Streaming
See also our Guide to Sharing Your Work!
Why should I stream my work on Skywind?
Fans want to see it. At the moment, most of the glimpses of Skywind's creation that the wider world gets are polished screenshots on social media. Plenty of fans want to see what's involved step-by-step, and if they get to ask a few questions as they go, all the better.
Team members want to see it. It's tremendously motivating to see other people helping to move Skywind onward.
Skywind's not dead - but a worrying amount of people assume that it's vaporware. Sharing demo footage helps spread awareness, and that attracts more volunteers - and that brings Skywind to a release-ready state faster.
How do I get set up?
Create your account
Decide whether you'll be streaming on Discord, Twitch, or YouTube, and set up an account if you don't have one.
Download broadcaster software
This software is normally called "open broadcast software" or "OBS". The most popular are:
OBS Studio from the OBS Project. Free, lightweight, open-source, user-friendly, but not very extensible.
Streamlabs OBS (aka 'SLOBS'). Customizable, well-featured, but CPU-intense.
Twitch Studio (beta). Beginner-friendly and easy to set up, but quite basic and only works with Twitch.
For detailed steps to set up OBS, check out the "OBS Setup Guide" section below.
Set up your stream
Tinker around, set up your microphone, and start a test stream!
Important: If you want to test your stream, please DO NOT use the Skywind Channel, use your own Twitch channel or make a short video to test your setup. If you use the Skywind channel, our followers will be notified and that might lead to them unfollowing, if we do too many tests.
Using Discord
Discord on Windows desktop has a "Go Live" feature.So long as Discord recognizes the CK / Skyrim as a streamable game, you'll get a Go Live button in the bottom-left, by your name. All contributors have access to stream to the Public Chat channel.
Using Twitch.tv
Twitch is the most popular web streaming platform, but their guidance is somewhat lacking. This guide is a fairly thorough getting-started walkthrough:
Using YouTube
YouTube has a function in the Creator Studio called "Go Live". You'll need to first verify your identity.
Prepare to stream
Prep your environment
Close private browser tabs, chats, emails, Discord, tax files etc.
Make sure your Microphone is turned on and the correct monitor is being picked up
Announce your stream
Announce your stream on Discord:
Write a notification message on the #livestreams channel:
Start with a mention of the @Subscriber: Livestreams role
Follow with a witty and funny sentence to make people watch your stream and talk about what you’ll be showing
Include a link to whether you're streaming
E.g. @Subscriber: Livestreams Hello! I'm streaming some Vivec City level design, come check it out! https://twitch.tv/my-cool-channel
Get streaming!
Using the Skywind Twitch channel
You can just stream your own content, but you'll get more views if you stream to our channel on Twitch.
Contact @PR ahead of time and we'll set it up and provide the stream key.
OBS Setup Guide
Follow the instructions below in order to get OBS ready for streaming Skywind development. This guide is intended for developers with minimal experience in streaming.
While you can use your existing layout and configuration settings for streaming on Skywind channel, remember that you are representing the project, and bear in mind the Guidance for Contributors. In addition, ensure the stream content does not violate the Terms of Service of the platform you are streaming on.
All developers are encouraged to download our portable OBS version that comes with preset configuration and scenes; this will be the fastest and easiest way for most people. Alternatively, if you prefer using a non-portable OBS setup, you can download the scene imports below.
Portable OBS Configuration
Before we begin, download the portable OBS archive (link) and extract it to folder of your convenience. Launch the tool using the "Skywind OBS.bat" file found inside.
During your first launch, OBS will prompt you with "Auto-Configuration Wizard". Click "Cancel" in this window as OBS will overwrite preset configuration settings otherwise.
Once OBS launches, you should see different scenes on the bottom left of the main window. First, we will go over adding your game and audio resources to these scenes, which will be used by the stream layouts.
Capture Sources
This section will cover going through the capture scenes in order to configure game window, game audio, streamer microphone and (optionally) streamer camera.
Game Window
Click on the scene titled "Game Capture" and you will be presented with the window shown. We will start off by configuring this source to capture any instance of Skywind. So go ahead and launch an instance of Skyrim SE.
Once the game comes up, Under the "Sources" panel, double click on the source titled "Game Capture".
Other Applications
If you are planning to broadcast another development application besides Skywind (Skyrim.exe), such as Blender or Creation Kit's Render Window , you will have to use a window capture instead. Click on the "+" icon under the sources panel and select Window Capture and proceed with the following the instructions.
In order to stream all panels of Creation Kit, you will have to use a Display Capture instead. As this option will capture your entire monitor display, make sure the display area is clear of sensitive/personal information!
In this configuration window, leave all settings alone except for "Window". Make sure this entry is set to SkyrimSE.exe. If configured correctly, you should see the gameplay window captured in the preview panel.
Once the gameplay is visible, unlock the scene by clicking the lock icon next to the source under the "Sources" panel. Using the preview window, drag the game so that it covers either the 16:9 or 4:3 pane in the preview window. This is determined by aspect ratio of your game/application window.
