Ontario, CanadaThere is now a Marathon 150 leaderboard. Follows the same rules as survival.
As soon as my new charger from Amazon arrives I plan to just add every category in the game that could be speedrun such as the marathon modes as suggested. I'm really happy this game is finally picking up some runners so gotta keep the train going!
Couple bugs to mention atm.
Trying to add a moderator to a marathon just makes the current moderator list disappear and ends up not adding the new user.
Donation Tracker is currently broken. If a user attempts to do a donation it gives an error saying the entry was not added to the database.
Also members of a marathon team need to be manually added as a mod to the marathon in order to have access to verifying donations and adding incentives.
Cheers.
My two cents, keep them separate. While there can be overlap in the audiences this doesn't mean you need to force it. Have two sites, but under one main banner.
Yes bring back lvl 0 start. There was a reason they were separated.
NASA is happening in June so there won't be any overlap.
With NASA 2018 we are trying to expand on the event itself. We are wondering what the general interest would be in having NASA run onsite tournaments and panels. A couple of examples could be a mystery tournament, puzzle game tournament, explaining stream tech panels, how to play X randomizer panels, etc. The general interest in these idea will help us decide how large of a venue we need to acquire. Thanks
Submissions are open.
Submissions close as soon as it becomes October 23rd.
Marathon Name : Horror Thriller Monster Marathon It will be an online marathon The purpose of the marathon is to just have a Halloween themed speedrun marathon. Submissions would be open asap, the actual event date will either be October 29th or the 31st will be hosted on twitch.tv/nasa_marathon mods can be the same as the current NASA 2018 forum the event itself will be 24 hours long twitter : https://twitter.com/nasamarathon discord : discord.gg/j7hKMjk
Since the marathon doesn't have a forum of its own, decided to make a thread. Leave your thoughts and comments below if you got any.
Alright so here is the tech feedback. Honestly all things considering, this went way better than last year since I had time to prep and get some proper equipment. The setup was basically what we tried out at Dreamhack Montreal but on steroids. I unfortunately did not get around to creating tutorial videos on the setup but that will be my goal to do going forward. The setup we have goes way beyond a normal home setup and therefore has a bit of a learning curve. Since I was the only one who knew how to run it all properly it led to some delays. ThoseCrazyGuys eventually got a bit of it figured out and I could rest some more, but this isn't adequate. This will be remedied in the future, and anybody interested in learning about this stuff stay tuned onto our youtube channel, I'll be trying to pump out a video series on all this stuff there.
The setup day was great since it allowed us to get everything set up, or set up everything we could anyways. It also let us figure out the internet issue. The unfortunate part about the first day was the fact we had a race so early on. Since we didn't have the consoles till the runners appeared, really couldn't get things setup like I wanted. In the future I want to setup like a console rack where all consoles will sit, and can be setup for the next run as the matrix will have all the video cables needed, and power cables will be plugged in already. The event involved a lot of hot swapping at times which led to setup times being sometimes longer than usual.
This year we went full RGB where possible. This led to a very good looking stream beyond a few issues with a couple games. The first one issue was during the pokemon puzzle challenge race. This issue was nothing more than a bad hdmi cable, and a very long hdmi run. This can easily be fixed by buying a good quality long hdmi cable or having an equivalent analog run. Either way, it was just a bad cable but I had no other quick option at the time. The second video issue with Land Before Time was just the fact that the datapath didn't flip itself from RGB to YPbPr colourspace. Literally opening up the datapath program fixed it. It looks like it is a limitation of OBS itself but again, quick fix and I got it fixed up for the JSRF race which had to use the same capture. Wario Woods. I fucked up during that game and killed an OSSC. I grabbed the wrong power adapter for the scart to YUV box and therefore had the wrong power cable for the OSSC. Why the second OSSC was even unplugged to begin with I can't remember. But since I mismatched the power cables the OSSC was dropping video since the power adapter it had didn't have even amperage. And then I fried it by using again the wrong psu that used 12v instead of 5v. That OSSC is fixable, I just need to order replacement parts. This is why we had to have a webcam staring at the TV for the run though till I rerouted everything through the dvdo iscan hd. Overall since this was the first real stress test of the whole setup, I know what the weak points are and what to do to strengthen them.
For the stream computer itself we used ThoseCrazyGuys pc since it had the most amount of PCIE slots that we could fit our datapath capture cards into. Which we only had 1 out of the 3 (at the time, we now have 4) for the start of the marathon. When lurk arrived we got to bump it up to two cards. These capture cards saved my ass multiple times during the event. There were times where the pexhd and the avermedia internal cards we had did not see a signal, either from the hdmi splitter or ossc, but the datapath did. If you are going to run a marathon and want a solid capture card, invest in a datapath visionrgb e1/e1s or e2/e2s . You will thank me later. This however led to the stream computer's massive flaw. Lack of PCIE lanes. Since a graphics card takes up 16 lanes, and each datapath takes up 4, this means that even if you have room available on the motherboard, you can't actually use anything else since you've maxed out. So while we had 3 capture cards internally , we could only ever use two. I forgot to pack my livegamerportable but bingchang brought his brand spanking new one. Bingchang you are a bro and a great example to “if you think you might need it, bring it” , I also highly recommend grabbing a livegamerportable or whatever the newest model of that device is. They are low latency external capture, have hdmi passthrough and can output audio via 3.5mm jack. Perfect for sending the hdmi sound into a sound mixer.
