SGDQ 2014 Feedback Thread

xcd

Edit history:

xcd: 2014-07-10 06:37:06 pm

2014-07-10 06:36:44 pm

Cube Throw = OoB

Quote from Reafexus:

Viewers were invited to provide feedback in the the tweet about the post. https://twitter.com/romscoutSDA/status/487020693536530432

i can't speak for jackafur but i think he meant people who aren't involved with the community at all, aka "stream monsters".

BobTGoldfish

2014-07-10 06:49:13 pm

The only way that giving priority to people from the community of games is realistically going to work, is if people from the game being played are willing to staff the donation station. (which is stupidly unrealistic)
as someone who has staffed the donation station, when it is busy it is unrealistic to ask the processors to check every name Vs every donation that comes in. It's just not viable.
and when there are short runs (20-30 minutes or less) we'd be inundated with lists.
Add into that the fact that a persons name as it shows up in the tracker is not always as we would be given it..
it's just a nightmare

Countdown42

Edit history:

Countdown42: 2014-07-10 07:07:53 pm

2014-07-10 07:06:11 pm

Or you could write them on a piece of paper, which should definitely be done.

I don't see how having an organized, stapled packet/list of potential important members that are donating would be anything close to nightmare

Veegie

2014-07-10 07:11:26 pm

Manually (i.e. slowly) checking that list against the flood of donations is the problem, though, especially for more popular games, which is why I suggested a low-tech but still automated solution, albeit one predicated on running searches on the donations (..and keeping a secret on the internet. =P).

Missy

2014-07-10 07:12:04 pm

[grrs internally]

Vulajin made a point some pages ago, and I'd like to reiterate it. There should be at least one person solely dedicated to making sure everything behind the scenes is going smoothly. Whenever I was back there, I definitely tried to do what I could to push things along, like covering when no assigned volunteers were around, or getting some snacks to keep people going. A director that's got the schedule for volunteer shifts and contact information (in case things go awry) in his or her pocket would be ideal and would help prevent some mixups. If you need someone for the role, you know I always hang around the stations in the back. I did a bit of running around to find people and I even had to track down witwix with a bunch of people, including zellyzel, right before one of his runs by calling his hotel room :p

I completely understand that the schedule for this GDQ was kinda last minute and a bit wonky, but there were a lot of extra hands besides the appointed volunteer hanging around for donation station at least. If I understood the tech station a bit more and didn't fear the wrath of UraniumAnchor of CoolMatty (mostly because I'm a klutz), then I would have gladly held down the fort over at tech as well. I know The_S1D, vulajin, gyre, testrunner, and Squall were around there during dead times and they did a fantastic job. It's a lot of intricate work to handle the tech stuff especially setup so major props to everyone involved there.

In regards to the donation comments, yes, sometimes we did filter out some donations from involved members of the current game being held. I'll be honest and say, the reason why I myself wound up filtering out comments like that, was because I had no idea who the person donating was or how he or she was affiliated, and this usually happened during a donation flood. It just comes down to some donation handlers not knowing every single facet of a community for each game. Getting someone who is more knowledgeable or more involved with every game on donation shifts would be cool, but it's a bit unrealistic, considering that runners of said game would probably sit on or behind the couch to support as opposed to just getting shoutouts from off-site runners through to the host. If the runner of the current game could toss us a hint about who is likely to donate, or mention that some people might want to get a word in through a donation, that'd be helpful. I know I'll try to improve on trying to squeeze in words from people directly related to the game being run and its community in the future, though, and work harder at it (especially during high-activity donation rushes). I'm all for a twitter being set up or using a pre-existing twitter account, specifically one belonging to someone sitting at the station, so that runners can tweet or DM that they're gonna be donating soon or that other runners might donate in regards to the game. I believe that all donation station volunteers try to find a balance between heartfelt comments and shout outs to those involved, so I hope that a system like this does not favor one over the other.

Personally, it gets annoying hearing the host say "and this goes to X's choice" a bunch, especially when a lot of donation comments are being read. I've mentioned to a few hosts that he or she does not need to read the parts about where the money goes, especially since the donation guys would unofficially choose someone to relay the message either before or after a run to the people who had money to be allocated to where they wanted it. We would also list Reader's Choice and Runner's Choice under the "Suggested Bids" dropdown on the donation page (usually we'd get the choice before a runner went up; if we didnt, we'd hide the suggestion until we confirmed it) so there was usually little need to have the host ask where to put it. I will say, though, that during busier times, the host reading a donation comment with runner's choice for the money would alert us about what the runner wanted, which let us change the suggestion for the site. Hosts this marathon were definitely great (ESPECIALLY since I didn't go up to host lol), I had a few back-up hosts I could rely on since there was some confusion due to the time-saving schedule.

The hotel sucked. That's the general consensus, I assume.

Practice room got messy at times. I wasn't around much, but I would see some trash lying about while on my way to find someone. It was set up okay, but yeah, the TV for the stream watching area seemed a little too loud considering there was a tv to play on right behind the curtain next to it. I got to play Dynasty Warriors 8 co-op on a laptop as my one experience in the practice room so I don't have much else to say about it. The catering was a very nice touch, it would have been great if we had a free breakfast right before it (heh).

This GDQ was pretty great. I met a lot of nice people and I liked the marathon layout, although I sometimes was not able to hear the runner/commentators from the donation station unless the volume was cranked. 7-11 being the only source of food past midnight also made me cry a little, but I'm sure next SGDQ will have a better venue. Cheers to the next one

Vulajin made a point some pages ago, and I'd like to reiterate it.  There should be at least one person solely dedicated to making sure everything behind the scenes is going smoothly.  Whenever I was back there, I definitely tried to do what I could to push things along, like covering when no assigned volunteers were around, or getting some snacks to keep people going.  A director that's got the schedule for volunteer shifts and contact information (in case things go awry) in his or her pocket would be ideal and would help prevent some mixups.  If you need someone for the role, you know I always hang around the stations in the back.  I did a bit of running around to find people and I even had to track down witwix with a bunch of people, including zellyzel, right before one of his runs by calling his hotel room :p

I completely understand that the schedule for this GDQ was kinda last minute and a bit wonky, but there were a lot of extra hands besides the appointed volunteer hanging around for donation station at least.  If I understood the tech station a bit more and didn't fear the wrath of UraniumAnchor of CoolMatty (mostly because I'm a klutz), then I would have gladly held down the fort over at tech as well.  I know The_S1D, vulajin, gyre, testrunner, and Squall were around there during dead times and they did a fantastic job.  It's a lot of intricate work to handle the tech stuff especially setup so major props to everyone involved there.

In regards to the donation comments, yes, sometimes we did filter out some donations from involved members of the current game being held.  I'll be honest and say, the reason why I myself wound up filtering out comments like that, was because I had no idea who the person donating was or how he or she was affiliated, and this usually happened during a donation flood.  It just comes down to some donation handlers not knowing every single facet of a community for each game.  Getting someone who is more knowledgeable or more involved with every game on donation shifts would be cool, but it's a bit unrealistic, considering that runners of said game would probably sit on or behind the couch to support as opposed to just getting shoutouts from off-site runners through to the host.  If the runner of the current game could toss us a hint about who is likely to donate, or mention that some people might want to get a word in through a donation, that'd be helpful.  I know I'll try to improve on trying to squeeze in words from people directly related to the game being run and its community in the future, though, and work harder at it (especially during high-activity donation rushes).  I'm all for a twitter being set up or using a pre-existing twitter account, specifically one belonging to someone sitting at the station, so that runners can tweet or DM that they're gonna be donating soon or that other runners might donate in regards to the game.  I believe that all donation station volunteers try to find a balance between heartfelt comments and shout outs to those involved, so I hope that a system like this does not favor one over the other.

Personally, it gets annoying hearing the host say "and this goes to X's choice" a bunch, especially when a lot of donation comments are being read.  I've mentioned to a few hosts that he or she does not need to read the parts about where the money goes, especially since the donation guys would unofficially choose someone to relay the message either before or after a run to the people who had money to be allocated to where they wanted it.  We would also list Reader's Choice and Runner's Choice under the "Suggested Bids" dropdown on the donation page (usually we'd get the choice before a runner went up; if we didnt, we'd hide the suggestion until we confirmed it) so there was usually little need to have the host ask where to put it.  I will say, though, that during busier times, the host reading a donation comment with runner's choice for the money would alert us about what the runner wanted, which let us change the suggestion for the site.  Hosts this marathon were definitely great (ESPECIALLY since I didn't go up to host lol), I had a few back-up hosts I could rely on since there was some confusion due to the time-saving schedule.

