Replay/Demo Capabilities

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Rancher Dan
03-15-2003, 13:44
I think the very next best thing to one's studly prowess with a spinfusor is the ability to show it off to other people. While demos are not critically important, they answer important questions about the fine and gentle art of tribal warfare such as:

How did that sucker manage to sneak up behind me and get my flag?
How high did my mortar spam make those body parts fly?
When I spammed behind that hill, did I hit anything?
Did that guy flop around on the ground for one or two seconds after I disc mined him?
And on a more serious note, what makes the really great players great?

I think the minimum is to be able to convert a saved game into an mpeg for extraction of the 'good parts' of a game. Beyond that, I think we get into an area of personal preferences vs. limits of what Sierra is willing to spend on enhanced capability.

What do you think would make for really kick-ass demo capability? How about if you're filming for bragging rights as an individual, game dissection as a tribe, or creating great game commentary as a shout caster?

snow
03-15-2003, 22:18
mpegs and avis are much bigger than rec's, so it would be a heap better if they just had some program or plugin for wmp or whatever so u could view them without loading up tribes.

R@ND0M
03-16-2003, 03:20
Thrax would learn well from the way Warcraft 3 does it's demo recording.
It auto-records the demo during the map, and at the end of the game, the server sends all the information to the client, which is prompted with an option to either "Continue" (delete demo) or "Save Demo" and continue.
Also subfolders are very handy to have for demos.
The demos should also use a standard naming format, and call the GetLocalTime API for the demo name.

Something like: Team1vsTeam2_Map_Nickname _(pub-03-15-03_0900) or something.

Adding a random floating point number (like system uptime or current time/date) would ensure you'd never get demos with the same name. Also, all Events should be server-side, so the client has to do as little parsing as possible (improving performance).
A naming format (instead of recording0.rec) would also ensure people uploaded demos to websites with the right name. I used to hate when people would upload a "recording0.zip" to TW and break an older demo link (this was in '00 mind you)

Slurp
03-17-2003, 15:59
Simple editing, cutting, reverse, skip ahead, and export to mpeg controls would be nice. Although I think this would be a somewhat obvious feature to ask for.

So instead, I'll request something much cooler, the holy grail of demoing: Being able to record an entire match from the server, and playback from an observer point of view.

Yogi
03-17-2003, 16:14
So instead, I'll request something much cooler, the holy grail of demoing: Being able to record an entire match from the server, and playback from an observer point of view.

No team would ever agree to that in a match situation.

Ixiterra
03-17-2003, 16:14
I used to hate when people would upload a "recording0.zip" to TW and break an older demo link (this was in '00 mind you)

Demos named "recording0.zip" probably weren't worth downloading anyway. :dapimp:

Da_Timsta
03-18-2003, 11:15
No team would ever agree to that in a match situation.

depends on the level of the team i guess :shrug:

i never took tribes serious enough to disallow the public access to demos from my team, i guess.

And I would definently LOVE this feature, multiview demos rocks - have seen quite a few from quakeworld matches. Also the possibility to jump (forward) to a position would be nice.

edit: borlaK, to my understanding reverse simply isnt possible with a recording of netcode.

NoGodForMe
03-18-2003, 13:59
I want the demo system to be menu driven. Download file to a \Tribes3\Demo directory, bring up a demo player which looks like a CD player with the arrows, and go.

Rancher Dan
03-25-2003, 10:05
No team would ever agree to that in a match situation.

I assume because that would expose their l33t tactics? Bummer.

I wish we could get a couple of shoutcasters to participate here. There are tools I think would be really cool and useful, but without input from the guys that actually do it, I'm really just guessing. Some of the stuff I'd like to see lends itself more to post-game reporting than to live game coverage.

Tools I'd like to see

Obviously, the ability to replay a game in its entirety from any viewpoint. I'd really like to see someone a lot smarter than myself address the issues in making this work. Speaking from ignorance, and assuming that the game server doesn't make use of a random number generator when deciding the outcome of particular events, it seems like one could dump the incoming data stream from all players onto the hard drive, then feed them back to a server at a later date.

This doesn't address being able to stop the game and rewind it. From a technical point of view, I suspect the server would have to save the equivalent of key-frames, containing the entire server data state at given times, say every 30 seconds. If you were replaying the game in god mode, you'd only be able to rewind in 30 second jumps. Irritating, but workable.

For live shoutcasting, I think it would be really useful to have windowed 3rd person views of all players, plus key objectives (like flags) on screen simultaneously. Clicking on a player's window streams that window to the viewers. An additional window showing the entire map from above with players represented by dots would aid situational awareness. Clicking on a dot would highlight that player's window.

For post-game processing, camera tools such as being able to follow projectiles like discs or mortar rounds along their flight path, and automatic camera panning and zooming would be quite cool.

