So yesterday I did my first development and Q&A livestream on Twitch ever. It ended up taking 5 hours. It was one of the most fun things I ever did.

Thanks to everyone who joined, you were amazing!

If you missed it, you can theoretically watch the uncut recording of the whole thing, or just skip through it.

What we did

Implemented a first rough version of a pollution system

• Factories create pollution when they are built
• There is an animated pollution map that shows you the severity of pollution everywhere
• Residential buildings won't be built in areas where pollution is too high

Answered lots of questions

• Unfortunately, I won't have the time to summarize all the Q&A, but I won't mind answering the same questions again in the future. If something really gets asked again and again, I will add it to the FAQ.

I want to do this more often

My goal would be to do 2 livestreams a week, in addition to the regular weekly update video. In the update video I can then also adress the progress made in the streams in a compact way.

My final exam is getting closer and closer, so I don't know when I will be able to have a regular streaming schedule, until then everything will be pretty spontaneous - but I will keep you informed of course.

I need a better PC

Every component of my system is now a couple generations old. It was was barely able to do 720p30FPS livestream encoding and run the game at the same time, it was laggy as hell (at least on my end) - the CPU had a constant near-death experience and my humble 4GBs of RAM were more than used up at all times. Also (and this is kind of embarrassing), I didn't even have enough space on my hard disks left to do a local recording of the full stream.

In addition, my system is unpredictably unstable, I consider myself very lucky that it didn't freeze or BSOD during the stream, like it often does, especially when the weather is hot like it is now. Case in point: My PC had a BSOD during my writing of this blog post, I had to start all over again.

I think you get the idea: In order to make high-quality streaming feasible, to speed up video editing and to improve my overall developer happiness, I need a better PC.

I can't really afford one right now, and people already suggested that I should ask for donations, but out of a false sense of humility, I didn't. But I really should:

If you have some spare money and you enjoy the content that I've been putting out, the best way to support me right would be a donation (even a small one!) that I can use to buy a new PC:

Update: I have received over $2000, this is enough, please stop donating :D Thank you very much!

Thank you, and see you soon!