By now, you should be seeing that the "Upcoming Events" block on the right side of this page is a bit different. Previously, the block would display upcoming scheduled streams; now this block works more as it's namesake and simply displays upcoming events, whether they have a stream or not.
In fact, it should be "not", since the streaming system built into the event calendar has been completely wiped out, and put out to pasture. In it's place, I have just unveiled a system built specifically around streaming, which is far more powerful and easier to maintain; easier for the moderation staff here, and at the same time, easier for you streamers out there.
The reason for originally putting streaming support into the Event Calendar had multiple purposes:
Secondly, I created the new XenRio Live Streaming Manager! The new stream manager is very different in that you don't need to set up any events, approved streams will automatically get displayed the moment they start playing a Soulcalibur game (according to Twitch.TV).
The way XenRio works is that every 5 minutes, it scrapes the Twitch.TV API and searches for information from a list of pre-approved channels. The scrape returns data on all currently live streams from the channel list. The approved channels list can be found here; if your stream is not on this list, you can use the "submit channel" link in the stream section and it will be reviewed by a moderator.
After the scrape, we parse out the live stream information, and if your stream is playing a game in the approved games list, it will be added to the live streams! Thats it! No need to schedule your stream on the calendar anymore; just get your stream added to the list, play Soulcalibur, and win!
The "Live Streaming Central" forum has been cleared as well. If you are a live streamer, and would like to make a thread for your streams, you can! As well, you can embed your stream using a simple code:
The above code uses your channel ID here on 8WAYRUN, or if you wish, you can do it manually:
In fact, it should be "not", since the streaming system built into the event calendar has been completely wiped out, and put out to pasture. In it's place, I have just unveiled a system built specifically around streaming, which is far more powerful and easier to maintain; easier for the moderation staff here, and at the same time, easier for you streamers out there.
The reason for originally putting streaming support into the Event Calendar had multiple purposes:
- Kept people on 8WAYRUN, rather than leaving the website.
- Displayed the stream directly at the top of the event thread.
- Displayed live streams on the portal, linked by event times.
- If an event had a stream, and the event was upcoming/running, but the stream wasn't live, the stream would be listed on the front page anyways. It devalued the purpose of the information if the portal block could display offline streams.
- Most major events which have Soulcalibur... don't stream it. So the event gets listed, but no one cares because there is no Soulcalibur, thus further devaluing the information.
- Malicious users could game the system in order to falsely support their stream; such as putting up false events with erroneous start/end times in order to make sure their stream always stayed in the portal block. Because of this, we had to moderate event submissions and changes and this not only created extra work for our moderators, but also frustrations for users as they had to wait for their events to be approved.
- People didn't actually like having streams embedded on event threads; especially when they wanted to read the thread. Every time a user changed the thread page, the stream would reload, play a loud and obnoxious advertisement and just piss readers off.
- Streaming has really taken off and now some events have multiple streams! There were workarounds to set up multiple streams for events, but they weren't very feasible and it would be wrong to expect users to go through the process to do it.
Secondly, I created the new XenRio Live Streaming Manager! The new stream manager is very different in that you don't need to set up any events, approved streams will automatically get displayed the moment they start playing a Soulcalibur game (according to Twitch.TV).
The way XenRio works is that every 5 minutes, it scrapes the Twitch.TV API and searches for information from a list of pre-approved channels. The scrape returns data on all currently live streams from the channel list. The approved channels list can be found here; if your stream is not on this list, you can use the "submit channel" link in the stream section and it will be reviewed by a moderator.
After the scrape, we parse out the live stream information, and if your stream is playing a game in the approved games list, it will be added to the live streams! Thats it! No need to schedule your stream on the calendar anymore; just get your stream added to the list, play Soulcalibur, and win!
The "Live Streaming Central" forum has been cleared as well. If you are a live streamer, and would like to make a thread for your streams, you can! As well, you can embed your stream using a simple code:
Code:
[stream]1[/stream]
Code:
[stream=twitch.tv]8wayrun[/stream]
