I had planned on using ShadowPlay, which is what I had been using for all my recordings and streams. Unfortunately, when I started preparing I realized that there was no option for a different stream key. So I had to give myself a crash course in OBS instead.
Obs isn’t that hard to deal with. I used most of the settings from the twitch page, which is out of date a bit. Only I kept getting a black screen in the preview. And then when I tried to switch back to ShadowPlay, I also got a black screen. You have to shut one down to use the other, I think.
Anyway, I ran a bit on my own channel just to make sure nothing was broken, and ended up with a silent character overview vid at low res. For some reason, ShadowPlay was set to stream in 480p instead of 720p. I ended up re-recording a similar video in the higher resolution, which did quite a but for readability of items, etc. Later, I finally got OBS working with DDO in windowed mode, according to the stream preview. Just before going live, I tried speaking and that didn’t work. Not unusual, for some reason on my 8.1 laptop, I have sound issues like that fairly often. It took a minute or two, then it seemed to be working, so I went live.
I had 2 laptops, a TV, and a tablet all involved so I could keep track of things. Aside from those setup annoyances and having to run windowed, it went well technically. I will probably look into overlays and other fun stuff for OBS in the coming weeks.
I didn’t have much of a plan, so I did a short hello then started running a daily epic series. Druid’s chain, DDtW, Partycrashers, and Devil Assault. This kept the action going on screen while I did some commentary and background. I figured it might take some time for people to tune in, with it being the first week, time zones, and so forth.
Cordovan made a couple comments in chat, so I knew it was all working. There was a comment or two from random viewers, but not much traffic at first.
From there, it took off a bit. Chatters grouped up with me in game, I joined a few groups running quests I wanted to play, and chat picked up. It worked itself out pretty well.
The most frequent question was which server. Thelanis. I’ll have to see about getting that put somewhere prominent. There were some other questions about build, gear, quests, chat commands, etc. I think I should make an email address for those, and advertise it so as to have some in stock to start out the stream with.
I won’t always be on the same character, but it will be on Thelanis. I gave an overview of my top 3 most played characters on stream. Depend on schedules, my SO might be joining me next time. This first go was too hectic to give up a machine for, I think it will be fine next time.
I did look up some forum threads, so I have more topics for discussion if chat doesn’t prompt. And I tried to watch Cordovan’s stream earlier today for new topics as well, though I was mobile and didn’t catch it all.
Thank you to Cordovan for the opportunity, and the community for the support.