It would be uber-cool if you could replace low poly models with high rez models for hollywood movie type rendering. Picture your audiences amazement when you secretly replace your opponent's player model with custom lama models, or show inattentive players picking their asses just before your wrath strikes. ;)

OK, this damned message is way too long for this crowd as it is. Any others ideas?

Yogi
03-25-2003, 10:19
Personally, the only addition to demos I'd like to see is a rewind. Even if it's not VCR style (ie continuous). If I have to step back 10 seconds at a time would be great. Just something so I wouldn't have to go all the way to the beginning.

edit: Oh, and subfolder support out of the box. No one in their right mind is going to keep all of their recordings in one directory.

R@ND0M
03-25-2003, 11:28
I love subfolders :(

A "Jump" option would be very cool.
Which just jumped through the demo either back/forward a minute, or had a slider that you could drag.

I don't want to see a DemoHUD the entire time I watch a demo though, so make sure it's toggle-able if there is one.

Observer/Multi-view demos are a must have.
Ask Marweas how important demos are.. they probably saved Tribes 2 (or at least bought it some more time)

jsut
03-25-2003, 13:03
I can only agree with more playback options. It'd be great if there was some sort of way to hop backward in a demo, even if it was only to the last keyframe, as long as they aren't more than 10 seconds or so apart i guess. VCR style rewind isn't really necessary IMO.

And yes, folder support from the get go would be great. It'd be nice if we could browse though our stored demos in a semi intellegent manor too, ala using explorer to navigate through your filesystem.

R@ND0M
03-25-2003, 23:28
I can only agree with more playback options. It'd be great if there was some sort of way to hop backward in a demo, even if it was only to the last keyframe, as long as they aren't more than 10 seconds or so apart i guess. VCR style rewind isn't really necessary IMO.

And yes, folder support from the get go would be great. It'd be nice if we could browse though our stored demos in a semi intellegent manor too, ala using explorer to navigate through your filesystem.

Ideally you don't want a game to be able to modify anything above its root directory.
Because then you can start getting scripts/applications which can exploit this, and cause damage, making the developers liable.

I think Tribes should auto-detect the demoformat, and associate itself with all demo-filenames. So you can just double click a demo in Explorer, and Tribes will load up the demo, knowing exactly what to do, and running it.
I also think it'd be good for Tribes to be able to read demos from inside ZIP's, although it's not necessary if the recording compression is sufficient.

jsut
03-26-2003, 00:34
i just meant use an interface similiar to explorer. meaning i can navigate into sub folders of whatever the games default is and load files from there. If i have 900 recordings sorted into a complex hierarchy of directories i don't want to have to see all 900 and their full paths, i'd like to see the files and directories and be able to browse down to the file i want to play.

know what i mean?

R@ND0M
03-26-2003, 00:56
ya, that's exactly what I want

RenGen
03-30-2003, 05:29
The Rewind is a great idea. Definetely need to get that in there.
Same with native subfolder support. But I'd like to extend this a step further. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO LOAD DEMOS FROM OUTSIDE OF THE T2 DIRECTORY! Let me burn my excess crap on to a CD, and view it off of the CD if I want to for heaven's sake! Thx :]

Regarding the observer demo changes being suggested. I'd argue that if the game went in that direction, you'd have MORE competition all around. Things would be far more transparent, you'd have a playing field that leveled quicker, and actually WATCHING the matches would be a lot more fun because you could see more and learn more with less effort. Ultimately if that were to happen the teams would all adjust accordingly, and have to make true gameday decisions week in and week out, and I think it would only benefit the future of the franchise.

Beren
03-30-2003, 07:34
Regarding the observer demo changes being suggested. I'd argue that if the game went in that direction, you'd have MORE competition all around. Things would be far more transparent, you'd have a playing field that leveled quicker, and actually WATCHING the matches would be a lot more fun because you could see more and learn more with less effort. Ultimately if that were to happen the teams would all adjust accordingly, and have to make true gameday decisions week in and week out, and I think it would only benefit the future of the franchise.

I couldn't agree more. I know teams like having thair strats, and they guard them. But, IMO, unprecidented growth of skill in the ladders would occur if they allowed more demo viewage.

They can ***** all they want, but which is better for the community? I think anyone with their head screwed on would admit that the more teams being compeditive the better. It all still comes down to skill in the end, so the best teams will still be top dog, but it would allow greater creativity and gameplay lower in the ladder.

All other sports, that i can think of, are open. Football teams watch through replays of other teams. Hockey. Cricket. Basketball. Everyone. The play book is closed, but the game footage is open like a book.

Da_Timsta
03-30-2003, 07:52
Also all other big games that has demo capabilities actually. I havnt seen people holding on to their stuff like they do in tribes anywhere else.

[meph]DooM!
03-30-2003, 08:12
Aren't all other games almost purely aim based though? :o

If Arena ever got as big as CTF, I couldn't really see demos being hoarded to save strats.

Da_Timsta
03-30-2003, 08:34
DooM!']Aren't all other games almost purely aim based though? :o

not really

warcraft 3 is a prime example :)