[Thorn]

This post is long overdue.

So a test stream did occur -- not on the expected date, but it happened the next day, so eh. We had five or six people commentating and four streams, and there weren't any obvious issues switching between streams, with Skype audible on each one. We have a few kinks to iron out (namely, how exactly to manage the stream channel), but I feel we can get those resolved in time.

What I need now is info about the games being run and the people streaming them. I need to know how long a game will take to show off (remember, you don't have to play to an obvious "game complete" point, so stream what you like) and if there's certain times that a person cannot stream due to work or school. I'd like to have the streams take place starting around 2 PM EDT and lasting no later than midnight, in the interest of getting at least part of the stream at convenient times for people in Britland or Aussieland without us streaming 24 hours each day. If we get our shit together, we could possibly have the planning done within two weeks, advertise for three weeks, and have the marathon in late August before many of you go back to school. That's a BIG IF, though.

We're on a new page and some slight changes have taken place, so here's the listing again. Even if some "maybe, maybe not" games become "maybe not", we have about 25 games on display.

• Sonic 1: Naegleria
• Sonic 2: Naegleria
• Sonic 3 & Knuckles (main game): SDM
• Sonic 3 & Knuckles (competition mode): Strong Bad
• Blue Sphere: Thorn
• Sonic CD: bertin (does not want to use 2011 version)
• Knuckles' Chaotix: Thorn
• Sonic Chaos: bertin
• Sonic Triple Trouble: bertin
• Sonic Blast: bertin
• Sonic Labyrinth: bertin
• Sonic Drift 2: bertin
• Tails Adventures: Axon (I said I'd remove this, but admittedly I haven't made any effort to contact him, so this is staying at least for now)
• Sonic Jam: Thorn
• Sonic 3D Blast: Thorn (using Saturn version)
• Sonic R: Thorn, bertin
• Sonic Shuffle: Thorn
• Sonic Adventure: bertin
• Sonic Heroes: SJ
• Shadow: bertin
• Sonic '06: DsS
• Sonic Advance: Zeupar, Spinny (if necessary)
• Sonic Advance 2: Combo, Spinny
• Sonic Advance 3: Combo, Spinny (if necessary)
• Sonic Rush: Spinny (if necessary)
• Sonic Riders: DsS
• Sonic Riders - Zero Gravity: Thorn
• Sonic Unleashed Wii/PS2: FKE
• Sonic Unleashed 360/PS3: FKE
• Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing: Groudon, Thorn, Werey, Zeupar (all have 360 version); DsS (PS3 version)
• Sonic Rivals: DsS
• Sonic Rivals 2: DsS
• Sonic Colors Wii: DsS
• Sonic Generations (console): DsS

Sonic and Sonic Team games still unplayed:

• Sonic 4 Episode 1
• Sonic 4 Episode 2
• Sonic 1 (8-bit)
• Sonic 2 (8-bit)
• Sonic Drift
• Sonic Jam (Game.com)
• Tails' SkyPatrol
• Sonic Eraser
• Sonic's EduSoft
• Sonic's Schoolhouse
• Sonic Spinball (any version)
• Sonic the Fighters / Sonic Championship
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Sonic Pinball Party
• Sonic Battle
• Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis
• Sonic Rush Adventure
• Sonic Colors DS
• Sonic Free Riders
• Sonic Generations 3DS
• Sonic Pocket Adventure
• Sonic and the Secret Rings
• Sonic and the Black Knight
• Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games series (all versions)
• Ristar (both versions)
• Burning Rangers
• Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg
• Sonic the Hedgehog Gameworld
• Tails and the Music Maker

[Combo]

I need to test this out with skype sometime with ya.

[Thorn]

Since I've gotten minimal feedback with respect to how long each run will take, I've made my best estimates (erring on the long side) and created a sample schedule.

All times are EDT.

