Well, 2020 is definitely a wild year. After the air-grasping thrill weekend that was IFPA NACS/Women’s World Championships/Pin-Masters, it was back to earth with a slam-tilt to everyday life. I pretty much had one week back before I was adjusting to an indefinite work-from-home atmosphere and having The Shadow as my main pin to play.
I had all the thoughts running through my mind from the first two and a half months of the year, and I decided a few things:
- Pinball can wait. We’re a hobby that prides itself on sharing and socializing, competition and comradeship. Given COVID-19, it would be wrong to try to keep that going as it was.
- Given that pinball is effectively frozen, it was a good time to step away wholesale. I’d challenge myself to make one Final Battle a day on The Shadow, but that wasn’t something I held myself extremely hard and fast to.
- Given the above two, I’d put the blog on hold for a bit. I can read code updates, but I can’t get my hands on games and experiment/try things out. Once I can get back, I’ll start back up as well.
I wrote the above in Mid-August when things started to open back up, and the rest of this is pretty much 2 months later! I’ll explain the longer pause in a future, soon-to-release post. But for now, I had some fun ideas for blog posts and decided that it’s time to get back into the game. In the meantime, I got into another game…or a few!
BAM! I stream semi-regularly on Twitch!
This started out as a way to spend a Sunday afternoon playing Fall Guys and other things with some equipment I was getting together, and if you want to see me do non-pinball things, I stream on Sundays at Noon (Eastern time).
The real motivation for the equipment finally came out in a test stream last Sunday where I played The Shadow until I got a Final Battle. I got a Final Battle (and failed on it!), but it felt like I was Thanos after finally putting all the Stones into the Infinity Gauntlet:
- I decided to upgrade my computer’s processor since it was 7 years old, and my new motherboard could handle 3 USB cameras!
- I actually was able to find a 720p/60 FPS USB camera without having to pay the COVID tax: the Razer Kiyo goes punch-for-punch with the Logitech C922x but is actually available at standard prices ($87 on Amazon at the time of this post).
- I bought all of the stands and supports required to run a stream including a tripod camera arm, a clampable mic boom, attachments for everything, and even a laptop stand (for the monitor and eventual laptop).
- I bought an LED Lamp, the real key to pinball production. PAPA taught me well on the benefits of having a well-lit playfield. If you don’t have one and you’re a streamer, go get it!
- I dug out my Logitech C310 for a player camera. Good old early-2010 era 720p glory. You’re not here to see my face anyways, right?
So yeah! Pinball! I can stream games and maybe even record tutorials! I’ll likely be putting the word out to see if I can get on some locations since my collection isn’t really great for diverse content.
This post will be the first in a stream of stuff I’ll be writing today/tomorrow, including some thoughts on Avengers: Infinity Quest and Hot Wheels. Don’t think I forgot about 7 months of code updates as well; I’ll get to them soon!
Scout's Scoop 