EPTNow you might and very well may say: "nep, stfu, look at the events and live stream bar, it can't be all that bad now can it?" Whereupon I would and very well shall answer: "Listen and shiver!" (Dutch proverb, doesn't translate well because of two rare diphthongs.)
It all started with 1 old pc and a mic. And when I say old, I mean I just saw my guarantee thingy which came with my pc, which dates back more than 6 years ago. Even back then I was a poor bastard and a miser, so I bought a low power (low noise) kind of apparatus with integrated graphics and silicone grommets -the works. It has since served me well to play 90's games and do homework, about 2 years ago I discovered its limits when I tried to play 1080p t-ara videos. Oh and I went blind. But not to digress. Following will be the short version of unholy incantations invoked which were needed to allow me to cast a couple of games, and to make the sound sound like it does in tonight's SSCAIT broadcast.
2009 jan: PC bought: 4850E with 2 gb ram and a 320gb hdd. No upgrades ever so remember this.
2014 xxx: Windows stops support of windows XP, so I migrate to Ubuntu.
2013 xxx: I buy a €14,95 logitech headset.
2015 jan: No-one to cast the later rounds of the Student Starcraft AI Tournament and as I still had a couple of weeks off before uni started once more... Windmills ho!
2015 jan 15-ish
Apparently all casting software out there is made for win7, which I don't have and at this point think my pc won't run. So the search is on for- we need to run BW first. Now there is a perfectly splendid little wine option to play starcraft on linux, which I get to work in half an hour. This is going well, now I only need to find a reco- Yes but what about chaoslauncher? What about it? You need it for repfix, which you need because bots like to play 40 minute games at 1000 apm. If not more. Now there is, APPARENTLY2HOURSLATER, no way to link bw to chaoslauncher via wine, so that's out. No problemo! We've still got this cd lying around, lets hoist up Virtualbox and XP in it, gogogo! Now BW runs, chaoslauncher runs, they run together. Meanwhile I got the runs for sitting behind my antiquity for too long, but gogogo. Now, there is, APPARENTLY2HOURSLATER, not really a decent recording aparatus for winXP, because it is a hundred years old and runs on brontosaurusbones -whatever. Now lets take a little leap into the future.
2015 jan 20-ish
All dates being equal, I haven't kept a log book, but imagine REALLY LONG TIMES pass while trying to do this rubbish on a really slow pc. So lets stuff win7 into the VM. 2gb ram being the minimum for it to run anyway, lets wing it and assign 1024. That should be enough for win7, bw, recording prog, right? So far so good, although the good old brick does slow down a little during install, which takes a couple of hours. Again, bw installs fine, chaos installs fine, they work together really well. Now for the recording software. Xsplit downloads, installs at a snailishly slow pace, and as it's wrapping up informs me it won't install because just because. On to the next thing: obsproject. Open source, multi-platform, looks promising. Unfortunately, the only bit that is already functional is the win7 bit, and it informs me in no uncertain terms that my pc is a piece of crocodile schlong and I can go play with that instead of trying to install obsproject.
2015 jan 2 hours before broadcast
All down and out in #bwapi with the phd computer wizard gosus, I sigh a lot and sit around like a headless hen. Then krasi0, proud owner of the renowned krasi0bot and probably the nicest guy with the best ideas of all Europe, comes up with a simple solution: simplescreenrecorder. Runs native on linux, uses negative resources and has about 5 options, so you can't mess anything up. Being a suspicious man by nature, I severely doubt homebrew software which is light and uses no resources, but seeing the predicament I'm in, decide to do it anyway. And behold and lo, plain lo in the morning, it works. Only thing left, to combine game sound with mic sound. Now there are two kinds of situations with programs which have but 5 options. The first is for windows. There, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. The second is much more fearsome, is linux. Because if something doesn't work in linux, there is ALWAYS SOMEONE who let his beard grow 10cm while figuring out how to do it in the terminal. Me being a total
2015 jan between recordings
Now not everyone was impressed by the sound and video quality of the recordings I made. To say it kindly. So the meanwhile between the Ro8 and Ro4 recordings were filled with virtual machines on virtual servers attacking one another, me and breakk hyung, which hosts the whole shenaniganshebang, over ip, php and tv, recorders to and fro and all the shizzle in the schlamizllersorei 4w579z bla. Bear in mind that anything takes 10x as much time, because I'm doing it on an antiquated piece of cardboard which saw the vikings discover the pocahontas cave back and front. Sooooooooooooo
2015 jan 28
Recording day! Every option is shot down by either me, breakk or ubuntu, and even krasi0 has ran out of good ideas. TT QQ I want mummy. So this is how todays recordings have been made:
1) Fire up winxp in a virtual machine, load bw through chaos and stuff a replay in the replay slot. Run the whole thing on 800x600, later bw will force 640x480.
2) Fire up the terminal, create 2 null-outputs, 2 inputs and 2 real virtual outputs and mix them up so both game and mic record.
3) Fire up ubuntu sound control to tidy the loops.
4) Fire up simplescreenrecorder, assign loops, in- and outputs to the 5 options there are, and record 640x480 with all the sound and don't scroll around too much, don't say /s/ or shout or talk in a low voice, and there you go!
All glhf watching the Student Starcraft AI Tournament 2014 semi finals tonight! breakk cut out the really unlistenableto bits, so it should be at least understandable.
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It doesn't really change anything to write this stuff, but at lest I've got it off my chest. All go to http://sscaitournament.com/ and donate with remarks "nepeta's new casting computer yo!"