Tuesday, August 21
2:00 PM	Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) (Genesis)	No Emeralds	Naegleria
2:30 PM	Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis)	No Emeralds	Naegleria
3:00 PM	Sonic Adventure	Tails' story	bertin
3:40 PM	Sonic 8-bit games	Various 8-bit games	bertin
6:45 PM	Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)	Sonic's story	DarkspinesSonic
8:30 PM	Sonic 3D Blast (Saturn)	All Emeralds	Thorn
Wednesday, August 22
2:00 PM	Sonic 3 & Knuckles	Donations for character - no Emeralds	SpinDashMaster
3:30 PM	Sonic 3 & Knuckles	Grand Prix	Strong Bad
3:45 PM	Sonic R	100% completion	DarkspinesSonic
4:15 PM	Sonic 4 Episode 1 (Console/PC)	Starting with all Emeralds	Thorn
5:15 PM	Sonic Adventure 2	Story mode
7:15 PM	Sonic Advance 2	Sonic - starting with all Emeralds	Combo
8:00 PM	Sonic CD (Sega CD)	No Time Stones	bertin
8:30 PM	Sonic Advance 3	Starting with all Emeralds	Combo (tentative)
Thursday, August 23
1:00 PM	NiGHTS into Dreams...	All A-ranks	charlie
2:30 PM	Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams...		charlie
3:15 PM	NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams	Various missions	charlie
4:30 PM	Sonic Riders	Both stories	DarkspinesSonic
5:30 PM	Sonic Unleashed (PS3/360)	Various acts
7:30 PM	Sonic Rivals	Sonic's story	DarkspinesSonic
8:30 PM	Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity	Both stories	Thorn
Friday, August 24
2:00 PM	Sonic 4 Episode 2	Starting with all Emeralds	Thorn
4:00 PM	Sonic Unleashed (Wii/PS2)	Various acts
5:30 PM	Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing	Xbox Live online play	Groudon, Thorn, Werey, Zeupar
7:30 PM	Dr. Robotnik's Me Puyo Puyo VS 2	Puyo Pop tournament	Thorn, audience
Saturday, August 25
1:00 PM	Ristar (Genesis)	No bonus rounds	Gamble
2:00 PM (approx.)	Knuckles' Chaotix	Co-op play	Thorn, BargainGamer
4:00 PM (approx.)	Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Wii)	Dream Event play	Thorn, GerbilSoft, BargainGamer, LilyBlade
5:00 PM (approx.)	Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis	Trying to maintain sanity	MrSparkle
6:00 PM (approx.)	Sonic Shuffle	7-Precioustone Versus match	Thorn, GerbilSoft, BargainGamer, LilyBlade
8:30 PM (approx.)	Fan works	Miscellaneous fan games and hacks
Sunday, August 26
2:00 PM	Sonic Rivals 2	Sonic's story	DarkspinesSonic
3:30 PM	Shadow the Hedgehog	Neutral path	bertin
4:00 PM	Sonic Advance	Knuckles - starting with all Emeralds	footbigmike
4:30 PM	Sonic Colors (Wii)	Egg Shuttle	DarkspinesSonic
6:00 PM	Sonic Heroes	Super Hard	Shadow Jacky
7:30 PM	Sonic Jam (Saturn)	Sonic World	Thorn
8:00 PM	Sonic Generations (Console/PC)	Various Acts and Challenges	DarkspinesSonic

Streamers, it is your responsibility to see if these time windows are practical.
If you can't be available for a time, tell me so that we can move things around. If your time window is overly long, and you didn't try a test run, you can blame only yourself, and likewise for having too small of a window.

You can see that some games don't have a hard decision on who's doing them yet: I'm looking to have some of the not-Sonic Sonic Team games covered by members of their communities, and some games still have two people listed as running them when only one is necessary. Miscellany listings will be ironed out once I know what fixes need to be made to this schedule.

[Combo]

So these times are set in stone? 

I can do Sonic Advance 2 in under 30 minutes.  Haven't bothered with Sonic Advance 3 much, but looks like it's at the end of the day so no problem.  No worries on me half assin' it either, I'll make sure to practice that game for most of August.  I did notice a few differences between the actual game and emulator though, hope that won't be much of a problem later.

[yoshifan]

Thorn said it's a sample schedule, so no, not set in stone.  However, he's emphasizing that more of the runners really need to provide time estimates for their games soon, so that the schedule can be made more accurate.

To clarify: be sure to provide real time (not game time) estimates, and account for possible mistakes/game trolling, as well as pre-game setup time.  As a rule of thumb, assume at least 5, perhaps closer to 10 minutes for setup time.

Also, if there's a particular day or time of day when you can't stream, then that's important to mention too.