The sound along with the video got a massive upgrade. Lanayru invested in a brand new soundboard and some lavalier mics. The board itself is fine, even if it is missing a cue/isolate button on the channels. The lav mics gave us some trouble though. Knowledge drop, microphones needs power. In this case the lav mics had little coin batteries. You could not switch them off since that would create a buzzing noise, so you keep them on all the time and just mute the channel on the sound board. This ended up killing the batteries and we literally had no mics for Geurge's run. We scrambled and figured out how to get the webcam's audio (which was garbo but at least you could hear). We then used a snowball till we could get some new batteries. We are already looking into other options for audio but overall, sounded much better than last year, was actually at a respectable level of loudness. Future improvements involve a room mic so you can somewhat hear people chilling but are not micced up, or just what is going on in the room during intermission.
The length of the setup times during races really killed me. I also almost injured myself during the bonus stream lifting a crt. I normally can lift it fine but I had literally just woke up from sleeping at the stream station. The reason races took so long to setup was because we had to use both TVs to show the same video otherwise people in the room wouldn't be able to see at all. Once we get a proper dedicated screen for the OBS projector output we should be able to minimize setup during races, since we'll have tvs freed up. The same goes for pc games. The Dark Souls race took forever because we literally had to set up two computers from scratch and then capture them. We didn't have the desk space so it involved lots of moving around, unplugging things etc. Going forward we can hopefully have dedicated space for this.
Overall I think the event went well. We can only improve from here. It was really funny when last year we had a stream that was barely of any quality due to internet issues, this year the stream was too high of a quality and without transcoding many people buffered endlessly. For the record the event was mainly streamed at 1280x720p60@6000kb/s. We had to bump down to 4000kb/s since something was going on with the internet upload at one point, but even then it is very watchable. If you have any questions on the tech just lemme know
Alright so the marathon is officially over. We appreciate both positive and negative feedback and suggestions from everybody even if you attended or even only watched online. We need to know what we did right and what maybe didn't go so well. It's the only way the event can improve. Staff opinions will be posted at a later date.
We don't have a date to quote when cutoffs will occur. I do know we will be very accommodating and are planning on having guests badges available for last minute stragglers and people who don't register and pay before our announced cut off day. I would recommend getting it done as soon as possible but I'm sure we won't cut off until sometime mid to late April. That timeframe is subject to change but it's what we are working on right now.
I would like to point out that the discussion about switching to stream.me has been ongoing since Feb 9th. Implying that staff has not given the offer enough time or consideration is simply not the case.
If you want to find a room mate, or looking to split a room or anything go ahead and ask in here. Also feel free to ask in the discord https://discord.gg/j7hKMjk
Corrected. Sorry for that.
We are working on getting badges. That's why we ask for what name you'd like on your badge on the registration form :D
For the lazy of you who don't want to look at a map for food options, I've compiled them for you
Walking Distance
No Frills (8am - 10pm) - Grocery Store Tim Hortons (24 Hours) - Coffee & Sammiches Denny's (7am-11pm) - Breakfast Food The Famous OWL of Minerva (11am - 11pm) - Korean Food Swiss Chalet (11am - 10pm) - Rotisserie & Grill McDonald's (5am - 11pm) - Fast Food Gazebo Burgers and Grills (11am - 9pm) - Retro Burger Joint South St. Burger (11am - 9pm) - More Burgers Starbucks (5:30am - 10pm) - Triple Venti Delight Sunset Grill (6:30am - 3pm) - More Breakfast
Longer Walking Distance
Artisano Bakery Cafe (8am - 8pm) - Sammiches McDonald's (4am - 3:30am) - Fast Food The Sequel Moods Eatery & Cafe (5:30pm - 1am) - Pub fare with Sisha Monfort Mediterranean Cuisine ( 11am - 3am) - It's in the name
There is also a shopping mall nearby. The walk to the mall is the same distance as the "Longer Walking Distance" food options. Actually they are in the same area, literally across the street from each other. The options inside the mall are . It seems all the times for the food it 10am to 9pm.
Real Fruit Bubble Tea Mac's Sushi New York Fries BarBurrito (this one actually is 11am to 9pm)
So we are having the feedback thread in the NASA forum as we ended up hosting the marathon and it looks like we are going to be partnering them in the future for more JSRF marathons when they occur. Leave any feedback you have for the event here.
