{"id":5643,"date":"2018-12-23T15:00:33","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T23:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=5643"},"modified":"2018-12-23T15:00:33","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T23:00:33","slug":"farewell-to-streaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/5643","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to Streaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

I did one more stream, this time playing Desktop Dungeons<\/em> from the beginning. Why the switch? Partly because I figured the few people who watched were probably getting bored with Gearheads<\/em>, but mainly because I wanted to see if the same problems would manifest. They did. My software reported that in excess of 98% of frames were being dropped.<\/p>\n

So I’m thinking I’m giving up streaming, at least for a while. It’s not that the problems are unsolvable. It’s that they’re unsolvable without buying additional hardware, and that’s more than I’m willing to do on a lark. All the streams I’ve done so far have been from a 2015 Macbook Air, over wifi. “You fool,” shouts every streaming advice article on the ‘net, “you should never stream over wifi!” And I was all ready to hook the machine up to my router via ethernet, and was even pleased to discover that I had an ethernet cable long enough to reach from the router to my good streaming spot, but then I realized that a 2015 Macbook Air doesn’t have an ethernet port. Ethernet-to-USB adapters exist for this purpose, but that falls under “buying additional hardware”.<\/p>\n

OK, so maybe I could stream from my desktop PC instead? I could stream a game, certainly, but this machine doesn’t have a camera, and it seems like watching the player’s face as they gurn and overemote is an essential part of the experience. I could buy a webcam, but again, that would be buying additional hardware. At this point I start getting clever and thinking: What if I hook up the laptop’s video output to the desktop machine? I’m pretty sure I have a video out adapter for the Macbook somewhere. That way I could use the laptop’s camera. I could even play the game entirely on the laptop but use the desktop machine for streaming — which sounds more efficient anyway, because that way the game and the streaming software aren’t competing for cycles. But you’ve probably already spotted the flaw in this plan: my PC has no video input.<\/p>\n

Even if I fixed my hardware problems, my chief limitation is probably just the upload speed from my ISP. So I’m giving up, but I imagine I’ll have the means to do proper streaming at some point in the future. I mean, I didn’t get as close as I did on purpose. Laptops just happen to come with cameras now. Open-source streaming software exists. It’s kind of amazing how easy it’s gotten to do video broadcasts over the internet that fall just short of adequate.<\/p>\n

As for Desktop Dungeons, I may get back into playing it. I still haven’t beaten the final dungeon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did one more stream, this time playing Desktop Dungeons from the beginning. Why the switch? Partly because I figured the few people who watched were probably getting bored with Gearheads, but mainly because I wanted to see if the same problems would manifest. They did. My software reported that in excess of 98% of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[362,608],"class_list":["post-5643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-desktop-dungeons","tag-streaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5644,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions\/5644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}