The hotel sucked.  That's the general consensus, I assume.

Practice room got messy at times.  I wasn't around much, but I would see some trash lying about while on my way to find someone.  It was set up okay, but yeah, the TV for the stream watching area seemed a little too loud considering there was a tv to play on right behind the curtain next to it.  I got to play Dynasty Warriors 8 co-op on a laptop as my one experience in the practice room so I don't have much else to say about it.  The catering was a very nice touch, it would have been great if we had a free breakfast right before it (heh).

This GDQ was pretty great.  I met a lot of nice people and I liked the marathon layout, although I sometimes was not able to hear the runner/commentators from the donation station unless the volume was cranked.  7-11 being the only source of food past midnight also made me cry a little, but I'm sure next SGDQ will have a better venue.  Cheers to the next one

spikevegeta

2014-07-10 07:27:30 pm

I was talking in a chat last night, and people we're upset about certain members from their community not having their donations read during the communities run. Would a simple solution be to just have that community decide on a sort of "Code" or # that denotes they are part of the community? That way instead of processors having to keep a list of all possible community members next to them at all times, they could just see "Oh they started their donation during SMRPG with #SMRPGCommunity or something? Might make it easier for everyone involved.

Laplacier

Edit history:

Laplacier: 2014-07-10 07:31:29 pm

2014-07-10 07:30:45 pm

StarSong Hype

My personal thought on giving certain donations priority would be for that person (or group) to tweet an SDA Twitter giving them the heads up that they made a donation. There won't be a "list" which would need to be made beforehand and you can easily pick out the Twitters since they'd be longstanding accounts and not fakes.

mike89

2014-07-10 07:41:38 pm

SEGA Junkie

Quote from romscout:

This relates to what I was just talking about with contacting me directly. Mike89, although you felt there was no clear way of contacting me while you were on Twitter, pretty much everyone else who needed to bring up an issue while on that account DM'd me and we sorted things out quickly. I always have access to Twitter no matter where I am. Like I said previously, making sure you all have some "go-to contact" scheduled for certain times of the day will probably make all the social media volunteers a little more comfortable and less hesitant with bringing up problems. It's something I'll talk about with staff before the next event.

Oh, that's fine, I'm just saying that most of the time when I needed someone it would be ass o'clock and I wouldn't want to disrupt the maybe 45 minutes of sleep you get a night. :p But you seem open to having that extra role and I think that would be more beneficial than having you or Mike chase up every little thing.

UraniumAnchor

2014-07-10 08:02:36 pm

Not a walrus

Quote from spikevegeta:

I was talking in a chat last night, and people we're upset about certain members from their community not having their donations read during the communities run. Would a simple solution be to just have that community decide on a sort of "Code" or # that denotes they are part of the community? That way instead of processors having to keep a list of all possible community members next to them at all times, they could just see "Oh they started their donation during SMRPG with #SMRPGCommunity or something? Might make it easier for everyone involved.

We JUST discussed this like ten posts ago.

konvertor

2014-07-10 08:04:54 pm

Quote from gyre:

Lav clips- We have spares. I reattached clips whenever I spotted one missing. Point it out to a tech person and we can fix this when there's free time. Avoid tearing the mic off or stepping on it and the clips will stay on more often.

I'm sure this one falls under the "we didn't have time" category. I was working on tech with UA and someone else (forget who, sorry). Someone asked UA for a new clip for one of the Lavs that was missing one. UA knew we had spares, but none of us could find where they were at. I think a small box next to the mixer would be a good place. I noticed they were missing a few times when I was on tech duty and would have gladly replaced them if I had known where the spares were.

heeheex2

2014-07-10 08:17:04 pm

I really don't get why anyone at the event should care at all about what goes on in the twitch chat, nobody is actually looking at the chat and thinking "this is how people at the event think". It gets said literally every time (I didn't look at the chat at all during this marathon so I have no idea how it went) but seriously, 2 or 3 bots just timing out certain words/ascii and sub-onlying to link the runner's channel before the run is all you guys need to do with twitch chat. Most of the people watching just want to have fun in chat and the irc chat is absolutely terrible for this because of the sda oldboi no fun allowed mentally there. Sure a lot of the things said in chat are really shitty and offensive, but there's no way to change the way people think with chat moderation, so banning the shitty comments and ignoring everything else (seriously, how often is anything worth while said in twitch chat other than stuff like audio issues that people in irc will also notice/point out) is probably the best thing to do. sub-only during the runs will lose all of the people who are only there to shit up chat (there's a lot of them) and with the way the marathons have slowly become less fun and more professional, will really make the marathon completely different than what it should be (fun charity marathon).

Also code words on the donation thing seems like it'd work pretty well, it's not like the people who approve the donations for reading aren't gonna be able to still sift through them. Something like "fuck jews heil hitler #LTTP2015" isn't gonna be read, obviously. Sure people would figure out some but it's still a lot less work to go through 50 donations filtered with hashtags than 200 that aren't.

I really don't get why anyone at the event should care at all about what goes on in the twitch chat, nobody is actually looking at the chat and thinking "this is how people at the event think". It gets said literally every time (I didn't look at the chat at all during this marathon so I have no idea how it went) but seriously, 2 or 3 bots just timing out certain words/ascii and sub-onlying to link the runner's channel before the run is all you guys need to do with twitch chat. Most of the people watching just want to have fun in chat and the irc chat is absolutely terrible for this because of the sda oldboi no fun allowed mentally there. Sure a lot of the things said in chat are really shitty and offensive, but there's no way to change the way people think with chat moderation, so banning the shitty comments and ignoring everything else (seriously, how often is anything worth while said in twitch chat other than stuff like audio issues that people in irc will also notice/point out) is probably the best thing to do. sub-only during the runs will lose all of the people who are only there to shit up chat (there's a lot of them) and with the way the marathons have slowly become less fun and more professional, will really make the marathon completely different than what it should be (fun charity marathon).

Also code words on the donation thing seems like it'd work pretty well, it's not like the people who approve the donations for reading aren't gonna be able to still sift through them. Something like "fuck jews heil hitler #LTTP2015" isn't gonna be read, obviously. Sure people would figure out some but it's still a lot less work to go through 50 donations filtered with hashtags than 200 that aren't.

Cool Matty

2014-07-10 08:22:12 pm

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

Quote from konvertor:

Quote from gyre:

Lav clips- We have spares. I reattached clips whenever I spotted one missing. Point it out to a tech person and we can fix this when there's free time. Avoid tearing the mic off or stepping on it and the clips will stay on more often.

I'm sure this one falls under the "we didn't have time" category. I was working on tech with UA and someone else (forget who, sorry). Someone asked UA for a new clip for one of the Lavs that was missing one. UA knew we had spares, but none of us could find where they were at. I think a small box next to the mixer would be a good place. I noticed they were missing a few times when I was on tech duty and would have gladly replaced them if I had known where the spares were.

I'd actually prefer not to have these just sitting out like a grab bag. A single clip costs $5 to replace (2 in a pack for $10). Yes, they're that expensive. It was absurd how many we went through at SGDQ, over 3x as many as we did at AGDQ. The lack of a box to put them in might have contributed somewhat (I hope), but I also think people were in general less careful this marathon. I'll do my best to make sure there's places to put them safely, but runners/commentators are going to need to come the other half of the way here. It's especially absurd to be LOSING clips. I hope I don't have to lay down the law on this, but I will make some absurd punishment for it if I have to. This is considered mistreating marathon equipment, and I will be drilling that in at AGDQ's orientation.