Once this is done, you can lock the gameplay source again and move on to game audio configuration.
Game Audio
Next, double click the "Game Audio" source and choose SkyrimSE.exe under the "Windows" drop-down. This all you need to do with the game audio for now.
Microphone
Double click the Microphone Audio source and choose your microphone under the "Device" drop-down. You should now see two different audio sources under the Audio Mixer panel: Game Audio and Microphone. We will revisit this panel in Audio Setup.
Camera Setup
This step is optional and you can move onto "Streamer Name" if you are not planning on streaming with camera, avatar, vtuber etc.
Switch to Camera Capture scene. Camera devices can be configured by double-clicking on the Video Capture Device source and selecting the camera device you'd like to use for the stream. Make sure the camera view is centered on the scene, as part of the output may be cropped depending on the scene you will be using.
If your camera includes a built-in microphone, make sure to mute it under Audio Mixer. The loudness meter should turn gray if the source has been muted.
Alternatively, you can add a static avatar using the "Image" source if desired.
Streamer Name
The final capture step consists of adding the streamer name under "Streamer Name" This will be used by certain layouts to display the username of the developer. Replace the contents of this source with your username.
Audio Setup
Volume Meter
Switch back to "Game Capture" display, where we had previously added our game and microphone audio sources.
Here, you should see two entries under the Audio Mixer panel. Each entry will have one or more bars divided in to 3 color-coded sections. As described in the image, we would like to configure our audio outputs such that microphone level usually hovers in the yellow zone (rarely clipping in to red), and game output to about 10 dB below the microphone.
Let's start by configuring the microphone levels and quality. Click on the button with 3 dots next to the microphone bars and select Filters.
In this window, you will see a number of preset filters. We will briefly cover these filters in this document, however you can find out more about them here on the OBS site.
Noise Supression: This filter does a pretty decent job at removing mild background noises (ie. PC fan noise). If you are streaming from a very loud environment, use Noise Gate instead, otherwise leave this filter at default settings.
Compressor: Used for quieting loud sounds. Test with default settings before attempting to make any adjustments.
Gain: This will be our main filter for increasing the output level to the ideal range. Play around with the gain level until your microphone output is consistently staying in the yellow region while talking at a normal volume.
Limiter: This filter is in place to ensure that your microphone output never gets too far in to the red zone (anything reaching 0dbFS will result in clipping). Do not make any changes this filter.
Once you are happy with the audio levels of your microphone (see image to the left), move on to configuring the game audio. You can use the blue volume slider under the audio level bar to lower the volume of your game if needed. Keep in mind that in-game and OS volume settings will have an impact on the OBS output!
OBS Settings
Open the Settings menu (File > Settings). We will use this menu to configure output resolution/quality settings and stream account info.
Output and Video
Navigate to Output sub-menu and make sure the "Output Mode" is set to simple. Under the Streaming panel, configure the following options:
Video Bitrate: Defaulted to 6000kbps for streaming at 1080p. This can be lowered if you need to stream at a lower resolution (configured later) of if you have a slower internet connection. You can follow the Twitch guidelines for other resolutions.
Encoder: Defaulted to Hardware Encoding. This setting is recommended unless you have a very powerful CPU and a not- very-good graphics card.
Navigate to Video sub-menu and adjust the Output (Scaled) Resolution depending on your bit-rate setting. The default is 1920x1080 (same as base resolution). If you need to stream at a lower resolution (limited processing/bandwidth), set your arbitrate and resolution to 4500kbps and 1280x720 respectively.
Stream
Under the Stream sub-menu, make sure that Service is set to Twitch. For Skywind, you will be using a stream key provided by PR team instead connecting to an account.
Click on Use Stream Key button and enter the provided key in the Stream Key field.
Stream Layout
Now that all configuration steps are complete, we are almost ready to start streaming! Preset offers 2 (soon to be 3) different layout options. Developers can pick either layout according to their content's needs:
Stream Intro: Intended to be the opener scene for your streams. Not only it gives you time to prepare for the stream, but also gives subscribers time to trickle in to the stream chat. Your microphone audio will not be captured in this scene!
Stream Short Break: This scene is for when you need to take a break from the stream. Your microphone audio will not be captured in this scene!
16:9 Border: Stream layout with game, chat, streamer info and optional camera port. This is a more visually appealing scene that's meant to be used for game-play videos (ie. QA or in-game testing)
16:9 Borderless: Stream layout with game-play and optional camera port. Content space is maximized for streaming visually cluttered applications such as Blender or Creation Kit.
4:3 Stream: Similar to 16:9 bordered, but the content window is at a 4:3 scale. Only use this layout if your game or application window is set to a resolution of 4:3 aspect ratio.
In all scenes, you can disable the camera view by clicking the Eye Icon next to the source titled Camera.
Go Get 'Em!
With the above OBS setup, you should now be ready to test your stream. If anything looks odd or out-of-place, it's worth running through the setup steps again to check your config.
Have fun streaming!