pouët.net

As I promised a special someone not to cause drama, I'll focus on the people on SceneCity who get the points I am making, especially on the "it's called spectrum for a reason, stupid" part and wish to talk openly about it.

Sorry to have taken Lynn as an example, but with her spending a lot of her time on completely randomly accusing everyone and their dog of misogyny and stuff for absolutely no reason or remotely recognizable "trigger point" stuff day after day after day, I think it was a good time to point this out.

Everyone, stop believing your autism entitles you to something, and stop believing you have any special rights due to your position on your spectrum, or that your autism is more important than someone else's autism. It's not. If you do, it's you who has become the bully.

And if you don't understand that problems with social interaction with other people is the SINGLE MOST COMMON defect in autism, maybe go read a book about neurodiversity instead of sitting on a high horse.

@scamp: Did you ever set up a Gitlab or something with the source for the alterations you guys have done on OME, btw? Since I'm looking into using it for SceneSat, it'd be really interesting to see how you handled it all. Also, the auto-scaling of edge servers would surely be interesting to take a look at as well.

I'm sad to see that things tend to escalate a bit too quickly in all sorts of directions, but we're still left with a demoscene to support and I plan to do my part to help out wherever possible. :)

Yes, there is an internal gitlab (and I think some stuff on github), but we also have contributed most stuff upstream, including making h.265 work over SRT. Some of the patches needed for getting that to work correctly they could not merge due to $whatever.

Or you simply take over scenecity.TV completely. You need local encoder hardware, I no longer need the local transcoder hardware, you want the streaming setup, I no longer need it, you need transcoders and being able to scale, I don't....

You get the point. :)

And I'd be happy of stuff we worked on for ages and paid heaps for not going to trash.

Well, that is a matter of finances, I guess. Which we're already struggling with. :) But it's an appealing thought.

I don't want money.

I know people are reading all kinds of stuff into my "infrastructure" posting. I would like the history, which also is my history, to be preserved. But I am no longer willing to invest in an environment where 10% want me dead, 30% no longer want to see me involved in ANYTHING scene related (demoparty organizing or whatever), 20% closest friends who are so deep down in depression, grief and self-destruction they no longer recognize who their true friends are, and on top 30% bullies who think that their exact position on the autistic spectrum or their own personal depression entitle them to beat up other people located ELSWHERE on the same spectrum. :)

A community of autistic people where the most common defect in autism is not tried to be dealt with and accepted as something that needs care is just plain and simple idiotic.

I am not mad at anyone.

If I can support someone who still WANTS to invest into the community that helped me survive much of my childhood and more, I'll do that.

In other words: Whatever you need of the software or hardware or hosting, you can have it. I don't want any compensation WHATSOEVER.

As written elsewhere: The datacenter will stay "forever", most of my business in Germany will stay there, we will EXTEND to Thailand, and also the life of me and a couple of other people will slowly GRADUATE to that island there.

I am (was?) about to shut down things because I was told it's redundant.

I'll give you a ping in the coming days and we can see what could be done. Much as we were heading into earlier on in the big thread yesterday.

As I've mentioned before, I'm very much for sorting this out to the best possible outcome and I do hope people trust my intentions either way. I'm not much for drama in any direction, so I think we could resolve this in a decent manner. If that's me being naive or not I dunno, but that's at least how I see it. :)

Maybe one take away is to be more explicit about stuff that exists, infrastructure, initiatives, efforts, needs, etc.

I'll try not to digress too much because I don't want to derail the topic, but this fits a larger pattern that has bothered me several times since I'm active in the scene: there are things that apparently some people know about, others don't, and there doesn't seem to be communication on it and you just have to be in the circle.

In this particular case, maybe it could have been clearer with a "hey by the way, this machinery is done with SceneCity, that handles this and that". Just putting a logo somewhere doesn't tell whether it's a vital infrastructure or just a greeting because they paid a beer once.

The general consensus inside my team had been "don't mention that scamp is involved, else people treat it like cancer". And a lot of people in charge actively tried not to mention us.

As I am in "don't hold back on dirty little secrets": Here are three parties that had been very happy with our services, or where we even rescued them last-minute, and which made very clear they don't want SceneCity to stream their party anymore because I was involved in building it:

Revision, Deadline, Evoke.

And if these high-visibility parties actively refuse to use this service for absolutely no technical but purely ideological reasons, it's no wonder SceneCity's visibility dropped to basically zero.

Did I just cause more drama? Maybe. But it's simply a documented fact, and why keep hiding it? :)

The other people in the team also are not the kind of people who like to be a front-man or be seen (or hated because they deal with me).