[quote="konvertor"][quote="gyre"]Lav clips- We have spares.  I reattached clips whenever I spotted one missing.  Point it out to a tech person and we can fix this when there's free time.  Avoid tearing the mic off or stepping on it and the clips will stay on more often.[/quote]

I'm sure this one falls under the "we didn't have time" category. I was working on tech with UA and someone else (forget who, sorry). Someone asked UA for a new clip for one of the Lavs that was missing one. UA knew we had spares, but none of us could find where they were at. I think a small box next to the mixer would be a good place. I noticed they were missing a few times when I was on tech duty and would have gladly replaced them if I had known where the spares were.[/quote]

I'd actually prefer not to have these just sitting out like a grab bag. A single clip costs $5 to replace (2 in a pack for $10). Yes, they're that expensive. It was absurd how many we went through at SGDQ, over 3x as many as we did at AGDQ. The lack of a box to put them in might have contributed somewhat (I hope), but I also think people were in general less careful this marathon. I'll do my best to make sure there's places to put them safely, but runners/commentators are going to need to come the other half of the way here. It's especially absurd to be LOSING clips. I hope I don't have to lay down the law on this, but I will make some absurd punishment for it if I have to. This is considered mistreating marathon equipment, and I will be drilling that in at AGDQ's orientation.

Harima

Edit history:

Harima: 2014-07-10 08:35:17 pm

Harima: 2014-07-10 08:34:55 pm

Harima: 2014-07-10 08:34:53 pm

Harima: 2014-07-10 08:33:37 pm

Harima: 2014-07-10 08:32:44 pm

2014-07-10 08:32:00 pm

Literally speaking... literally...

Everything important has already been said a number of times now.

But I believe the couch wasn't one of them yet. As I remember in the AGDQ2014 feedback thread, someone mentioned the stream not looking as colorful or "in-the-middle" with the camera angle and generally darker colors of the stream room.

Somehow this seems to be an issue since SGDQ2013 when the couch was changed from the red one from previous GDQ's to a darker one.

Why not bring the red couch back? It would bring some color back to the stream. And you could bring the camera facing the runner and commentator back to somewhere next to the TV currently used for the run. People looking sideways on stream aren't as good as more or less looking directly in the camera, giving the stream a more "in-the-middle" kind of feeling. AGDQ2013 should be the go-to camera angle for reference.

And bring the red couch back, that is a GDQ staple!

Otherwise great marathon as always!

UraniumAnchor

2014-07-10 08:40:41 pm

Not a walrus

If we could magic a red couch of thin air I'm sure we would. Wink

At this point we'd have to track one down and store one in each location, and couches aren't exactly small.

As for the camera angles, that'll be solved by having better tripods. The ones we had to buy at the last minute when we realized that the angles weren't going to work at all without being able to mount the cameras on something weren't tall enough to get a good direct shot because the TVs were in the way.

Reed

Edit history:

Reed: 2014-07-10 08:56:20 pm

2014-07-10 08:54:55 pm

@tiburonCS

I want to preface this by saying SGDQ 2014 was the most fun I've had at any GDQ event (been to two) and most of my gripes were just minor annoyances on an otherwise awesome event. Also a lot of stuff has already been covered and Rom+crew seem to know most of the issues.

- Stream Layout: Just some points I don't want to get overlooked.

The stream font is seriously awful. Between the typeface, the drop shadow and the color, it's impossible to read at small screen size or at a distance. The relatively bright background doesn't help. Also, as Go1den said, the timer is impossible to read from a distance due to the color.
One general thing I would say re: stream layout and transitions is take cues from esports/FGC tourneys. Those generally look really professional.

- Venue Issues

The major thing was the cold. I was shivering the whole time, and I know people had issues with numb hands while practicing. Also, the air was super dry - not AGDQ14 levels where I woke up with cracked lips every day, but still pretty bad. Pretty please figure this out for next time <3 I'd like to go to a GDQ event where I'm not putting my health in peril just by attending.
Also, no food to be had after 10pm. This was a huge huge problem. I don't know why everyone in Denver goes to bed so early, but if your Taco Bell closes before midnight, you're not a real place.

- People watching the stream often had no clue who the people on the couch were. There should be a way of making this known without role calls every five seconds. This is probably a two-part solution: 1) formalize the couch process more, so you don't have random people jumping on all the time; 2) find a responsive, up-to-date way of listing the people on couch, either on stream or on the GDQ website. (GDQ Monitor?)

- Minor thing, but I know a whole bunch of people got banned in Twitch chat for spamming haloruns.com links during the Halo run, which is like a running joke in Halo streams. I know it was probably automated (xanbot seemed to work really well generally, btw) but it would be cool if there was official promotion of those links instead of banning.

- What Jackafur said about people being dipshits, please conduct yourselves properly and learn some social skills, if you're gonna come don't be weird/creepy/smelly, if you can't be around people then don't come. This is a fun video game event, it isn't your special nerd party to get fucked-up and create drama that reflects poorly on the entire event. I go around the net and oftentimes any mention of SGDQ is met with "Oh you mean that event where <drama> happened??" This has nothing to do with the organizers and everything to do with the people who attend. Get your shit together or don't come, thanks.

Quote from TheMG2:

I could have sworn I remember hearing that "pronounce my name" donations and tongue twisters weren't supposed to be read. Why were they read so often? Regardless, they really shouldn't be read, they don't really add anything of value.

Quote from xcd:

Also, the dolls or whatever you want to call them are starting to get annoying. I find it to be pretty disrespectful that runners worked for months to show off their game and some dumb stuffed animal becomes the center of attention. It just kinda weirds me out for such a large event.

- Speaking of things becoming the center of attention, can we please stop reading donation comments that are all about how cool/cute the donation reader's voice is, or asking them to read out stupid shit. This is PJSalt but I think it's justified. It really seemed like a lot of the donation readers didn't know the guidelines.
Also, I know for the Halo run we had a lot of community people complain afterwards that their comments weren't read. Maybe it was on us for not clearing it with the host at the time. Rom already touched on that point so moving on.

Quote from Garrison:

I really like the idea of badges in general, but I feel like a lot of the enforcement was a little hamfisted. .... I honestly don't think there's a good solution for the problem and to be honest in theory its a great thing to have unbiased checks, but I feel like a grandpa getting carded for beer when it happens to me and I DONT LIKE IT!!!!!

- Agreed with the enforcement being ham-handed, different situation but there were occasions when I broke a rule unknowingly and had stuff basically snatched out of my hand and trashed with zero explanation. It's growing pains and all considering the growth of the event, but if you're enforcing a rule, you should explain it. Better training for the people enforcing might help, maybe just a reminder that "you don't have to be a dick".

Good ideas for next time:

+ Strap bracelets instead of lanyards for the event pass. Easy to see, hard to remove, impossible to lose.
+ Pre-game stream. Hype videos, interviews or even just a countdown. Doesn't really matter as long as the stream is up and chat gets hype.
+ Promote the runner's stream through linking periodically in chat (Twitch chat). Also link community websites like HaloRuns, SourceRuns, etc.
+ Better training/vetting of donation readers so they don't read dumb things, or have mushy mouth.
+ Instead of an estimate, have people submit likely time ranges in a mandatory thread pre-event. On the schedule, instead of listing the estimate just say 'Next run starts at:' preferably with what the next game is.
+ Second stream for behind the scenes stuff. Maybe casual room, taking a look at Melee, fighting game matches, Mario Party stuff. Gives viewers a fuller sense of what happens at the event. Again, Rom touched on it.

This turned into a bit of an essay, but anyways, I had a lot of fun and may volunteer in the future. Thanks for the hard work

I want to preface this by saying SGDQ 2014 was the most fun I've had at any GDQ event (been to two) and most of my gripes were just minor annoyances on an otherwise awesome event. Also a lot of stuff has already been covered and Rom+crew seem to know most of the issues.

