So I finally set myself up on Twitch tonight and streamed for an hour of Mega Man 2; I had zero viewers… Listen, I wasn’t expecting a following and primarily I did it to push myself. I’m using a 100% open-source platform for twitch streaming using OBS (open broadcast system studio) running on Pop OS Linux. I’m using an open source live split software called flitter. It’s within an xTerm (don’t use alpha channel enabled terms in OBS) and it uses a simple text file for configuration. I’m using Higan for my NES/Famicom emulator with a rom of Mega Man 2 that runs at 60 frames per second. And I have a camera on me while I’m playing to capture the reactions. All on one computer (not a particularly powerful one btw) running Linux and streaming the output to Twitch. I now have one follower, my son.
My son imparted some of his hard earned wisdom on Streaming to me. He said make sure your audio quality is good. Get a good mic, test the levels and make sure I’m speaking over the game (but you can still hear the game audio). He said this is really important. The video can be sorta crappy but the audio quality better be good. He recommended a few good quality mic’s and he uses an external audio mixer to set the mic levels. He also recommended I record, not stream for the first few sessions and then watch it back to make sure it sounds and looks good.
Why am I doing this? A few reasons. One, I like Mega Man 2 and the challenge of playing it well and getting a decent speedrun appeals to me. I’ve watched some of top speedruns and they so some crazy stuff. Two, I want to prove that you don’t need Windows 10 to do streaming/speedrunning — Linux and open source software is perfectly viable for Twitch streaming. Three, I wanted to prove to Cam that he can do all his creation/streaming/broadcasting if he switched to Linux. What do you think? Any games you’d like me to play? Leave a comment to let me know. My Twitch handle is rpavlovsky but I might change it, I don’t know…