About Replays

Published on August 7, 2008 By TheBigOne In Demigod

While there hasn't been an official confirmation on the existence of replays in Demigod yet, it is very likely that there are replays and as I haven't seen a replay thread so far it's time to make one.

Before beginning to list up the features which Demigod replay system should have, I have to admit that I have very ambivalent feelings towards replays. I do enjoy watching replays of interesting matches, be it in Starcraft or Supreme Commander, however there are a few thinks which aren't so cool about replays.

The first, is that strategies spread a lot faster with replays then they did in the old times (for example in starcraft before they added replays), so the most exciting time period of any multiplayer game, the one where everyone is experimenting around and many divergent gamestyles exist, is alot shorter than it would be without replays.

Another thing I have seen very much and dislike is that newer players very often imitate the gamestyle of good players without even knowing what they are doing - some may say that the learn faster that way and it might even be true in some cases, but I think that it would be more fun for them and their opponents if they experiment on their own, rather than imitating a proven tactic and either failing badly because they didn't know what to do when something unexpected happened or winning because of imitating the strategy good enough and having been lucky that the enemy reacted as expected.

Please don't see that as a generalisation many new players take replays as a good inspiration and do explore the game themselves but especially in Warcraft 3, I noticed how many players, not even necessarily new players, imitated the style of the progamers and lost badly. On the one hand because they just didn't know what to do when I didn't play "standard" and on the other hand that they just can't execute a strategy of someone who is alot better and faster than them. Without replays more people would realize that a strategy which is very good at top level isn't necessarily a good strategy on their level.

Okay enough of this, nobody can deny the entertainment value of replays when you watch them solely or mainly for fun. So here are some things I'd like to see in:

Live Replays like we had in GPGnet, I do hope that Impulse is capable of that.

The ability to watch replays together (as in Starcraft, strangely enough Blizzard skipped that one in Warcraft III).

Recording Chat in replay , its fun on the one side and also reduces possible flaming as people know its being recorded. (it should be possible to turn that off though, especially for teamchat)

We all know why replays just can play forward and you can't just select any time, but having some "keyframes" every 5 or 10 minutes would be really cool. It surely should be possible to save all conditions of a single tick either in the replay itself (which surely would increase their size) or at least when watching the replay, so you can jump back 5 minutes rather then watching it from beginning on if you want to see a certain scene again.

A small replay manager where I can search through my replays using filters and sort stuff, should also display map, gamelength, players (including which demigod) and the winners. GPGnets replay vault had most of this stuff but I would like to have it locally for my own replay archive as well.

A way to quickly change the Demigod Version to an older one so we can watch old replays, even cooler would be if that happens automatically when trying to watch an older replay.

I doubt everything of that comes true but I hope at least some of it happens in one or another way.

Comments (Page 3)

Gnats3

on Aug 17, 2008

I don't really like the "click a players structure to switch to their perspective" idea - it is too annoying to do it accidently. I prefer the drop-down menu that Supcom has.

RonLugge

on Aug 17, 2008

What I would like to see for replays would be:

-rewind

That's impossible. A replay, in simple terms, is a record of the "Starting state" of the game -- including the seed which is used to determine any "random" events -- plus all player given commands. The game then runs the "replay" using the exact same engine as you'd use to play it in the first place -- with, maybe, a few minor tweaks so you can see different things than would otherwise be possible.

You can't rewind; no way to do it. There isn't a marker "something died at X time at Y place", so when you reverse time, the unit can't respawn, units don't know what orders they have, etc etc.

Edit:

The idea of placing "bookmarks" at 5 minute intervals / player chosen spots should be doable, on the other hand.

xBlackxStarx

on Aug 18, 2008

so.. I donno if anyone was paying attention in IRC a few days ago..but "Be Set" one of the mods said "without replays, the competitiveness of the game would fade away" or something along those lines.. I responded with.. "are you implying there's replays" he gave me a straight answer.. "Yes"

so there u have it.. replays were confirmed 8)

innociv

on Aug 18, 2008

I'd like the fog of war to be colored and overlapping so you can see how each team saw it.

Sometimes when you watch a replay you're like "wtf how did he not see them?" not quite realizing they didn't have fog of war turned off.

Gnats3

on Aug 18, 2008

That's impossible. A replay, in simple terms, is a record of the "Starting state" of the game -- including the seed which is used to determine any "random" events -- plus all player given commands. The game then runs the "replay" using the exact same engine as you'd use to play it in the first place -- with, maybe, a few minor tweaks so you can see different things than would otherwise be possible.You can't rewind; no way to do it. There isn't a marker "something died at X time at Y place", so when you reverse time, the unit can't respawn, units don't know what orders they have, etc etc.Edit:The idea of placing "bookmarks" at 5 minute intervals / player chosen spots should be doable, on the other hand.

For some reason I remember Rise of Legends (which Cowbuttzex played, IIRC) having a rewind. There weren't any physics-based, dodgeable bullets that I can remember so maybe they made the replays larger and enabled rewinding.

I could be remembering incorrectly though.

RonLugge

on Aug 18, 2008

I'm not familiar with the game in question, so I have no clue how they managed that -- or what obstacles they may have had to overcome in doing it.

OMG_ZEX

on Aug 18, 2008

Rise of Legends had an excellant replay manager I hope to see something close to the same in Demigod. You probably haven't heard of Rise of Lengends because the game died after the 100k tourny. It was probably one of the best RTS games to go unnoticed. Kind of like UaW except better than UaW. Rise of Legends was made by Big Huge Games who made Rise of Nations

brn4meplz

on Aug 18, 2008

xBlackxStarx

Be_Set is just a community person, he isn't involved in any way with the game or either company, anything he says is speculation, but it's generally agreed on that the game will have some form of replays because Supcom had them and it's supcoms engine. Also every game released in the last 2 years has had a replay and it' suicide not to have one.

What really tests a games competitive edge is observers slots and the level of control they have, for Shout casters and E sports shit.

timmyfred

on Aug 21, 2008

For the record, you could rewind, fast forward, jump ahead, etc. with the TA Demo Recorder. It was a bit buggy, and reclaimables didn't rewind or fast forward, properly, but it was workable...granted, the filesizes were fairly huge, but its not "impossible" to do...esp. considering TADR came out nearly 10 years ago.

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