Given the recent controversies surrounding Discord and the fact that the end user is a product of Twitch, I wonder if there is any “bare bone” solution to stream my gaming session to a friend who’s on Windows. I’d rather that they didn’t have to do anything except clicking on a link or perhaps installing a piece of software but with no need to do any configuration. From their perspective, it should "just work.

On my side
Should I set up a webserver into which I feed an OBS stream? Or can perhaps ffmpeg work as a server on it’s own? I’m on Arch Linux, playing games on Steam, within dwm within X11.

On my friend’s side
No idea how a windows user is supposed to receive such a video feed.

Edit: text and voice chat, we’re considering Signal for.

  • Ooops@feddit.org
    9·
    3 months ago

    Discord alternatives are complicated, because Discord is conceptual bullshit. It started as voice communication, yet became popular for the text communication.

    So you won’t find a good replacement (unless something new created in particular to mimic discord), because the things it now provides are better handled by seperate applications.

    PS: OBS should already work on it’s own, without a dedicated webserver on your side. Basically every media program (also browser) should be able to handle streams

    OBS’ WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion) support should allow direct connection to web browsers.

    (I’ll will take a look at it when I’m home)

      • Ooops@feddit.org
        1·
        2 months ago

        wtf?

        Pleass tell me you are just talking about discord channels instead of proper issue trackers and not something even more stupid…

        • Landless2029@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          Both.

          People have locked channels with info instead of a readme in a repo.

          And

          Channels for opening issues with topics for bug tracking.

          For example check nexus mods authors…

    • zealouscurmedgeon@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 months ago

      There’s quite a few Discord alternatives. IMO Stoat and especially Fluxer are pretty discord-like. Fluxer is pretty new and still working out kinks. They support (Stoat) or will support (Fluxer) self-hosting and Fluxer will implement (limited) E2EE. I have heard of other alternatives like Root, TeamSpeak, Mumble but cannot speak to them.

      • Ooops@feddit.org
        2·
        3 months ago

        Teamspeak and Mumble (which I prefer because it’s free and open-source… also already vastly superior sound quality years ago when Teamspeak was stil the common option most peope used) are indeed “separate applications” doing only one of the jobs… voice communication in this case.

    • durinn@programming.devOP
      1·
      3 months ago

      Thanks! I just installed OBS - also trying out a few variants from the AUR - but it gave an error saying “couldn’t load frontend-tools plugin”, didn’t recognize/pick up the Steam and/or the game’s window, even though I tried the game in various screen modes, and WHIP wasn’t in the streaming servers/sources selection section. I did some limited troubleshooting, but gave up, because my friend says they have Steam too. We’ll try out Steam’s “native” broadcasting function later tonight and see if we’re satisfied with that + chat/voice chat through Signal.

      Thanks for your time and input! :)

      • Ooops@feddit.org
        2·
        3 months ago

        Oh, I assumed you already had setup OBS…

        And WHIP is probably unneccessarily complicated anyway.

        I was able to stream the output of my V4L2loopback-device (the virtual camera created with OBS’ output) to a browser accessing localhost:<port> with Motion without any setup other than creating a single-line config file defining the port…

        • durinn@programming.devOP
          1·
          2 months ago

          Yeah, sorry, I was unclear on several parts in the post. Thanks anyways! If Steam’s native broadcasting turns out to such, I’ll try something else.

  • onlinepersona@programming.dev
    2·
    2 months ago

    TL; DR use Jami

    You want something to stream low latency, don’t you? Honestly, that means peer to peer, not centralised (I. E streaming to a server which then streams to your friend). OBS will use large buffers (multiple seconds) that are then sent out to the server.

    I would suggest using Jami. It’s peer to peer chat with peer to peer video and audio calls. It’s the simplest solution I’ve found. Matrix has MatrixRTC (or whatever they call it) but you will need the Element client and will need to activate RTC in the “labs”. Not sure if it’s in the stable build or the beta.

    Signal can also stream peer to peer (webrtc like every other) but it compresses a lot and encrypts on top of it. You could have low latency but you will have visual artefacts and there’s no way to tweak the settings.

  • ISOmorph@feddit.org
    2·
    3 months ago

    Never tried it myself, but doesn’t steam have a feature to stream to your friends? Your friend would just need to install the client and create an account. All the other options in this thread are just if you want to serve your streams to a broader audience

  • juipeltje@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 months ago

    Luckily i barely use discord, but i have one small usecase for it where it is pretty much irreplacable, which is that i use it to voice chat with a friend when playing games with crossplay support, since he is on ps5, and discord now having ps5 support makes that the go-to app.

  • procapra@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 months ago

    Whatever your preferred matrix client is. That’s the alternative. Element, Nheko, Fluffychat, all decent options.

    Is it perfect? Hardly. Is it the best you’re going to get short of some cheap discord knockoff? Yes.

  • DefinitelyNotBirds@lemmy.mlBanned
    2·
    2 months ago

    Bare bone streaming tools like Sunshine work cross platform if your friend runs Moonlight on Windows. This setup beats Discord or Twitch for low latency gaming sessions with friends. Have you tried Sunshine and Moonlight yet?