or harder for some people.

cupe: maybe you'd just need the pressure of streaming to become productive :)

Yeah, does work. I didn't fancy writing the music for Ad Astra so I streamed myself composing it to get it done.

@cupe: Haha. I somehow had the hidden agenda, that the 0.0012 viewers on the twitch stream will prevent me from checking twitter and pouet all too often. :-)

Not sure how it goes. I already have a couple of rough ideas and maybe I get some more suggestions from the chat. I guess, just getting started was one thing I learned from 1x.

Perhaps you can give a brief overlook on how to write shaders in tooll?!

if you use pen/paper or whiteboard, it would be nice to have a cam ready to capture that aswell.

i believe what oasiz was mentioning about highlight is a thing on twitch where you can select what video of yours (or snip of your video) you want to highlight in your main page. and that delays their deletion time apparentely.

but videos on twitch get deleted regardless of this. so you should always:
a) make sure you have the twitch settings of your channel set to save your video (by default it's off)
b) as you broadcast save it to disc anyways, just in case
c) after streaming you should export it to youtube asap (it might have problems with long videos and force you retry a few times)

if you dont do the above you'll risk losing your video completely after 1 month has past.

I sometimes stream tracking, synth jams, or art-pixelling on my channel (twitch.tv/oldskooljay). I don't have any subscribers, I just post up on facebook or wherever and usually a few people tune in over the couple hours I'm on-line. Very low key and informal but it's fun to do. :)

Sometimes I go on Twitch to MAKE myself be productive, otherwise I work like you do. :P But if I'm like 'I'm gonna do this online for the next two hours' then I usually do manage to work on what I'm intending to for that time.

I would like to watch this and of course any other demo people who want to stream their work I would also watch.

Can you please post a date and time/timezone when you will stream? It's really hard to catch stuff at the right time here on the wrong side of the world but if I know exactly when it is I can set an alarm to remind me.

hello again. If things work out, i will be starting in about 30 minutes on https://www.twitch.tv/pixtur2 :-)

Now, this was a nice start. Thanks to the people who were watching. It's actually surprisingly motivating, even though I'm constantly wondering if there could be anything more boring that me trying to figure out what to I actually want to build.

The microphone-issue sucks but I will get a headset soon. Really curious where this thing is going :-)

I wanted to watch the VOD but it wasn't archived, did you enable it?

https://help.twitch.tv/customer/en/portal/articles/1575302-videos-on-demand