- Stream Layout: Just some points I don't want to get overlooked.
[hidden]The stream font is seriously awful. Between the typeface, the drop shadow and the color, it's impossible to read at small screen size or at a distance. The relatively bright background doesn't help. Also, as Go1den said, the timer is impossible to read from a distance due to the color.
One general thing I would say re: stream layout and transitions is take cues from esports/FGC tourneys. Those generally look really professional.[/hidden]

- Venue Issues
[hidden]The major thing was the cold. I was shivering the whole time, and I know people had issues with numb hands while practicing. Also, the air was super dry - not AGDQ14 levels where I woke up with cracked lips every day, but still pretty bad. Pretty please figure this out for next time <3 I'd like to go to a GDQ event where I'm not putting my health in peril just by attending.
Also, no food to be had after 10pm. This was a huge huge problem. I don't know why everyone in Denver goes to bed so early, but if your Taco Bell closes before midnight, you're not a real place.[/hidden]

- People watching the stream often had no clue who the people on the couch were. There should be a way of making this known without role calls every five seconds. This is probably a two-part solution: 1) formalize the couch process more, so you don't have random people jumping on all the time; 2) find a responsive, up-to-date way of listing the people on couch, either on stream or on the GDQ website. (GDQ Monitor?)

- Minor thing, but I know a whole bunch of people got banned in Twitch chat for spamming haloruns.com links during the Halo run, which is like a running joke in Halo streams. I know it was probably automated (xanbot seemed to work really well generally, btw) but it would be cool if there was official promotion of those links instead of banning.

- What Jackafur said about people being dipshits, please conduct yourselves properly and learn some social skills, if you're gonna come don't be weird/creepy/smelly, if you can't be around people then don't come. This is a fun video game event, it isn't your special nerd party to get fucked-up and create drama that reflects poorly on the entire event. I go around the net and oftentimes any mention of SGDQ is met with "Oh you mean that event where <drama> happened??" [b]This has nothing to do with the organizers[/b] and everything to do with the people who attend. Get your shit together or don't come, thanks.

[quote="TheMG2"]I could have sworn I remember hearing that "pronounce my name" donations and tongue twisters weren't supposed to be read. Why were they read so often? Regardless, they really shouldn't be read, they don't really add anything of value.[/quote]
[quote="xcd"]Also, the dolls or whatever you want to call them are starting to get annoying. I find it to be pretty disrespectful that runners worked for months to show off their game and some dumb stuffed animal becomes the center of attention. It just kinda weirds me out for such a large event.[/quote]
- [b]Speaking of things becoming the center of attention,[/b] can we please stop reading donation comments that are all about how cool/cute the donation reader's voice is, or asking them to read out stupid shit. This is PJSalt but I think it's justified. It really seemed like a lot of the donation readers didn't know the guidelines.
Also, I know for the Halo run we had a lot of community people complain afterwards that their comments weren't read. Maybe it was on us for not clearing it with the host at the time. Rom already touched on that point so moving on.

[quote="Garrison"]I really like the idea of badges in general, but I feel like a lot of the enforcement was a little hamfisted. .... I honestly don't think there's a good solution for the problem and to be honest in theory its a great thing to have unbiased checks, but I feel like a grandpa getting carded for beer when it happens to me and I DONT LIKE IT!!!!![/quote]
- Agreed with the enforcement being ham-handed, different situation but there were occasions when I broke a rule unknowingly and had stuff basically snatched out of my hand and trashed with zero explanation. It's growing pains and all considering the growth of the event, but if you're enforcing a rule, you should explain it. Better training for the people enforcing might help, maybe just a reminder that "you don't have to be a dick".

[b]Good ideas for next time:[/b]

+ Strap bracelets instead of lanyards for the event pass. Easy to see, hard to remove, impossible to lose.
+ Pre-game stream. Hype videos, interviews or even just a countdown. Doesn't really matter as long as the stream is up and chat gets hype.
+ Promote the runner's stream through linking periodically in chat (Twitch chat). Also link community websites like HaloRuns, SourceRuns, etc.
+ Better training/vetting of donation readers so they don't read dumb things, or have mushy mouth.
+ Instead of an estimate, have people submit likely time ranges in a mandatory thread pre-event. On the schedule, instead of listing the estimate just say 'Next run starts at:' preferably with what the next game is.
+ Second stream for behind the scenes stuff. Maybe casual room, taking a look at Melee, fighting game matches, Mario Party stuff. Gives viewers a fuller sense of what happens at the event. Again, Rom touched on it.

This turned into a bit of an essay, but anyways, I had a lot of fun and may volunteer in the future. Thanks for the hard work

The Sid

2014-07-10 09:26:45 pm

raising the stakes on being bad!

Quote:

Another thing I would like to note is for all runners: assume that volunteers have no idea what your game is and have no idea about its speedrun, unless you specifically arrange something with them beforehand. Assume that the tech staff has no idea when time starts/stops for your run. Assume that the host has no idea when the right times to read donations are. Assume that the donation processors have never heard of your game or any of the folks who are involved in its community. Plan around this. You can talk to the tech staff in advance and tell them how timing is going to work. You can work with your host in advance, or just ask them not to read donations until you give the go-ahead. You can ask your speedfriends to include a hashtag in their donation comments, and tell the donation station and host to specifically look for that hashtag. Remember that all the volunteers don't necessarily know the entire community. Help us help you here.

yes plz

now on to my soap box
im gonna hide alot of this so only unhide it if you care to read alot or if it pertains to you cuz this is like 3 pages of bs and answers from working tech/donations
A MANY things
For runners getting access to tv’s if you make it a separate room/area it may be a good idea to make it so commentators can have access to that area as well to practice on site for the actual marathon.
Heck I was just watching mr.cab run MMV gb and learned enough of it to do couch commentary if I wasn’t doing teach and wasn’t such an idiot I would have done commentary if it was separated I wouldn’t have had that chance or pleasure of meeting him.

rom/mike props

Specifically for Rom and Mike. Mike gave me a lot of positive feed back and “pats” on the back for helping out with tech/donations, but I never had that experience with rom not like I volunteered to get hugs and kisses, but giving the new guys some love when you catch em’ doing more shift then they are scheduled for makes em’ wanna come back and do it again no questions asked.

Duckfist made a good point and it may be a bit late now, but I think next year it might be easier to keep general feed back and Tech in two separate threads, from the perspective of someone that’s worked in film there’s many technical and person facets to these at this point they can sustain there own thread and make it so updating layouts, audio setups, agdq tool etc easier by not having to sift through hotel or interpersonal issues.

TECH STUFF

For duckfist and the GDQ tool

-Try and set it up to show previous and next game in the transition setting
-Maybe a way to interface with the donation tracker (or a hand input tracker) to show the donation total.
-Maybe instead of showing donation totals ad some feature to show prizes for that block through the donation tracker
-Possibly interfacing with the donation tracker in a way that it can pull in runner and readers choice (if and when the donation station is able to set them prior to the run)
-A setup of races as they are becoming more prevalent maybe 2-4 man races seem to show up at least once every GDQ

A/V tech issues & responses

It seems for Audio we need to have dedicated guys to set up the runners and make sure we are good on sound with each block same with setting up consoles if we don’t get some SDA console for the setup. A consistent mistake I would make ill admit due to being in film time is money so im used to keep roiling 9so id let them start with really getting a test of there audio only to find out the mic wasn’t properly positioned) and with the commentary they need to me mic’d right the first time so we need to have em feed us some dialogue to check and see if the mic is fin instead of just ask if we are ready so preprep needs to be for runners as well as tech( knowing we had an audio thing and some people still didn’t set up the ear mic properly)

From a film perspective im unsure of how our camera setup is (if we own or what not) but we should get 3 if we can from what I saw 3 would be the best for our layout 1st for single /double race & crowd without showing empty room 2nd for showing racer 3 and 4
And 3rd for crowd cam or “GDQ monitor” ( if we do GDQ monitor I think we should just screen cap it imo.

For the love of good better tripods, those tripods were the most rickety things ever, if I have a job I would just about buy it out of pocket, cuz I would have killed for a better angle which we couldn’t get due to the tripods head being so damn weak it couldn’t support the camera. Leading to putting them on side ways leading to one of the cameras falling

Timer screwups were often caused by how hard it was to hear the runner and being unfamiliar with some games, being closer to the runners next time will most likely resolve this issue, but simply using the headset could have resolved this in most cases that and not being distracted by questions at the end of a run which happened to me at least 3 times over the course of the marathon

As for the MM6 race and the camera we were trying to add the other camera and redirect it but obs didn’t take it and we didn’t want to force adding it and covering up the entire race with a cam feed for how ever long it would have taken us to resize it. We also we looking at the came to make sure it wasn’t RIP. So it wasn’t so much sitting on our hands we figured it better to go with cam then cover up the feed for any amount of time and fight OBS mid run to make it take cam 2

Hotel

I don’t have much experience with hotels, but I think owning the space having GDQ take up most off if not all of the hotel is a good way to go that way the hotel will have a vested interest in catering to us not like we are unreasonable, but it might prevent last minute backing out on free breakfast and hiding refrigerators and dumb things like that.

