Mega Man Legends RACE!

[Qwertman]

I just had... A GREAT IDEA! :08:

A livestream of MegaMan Legends. But... It's a race! Here's what I've figured out so far:

• Racers download a pre-configured ePSXe and VLC. Neither need to be installed, simply run.
  
• Racers play MegaMan Legends, viewers watch via a webpage that shows the stream from all four racers plus their scores.
  
• The game music will not be streamed with the video. Instead I will have the webpage play a stream I control, and will contain MML music as well as MML related music.
  
• Players and viewers CAN (but are not required to) communicate via a chatroom as well as a voice chat- something like Ventrilo or what you have in FPS games where you're not constantly streaming audio. You only stream when you want to talk.
  
• To keep the voice chat clean and to avoid interference with the soundtrack, racers will be asked to keep Music OFF, but if they desire, can keep SFX ON.
  
• The event will start out with a single stream of the Bonne intro, a play through of the intro dungeon, and the following cutscene. Racers start right after the crash on Kattleox (they will be provided with a save file that is already at this point)
  
• If a racer chooses to watch a cutscene, their score will be adjusted so that the time to watch the cutscene doesn't count against them. If they skip a cutscene, I will summarize it beneath their score.
  
• The score is one point per minute. A lower score is better. Displayed next to the score is a % performance based on how far they are compared to how long they've taken.
  
• Completing a side-quest will deduct a pre-determined number of points from the racer's score.
  
• It is up to the racer to determine which upgrades and items are worth their time.
  
• The in-game time will NOT be factored into the score, my server will keep track of score and automatically add one point to every player every minute.
  
• There will be a few scheduled breaks
  
• If a racer knows they will have an interruption, they should let me know before hand.
  
• Five bathroom/food breaks per player are allowed- they may be no more than 40 minutes each, and no more than two hours total. The player's score will not increase during a break. (they should announce their break and leave the game paused during it).
  
• I'm thinking it should all be one big run, one day.
  
• Racers will not be allowed to watch other racers' videos, but will be able to communicate with them and view their score as well as my comments on their score/progress.
  

[Deleted]

That sounds like a great idea. But, what are the rules? Like, which weapons should the players use or how much may they upgrade their weapons?

[Mikéy]

Aw, Steffie. You can play the game however you like. Upgrade whatever you like. The point is to beat the game as fast as possible, and if you do any side content, then you might get bonus points/time. That's probably what Qwert is still trying to figure out. But still, having four streams going at once, epic as it sounds, wouldn't be easy to manage. My guess is that the in-game time will be the final verdict, naturally.

I'm still waiting to see if anybody else is really all that interested.

[Avegodro]

This sounds like a fun idea, though I can't even begin to figure out how to do four at once. Ah well that isn't my problem yet. ;D

If we do get something like this going, I might consider joining in.

[Qwertman]

Yes, weapons and upgrades are up to you- that's part of the challenge, you need to decide what amount of upgrading is the most worth your time. I think this is a good scoring system: Each minute gives you one point. Points are bad, the person with the fewest points gets first place. If a side-quest is completed, a determined amount of points are deducted from your score! Since several side quests are only accessible after you fix the city, perhaps that should be required.

As for the streaming, VLC can grab a portion of the computer screen (which ePSXe would be placed in) and stream it to any IP address. If the racer has a capture card they can plug their PlayStation into, VLC can stream that input as well. I have a somewhat pricey VPS with a Gigabit connection that would easily be able to handle four standard definition video streams simultaneously. If VLC on the player's computer is set to encode it as H.264+AAC, all I have to do is put a web page on my server that has four video players, pointed to the incoming streams. I would provide a pre-configured version of VLC Portable to the racers.

