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Jaxel
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Welcome to version 4 of Scoreboard Assistant (for web)! I've decided to completely open up this website for beta testing! That means at least till the end of May, everyone will be able to use all the features of this website completely for free! Just register an account and you'll be able to make your own scoreboard packages immediately! If it's your first time seeing this website, check out some of the tutorials and guides to get started.
What is Scoreboard Assistant?
Scoreboard Assistant is a program I've been writing and rewriting for about 10 years now. SBA was a program that wrote information to an overlay for your stream. It made it easy to change names of players, update scores, create lower thirds, etc... The aim was to reduce the amount of people required to run a stream; so you don't need to have a person dedicated to managing on-screen information and graphics.
The first 3 versions of the application were mostly made for personal use, but I've released them relatively free for use (version 3 cost $0.01). I've released them for free because they were poorly programmed and I didn't feel like supporting them at all. Version 3 is still the most popular piece of software I've written, selling over 10,000 copies to this day (again, for as low as $0.01). This new version 4 is written from the ground up, as a website.
Why rewrite Scoreboard Assistant as a website?
I've always been a web-developer; never much of a person for compiled programming languages. Version 3 of SBA (for .NET) was years out of date and needing an upgrade anyways. I wanted a version of SBA that was platform agnostic. I know a lot of people were using programs like Wine to run the old application on Mac and Linux. As a website, that means SBA is compatible with all platforms, as long as you have a web browser. Plus, I saw what Kevorkian (@Zonak) had written for his streams and I thought I could extrapolate from that.
What can this website do that the old version could not?
Besides being platform agnostic? Having remote access to your scoreboards means you don't always have to run back to your stream station to update your stream. Do you have a player with a complicated name? You can actually have them type their name in on your phone and update the overlay right there. You can even give third-parties access to update your scoreboard. So lets say you have a moderator in your chatroom, and you've given them permission to update your scoreboard. As they are watching, they notice you forgot to update the on-screen scores, because you ran to the bathroom or something. They can actually update the scores themselves! You can even remotely change OBS scenes (after you've properly set it up).
Why is this new version a bit more complicated?
For versions 1-3 of SBA, they worked primarily with local text or xml files to manage data. After writing those files, you would extract the data directly in XSplit or OBS. Towards the end of the life of the version 3, I introduced something called "Websockets" into the application. Websockets allowed scripts to monitor for changes in SBA remotely, and execute queries based on those changes. Websockets were far more robust than simple text files and allowed for instantaneous updates to scoreboards, instead of having to periodically poll for updates through a loop. The downside of Websockets though, is that they are a bit more complicated to initially set up.
Since this version 4 of SBA is made on the web, there are no local files for you to fetch information from, which means Websockets are not only the best solution, but the only solution. So anyone who wants to use this new version of SBA must have a basic understanding of Websockets. Fortunately, I've gone over a lot of the basics in the tutorials and guides. We actually provide the majority of the libraries and scripts needed to animate your overlays.
What is Scoreboard Assistant?
Scoreboard Assistant is a program I've been writing and rewriting for about 10 years now. SBA was a program that wrote information to an overlay for your stream. It made it easy to change names of players, update scores, create lower thirds, etc... The aim was to reduce the amount of people required to run a stream; so you don't need to have a person dedicated to managing on-screen information and graphics.
The first 3 versions of the application were mostly made for personal use, but I've released them relatively free for use (version 3 cost $0.01). I've released them for free because they were poorly programmed and I didn't feel like supporting them at all. Version 3 is still the most popular piece of software I've written, selling over 10,000 copies to this day (again, for as low as $0.01). This new version 4 is written from the ground up, as a website.
Why rewrite Scoreboard Assistant as a website?
I've always been a web-developer; never much of a person for compiled programming languages. Version 3 of SBA (for .NET) was years out of date and needing an upgrade anyways. I wanted a version of SBA that was platform agnostic. I know a lot of people were using programs like Wine to run the old application on Mac and Linux. As a website, that means SBA is compatible with all platforms, as long as you have a web browser. Plus, I saw what Kevorkian (@Zonak) had written for his streams and I thought I could extrapolate from that.
What can this website do that the old version could not?
Besides being platform agnostic? Having remote access to your scoreboards means you don't always have to run back to your stream station to update your stream. Do you have a player with a complicated name? You can actually have them type their name in on your phone and update the overlay right there. You can even give third-parties access to update your scoreboard. So lets say you have a moderator in your chatroom, and you've given them permission to update your scoreboard. As they are watching, they notice you forgot to update the on-screen scores, because you ran to the bathroom or something. They can actually update the scores themselves! You can even remotely change OBS scenes (after you've properly set it up).
Why is this new version a bit more complicated?
For versions 1-3 of SBA, they worked primarily with local text or xml files to manage data. After writing those files, you would extract the data directly in XSplit or OBS. Towards the end of the life of the version 3, I introduced something called "Websockets" into the application. Websockets allowed scripts to monitor for changes in SBA remotely, and execute queries based on those changes. Websockets were far more robust than simple text files and allowed for instantaneous updates to scoreboards, instead of having to periodically poll for updates through a loop. The downside of Websockets though, is that they are a bit more complicated to initially set up.
Since this version 4 of SBA is made on the web, there are no local files for you to fetch information from, which means Websockets are not only the best solution, but the only solution. So anyone who wants to use this new version of SBA must have a basic understanding of Websockets. Fortunately, I've gone over a lot of the basics in the tutorials and guides. We actually provide the majority of the libraries and scripts needed to animate your overlays.