Food/catering

I think maybe ensuring that volunteers/staff/runners at least get the food for the time they are giving maybe setting some food aside, or policing the food to keep stupid from grabbing 2 boxes right off the bat like your entitled to extra food.

Donations

For runners choice if we didn’t get it before hand we add them all to his choice after hand, at least that’s how it was done while I was over there and that was with the guys that where there 24/7 so most of them were properly sent to the right incentive, the only time I may have been less active on butting toward something was, whatever the guy 3rd from the back in a blue shirt wants, or the name of a person we have no clue of that isn’t in the room. And that was early on most of those ended up being resolved later on when they weren’t the kind sent to make are lives harder.

Volunteer feed back

I know its going to be addressed, but I wanted to just add a bit more, it feels like we are under-utilizing new blood, and to be honest I would have missed every shift if mike had not grabbed me and asked me to cover leading me to check the list again and find my name. There need to be a Thread idk if private or what but a list of “guys” you want to work volunteer in that thread so we know ahead of time we are to be “needed” even if we don’t know when. And even more so not so much having to have the professional shadow approach for every may not be necessary, im trained in film if I had gotten 10 minutes with matty and the sound board before the event I could have worked it a lot better. And I get the feeling there may be other with skill sets like mine that may or may not be going untapped.
Maybe adding a field in the volunteer signup for “experience” in certain fields or with certain gear may facilitate using the new comers more effectively to help alleviate the long timers and let them rotate with us w/o worry.

EXPLIST FEED BACK / RESPONSES

I feel the extra day of setup ( I feel it should be two) one to build it up and a second day for tech setup dry runs to find audio issues, setup video cropping for special races/games and many other thing will help a lot.

Cool matty as some one that’s worked in film I would not use wireless packs for anything in this setting since we will be running 24/7 we would have to stay on top of swapping batteries not only an extra cost but something easily missed that could cost use audio in the middle of a run due to us swapping people (staff) at the tech station you’ll never know 100% of the time what there is to change and its easy to forget just like stop and restarting the stream recording to keep it from getting massive. The over the ears half solid mics sound good. We may also want to look into boundary layer mics but I need to go talk to my film professor and find out if the pick rang for it is to sensitive for what we want to use it for or if it will be just right like I’m hoping (ideally it will be one mic under the TV that catches the runner louder and the couch just behind them but there wouldn’t be distinct audio channels for each person)

The S-video issue I know doing SDA machines can help but if I had know we were doing S-video I would have brought my nice S-video and stereo Snes cable to use for the duration and either having SDA own some of said cables for each system to eliminate or just having the techs know you should bring the to back our A/V GODLIKE I know im down to grab my cable for next year label it and leave it there as part of the setup till I leave.

[quote]Another thing I would like to note is for all runners: assume that volunteers have no idea what your game is and have no idea about its speedrun, unless you specifically arrange something with them beforehand. Assume that the tech staff has no idea when time starts/stops for your run. Assume that the host has no idea when the right times to read donations are. Assume that the donation processors have never heard of your game or any of the folks who are involved in its community. Plan around this. You can talk to the tech staff in advance and tell them how timing is going to work. You can work with your host in advance, or just ask them not to read donations until you give the go-ahead. You can ask your speedfriends to include a hashtag in their donation comments, and tell the donation station and host to specifically look for that hashtag. Remember that all the volunteers don't necessarily know the entire community. Help us help you here.[/quote] yes plz

now on to my soap box
im gonna hide alot of this so only unhide it if you care to read alot or if it pertains to you cuz this is like 3 pages of bs and answers from working tech/donations
A MANY things 
For runners getting access to tv’s if you make it a separate room/area it may be a good idea to make it so commentators can have access to that area as well to practice on site for the actual marathon.
Heck I was just watching mr.cab run MMV gb and learned enough of it to do couch commentary if I wasn’t doing teach and wasn’t such an idiot I would have done commentary if it was separated I wouldn’t have had that chance or pleasure of meeting him.

rom/mike props
[hidden]Specifically for Rom and Mike. Mike gave me a lot of positive feed back and “pats” on the back for helping out with tech/donations, but I never had that experience with rom not like I volunteered to get hugs and kisses, but giving the new guys some love when you catch em’ doing more shift then they are scheduled for makes em’ wanna come back and do it again no questions asked.[/hidden]

Duckfist made a good point and it may be a bit late now, but I think next year it might be easier to keep general feed back and Tech in two separate threads, from the perspective of someone that’s worked in film there’s many technical and person facets to these at this point they can sustain there own thread and make it so updating layouts, audio setups, agdq tool etc easier by not having to sift through hotel or interpersonal issues.

TECH STUFF

For duckfist and the GDQ tool
[hidden]-Try and set it up to show previous and next game in the transition setting 
-Maybe a way to interface with the donation tracker (or a hand input tracker) to show the donation total.
-Maybe instead of showing donation totals ad some feature to show prizes for that block through the donation tracker
-Possibly interfacing with the donation tracker in a way that it can pull in runner and readers choice (if and when the donation station is able to set them prior to the run) 
-A setup of races as they are becoming more prevalent maybe 2-4 man races seem to show up at least once every GDQ[/hidden]

A/V tech issues & responses

[hidden]It seems for Audio we need to have dedicated guys to set up the runners and make sure we are good on sound with each block same with setting up consoles if we don’t get some SDA console for the setup. A consistent mistake I would make ill admit due to being in film time is money so im used to keep roiling 9so id let them start with really getting a test of there audio only to find out the mic wasn’t properly positioned) and with the commentary they need to me mic’d right the first time so we need to have em feed us some dialogue to check and see if the mic is fin instead of just ask if we are ready so preprep needs to be for runners as well as tech( knowing we had an audio thing and some people still didn’t set up the ear mic properly)

From a film perspective im unsure of how our camera setup is (if we own or what not) but we should get 3 if we can from what I saw 3 would be the best for our layout 1st for single /double race & crowd without showing empty room 2nd for showing racer 3 and 4
And 3rd for crowd cam or “GDQ monitor” ( if we do GDQ monitor I think we should just screen cap it imo.

For the love of good better tripods, those tripods were the most rickety things ever, if I have a job I would just about buy it out of pocket, cuz I would have killed for a better angle which we couldn’t get due to the tripods head being so damn weak it couldn’t support the camera. Leading to putting them on side ways leading to one of the cameras falling

Timer screwups were often caused by how hard it was to hear the runner and being unfamiliar with some games, being closer to the runners next time will most likely resolve this issue, but simply using the headset could have resolved this in most cases that and not being distracted by questions at the end of a run which happened to me at least 3 times over the course of the marathon

As for the MM6 race and the camera we were trying to add the other camera and redirect it but obs didn’t take it and we didn’t want to force adding it and covering up the entire race with a cam feed for how ever long it would have taken us to resize it. We also we looking at the came to make sure it wasn’t RIP. So it wasn’t so much sitting on our hands we figured it better to go with cam then cover up the feed for any amount of time and fight OBS mid run to make it take cam 2[/hidden]

Hotel

I don’t have much experience with hotels, but I think owning the space having GDQ take up most off if not all of the hotel is a good way to go that way the hotel will have a vested interest in catering to us not like we are unreasonable, but it might prevent last minute backing out on free breakfast and hiding refrigerators and dumb things like that.

Food/catering

I think maybe ensuring that volunteers/staff/runners at least get the food for the time they are giving maybe setting some food aside, or policing the food to keep stupid from grabbing 2 boxes right off the bat like your entitled to extra food.