I know for certain that I've downloaded from my server at 12Mb/s (Mb, not MB) and a 1Mb/s stream is pretty high quality for a SD video (especially if encoded in 264) so if we assumed that was its absolute maximum threshold, we could have 12 people watching- but chances are it can handle more than that. The only time I had stutter from it was when I was streaming HD video from it that was being actively re-encoded via FFMPEG which is why I think it would be best for the players' computers to do the encoding.

If we have more than four people who want to race... I'm not sure how to eliminate the extras! Unless there were 8 (wow), then there could be two concurrent races followed by a third with the top two or one from each of the previous groups.

So, what you can do right now: If you're interested in racing, let me know, and tell me
- Do you have an ISO or PSX disc of MegaMan Legends 1?
- What OS are you running?
- What are your results from speedtest.net following these instructions?
- Go to speedtest.net/user-settings.php
- Choose Amsterdam from the preferred server dropdown (at the bottom)
- Click Save
- When the page finishes loading, click Take a Speed Test (blue button near the top-right)
- You are presented with two options. Pick "Begin Test - Your Preferred Server" (the button on the right)

EDIT: I've just tested screen capture from VLC to a local file. I encoded to 800Kbps, a 640x480 resolution, and 24fps as H.264, and it looked beautiful! It used between 20 and 25% cpu on a 2ghz quad core. ePSXe only used 1% cpu (it puts everything on the graphics card). It's looking like this may really work well, even for racers with lower end hardware! =D

[Trege]

Man I'd love to enter a race but I don't think 3G can handle the data bandwidth needed.

Speedtest results : i88.photobucket.com/albums/k185/Alecsandar1111/Speedtest.jpg

(I wish sprint would set up 4G where I live but nothing yet.)

[Qwertman]

Yeah, I was thinking 500Kbps minimum for the streamers so even if you were to just watch you'd need a bit over 2Mbps download. It's too bad so much of America doesn't have affordable, fast internet. I'm going to miss my 15Mbps when I move to college in a few weeks

I'm glad to hear a few people are interested though. I'd like to hear from Dashe or any of the other older members, I'm surprised this idea hasn't gotten more attention.

As far as my progress, yesterday I recompiled FFMpeg on my server with the latest libx264, so if necessary a viewer with Trege with <2Mbps down can request an extra-compressed stream. I'm not sure if I'll implement that, though it's nice to know I can (and in the process I learned the wheris command! :3).

[adrian2040n]

A pre-configured emulator? Can I participate if I use a Mac?

[Qwertman]

If you can figure out how to emulate Legends on a mac (or if you already have) you don't need to use the pre-configured emu. The streaming software, VLC, works on all platforms so you can definitely race! PM me with speed test results if you're game. The date is not determined yet. I'm thinking sometime during the last few weeks of this month.

Also, does anybody have any experience with Ventrilo, would that be a good option for our communication?

[adrian2040n]

Emulating PSONE is easy in the Mac. BTW, I have both the normal and Greatest Hit versions of the game. (Got the Greatest Hits version as a gift for buying another game.)

Is there any major difference between the too?

[Qwertman]

I'm pretty certain there's no difference.

[Avegodro]

Well I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to race so I guess I'll just watch.

[rivers]

I wouldn't mind racing. Not sure though. I'd have to speedrun the game soon, just so I can remember what's important and what isn't, and get a controller for my computer.

[Tau]

I'd love to participate, but I'm stuck on a 1.25 Mbps connection, and Verizon doesn't seem to have any plans of bringing anything better to my area. Pretty annoying when my friend who lives ten minutes down the road is surfing at ten times the speed.

[Qwertman]

Recently I've been thinking it would be best to do something small first- like just the first few parts of the game. If something goes wrong it's not as much of a let-down, and we can see what works well and what doesn't as far as scoring before we dedicate a full day to it.

@truner, I think it would be best to stick with PS only, since save and load times are probably different with the PC version. But if you really wanted to try for the first event I'm sure it wouldn't hurt.

rivers, are you able to get a consistent 200 or 300kbps up? If so, I'll put you on the list.