Tag Archives: live streaming

FuzzyAdventures, Gaming

Let the Fuzzy Adventures Begin!

Leave a comment

With my summer now in full swing (even if the weather disagrees), I’ve started work on my new Fuzzy Adventure series. This was item 6 in my post about what I planned to do this summer and I’m super excited to get to work! I’ve done a test session already with a short run through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to see how my setup works:

A screenshot of an initial Fuzzy Adventure test run.
A screenshot of an initial Fuzzy Adventure test run.

 

I’m using a StarTech USB3HDCAP to hook up my consoles to my PC and XSplit to handle both the Twitch streaming and video recording. The cool thing about the capture box is it can handle any console so I can play and record on anything from my old NES up to PS3. Since I just picked up Ni No Kuni I may end up doing a regular Let’s Play as I work my way through that.

As for the Fuzzy Adventures, I anticipate doing at least one episode per week. Each episode will probably include about an hour or more of game time (no doubt subject to the game being played) along with the written portion.  Since this is all new to me I’ll have to see how much writing is involved for each hour of game play.  I’ve also engaged the services of a professional graphic artist to handle the graphics for the videos. I really want something that looks well-made. All of this should be ready within the next week or two. Can’t wait to get started!

Gaming, Writing, Imagination, Live Writing, Crowdfunding

The Semester’s End & Things to Come

Leave a comment
This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

So yesterday I had my last final. I’m really glad it’s done but I’d also like to kick the person who decided to hold finals and graduation on the same day. Seriously stupid. Why not have graduation on Saturday instead? Makes way more sense. Whatever, it’s done and I’m pretty sure I did well on both of the finals I had to take. My hand is still mad at me though. Nothing like having to hand-write a five page essay in under an hour. Fun times. Now though it’s time to move on to super fun things!

Starting Monday, barring any life events, I will be starting my new Fuzzy Adventures series. All of the gear I needed to make it happen came in on Thursday. Took me a good day or so to get everything set up as well. Still have to do a few things on the software end but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Tested out the video capture card by hooking up my trusty old PS2 and booting up the first game I’m going to use for my Adventures series: Castlevania – Symphony of the Night. I wasn’t sure I was going to start with that one but the Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night decided me. For those who haven’t heard it is a gothic-themed side scrolling action adventure RPG made by the same guy who co-directed Symphony of the Night (SOTN). In his opening video he says that he’s wanted to do another game like SOTN for a long time but the AAA publishers say there’s no demand for such a game. Considering the campaign is already at $2.1 million with 27 days left to go I’d say the AAA have their heads up their asses. That’s not news though. Personally I’m really glad crowdfunding has allowed game developers to give AAA pubs the finger and do what they and the gamers want: make awesome games without publisher oversight and interference. Just look at what happened to Maxis and Simcity. EA took a beloved franchise and forced Maxis to limit and monetize the game to the point that it was a huge failure. Then EA blames Maxis and closes them down. Fuckers. But I digress.

I’m excited that I’ll be using my Twitch channel quite a bit more. I still plan on doing Live Writing sessions since I have plenty of writing to get done this summer. Each Fuzzy Adventure will entail quite a bit of writing per episode. I haven’t decided how long each finished video will be since I don’t know how long it will take me to do the writing for every 15 minutes of game play. I suspect that will vary greatly from game to game. SOTN isn’t exactly plot or dialogue heavy so I’ll be making a lot of stuff up to tell an interesting story. If and when I get to games like Final Fantasy 6 or Crono Trigger though I’m sure the writing portions will be much, much longer with less deviation from the game plot & dialogue. Either way I’m super excited to get going on this!

Writing, Live Writing, Method

The Quest for the Perfect Streaming Site

Leave a comment
This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

Now that I’m all settled into my weekly routine with college I feel like it’s time to get back to writing. To that end I’m planning on restarting my live writing sessions and doing them at least twice a week. The only problem is figuring out which streaming site to use. My basic requirements are thus:

– Must support at least 720p streaming. Anything less and you can’t read the text as I’m writing

– Must support live chat. There’s no point doing live writing if people can’t chat to you about it as you’re doing it. Also would prefer chat to be enabled whether or not a user has an account with the site.

– Prefer support for streaming my audio output along with my microphone. This enables people watching to listen to my writing playlist live and negates the need to add a soundtrack to the video later.

– Prefer free or inexpensive services. I’m a poor student now so I can’t really afford to pay for some fancy streaming service.

– Prefer the site to not be primarily a game streaming site.

 

That’s it really. So with those requirements I’ve been checking every streaming site I could get my hands on. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

 

Google+ Hangouts On Air:

Very easy to use and you can stream individual application windows rather than all or parts of your computer screen. You can schedule events and invite people from your circles to join. This would be my ideal streaming service/tool if it weren’t for two HUGE flaws. It doesn’t let you stream you audio output (i.e. the music you might be listening to) and it’s chat function doesn’t function. I’ve tested this numerous times and no matter what I do people who join the Hangout can’t see the chat window. Just the video. This pretty much defeats the purpose of doing a live writing stream in the first place.

 

YouTube Live:

I have the XSplit streaming software that I picked up some time ago to stream my World of Warcraft multiboxing sessions and these both work quite well together. The only problem is there’s no chat interface at all. None.

 

Twitch.tv:

This actually hits all of my requirements and is the service I used during the 2014 NaNoWriMo event to live stream my writing. My only concern here is that it’s nominally for live streaming gaming. This is definitely not gaming and thus wouldn’t be of interest to people browsing the site. Right now it’s my only real option though I’m hoping to find a better one. Twitch also lets people chat without an account, so bonus there.

 

Livestream:

I had quality issues with my stream coming from XSplit. They also want you to upgrade to a paid account if you want to use chat or any other basic feature beyond streaming.

 

FC2Live.us

Looks like it might work but appears to be used mostly by folks outside of the US. I definitely want a US-based site at this point.

 

UStream:

Another paid streaming site, this one geared towards enterprise or business users. Not for me.

 

hitbox:

Gaming site again. Le sigh.

 

UVlog.com:

This might be an alternative to using Twitch.tv but so far there isn’t much there. I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see how the site evolves.

 

 

So there it is, the list so far. I’m going to keep searching for the best site for my purposes but for the moment it looks like I’m stuck with Twitch. I’ve had some thoughts for fixing at least one of the Google Hangouts issues but the chat one is a total deal-breaker. If they got that fixed I could find a work-around for the whole audio streaming issue. I might send a message or two out to some folks I follow who stream regularly. They might have some ideas. Either way my goal is to start live writing again this Thursday!