I hope she is not hated for me mentioning this now: From those who don't have eggs in the basket, Darya has been the most vocal voice spreading positive info about SceneCity all around.

wtf, this is simply not true. (at least not in this twisted fashion you make it appear here and in other threads)
But I'll be zen and buddhist about it and won't drag any details into public now. I was actually about to write a post of appreciation, and will probably do this when this uncalled for public mudthrowing stopped. I expected the new and improved scamp to be at least a little bit more self-reflective as to only see all failure and shortcomings and bad intent on all others than yourself.
And sorry that I stopped answering to your messages anymore sometime in July. I logged out of scenecity and havent opened it again. Also haven't read your mail yet, as it was just getting too much for me and I rather focussed on organizing Deadline instead of exchanging textwalls with you and read about what we all do wrong and how unthankful we are and micromanagement attempts on our event planning.
Maybe I should have told you before. I wanted to talk to you in person on Nordlicht or Evoke, as we discussed, but this didn't happen. I don't like how this ends now, but I have to draw a line somewhere as well.

@ziphoid do you need help with funding for scenesat?

@xeron: That is always needed, indeed. We're constantly flipping coins and wouldn't it be for our kind patreons and the voluntary payments for our free Sound of SceneSat compilations, we'd gone under ages ago. Making use of a hardware setup like the one running SceneCity would allow us to do wonders, and primarily get rid of our current $135/month streaming engine straight away.

But, this thread isn't about SceneSat. I should really put up more info somewhere when there's time to do so. :)

v3nom: I respect you, value you, and don't intent to do a public (or even private) fight with you. Call it "twisted", I call it "executive summary".

And yes, you ghosted me for 4 months on every communication channel we ever had. Which you had never before done when you actually NEEDED stuff from me.

Feel free to unghost me anytime you want. I don't hold grudges, I like you, and especially the insanely great decoration I have seen through your stream (when the Youtube one was was up, cough, cough, sorry, would have switched sooner to scenesat if you had promoted that as much as you promoted youtube) was mind-blowing.

We felt very, very, VERY disinvited, else we would have enjoyed that in person. From the distance it looked like the Deadline edition where most love was invested into.
'
Nevertheless, yes, Deadline rightfully is on the list above. It's just factual. Don't ghost someone and a team who you happily had provide you services for what was it .. 8 years?... and then expect this not to get noticed.

So, next party orga please, maybe someone who happily took about 30.000 from us, 10 years of providing Internet and network, then rescuing their ass on streaming last minute, and then started the ghosting once we were no longer needed? :)

ANY TAKERS? :)

Or maybe better not? So far only this single SceneCity item has been mentioned. Maybe some people would like to leave it at that?

Ok, Ok, I will stop posting for this night.

If anyone wants to have a serious conversation: Query (DM as the cool kids say), please.

you call it ghosting, I call it mental self care. I can only spend my limited time and energy once and it gets more and more limited the more the deadline approaches. we wanted to talk in person at nordlicht and/or evoke. I was there. good night! (I need to go to bed as well, need to be at a hospital tomorrow at 7.)

Let's talk when you are ready.

I only brought this list of parties up because I was asked here what the reason is SceneCity didn't have visibility. And this is the truthful answer: A demoparty streaming service and a demoscene chat service don't make any sense if not used or even actively rejected to be used.

And it was an active choice at all three mentioned parties. It's not realistic that suddenly it was forgotten that SceneCity exists and what it purpose was. And it's not the case I would have been the only contact, either, in case someone has an emotional problem with me.

At all three mentioned parties there had been SceneCity guys present that are not me. Nobody would ever have needed to deal with me.

So, please, whoever wants me to stop talking: Better not bring up those things. I'll not tell anyone more from the box of "dirty little secrets" unless it's the truthful answer to something I am getting asked :)

I'm incredibly appreciative of all the support I've gotten and I have no idea where this is coming from.


No, I'm aware that I can be hurtful sometimes. I have no issue talking it through with people.


I don't assume anything like that, nor do I think other autistic people are "the problem", whatever that means.


The only thing I'm generally intolerant of are people who hold viewpoints that I feel in some way conflict the existence of me and my friends, though I don't pretend I'm perfect -- I just find some people annoying, which I don't think is a unique experience, and I try my best to disengage when that happens (not always successfully, but I've gotten a lot better about).


I reflect so much I wouldn't stand out in an early 90s raytracing scene. The amount of overthinking I do is practically one of my bigger flaws.


You wouldn't have posted this if that was true.


you're making it sound like I'm scheming something. don't worry, i'm not up to anything nefarious.


