T w e n t y S i d e d

Last Wednesday I did an hour long stream of Grand Theft Auto V. We drove around the city, fussed over environment detail, talked about the walk cycles of pedestrians, discussed the tricks used to make storefront facades look believable, looked at environment maps, analyzed different sidewalk textures, got excited about the dynamic day / night transitions, and killed hundreds and hundreds of people.

I’ve uploaded the video to YouTube for those of you who missed the stream.

This was actually really fun. I was always worried that streaming would be stressful, but this was pretty chill. I guess it helped that only 40 people showed up, so I didn’t have the anxiety of learning to stream in front of a huge crowd. It felt more like hanging out with a small group of friends and talking about games. (There were 40+ people, but only a handful participated in chat, so still felt like a small group.)

I’m not going to commit to making this a regular thing, but I do plan to try it again this week. Wednesday night at 6pm eastern time / 11pm GMT.

Stuff I’m working on:

1. The framerate was too choppy. I ran some tests, and according to Twitch my internet connection is just fine, so the choppy performance was certainly due to my computer’s lack of power. I’m going to work on making it smoother. That means making the game window a little smaller.
2. Since the game window is smaller, we’re going to have some empty space in the frame above my face. So I’m going to put the chat window there. This way you can see what I’m reading. (Which isn’t always clear, because viewers are on a 5-10 second delay and the thing I’m answering may have scrolled off by then.) This will also make it so that people watching the VOD on YouTube will be able to follow both sides of the conversation.
3. I’m going to fiddle with the lights a bit. I’m not going to blast myself in the face with studio lights or anything (yuck, I have no idea how people can play like that) but I’ll see if I can add some illumination so my face is lit by more than the monitor and my keyboard.

I’ll probably keep doing this until I get bored of it. See you there.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Due to quasi-popular demand (and personal curiosity) I’m planning on doing some streaming. I’ve never done this before, so there are bound to be some problems. With that in mind, I’ll be doing a little test stream tonight to figure out how to use the software and get the bugs worked out.

Here, this should give you an idea of what you’re in for:

I’ll be playing Grand Theft Auto V. Well, not so much playing as wandering around, commenting on the technology, and poking at bits of the simulation to see how it responds.

I realize it’s just the nature of the medium, but it bugs me that I’m slack-faced in the image. I realize everyone does this and it’s nothing abnormal, but it feels abnormal to me.

Yes, that is the face we make when we play a videogame. But that’s not the face we use when talking to people. When we’re talking to people we make eye contact and adopt some facial expression. Even if you’re talking to a large group of people, you keep your face expressive.

But when it’s only a camera watching you, the entire social thing collapses and most of us revert to our unflattering “staring at the television” face, which isn’t very welcoming. That’s the face of someone who is tuning you out because they’re not interested in what you have to say.

This is probably only a big deal to old-timers like me. Or maybe just me. I dunno.

Anyway. I’ll be streaming at 6pm tonight, eastern time. That works out to 11pm GMT. Again, this is just a test stream.

When I go live, it’ll be on my Twitch page. I’ll announce here and on Twitter when I go live.

EDIT: That was fun. Thanks for watching. I’ll upload the VOD to YouTube for those that missed it.

I don’t know if I’ll make this a regular thing, but we will be doing it again.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.