With the upcoming Demigod 2 vs 2 tournament, my desire to provide commentary for games has been renewed. In the process, I've found a wonderful way to waste my bandwidth.
ONE: The Game itself
Demigod isn't just an RTS - its a peer to peer RTS. That means for each additional player, you add in more upload requirements. With commentary, you need two extra players - that means I'm uploading and downloading data from five people.
TWO: The Commentary
It isn't commentary without speaking, and thats where Ventrilo comes in. This allows them to hear each other, and if setup properly, can allow them to hear the chatter between the two teams as well.
THREE: Music and Sound Bites
This is where things start getting interesting. To have music, you need to have a second copy of Ventrilo running with the live music stream. This is easiest to do with winamp in conjunction with a program called Virtual Audio Cable. This outputs winamp's music to a separate sound output, and use that sound output as an input in Ventrilo.
FOUR: ...Live Music and Sound Bites?
Instead of just streaming regular old mp3s from my personal library, I decided to echo a webcast of Bailrigg FM, a UK student run radio station. This plays through Winamp.
FIVE: Video Stream
To upload the actual commentary so all can see, I'm using livestream.com.
So, in short, I'm downloading music, to upload it to vent, to download it from vent, to upload it online. Fun!