Duckman LAN
Community event for Ready At Dawn's "Echo Arena"
Community event for Ready At Dawn's "Echo Arena"
A change of direction for VR LAN events
1-2 Nov 2024 - Exeter, UK
The shutdown of Echo VR forced us to change the direction of this event. It shattered the competitive VR space that we knew and loved and split the players (and therefore our attendees) into many more games.
This event became more of a showcase event for A2, which is Another Axiom's attempt at a spiritual successor to Echo VR. We worked with Another Axiom to provide the first public broadcast of their game in alpha, which did put a fair bit of pressure on me to get it right.
I worked with notblue to create bespoke software for this event, as I needed to create an overlay that would work in multiple games - it had to work with A2, Breachers, Racket Club, Blaston and Onward.
Echo VR's final hurrah!
7th April 2023 - Southampton, UK
During the 2022 event, I created and ran the broadcast package live for the VR Master League twitch channel.
However, during the event I ended up spending a lot of time on repetitive tasks such as saving replays, changing certain scenes or team names, or opening too many applications to the point where it just made more sense to combine them all into one tool or app.
For Duckman LAN 2, I have created a much more streamlined version of the package from the ground up, with more traditional scene naming structures much akin to what is standard practice in programming (e.g. an image for the scoreboard will be named 'Image.Scoreboard.X'), which allows a much easier time in OBS when reusing assets and reorganising scenes. I was using the Echo Arena API before, however it was largely just to trigger animations. I was using a modified version of the Broadcast Tool which I made years earlier to save scores and select teams, but for this year I have integrated all of that functionality into Stream Deck using Companion and Python scripting. In doing this I have created my own API hub to access Echo Arena's score values, as well as team name listing using the Google Sheets API.
Automated things in the package include round score input, team name/logo display, goal animations and replay saving/transitions.
The first European community LAN for Echo Arena
7th April 2022 - Bournemouth, UK
In April of 2022, I got to produce and present a professional broadcast package for an in person eSports event in Bournemouth
I worked with Annexed Fate produce a professional livestream package for this event, which had multiple sponsors and was recieved very well by the community. I used tools such as OBS, UPDeck Photoshop and After Effects, as well as my own Broadcast Tool software to pull this off. I also worked with Blackmagic cameras and interfaces, GoPros, and a PA system to give the livestream and in person audience a great viewing experience. For the passion of the game and for the community.