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.

  • juipeltje@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 hour 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.

  • pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    2 hours ago

    I have the same question, but a particular problem I am having is the need to chat via text while streaming instead of audio for accessibility purposes. Discord’s game overlay worked okay for this (not great, but usable) on Windows, but doesn’t run at all on Linux, and every alternative I look at seems very voice chat focused. Steam does have chat options within the overlay but doesn’t seem to have good chat history options.

    • durinn@programming.devOP
      1·
      1 hour ago

      I’m using a separate little laptop to chat, in this case, with Signal. It’s a little inconvenient, but on the other hand, if you don’t have multiple monitors, you are at least free from chat notifications in your gaming screen/window. :)

      Yet another though, if you have an Android phone, just plug in a keyboard and use the phone for chat. :D

      • pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 hour ago

        I’ve considered that a few times, and have done the 'phone chatting while gaming" solution, but it gets pretty unwieldy quickly in my experience, sadly.

  • procapra@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 hours 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.

  • Ooops@feddit.org
    5·
    5 hours 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)

    • durinn@programming.devOP
      1·
      5 hours 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·
        5 hours 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·
          3 hours 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.

    • zealouscurmedgeon@lemmy.ml
      1·
      5 hours 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.

      • Hexarei@beehaw.org
        1·
        33 minutes ago

        The main trouble with Stoat and Fluxer from what I’ve seen is that they’re both trying too hard to be Discord, while neither of them are quite hitting the mark. They’ll be interesting to follow in the future

      • Ooops@feddit.org
        3·
        5 hours 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.

        • stringere@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Boggles my mind that teamspeak has always sounded better than discord, and yet dicksword swallowed TS’s market. Something teamspeak handled (haven’t used in ages, cannot say if it still does) was people speaking at the same time.

    • Rando@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      Second this, me and my friends have been using it since the day it came out (I am the one hosting it) and it checks all the boxes for us.

      I was never able to get my group to switch away from Discord but this has finally done it

      • airikr@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        8 hours ago

        Noice :) And yes, it looks like Discord and works like Discord for each update (if not better) and I have searched for such software for many years. Based in EU no less :D

        Matrix with Commet would have been a good alternative for me, but I hate how Matrix is built (you are literally forbidden to delete channels you have created).

        • jay@mbin.zerojay.com
          1·
          7 hours ago

          you are literally forbidden to delete channels you have created
          Server admins and space admins can delete rooms within them just fine. If you are the last person left in a room and you leave it, it disappears too.

          • airikr@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            7 hours ago

            I was the admin for the space I created :) Good to know that the whole space will be completely deleted after I left it. They should tell one that. Very confusing otherwise.

    • stringere@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Yeah, but when I enable the Steam overlay and have my controller connected it takes random screenshots constantly. Which is unfortunate, because I miss getting clips of so many hilarious Pelican landings in Helldivers 2.

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
    9·
    10 hours ago

    Owncast already mentioned, and while it’s good, it doesn’t achieve real-time streaming like discord does. It’s more of a twitch replacement for streamers with an actual audience thanks to it’s ActivityPub support (in that people on stuff like mastodon can “subscribe” to the server).

    MatrixRTC is still new and while it’s already being used to provide voice channels in clients like element, cinny and commet, as of now none of them can stream gameplay with audio.

    For this I’m currently using Broadcast-box. Self-hostable, but the dev also provides a public instance.

    It uses WHIP to stream over WebRTC (OBS is compatible) to achieve less than half second latency. More than fast enough to feel like “real-time” if in a voice-chat with friends. And you can push the video quality past what any platform like youtube, twitch or discord will allow.

  • ISOmorph@feddit.org
    3·
    9 hours 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