[Thorn]

^ Pretty much this. You need to find what aspect of the game you should stream or even figure out if you're open to whatever (for example, we can accept donations for character choice if you're flexible and you know that they'll all fit into a certain window). You need to figure out your run's length assuming the maximum time spent due to Live Stream Bullshit Variance (henceforth LSBV). For example, Tails Adventures can be done in a half hour with glitches, but if they suddenly don't work properly on live stream, Axon has a full hour to go through the game without them.

Once you've got that figured out, you need to plan for what happens if you have minimal LSBV -- we won't start the next stream early because that's not fair to audience members that plan to show up at a certain time. You'll want to seek out other aspects of your game that can be streamed after the main run: if SDM finishes early, he could perhaps play Blue Sphere; if the Puyo tourney ends way early, we'll run a few Fever mode rounds. Special Stages and bonus rounds are good candidates for filling time, as are levels that don't exist in story mode (e.g., Green Hill in Sonic Adventure 2 and extra courses in the Riders games).

I wouldn't worry too much about setup time eating into your time window, as you should be starting your setup during the previous stream. I did a test stream with several people to see how quickly we could get the stream up and running when players switched, and nobody took more than two minutes past their start time since we all prepared beforehand.

[Combo]

Ah alright.  Well that 30 minute time is a real time estamate.  The run I have recorded finishes at around 26 minutes real time, but I can make it 35 minutes if 30 sounds too little.  I can mess around with the extra characters if I have time, or do the extra boss (I suck at that).

[THC98]

3:00 PM    Sonic Adventure    Tails' story       bertin

Hm... 1h and 30 min for this??? Tails' story can be done in under 30 min easily...

[Thorn]

^ That originally said "Sonic's story". I'm waiting for bertin to give me a new time estimate, at which point that time window will be narrowed.

[Combo]

Is Xsplit still the best thing I could use for free?  Because when I tried it I couldn't start anything up because I needed the license to use it.  Also when I tried to uninstall it it wouldn't let me. >_>

Was gonna try livestream procaster but I couldn't use it because I only had 2 gigs of RAM (and maybe other stuff). :(

[yoshifan]

So I pretty much already told Thorn about this, but for SA2B:

I can run it (any of Hero, Dark, or Last story), but I'd like to be considered a backup, i.e. I'll play if no one else steps up.  I feel like I've already had my time in the spotlight with live-streaming this game, since I've streamed a lot of races with Zeph and played the game during Speed Demos Archive's AGDQ marathon.  I know there are a lot of excellent SA2B players here, and I'd love to see another SA2B player step up to run the game live and get some time in the spotlight.  Doesn't matter if they're particularly better than me or not.

[Thorn]

Combo: If you want a truly free alternative, Flash Media Live Encoder and SCFH DSF work well. I would be happy to help you set things up, and I apologize that I wasn't available in IRC yesterday when you sent me a /msg (it was the first day in about five months that I had the opportunity to meet with real-life friends).

yoshifan: It's increasingly looking like it'll be you, even though I know you want to be a backup. Only Werey has volunteered to to play the game, and his capture device fried the instant he tried it. No amount of nagging has made any other TSCer step up. I have already stepped up to play many games that received zero volunteers, but my skill at SA2 is pretty much nonexistent. I very much appreciate you volunteering in the first place, and do let me know if you have any questions on things.

[yoshifan]

Random things:

- Thorn's stream setup seems to work, after testing today.  Can get a good audio balance between game audio, his voice, and others on Skype.  Still has yet to test with an omni-directional mic, though, which would allow him and others in the same room to talk (particularly during M&S Winter Olympics and Shuffle).

- I've previously tried streaming while talking on Skype, so I'm good on that front.  (I have to use separate computers for streaming and Skyping, though, since my main laptop bluescreens when I do both streaming and Skyping on it.  This just means I can't stream while including a Skype call in my stream, so as long I'm not running the main stream, things are fine.)

- For Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, 2 hours should be an okay timeslot to do all 3 stories from a new game.  I expect the run to take around 1 hour 50 minutes, so accounting for setup and bad performance or luck, 2 hours should be just enough.  FYI, I'll skip the Hero and Dark credits with resets.  Also, I can also include a timer and run splits on my stream.

- So... Sonic Unleashed (Wii) doesn't have a runner right now.  After SA2B, I could maybe try to very quickly refresh myself on the basics on SUWii and... maybe run the game for the marathon.  I wouldn't expect it to be a pretty performance though.  Isn't there anyone who can stream and has played the game more recently than I have (my last stat was May 2009)?