Recap: Tetris Arena Live, Week #2 (Epic Six-Hour Stream)
Hi humans.
As promised last week, I did another live stream yesterday.
I planned on having the stream be three hours long, but somehow, it ended up being six.
Also, on a side note, the audio quality of the replays is poor because XSplit (a broadcasting control panel) developers decided it would be a great idea to remove a bunch of features from the free version of their product, including high-quality audio encoding. I’m pretty sure that I will find a solution by next week, or by the next two weeks at the latest. For now, the sound quality will have some static.
This week’s show started with me participating in a six-person free-for-all match while sitting and sweating beads because I had to keep my air conditioner off, or else the only thing the entire stream would hear is a loud rumble that sounds similar to the noise an airplane would make if it was parked outside my apartment. Then, we transitioned into a one-on-one room where I shoutcasted some matches. As we approached the two-hour mark, I took my first drink of water, and ended up less able to cast the games because the water was too cold and was constricting my throat.
If you encounter any problems with the embedded player above, or if you want to watch it without the Twitch.TV watermark in the corner, go to http://www.twitch.tv/harddrop/b/311898988.
During the second part of the show, I continued shoutcasting one-on-one matches. After a while, someone suggested that I also participate in the one-on-one matches, so I joined the queue and started playing as well. Thanks to both the increased lag due to streaming and recording, and due to my mediocre Tetris-playing skill, I lost a good portion of my matches, including one to a Rank 8 beginner player after underestimating how well she plays.
After getting tired of playing, I transitioned to a different one-on-one room and watched much better players play, and did some more shoutcasting. Near the three-hour mark, another Hard Drop community member named Polaris joined me on Skype to co-cast some games, and subtly but epicly trolled me about three or four times.
If you encounter any problems with the embedded player above, or if you want to watch it without the Twitch.TV watermark in the corner, go to http://www.twitch.tv/harddrop/b/311908706.
After streaming for four hours, which was one hour longer than what I was intending, we added another streamer/caster, Paradox, to the Skype call. We did a little bit more casting of one-on-one games, then Paradox joined the match against hebo_MAI, generally accepted as the world’s best competitive Tetris player, and the champion of the first Tetris Tournament Online, hosted by Hard Drop back in late 2010 and early 2011.
After Paradox left, I started falling asleep and Polaris started doing weird things. As the end of the final two-hour stretch, we listened to three Christmas songs, then left.
If you encounter any problems with the embedded player above, or if you want to watch it without the Twitch.TV watermark in the corner, go to http://www.twitch.tv/harddrop/b/311917429.
As a reminder, I will be streaming again next week from 7-10 PM US CST (I will most likely not be staying for six hours like I did this week), so if you’re free during that time, come watch me at the following link:
http://Twitch.TV/HardDrop
If you miss it or are unable to attend, I will have the recordings of the stream embedded in next week’s blog post as well.