Donations

[hidden]For runners choice if we didn’t get it before hand we add them all to his choice after hand, at least that’s how it was done while I was over there and that was with the guys that where there 24/7 so most of them were properly sent to the right incentive, the only time I may have been less active on butting toward something was, whatever the guy 3rd from the back in a blue shirt wants, or the name of a person we have no clue of that isn’t in the room. And that was early on most of those ended up being resolved later on when they weren’t the kind sent to make are lives harder.[/hidden]

Volunteer feed back

[hidden] I know its going to be addressed, but I wanted to just add a bit more, it feels like we are under-utilizing new blood, and to be honest I would have missed every shift if mike had not grabbed me and asked me to cover leading me to check the list again and find my name. There need to be a Thread idk if private or what but a list of “guys” you want to work volunteer in that thread so we know ahead of time we are to be “needed” even if we don’t know when. And even more so not so much having to have the professional shadow approach for every may not be necessary, im trained in film if I had gotten 10 minutes with matty and the sound board before the event I could have worked it a lot better. And I get the feeling there may be other with skill sets like mine that may or may not be going untapped.
Maybe adding a field in the volunteer signup for “experience” in certain fields or with certain gear may facilitate using the new comers more effectively to help alleviate the long timers and let them rotate with us w/o worry.[/hidden]

EXPLIST FEED BACK / RESPONSES

[hidden]I feel the extra day of setup ( I feel it should be two) one to build it up and a second day for tech setup dry runs to find audio issues, setup video cropping for special races/games and many other thing will help a lot.

Cool matty as some one that’s worked in film I would not use wireless packs for anything in this setting since we will be running 24/7 we would have to stay on top of swapping batteries not only an extra cost but something easily missed that could cost use audio in the middle of a run due to us swapping people (staff) at the tech station you’ll never know 100% of the time what there is to change and its easy to forget just like stop and restarting the stream recording to keep it from getting massive. The over the ears half solid mics sound good. We may also want to look into boundary layer mics but I need to go talk to my film professor and find out if the pick rang for it is to sensitive for what we want to use it for or if it will be just right like I’m hoping (ideally it will be one mic under the TV that catches the runner louder and the couch just behind them but there wouldn’t be distinct audio channels for each person)

The S-video issue I know doing SDA machines can help but if I had know we were doing S-video I would have brought my nice S-video and stereo Snes cable to use for the duration and either having SDA own some of said cables for each system to eliminate or just having the techs know you should bring the to back our A/V GODLIKE I know im down to grab my cable for next year label it and leave it there as part of the setup till I leave.
[/hidden]

Worn_Traveler

2014-07-10 09:46:10 pm

Formerly known as Skullboy

I've seen the idea of a designated, scheduled runner/ "director" who keeps tabs on everything in a general way and I think it's a wonderful idea. This volunteer position was first mentioned at least a year or two ago but never really phased out. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for the attendees who want to volunteer but are not confident or comfortable doing tech work nor are they running games or doing couch commentary. I'm not saying they should be telling the staff what to do but having someone around who can pay attention to everything would help.

I am sorry to hear that the hotel wasn't good. I've been to my share of good and bad ones for various events and trips and having to spend time in a place that isn't reasonably accommodating can make the trip drag when it should fly by in a good way.

Good job to everyone involved with this effort. One thing I love about SDA marathons is the consistency to have great runs and how everything falls into place each marathon. I'd also like to point out that while the tech and staff crew may seem reluctant to some suggestions or super defensive, it's the tone and not the intention. A lot of the newcomers may not realize this. Keep up the great work everyone!

I've seen the idea of a designated, scheduled runner/ "director" who keeps tabs on everything in a general way and I think it's a wonderful idea. This volunteer position was first mentioned at least a year or two ago but never really phased out. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for the attendees who want to volunteer but are not confident or comfortable doing tech work nor are they running games or doing couch commentary. I'm not saying they should be telling the staff what to do but having someone around who can pay attention to everything would help.

I am sorry to hear that the hotel wasn't good. I've been to my share of good and bad ones for various events and trips and having to spend time in a place that isn't reasonably accommodating can make the trip drag when it should fly by in a good way.

Good job to everyone involved with this effort. One thing I love about SDA marathons is the consistency to have great runs and how everything falls into place each marathon. I'd also like to point out that while the tech and staff crew may seem reluctant to some suggestions or super defensive, it's the tone and not the intention. A lot of the newcomers may not realize this. Keep up the great work everyone!

ewaller

2014-07-10 10:01:25 pm

Sorry if already mentioned, but one thing that I found confusing was the catering. I didn't even realize there was going to be catering, and then every day it seemed to show up at a different time, so I wasn't sure if it was going to show up or if I should just get lunch somewhere etc. Maybe there was a post about it somewhere, but something at the event space letting people know what to expect would be cool :). I understand if no one knew when it was coming but maybe just something saying it actually would be provided on certain days would be good.

UraniumAnchor

2014-07-10 10:08:20 pm

Not a walrus

The catering was figured out literally two days before the event, so I'm not surprised that information on it was sketchy at best.

All we really knew for sure was "Monday through Friday".

Sir Tonk

Edit history:

Sir Tonk: 2014-07-10 10:56:38 pm

Sir Tonk: 2014-07-10 10:39:07 pm

2014-07-10 10:14:38 pm

Quote from Lanayru:

As for volunteering, sure just get me some cash as I'm 16 yr old with no job and me a flight from KBUF or CYZZ to Dulles and I'll be more than happy to come with my brother who also has experience with this technology.

Holy shit, line of the thread right here.

Quote from romscout:

More love for prizes:
Yes. We dropped the ball on it. Whether it's getting a picture on the screen or showing it on the camera, this needs to be done better. I will take blame for at least some of this since I took it upon myself to be in charge of prize submissions and didn't end up doing a great job since I became too busy with event logistics. This is yet another instance of "we need someone else dedicated to handling this" so that we don't have to do as much work for it right as the event starts. I know there are a lot of people in our community who want to help the events become better, so don't worry, I'll reach out to you. For that matter, if you think handling prize submissions and organizing some stuff we can use on stream for them is your thing, don't hesitate to bug me about it!

Here's an idea, if anyone out there is decent at video editing and has a space to shoot in, put together 30 second or longer clips for each of the major prizes. Do something fun, like a spoof of old Home Shopping Network products. Maybe Mecharichter has a friend that can do 360 shoots of the perlers, then someone else can use that footage to do something with it. The prize videos can be like PSAs/commercials to play between runs and will give the control station a chance to switch stream layout maybe.

That's one of the reasons public radio has PSAs/ads at the end of each show. It lets the station switch out the crew for each show, or cue up the next file if it's pre-recorded.

I'm not sure if putting together prize videos is feasible, but maybe there's a university video department full of students that would love the chance to do something like that for charity. Ya never know and it sounds like there's a few film/audio students in the thread already.

[quote="Lanayru"]
As for volunteering, sure just get me some cash as I'm 16 yr old with no job and me a flight from KBUF or CYZZ to Dulles and I'll be more than happy to come with my brother who also has experience with this technology.
[/quote]

Holy shit, line of the thread right here.

[quote="romscout"]
[b]More love for prizes:[/b]
Yes. We dropped the ball on it. Whether it's getting a picture on the screen or showing it on the camera, this needs to be done better. I will take blame for at least some of this since I took it upon myself to be in charge of prize submissions and didn't end up doing a great job since I became too busy with event logistics. This is yet another instance of "we need someone else dedicated to handling this" so that we don't have to do as much work for it right as the event starts. I know there are a lot of people in our community who want to help the events become better, so don't worry, I'll reach out to you. For that matter, if you think handling prize submissions and organizing some stuff we can use on stream for them is your thing, don't hesitate to bug me about it!
[/quote]

Here's an idea, if anyone out there is decent at video editing and has a space to shoot in, put together 30 second or longer clips for each of the major prizes. Do something fun, like a spoof of old Home Shopping Network products. Maybe Mecharichter has a friend that can do 360 shoots of the perlers, then someone else can use that footage to do something with it. The prize videos can be like PSAs/commercials to play between runs and will give the control station a chance to switch stream layout maybe.

That's one of the reasons public radio has PSAs/ads at the end of each show. It lets the station switch out the crew for each show, or cue up the next file if it's pre-recorded.

I'm not sure if putting together prize videos is feasible, but maybe there's a university video department full of students that would love the chance to do something like that for charity. Ya never know and it sounds like there's a few film/audio students in the thread already.

