Someone should document how best to do a stream like this.
They seem to have a program called XSplit which lets them do picture-in-picture camera video (wireless? laptop webcam?) and a VLC feed (to stream live desktop video screenshots - hard to read even at 720p and no chance if they put several on screen).
Also need how to actually run such a stream once it's setup - responding to people on chat, switching feeds, doing hourly recaps or maybe scrolling marquees of status.
The recaps or lack thereof are really bad at the moment - there was a meeting about the game design but nobody explained to the camera what the outcomes were. It's written on the conference room whiteboard but we can't see that - maybe a rapid fire blog of decisions/milestones for people to catch up on the code run?
Like John Madden, screaming about dropped semi-colons and unprotected pointer dereferences?
I'm pretty sure the Starcraft community has figured out how to do this right. It's too bad they didn't invite a pro to come and make it more entertaining.
If you search the forums on Justin.tv/Twitch.tv you can find the answers to these questions. Most serious casters use Flash Media Encoder to encode/upload their stream. There is a variety software for actually doing the screen capture and combing multiple video feeds. Usually people use some combination of XSplit, Camtasia, VH Capture, etc.
I can't understand how they put a bunch of people on a field with a ball, and people watch.
EDIT: actually, that's a snarky comment... I'll try to add something constructive: I absolutely LOVE watching people code - it's fascinating to see how others approach problems (it's rarely exactly how I'd do it). But at the same time, I'm not interested at all in watching a graphics guy creating amazing images - spending an hour to correctly shade some backdrop. I'm all like, "errgh, who cares about this? Get back to they guy troubleshooting his perlin noise implementation!" ;)
Feeling a lot better to see them googling how to make a PriorityQueue in Java (take that algorithms class!) or misusing println to track down a deadlock in the network code loop ;)
Would be fun to have a panel of running commentary like sport, especially for those who can't quite see the screen or want to learn something new. The justin.tv/twitch.tv chat is more obsessed with ponies and complaining about lag .
Watching Notch code and create art for Ludum Dare was quite interesting and informative. I didn't watch the whole thing because the first 12 hours or so was the most informative, and I skipped through anything boring.
Watching him code that day, I could see how his mental processes work. It was fairly obvious why he was doing things. I think it's a great experience for anyone who isn't already an expert.
In my case, I'm a professional developer, but not a game developer, so there was still plenty to learn even from the basics.
I'd watch experts programming. Games are definitely one of the most interesting areas, but if I wanted to learn some new technology, or just pick up new tricks I think other projects would be interesting too.
Programming is fundamentally a creative process. Watching someone code (especially someone good code) is a lot like watching your favorite painter paint or favorite tennis player play.
You are watching an expert dance and swing his way through something you enjoy and you might learn how to do it a bit better from them.
Does anyone know if Notch has added some sort of vim key bindings to eclipse. It looks like he can jump to the beginnings and ends of words, but I'm unsure if this is either lag of the video, really fast arrow movement or some form of key shortcuts.
It annoys me when apps don't allow this. This was one of the first keyboard shortcuts I learned back in my first data processing class and everyone should know it.
Those are specific to the Emacs emulation mode, which you can turn on under "Keys" in preferences. Like a lot of these emulation modes, it gets something like 90% of the key bindings right, and the last 10% will trip you up just enough to drive you crazy if you're really used to Emacs proper.
Hopefully they open source their code after they finish. It would be fun to see what people could do with it (since it's probably unlikely they'll be supporting a game that's making them no money).
They seem to have a program called XSplit which lets them do picture-in-picture camera video (wireless? laptop webcam?) and a VLC feed (to stream live desktop video screenshots - hard to read even at 720p and no chance if they put several on screen).
Also need how to actually run such a stream once it's setup - responding to people on chat, switching feeds, doing hourly recaps or maybe scrolling marquees of status.
The recaps or lack thereof are really bad at the moment - there was a meeting about the game design but nobody explained to the camera what the outcomes were. It's written on the conference room whiteboard but we can't see that - maybe a rapid fire blog of decisions/milestones for people to catch up on the code run?