Imposter syndrome and self deprecation are kicking my ass on a daily basis so I once again don't understand where this is coming from


I probably am sometimes. I'm not flawless, but I do try my best. That said, I also think sometimes people knowingly act in bad faith and then try to play the victim when it backfires.


why is this in quotes? lol.


No, generally those kind of definitions come from groups or communities and I have no delusions of being in charge of any of them.


To inch a little closer to the actual topic of the thread,

yeah, maybe people do shy away from things you're involved in. Maybe you've made a reputation over the years, and that doesn't just clear overnight just on good intentions or promises. Some damage takes years to repair, sometimes it never does. Whether people forgive or not is up to them, not anyone else, no matter how much good will is shown. You just gotta make things right because you want to.

Trust me, I've learned that myself the hard way. More than once.

As you have opened up after me naming you as an "example", which I find surprising and very reasonable, I find it inappropriate to do further deep shit talk (meant in a positive way) in front of other people. Would be happy to talk elsewhere.

Happy to continue on IRC or SC.

Unless you PREFER to have the conversation in public. Maybe people learn something. Maybe not.

You choose.

If pouet, then new thread, please.

On the topic of why parties won't use scenecity, i can only speak for Inércia's side of things. We honestly appreciated the routers and stream support for the (was it 2022?) edition.

The reason we didn't reuse it in future editions was mostly because of the requested exclusivity to the platform at the time. And while the solution of recording everything locally and uploading it to youtube immediately after the compo sort of worked out to provide VODs and archives of what happened (except we fucked up for the prize giving, but mistakes happen), we are certain that we missed a lot of realtime viewer interaction because of it, because random people do pop up on twitch and youtube, we had that crowd during the pandemic, we had them the years after aswell, but we didn't have significant online interaction when we used scenecity. Another issue of exclusivity was that when some people had load issues, there was no alternative platform to point them to, they would just not be able to watch.

Don't get me wrong, we 100% agree demoscene should have infrastructure available that is independent from big corporations.

But to not be able to use popular channels is shooting ourselfs in the foot in terms of outreach. And while for some demoparties that might be fine, they focus only on their regular visitors etc, some don't even care for providing livestream at all, it's an after-thought on their party orga todo list, whatever, their option; for us at Inércia, due to the lack of active demoscene in Portugal, outreach is essential.

As a sidenote: i honestly believe demoscene overall would have a lot more active folks if more demoparties out there would put as much thought in handling their livestream and online communication aspect as seriously as they think about their physical partyplace experience. But each party orga team knows best what they rather focus on, to each their own, at the end of the day i can only control Inércia (when Jeenio let's me have my way) and free time is always lacking to do everything we wanted to do for the event.

So with outreach in mind being front and center, we need to be on the trendy platforms, trendy not just for other demosceners but for random curious people who might be interested in digital art, and these days that's discord and youtube and twitch. Love it or hate it. Funneling our streaming and chat to exclusivity use of a relatively private/unknown channel is counter to that need.

So we looked into alternatives. Scenesat provided the multistream relay without requiring exclusivity, so we used their livestream service instead. Restream.io would have done similar service commercially but scenesat also does semi-automatic-backups of the stream, which is useful in case of having to deal with copyright nonsense on the VODs on the commercial platforms.

On our new location they had good enough internet for us to secure a livestream uplink and still offer bandwidth for our visitors, so we didn't need the 4g routers support from viprinet anymore and did not want to abuse on that sponsorship without really needing it - since we assume it's quite costly to ship, provide, etc.

tl;dr: if it didn't require exclusivity (and had VODs available by default) we would gladly also stream our events there.

TBH I've never heard of Scenecity and I just went there and still didn't get the idea behind it. (Like, what it actually is and why would I use it. Was the idea to have a sofascener service with sceneid login? I wouldn't care much about privacy while watching demoparty streams, nor would I expect it from sceneid login, but what do I know.)

Still sad to hear it must go, because when I was stumbling upon things Scamp did, it was usually awesome. <3

Why, though? Big corporate infrastructure is being used to stream massive events that easily deal with (hundreds of) thousands of simultaneous viewers and that works absolutely fine. It's easily discoverable, there are apps, it's robust.

Why not just use it?

Because they happily delete your stream if they think that you've just violated copyright or shown someone's naked butt.

Just for the record, how many times has that happened?

I'm aware of two cases, the famous one on Twitch but also on YouTube. Also just for the record, I'm not against streaming on big corps' platforms, I'm just for having an alternative just in case.

at the risk of breaking everybody's grr boo angry vibes, this sentence is a work of beauty! i'm getting warm fuzzies etc

skrebbel: Indeed, that's lovely.