Live Streaming Update and More Protocol Changes!

[Jaxel]

By now, you should be seeing that the "Upcoming Events" block on the right side of this page is a bit different. Previously, the block would display upcoming scheduled streams; now this block works more as it's namesake and simply displays upcoming events, whether they have a stream or not.

In fact, it should be "not", since the streaming system built into the event calendar has been completely wiped out, and put out to pasture. In it's place, I have just unveiled a system built specifically around streaming, which is far more powerful and easier to maintain; easier for the moderation staff here, and at the same time, easier for you streamers out there.

The reason for originally putting streaming support into the Event Calendar had multiple purposes:

• Kept people on 8WAYRUN, rather than leaving the website.
• Displayed the stream directly at the top of the event thread.
• Displayed live streams on the portal, linked by event times.

However, with all this, including streaming in the calendar created some problems I did not expect:

• If an event had a stream, and the event was upcoming/running, but the stream wasn't live, the stream would be listed on the front page anyways. It devalued the purpose of the information if the portal block could display offline streams.
• Most major events which have Soulcalibur... don't stream it. So the event gets listed, but no one cares because there is no Soulcalibur, thus further devaluing the information.
• Malicious users could game the system in order to falsely support their stream; such as putting up false events with erroneous start/end times in order to make sure their stream always stayed in the portal block. Because of this, we had to moderate event submissions and changes and this not only created extra work for our moderators, but also frustrations for users as they had to wait for their events to be approved.
• People didn't actually like having streams embedded on event threads; especially when they wanted to read the thread. Every time a user changed the thread page, the stream would reload, play a loud and obnoxious advertisement and just piss readers off.
• Streaming has really taken off and now some events have multiple streams! There were workarounds to set up multiple streams for events, but they weren't very feasible and it would be wrong to expect users to go through the process to do it.

So what have I done to fix thease issues? Firstly, the ENTIRE streaming system in the Event Calendar has been removed. Streams can no longer be linked to events (though you can still use the stream embed bbcode to put streams into the first post of an event thread).

Secondly, I created the new XenRio Live Streaming Manager! The new stream manager is very different in that you don't need to set up any events, approved streams will automatically get displayed the moment they start playing a Soulcalibur game (according to Twitch.TV).

The way XenRio works is that every 5 minutes, it scrapes the Twitch.TV API and searches for information from a list of pre-approved channels. The scrape returns data on all currently live streams from the channel list. The approved channels list can be found here; if your stream is not on this list, you can use the "submit channel" link in the stream section and it will be reviewed by a moderator.

After the scrape, we parse out the live stream information, and if your stream is playing a game in the approved games list, it will be added to the live streams! Thats it! No need to schedule your stream on the calendar anymore; just get your stream added to the list, play Soulcalibur, and win!

The "Live Streaming Central" forum has been cleared as well. If you are a live streamer, and would like to make a thread for your streams, you can! As well, you can embed your stream using a simple code:

[stream]1[/stream]

The above code uses your channel ID here on 8WAYRUN, or if you wish, you can do it manually:

[stream=twitch.tv]8wayrun[/stream]

 

[FenrisZero]

So Basically, What You're Saying Is That We Have To Deal With More MLP Marathons And Bad SCV. Gotcha. Now Where Is This A Good Thing?

 

[Egg]

Fine work sir.

 

[Malice]

Displaying upcoming events on the forum is unnecessary since there are not many events for Soulcalibur or people that go to them. You can continue to display this under Tournaments & Events.

The streaming system built into the calendar shouldn’t have been completely wiped out because it was still useful. All it needed was some changes to it to make it actually user friendly. This is the main reason where the extra work comes from.

If an event didn’t have a stream that was live, it devalued that block some, but now in its place there’s nothing for someone to watch because you scrapped entire system, giving more reason for people to leave 8wayrun. Nor are people going to put in the extra work that you are now forcing them to do just to have their stream appear on this site.

The BBCode is good, but most are clueless on how to use code.

Most majors that had SCV did stream it because I was the one managing the system because of how unintuitive you designed it until my admin rights were taken away for whatever reason that wasn’t told to me, and posting information so people knew when to watch it.

A malicious user wouldn’t have an event to begin with. The only events that stayed in the portal block were because they were either recurring events that no longer existed which I would remove/update, or their duration was set to some stupid length of time because of how unfriendly the system was for entering start/end times. If you would just let people simply put a start time and an end time instead of forcing them to actually count how many hours that their event was going to last, it would take care of this problem.

Removing the automatic embeds from tournament threads is really the main thing that should have been done, not scrapping the entire system. Now you put more work on the organizers to have their stream shown, and the link to the stream is no longer clearly shown at the top. Why not show the stream when it’s live instead of based on the event duration? That would have been a better solution than trashing the entire system. Or possibly, hide the embed behind a Show Stream button.

The stream manager is a good thing, but in the process you made it more difficult to show streams for tournaments because now you made them dependent on being in the approved channel list and in the approved game list which they won’t since the scrape will miss them.

Not to mention the sites that uses your software outside of 8wayrun. Why scrape the entire thing because of what’s going on here? Plus people want to watch more than just Soulcalibur, but now they won’t see anything and are forced to leave the site.

Ideally you should have two functions: one for automatically displaying an approved stream when it goes live, and a second for automatically displaying an event stream or streams when they are live and not by the event duration.

 

[Jaxel]

Thanks for your input Malice, a lot of the points you brought up I thought about when making the changes.

Displaying upcoming events I think is now more necessary than ever. With low event turnout, the more events we can promote the better. Putting them on the forefront of the website can't hurt.

The new system has LESS work for streamers. You no longer need to set up an event to show your stream; and if your event has multiple streams, you no longer need to create multiple events to show them. Once your stream has been added to the approved list, you NEVER have to do anything again. The moment you start streaming a Soulcalibur game, you get posted on the stream list.

The BBcode is simple as shit. If you can't figure it out, you dont deserve to stream.

Malicious users didn't have events because we moderated the events and forced approval for ANY changes. This created more work for both users and moderators. Getting rid of the stream system in the calendar removes the incentive for malicious users, thus making things way easier on moderators.

The scrape happens every 5 minutes. In the past, events had to be approved by moderators... each and every event. Now, only the stream has to be approved... and only ONCE. The moment you change the game on Twitch.TV to a Soulcalibur related game, the scrape will pick up the stream within 5 minutes.

Not to mention, having stream in two different systems would have confused users. So I opted to remove it from the event system entirely for a clearly better system.