Have been one of the idiots that been setting up servers, q3, q4, warsow, ts2, streams, gtv, web and whatever for the last 4 years, only for the gaming community. Really, why? Ive been nagging a little bit in forums and replys, but it actually sucks so hard. Ive been running 8*q3, 8*q4, 2*ts2, 1*gtv 500 slots, vid stream for > 200 ppl, forum, website, shoutcast and whatever. Im hosting #Quake4All, #Tdmpickup.se, #Ftpickup.se, #q3ft.se, #ctfpickup.se, #gameready (vid-streams from snl, cb, etc), etc. I like to set up servers, I like to provide stuff, but really, why?

Well, now Im tired, Im fed up with all the lazy, "pirate-generation" kidz, probably assuming that everything on the Internet is for free and is up and running for them and only them. Tired about the, probably 10%, people always, at all times, what ever the mattter is, have to complain. Out of the 50 priv msg I get per week, 40 of them tells me I suck for providing free streams, or for having 10 public servers that I update, lock, manage, admin for matches, or for having 79 of the new 80 maps, for for having snapshot 30 when they like 40, or for beeing a jerk banning ppl now showing up on signed pickups., or just for providing the servers (?) so Im a bad person when shutting them down due rasist behavior on the server.

This community needs to realize that everything isnt for free. People spend time, their personal money to let ppl play. Pls show a tiny little bit respect to those guys, they can stop at any time, and the only part that suffers is you.

Im not saying this to get feedback about what Im doing, Im way beyond that. I will stop anyway due to all the fuckheads outhere not knowing about what I and loads of other guys provide to them for free.

So, pls, do you want to have freedom of choice without paying or be forced to play on certain servers, just be polite and have common sense, thats enough. Dont assume that everyone else is so stupid, they probably have reasons for doing as they do.

I know that Im an idiot, spent about 10-20 hours a week, streaming, updating, admining, investing €10000, paying €100/month and ffs my power bill is €4/24 hours only for the servers, to let ppl play pickups and have pcw/warservers. I learned something, at last (Im stupid, u dont have to mention that) that the gaming community is for kidz, not for men, men understand things, kidz dont.

So bye bye, gaming community, maybe I got to old, but I still think that the way people behave and expect services today will not be possible in the long run.

For those playing on the mentioned pickups, I have tried to spread the servers to other hosts to maintain them and I will keep running some of them not requireing any updates. But, some of them will be shut down pretty soon, when I feel like it....

Posted this in the forums a while ago, but got to many questions on irc so posting it again.

Due to the fact that GTV is not available in Q4, but myself and probably a lot of ppl in the community wants more Q4 matches to be possible to watch, other solutions are working without having loads of bandwidth or video servers.

The Gameready-team has during the last months been testing different types of P2P-streaming methods to make Q4 (and other games) video streams available to the public.

We are currently using SopCast, but we tested other software like Peercast, Freecast, etc. SopCast has a number of disadvantages like instability, not completely integrated with FF, Mozilla or Linux. But the advantages are an extremely easy server side, easy set-up, easy to embedd in Web-pages (IE) and so forth. We have broadcasted Gameready Tours and SNL Q4 1v1 League with this, and it's working ok (for the most ppl that is...).

So, I want to share som experience and hope that more ppl out there will give us more streams.

Necessary hardware/software:

Camera-PC
Quake 4
Windows Media Encoder or similar (settings: about 700 kbps video, 29 fps (at 400*300 in resolution), 64 kbps audio, pull content from WME in specified port)
Upload to the stream-server: > 900 kbps and open incoming traffic for the specified port defined in WME in your firewall (We are running it over the Internet) or simple TV-out (if you have the Camera-PC and Stream-server at the same location)
Sys specs: We are running on Intel Core2Duo 6600 @ 3.0ghz | 2GB RAM | Audigy 2z | GeForce 7900GTX | Raptor 10K 150Gb :P

Stream-server
This should not be run at the same PC as the Camera unless you have an extremely powerfull PC
Pretty simple PC on Windows 2000/XP
Upload at least 5 Mbps to the Internet
SopCast installed
Open ports 3902 for incoming traffic

Create an account at SopCast, create a channel, apply for a group (to be able to broadcast). Preferably you apply for the group "Esports" (ID 1120) were we have a number of channels today broadcasting Esports content.

The Camera-PC starts WME, create the right settings above and then start Q4. The Streaming-server starts SopCast, logs in and enters the IP-adress of the Camera-PC mmsh://ip:port and enters the Channel data and starts the stream. The stream will buffer for about 30 secs and then you are up and running. If you are on the same location with the two computers, you can use TV-out on the Camera-PC and put WME on the stream-server to decrease the load on the Camera-PC, then you will only need a pc with performance enough for Q4 for the Camera-PC. WME is extremely CPU-consuming....

You can also embedd your channel in a web-page, see SopCast for more instructions.

It's pretty easy and we have with the set-up above streamed to 100+ ppl using about 10-20 Mbps on the server side. It's recommended to stream at about 750 kbps to allow DSL-clients contributing with full relay (P2P) without hitting their upload limit and with good enough quality. If you stream at > 1 Mbps, more load will be set on the stream-server's Internet connex due to the fact that DSL connections have < 900 kbps in upload... If the majority of the clients opens port 3902 and have upload bandwidth >= stream bandwidth, you can have unlimited number of clients at ~1-2 Mbps on the server side....

Hopefully some of you guys out there will provide us with more streams, and not only the major events from the big ones :) If you all are avail at SopCast in Esports, we can watch video-streams all day ;)

Feel free to ask questions in #Gameready @ qnet or visit www.gameready.nu and discuss in the forum.

And before you all whine about SopCast, I know it's not stable but a P2P-distribution IS necessary for ordinary ppl to stream, and SopCast works for the majority..... And if someone succeed in using WME (or other encoder) and SopCast with h264, pls tell me :)

Following the current bidding on The Sealand (http://www.sealandgov.org/) , now with The Pirate Bay as the latest interested party http://buysealand.com/.

Who's wanna sponsor me buying the totally worthless platform and making it a kingdom of gaming instead?