DarkAries

2014-07-11 12:25:12 am

Quote from Omnigamer:

These are the things that would have to change to make a full RGB setup possible:

-RGB TV. These are really uncommon and universally expensive. For what it's worth, the runner doesn't even need perfect quality.
-SCART distribution amp. I don't even know where you can get these in the US. On the flipside, if something goes wrong with our S-Video setup, a quick trip to Radioshack or some other electronics store can fill the gap.

Umm...you do realize there are RGB to Component convertors out there right? Like there is a whole market for these things. People at Sega-16 have even made their own convertors out of dead SNES components and now have a DIY convertor for pennies. Hell you can buy them if you get the Wii Socket off Assembler Games. Some basic soldering skills, put it in a case and you have a RGB to Component convertor for dirt cheap. Hell AVERMEDIA WHO SPONSORED THE EVENT has their own capture cards that handle 240p over component, like the LiveGamerPortable. It's a non issue either way because the Pexcap would be able to handle it perfectly. And since they already have the equipment for pulling lines of composite and RCA audio, the setup wouldn't have to change that much.

Put it this way. Why do ESA bother with Scart and Component? Why is GDQ dealing with composite and s-video. When you play at home do you hook up the composite cables on your console or do you hookup s-video or component. Go play a WiiVC game on composite and then play it on s-video, THEN go play it on component in actual 480p. You are ignoring my point completely. They have spent literally thousands on dollars on audio and misc. tech equipment, and are using inferior video outputs from the consoles, when to upgrade, you could fit in a 100 dollar budget, and that's only if you wanted gold plated Monster cables. Also why are you the only one complaining? I'm all for constructive discussion but seriously, it just seems like you are not wanting to change anything to try to improve, which is where A LOT of the "saltyness" has come from in this thread, and led to a shit storm that flew over twitter. The whole issue here is "nah it's good enough as is" was like a motto and now they would like stuff to change so we can have smoother sailing in the future. Automatically shooting down ideas you clearly don't have a proper understanding of due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding of another person's knowledge, isn't what this thread should be for.

[quote="Omnigamer"]
These are the things that would have to change to make a full RGB setup possible:

-RGB TV. These are really uncommon and universally expensive. For what it's worth, the runner doesn't even need perfect quality.
-SCART distribution amp. I don't even know where you can get these in the US. On the flipside, if something goes wrong with our S-Video setup, a quick trip to Radioshack or some other electronics store can fill the gap.
[/quote]

Umm...you do realize there are RGB to Component convertors out there right? Like there is a whole market for these things. People at Sega-16 have even made their own convertors out of dead SNES components and now have a DIY convertor for pennies. Hell you can buy them if you get the Wii Socket off Assembler Games. Some basic soldering skills, put it in a case and you have a RGB to Component convertor for dirt cheap. Hell AVERMEDIA WHO SPONSORED THE EVENT has their own capture cards that handle 240p over component, like the LiveGamerPortable. It's a non issue either way because the Pexcap would be able to handle it perfectly. And since they already have the equipment for pulling lines of composite and RCA audio, the setup wouldn't have to change that much.

Put it this way. Why do ESA bother with Scart and Component? Why is GDQ dealing with composite and s-video. When you play at home do you hook up the composite cables on your console or do you hookup s-video or component. Go play a WiiVC game on composite and then play it on s-video, THEN go play it on component in actual 480p.  You are ignoring my point completely. They have spent literally thousands on dollars on audio and misc. tech equipment, and are using inferior video outputs from the consoles, when to upgrade, you could fit in a 100 dollar budget, and that's only if you wanted gold plated Monster cables. Also why are you the only one complaining? I'm all for constructive discussion but seriously, it just seems like you are not wanting to change anything to try to improve, which is where A LOT of the "saltyness" has come from in this thread, and led to a shit storm that flew over twitter. The whole issue here is "nah it's good enough as is" was like a motto and now they would like stuff to change so we can have smoother sailing in the future. Automatically shooting down ideas you clearly don't have a proper understanding of due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding of another person's knowledge, isn't what this thread should be for.

Edenal

2014-07-11 12:41:24 am

Hockey enthusiast

Quote from Omnigamer:

-SCART distribution amp. I don't even know where you can get these in the US. On the flipside, if something goes wrong with our S-Video setup, a quick trip to Radioshack or some other electronics store can fill the gap.

There are plenty of friendly Europeans that can help you out with that. I recently bought 7 new SCART distribution amplifiers for ESA purposes. For reference, I paid ~ 200$ for all of them.

Quote from Omnigamer:

-RGB TV. These are really uncommon and universally expensive. For what it's worth, the runner doesn't even need perfect quality.

Most consoles output both composite + RGB. So you would not need to change anything in TV-department.

moooh

2014-07-11 06:10:51 am

Exoray

Regarding codes/passwords for priority comments:
People seem to forget that donation comments are public. It wouldn't be long until people outside of a particular community figure out what code word to use for a particular run in order to get their comments prioritized. We'd just end up with the same mixed list of relevant and non-relevant comments that we already are screening, so it wouldn't change anything.
It is already part of a donation processor's job to screen incoming donation comments for things related to the current run and the runners can already give the donation station, ahead of time, a list of names to be on the lookout for. Telling them to pass on to the host "everything that comes with this hashtag" is of course also already a possibility (and has been done by many runners), but one shouldn't expect that this guarantees everything with these hashtags automatically becomes read. The host doesn't always have the time to read all things send to him/her either.

Regarding strap bracelets that many people brought up:
As I'm sure most if not all PC gamers can attest, the thought of having something like a bracelet interrupting your hand movements during your run is not exactly a pleasant one. I'm sure this goes for quite a few console runners as well. Having something that you are not used to around your hands (the things you use the most when running your game!) might very well interfere more than enough to make it an uncomfortable nuisance.

Regarding codes/passwords for priority comments:
People seem to forget that donation comments are public. It wouldn't be long until people outside of a particular community figure out what code word to use for a particular run in order to get their comments prioritized. We'd just end up with the same mixed list of relevant and non-relevant comments that we already are screening, so it wouldn't change anything.
It is already part of a donation processor's job to screen incoming donation comments for things related to the current run and the runners can already give the donation station, ahead of time, a list of names to be on the lookout for. Telling them to pass on to the host "everything that comes with this hashtag" is of course also already a possibility (and has been done by many runners), but one shouldn't expect that this guarantees everything with these hashtags automatically becomes read. The host doesn't always have the time to read all things send to him/her either.

Regarding strap bracelets that many people brought up:
As I'm sure most if not all PC gamers can attest, the thought of having something like a bracelet interrupting your hand movements during your run is not exactly a pleasant one. I'm sure this goes for quite a few console runners as well. Having something that you are not used to around your hands (the things you use the most when running your game!) might very well interfere more than enough to make it an uncomfortable nuisance.

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2014-07-11 09:12:31 am

2014-07-11 09:05:37 am

All the things

Quote from DarkAries:

Umm...you do realize there are RGB to Component convertors out there right? Like there is a whole market for these things. People at Sega-16 have even made their own convertors out of dead SNES components and now have a DIY convertor for pennies. Hell you can buy them if you get the Wii Socket off Assembler Games. Some basic soldering skills, put it in a case and you have a RGB to Component convertor for dirt cheap. Hell AVERMEDIA WHO SPONSORED THE EVENT has their own capture cards that handle 240p over component, like the LiveGamerPortable. It's a non issue either way because the Pexcap would be able to handle it perfectly. And since they already have the equipment for pulling lines of composite and RCA audio, the setup wouldn't have to change that much.

Put it this way. Why do ESA bother with Scart and Component? Why is GDQ dealing with composite and s-video. When you play at home do you hook up the composite cables on your console or do you hookup s-video or component. Go play a WiiVC game on composite and then play it on s-video, THEN go play it on component in actual 480p. You are ignoring my point completely. They have spent literally thousands on dollars on audio and misc. tech equipment, and are using inferior video outputs from the consoles, when to upgrade, you could fit in a 100 dollar budget, and that's only if you wanted gold plated Monster cables. Also why are you the only one complaining? I'm all for constructive discussion but seriously, it just seems like you are not wanting to change anything to try to improve, which is where A LOT of the "saltyness" has come from in this thread, and led to a shit storm that flew over twitter. The whole issue here is "nah it's good enough as is" was like a motto and now they would like stuff to change so we can have smoother sailing in the future. Automatically shooting down ideas you clearly don't have a proper understanding of due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding of another person's knowledge, isn't what this thread should be for.

