Blog Posts

Site Update 14-JUN-2020

Sunday June 14, 2020 7:30pm by Terrorskull

Twitch Update

I am currently streaming my raids and mythic plus dungeon runs in WoW. I am also doing some random Age of Conan streams as well. I do have some other plans of games to stream in the future, but the main streams will likely continue to be WoW with some other games as time permits.

Additionally, I am working on improving the quality of the stream for viewers. I have some additional plans, but here are some of the changes I have made recently.

1. Stream down to 720p. Due to not being able to reliably get the transcoding option (clicking the gear cog on the stream to pick from a list of resolutions) from Twitch for now, I have dropped the quality down to 720p to help those on mobile or with limited connectivity have a smoother viewing experience. When I can reliably get transcoding from Twitch, I will stream in 1080p again.
2. New scenes. I have switched to a new, more personalized set of scenes and transition.
3. Stream music. I am now running background music while streaming. Luckily I chose to subscribe to a service to provide this for this purpose, so I should not run into any issues with copyright like many streamers are getting on Twitch now.
4. Camera changes. I have been testing different lenses, settings, and crops to find something that works best for my setup. I have also included additional cameras for the cat cam and overhead view as well as an option to display video directly from my phone.
5. Background updates. I have worked on cleaning up and improving the background in my streams. You may notice the floating skull or the Ragnaros statue on the desk in the background now. I am still considering some other options to make things more interesting.

Twitch Schedule

• Tuesday 8-11pm CT - WoW Raid
• Wednesday 8-11pm CT - WoW Raid
• Saturday 8-11pm CT - WoW Mythic+

YouTube Update

I have not posted much content here recently. I did post my full DOOM Eternal play through, but I have not had time to create any boss kill videos. If I can find the time to do this I may bring these back in Shadowlands.

Site Update

I have not been adding or maintaining this site very frequently. My current role has moved me away from the technology I have used to develop this site, so I have been focusing in other areas. That said, I am looking to rewrite and improve the site using some different technologies. I am still planning which parts I want to keep and what I want to add. Currently I am testing out some theme options and a toggle for light/dark mode.

For now there is some broken functionality on the site. Twitch has updated their API, so the live banner is not displaying properly. My host has changed their configuration, and that is breaking the call to YouTube to get the latest videos. I am looking into what I can do to resolve that problem for now until I get something new created and online.

Update 24-JUN-2020

Small Site Style Update

Sunday July 15, 2018 5:00pm by Terrorskull

Decided to do a quick pass on some site issues that were bugging me. Still need to decide on a good color scheme and some other things before really working on making a big overhaul. For now I updated a few, smaller things that don't rely on those other decisions.

• Defined custom fonts (lost original set up with some other changes)
• Removed the default link underline decoration
• Removed some extra space at the bottom of the home page blog post section
• Conditionally added a separator between the blog content and topics if topics are associated
• Reduced the size of the blog topics

Blog Topic Support Added

Sunday July 15, 2018 6:37am by Terrorskull

I have expanded on the initial blog functionality that I recently added. Still nothing major, but the posts are now associated to topics. These topics are clickable links displayed at the bottom of each post. Clicking them will open a list of posts filtered by that topic. Still pretty basic stuff, but it needed to be added with the management behind the scenes. Next steps will likely be getting the basics of the gallery in place or possibly some style improvements. If neither of those, maybe I will get around to twitter stream integration.

Blog Now Active!

Saturday July 07, 2018 11:13pm by Terrorskull

The basics of the new blog and news feature are now implemented. By basics, it is clearly just the very minimal amount of functionality and styling at this time. I plan to look into adding some filtering based on topics and also by date. Additionally to keep things somewhat tidy, I want to add a length limit with a read more option that will either slide out the remaining text or link to the actual post page. I will also be looking into cleaning up the style, but I may wait until a general site overhaul before doing that. There are also some improvements I plan to make on the CMS end of things that I can use for writing new posts.

For now at least, I have a quick way I can add some new information that is related to the site or just general thoughts on things going on in the gaming community. The latest post will now show up on the home page, and all posts will be viewable on the blog page.

Site Updates

Friday June 29, 2018 10:15pm by Terrorskull

Battle for Azeroth and Classic

With Legion winding down and Battle for Azeroth on the horizon, I am make some updates to the site's downloads section. Also, with the announcement at the 2017 Blizzcon of Classic, I will be updating the category names to properly reflect private server, Vanilla, addons and official, Classic, addons. At this time I do not know if Blizzard intends to use an API that works with the existing Vanilla, 1.12, addons or keep with the current API available in Legion and Battle for Azeroth. They could even end up doing something entirely different, so I will make updates as more information is available.

Next Features

I have a couple of things in mind to add to the site next. I have not decided which I will do first, but I plan to convert this section into more of a news/blog format and to implement some kind of a gallery. The news section will feature the newest post in this section, and a new page will be added for history and allow for linking directly to a specific post. The gallery I am still deciding if it will be set up to include multiple galleries or just have categories, similar to the downloads, that can filter down and specific images being displayed. These are still in the planning phase, but just an idea of things I plan to add in order to be able to more easily add new content, thoughts, and share information.