Midwest Zoom (Oct 16th '21 ???)

[Kurgan]

I'd be willing to try out a Twitch Stream of our usual HQ game this Saturday (or Friday) if you're interested. If it doesn't work out, we can always go back to Zoom. Please let me know!

[Kurgan]

Twitch was a pain. Since the account is brand new I'm not in "partner status" so can't do "squad streaming" which is really the sort of thing I'd want to have for this... the ability for people (from the Inn, let's say) to pop in, even if they're just a disembodied voice, and talk with whoever is playing Zargon (me, but doesn't have to always be me) manipulating the board and pieces. Ideally each person would have a camera for their dice rolls.

As it is, we had the chat and a really slow video feed of the board with the close up board (progress at least... I downgraded to an older version of OBS Studio that played nicer). The slowness was due to another device on the network that was downloading (my bad). But for now it seems that Zoom is still the best fit. I'm open to exploring other options.

Our backup was to the old familiar (and still free due to covid) Zoom:
iKarith and I played "Running the Gauntlet" and a lucky guess lead to probably the shortest quest I've ever played, ever (which was fine under the circumstances). After getting some great rolls to wipe out a room full of zombies, I let his Wizard Parley with a lone Chaos Warrior (and as luck would have it, he got the Boots of Speed, +2 squares movement). Giving the Cabiri Lords back their magical treasure resulted not only in a safe trip home but also a gift of the Magister's Hood (I thought he'd have to work a lot harder for it, but fair is fair!). Now the Wizard is powered up (don't worry, there are similar power ups for the other Heroes coming down the line, oops, said too much).

[Kurgan]

I have at least part of the weekend (9/10-11) free. Then I'll be on vacation a good portion of October. Don't let that stop you guys from organizing your own games though and if anyone has any tips for good cheap ways to stream physical games, please let us know!

[Kurgan]

At this point I am looking into other platforms for free (or close to it) video conferencing/streaming.

Jitsi looks like it could be promising. I can't rely on mobile apps for my streaming, or anything that requires already having a large popular following (Twitch and Youtube have barriers to entry there if you want to have multiple persons on a stream), but otherwise I'm open to just about anything that would let us more easily play with other inn members online.

[iKarith]

I still think we can stream to Twitch, but it'd wind up needing to be a stream from something more real-time. I'm not sure Kurgan's got the Internet to pull that one off. I do, but I haven't had time to set anything up, and for me setting it up is more complex because making stuff big enough to see is a thing.

[Kurgan]

I'm not sure Twitch is that memory intensive (with OBS Studio also running in the background) but maybe so. I wonder if they prioritize bandwidth for partners and top performers and such? We had three people in the room and the update times were very slow (like 14-34 seconds). To be fair, I had an xbox downloading a game in the other room that I forgot about, but it was still downloading when we switched to zoom and I didn't notice any problems there (did you, iKarith?).

Then again I have tended to shut off OBS because it hasn't been synching properly with Zoom lately (in order to show 2-3 screens at once in the frame instead of only one and switching back and forth manually in menus.. vs. OBS's nice hotkey setup).

[iKarith]

I'm not sure Twitch is that memory intensive (with OBS Studio also running in the background) but maybe so. I wonder if they prioritize bandwidth for partners and top performers and such? We had three people in the room and the update times were very slow (like 14-34 seconds). To be fair, I had an xbox downloading a game in the other room that I forgot about, but it was still downloading when we switched to zoom and I didn't notice any problems there (did you, iKarith?).

Then again I have tended to shut off OBS because it hasn't been synching properly with Zoom lately (in order to show 2-3 screens at once in the frame instead of only one and switching back and forth manually in menus.. vs. OBS's nice hotkey setup).

I really think you're getting hung up on twitch partner perks. Your internet connection sometimes has trouble managing Zoom (we might be able to fix that, but I think we have to optimize some settings for that and it might be less than ideal in terms of video resolution…)

Ultimately with Twitch to have video without huge latency for the players, we need a low-latency video stream. That's usually done with some other service—Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, whatever—and streaming your video out to Twitch for everyone else. That's a lot of bandwidth—uploading two simultaneous videos. On a bad day I've got 600Mbps uplink, I can do that.

But a game that doesn't have to send full screen updates (like TTS) uses very little bandwidth. A voice chat uses little. All the rest is left for a screen capture/share to Twitch. You've got plenty enough bandwidth for that with only a couple of bandwidth optimizations. I definitely have enough. If we can get it working, it's the way to go I think. And anybody with a Twitch account should be able to do it.

[Kurgan]

Right, to be fair, I have no idea what it looks like on your end unless you tell me. I've never tried turning down the video settings to crap levels to see some improvement there, but I'd be willing to work with you on that sometime if it'll improve things.

We're not shooting a movie... we just need relatively clear speaking voices, and a clear image of the board (motion in between of setting stuff up is a lot less important than the final positions of the pieces). If the dice are a chunky blur until they come to a standstill, I'm fine with that, so long as you can read the outcome at the end.


I do pay through the nose for my internet and still it might not be good enough, might have to rent a server (I already rent one for gaming, not sure if that's in my budget to rent another that I only use occasionally like this). Then again maybe my hosting service would give me a discount on an extra one? Not to say it has to be me hosting of course...

One small breakthrough though, I have figured out how to get my multi-webcam on the screen at once setup for OBS and Zoom working again, it involved setting Zoom off-topic OBS Camera 1, starting OBS Studio AFTER Zoom gets going and using an old version of OBS (26.1.1), so that's good news.

[iKarith]

I can't promise I'll be up for a game Saturday—vaccine dose #3 tomorrow unless something goes wrong. Then again, the one I reacted strongly to was the first, so … I might be totally fine Saturday. That's what I'm hoping for.

[Kurgan]

Godspeed, sir.

I'm going to put out an open invitation...

[the meeting has ended]

Recommend you have your own set, but if not, pencil & paper and some dice should do the trick, I'll manage the board like usual. If the participants agree, we can upload any usable footage onto Twitch (will discuss it beforehand).