I'm all for constructive discussion as well, and unless I'm missing something that's what all of this has been up to this point. I can accept your points and provide counterpoints all the same. You see it one way and I see it another. And to be fair, there's a very limited number of people "complaining" about video quality in the first place, so I don't see why even if I'm the only one to speak up against it that my points should be made invalid. If other people aren't jumping on either side of the issue, that all just goes to say that it's not that important of an issue to begin with.

"Why does ESA bother with SCART and Component?"
I can't speak directly for them, but if nothing else they're much better situated to support it. Regionally-available support for the connectors, a wide bevy of available scalers, and compatible TVs go a long way. A very limited set of people in North America have ever worked with SCART, let alone seen it.

"You are ignoring my point completely."
Not at all. I understand what you're trying to drive home: *GDQ is a premier event, so we should be providing premium service wherever possible. I am not a crotchety old man trying to shun new technology just because I'm more familiar with other things. I use an RGB recording setup at home for submission videos. I know what the quality difference is. I can appreciate the difference, but at the same time I realize that it's only a marginal improvement. I also know all manner of headaches I had to go through in order to set it up correctly.

"... fit in $100 budget..."
Yeah, no. Buying SCART amps and shipping them from Europe alone will hit that cost. Having staff time put towards making proprietary convertors just to support it seems like a waste vs spending it on actual organizing. The appropriate output cables for various consoles is not zero either. Appropriate mods for consoles that don't support it natively are not negligible.

"... you clearly don't have a proper understanding of..."
Whoa, slow down there cowboy. If I didn't know any better I'd think you were calling me ignorant. That doesn't happen on the internet though.

"... lack of understanding of another person's knowledge..."
What I'm hearing is that you believe yourself to be an expert in the field of RGB from consoles. Sure, let's go with that. I'm not an organizer, but I have worked as part of the tech crew for four GDQs. I've seen many ways that things can go wrong and have at least some insight to make sure at the bare minimum that the event proceeds in spite of unforeseen circumstances. What you're proposing makes sense from a home user standpoint, but for these events flexibility and risk management is key. What happens when our RGBNES blows a capacitor? How about when the proprietary convertor you made simply stops working? What if somebody needs to play their game on Console X and it doesn't support RGB? What if the scaler blows up? All of these things can be dealt with fine from the perspective of our current setup, but become that much more challenging with RGB.

I like quality. I modded many of my consoles because I want my submissions to be the best they can in both recording quality and gameplay. But for these events the primary concern is keeping it running in spite of anything that can happen. Is it possible to set up RGB at a GDQ? Certainly. Would it take staff time and a reorganization of our stream flow? Definitely. Does it cost a bunch vs using what we currently have? You bet. Is a slightly higher video output critical to the success of the event? Not at all. RGB is a luxury, and we will not hemorrhage viewers/donors if we don't use it. This is my take on it; you can disagree all you want. The organizers ultimately decide what happens, but IMO the risks and costs outweigh the benefits.

[quote="DarkAries"]
Umm...you do realize there are RGB to Component convertors out there right? Like there is a whole market for these things. People at Sega-16 have even made their own convertors out of dead SNES components and now have a DIY convertor for pennies. Hell you can buy them if you get the Wii Socket off Assembler Games. Some basic soldering skills, put it in a case and you have a RGB to Component convertor for dirt cheap. Hell AVERMEDIA WHO SPONSORED THE EVENT has their own capture cards that handle 240p over component, like the LiveGamerPortable. It's a non issue either way because the Pexcap would be able to handle it perfectly. And since they already have the equipment for pulling lines of composite and RCA audio, the setup wouldn't have to change that much.

Put it this way. Why do ESA bother with Scart and Component? Why is GDQ dealing with composite and s-video. When you play at home do you hook up the composite cables on your console or do you hookup s-video or component. Go play a WiiVC game on composite and then play it on s-video, THEN go play it on component in actual 480p.  You are ignoring my point completely. They have spent literally thousands on dollars on audio and misc. tech equipment, and are using inferior video outputs from the consoles, when to upgrade, you could fit in a 100 dollar budget, and that's only if you wanted gold plated Monster cables. Also why are you the only one complaining? I'm all for constructive discussion but seriously, it just seems like you are not wanting to change anything to try to improve, which is where A LOT of the "saltyness" has come from in this thread, and led to a shit storm that flew over twitter. The whole issue here is "nah it's good enough as is" was like a motto and now they would like stuff to change so we can have smoother sailing in the future. Automatically shooting down ideas you clearly don't have a proper understanding of due to a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding of another person's knowledge, isn't what this thread should be for.[/quote]

I'm all for constructive discussion as well, and unless I'm missing something that's what all of this has been up to this point. I can accept your points and provide counterpoints all the same. You see it one way and I see it another. And to be fair, there's a very limited number of people "complaining" about video quality in the first place, so I don't see why even if I'm the only one to speak up against it that my points should be made invalid. If other people aren't jumping on either side of the issue, that all just goes to say that it's not that important of an issue to begin with.

"Why does ESA bother with SCART and Component?"
I can't speak directly for them, but if nothing else they're much better situated to support it. Regionally-available support for the connectors, a wide bevy of available scalers, and compatible TVs go a long way. A very limited set of people in North America have ever worked with SCART, let alone seen it.

"You are ignoring my point completely."
Not at all. I understand what you're trying to drive home: *GDQ is a premier event, so we should be providing premium service wherever possible. I am not a crotchety old man trying to shun new technology just because I'm more familiar with other things. I use an RGB recording setup at home for submission videos. I know what the quality difference is. I can appreciate the difference, but at the same time I realize that it's only a marginal improvement. I also know all manner of headaches I had to go through in order to set it up correctly.

"... fit in $100 budget..."
Yeah, no. Buying SCART amps and shipping them from Europe alone will hit that cost. Having staff time put towards making proprietary convertors just to support it seems like a waste vs spending it on actual organizing. The appropriate output cables for various consoles is not zero either. Appropriate mods for consoles that don't support it natively are not negligible.

"... you clearly don't have a proper understanding of..."
Whoa, slow down there cowboy. If I didn't know any better I'd think you were calling me ignorant. That doesn't happen on the internet though.

"... lack of understanding of another person's knowledge..."
What I'm hearing is that you believe yourself to be an expert in the field of RGB from consoles. Sure, let's go with that. I'm not an organizer, but I have worked as part of the tech crew for four GDQs. I've seen many ways that things can go wrong and have at least some insight to make sure at the bare minimum that the event proceeds in spite of unforeseen circumstances. What you're proposing makes sense from a home user standpoint, but for these events flexibility and risk management is key. What happens when our RGBNES blows a capacitor? How about when the proprietary convertor you made simply stops working? What if somebody needs to play their game on Console X and it doesn't support RGB? What if the scaler blows up? All of these things can be dealt with fine from the perspective of our current setup, but become that much more challenging with RGB.

I like quality. I modded many of my consoles because I want my submissions to be the best they can in both recording quality and gameplay. But for these events the primary concern is keeping it running in spite of anything that can happen. Is it possible to set up RGB at a GDQ? Certainly. Would it take staff time and a reorganization of our stream flow? Definitely. Does it cost a bunch vs using what we currently have? You bet. Is a slightly higher video output critical to the success of the event? Not at all. RGB is a luxury, and we will not hemorrhage viewers/donors if we don't use it. This is my take on it; you can disagree all you want. The organizers ultimately decide what happens, but IMO the risks and costs outweigh the benefits.

kariohki

2014-07-11 09:21:00 am

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

If we could magic a red couch of thin air I'm sure we would. Wink

At this point we'd have to track one down and store one in each location, and couches aren't exactly small.

How about a slipcover or two made out of a brighter color to put over the cushions and back of the couch? Would just need measurements of a standard couch, and even if there's a wider or smaller one then storing more covers won't be a space issue. Also if they get dirty they can be washed or replaced.