(Feature request) Replay that last battle...

[rjshae]

(though as others have said, the title needs work ),

 

In the filesystem world that functionality (or something like it) is called "Journalling", although that might be confusing to players. Perhaps "Instant Replay" would be readily identifiable by many?

Edited October 18, 2012 by rjshae

[Hassat Hunter]

I'm sorry, I'm a nub here how can I change the title of a thread?

Pretty sure only the moderators can do that...

[Karkarov]

This is a luxury feature at it's best. This just isn't needed in the game. Would it be nice to have for some players, sure, but I would rather the devs not even bother. If you really need this you can get any number of recording software solutions such as fraps, record it yourself, and use some basic and cheap video editing software to cut it together yourself.

[AwesomeOcelot]

If this feature isn't implement, something that would be just as helpful for me is extensive and colour coded combat log that's easily retrievable and can be viewed in game in a large window or fullscreen, with time stamps and breaks for changes in maps.

 

This is a luxury feature at it's best. This just isn't needed in the game. Would it be nice to have for some players, sure, but I would rather the devs not even bother. If you really need this you can get any number of recording software solutions such as fraps, record it yourself, and use some basic and cheap video editing software to cut it together yourself.

 

That's only really a replacement, and not an optimum one, for sharing with others.

[scipioafricanus]

If it wasn't too expensive I'd love this option ! As you say, rather like Tiger Woods golf watching a hole in one, seeing your epic battle done in real time with all the characters moving/fighting in real time would be utterly GREAT !!! Devs - note this idea !!

[Suen]

Love the idea.

If they will make it: an option to turn on/off the heroes/monsters names over their head. Or mouse over. And an option to pause.

I've seen the "record demo" in action in a mmorpg, and if you can't read the names, or at least a symbol, it's just a confuse brawl.

[Uomoz]

It could be something tied to the Soul gameplay.

 

Like the ability of the Main Char to review past events through his soul.

[mokona]

Real-time, or even double-time, battle replays would be neat.

[jivex5k]

Only if the combat looks good enough to replay would this really matter.

I can't see that being the case in a top-down iso game.

[SGray]

It's not already in engine, so it'll take time to implement such a thing, and i don't think devs have time in abundance.

 

Nevertheless, it wouldn't be too hard to implement:

1. Place autosave locations before any major battle, as usual.
   
2. Make "system" copy of this autosave and add saved random seed to it. (This step could be the most troublesome, as i doubt that ingame random functions are using any seed. Not hard to override, but could be time-costly. And main concern - could lead to bugs in replay result if some rnd call is overlooked.)
   
3. Add user input log with timings to save from previous step, until the battle ends.
   
4. After battle completion save all from upper to ordinary save/allow user to start replay on hotkey confirmation/replay based on settings.
   
5. Part that'll definitely take time, but doubt that too much - replaying mechanism itself. After loading save marked as replay - translate stored input (if not translated before) to per-character commands and execute them sequentially. Lock ui for the duration of replay. Zoom camera out to picture whole battlefield, but better - allow free camera. (Possible issue: what to display if party is split and fighting in the opposite corners of the map?)
   

If, by any case, engine developer ever find himself drowning in free time - it'll be a good thing to do. Really, such feature could enhance immersion greatly, especially if somehow backed by lore. If you are "in" the game such battles are played in head, but it'll be good to have some visual footage of battle flow. Side-profit from this feature could be in ease of creation of scripted battle scenes, without glitches like "oops, 3 crits in a row, wrong side won" or additional scripts.

If to be real - this feature is, most likely, for next major expansion pack or for PE2, not for the first release. Though, having such possibility in mind while developing current tasks could help a lot later.

Edited October 29, 2012 by SGray

[Juneau]

I think it sounds like a fantastic idea if not some form of crazy hard drive space eating monster.

 

You would have to have a save most recent battle replay / enable option. Or maybe it only works on bosses because otherwise it's going to eat up A LOT of space which is the only downside to recording - that is IF your PC can even handle it.

 

Technically it isn't hard to implement setup your record software - include a "is game paused" flag and have the recording software record when your out of pause. Hopefully streamlined.

 

Good idea +1 /like UpVote, ThumbsUp etc.. etc..

[Juneau]

Sorry for the double post - For some reason I can't click save when I try to edit my post (might be my work PC)

 

Games already include a "kill cam". It shouldn't be hard to expand on this to include the whole fight? Would be cool as an option to turn on / off.

[sesobebo]

somewhat narcissistic and completely non-crucial feature.

 

but it would be totally awesome.

 

[SGray]

if not some form of crazy hard drive space eating monster.

 

because otherwise it's going to eat up A LOT of space which is the only downside to recording - that is IF your PC can even handle it.

 

Technically it isn't hard to implement setup your record software - include a "is game paused" flag and have the recording software record when your out of pause. Hopefully streamlined.

It's "hard drive space eating monster" indeed, if implemented as video recording. More reasonable way is - in-game, engine based replay, like in WarCraft 3 or World of Tanks.

 

 

Games already include a "kill cam". It shouldn't be hard to expand on this to include the whole fight?

Not quite trivial piece of a code if not the most simple cam. What if there are multiple killings simultaneously? Or multiple sequential kills in separate locations? Jump (glitch) through them instantly? Not good? So we should have separate entity analyzing battlefield somehow and trying to predict what'll be more interesting to watch (record)?

Imo - the best decision is to allow player to control cam during replay (possible only in engine-based ones), and decide what's good for himself, without bothering to analyze replay programmatically. Replay analysis done well in in LoL, but i don't know how it was done and if it could be applicable to more complex gameplay.

Edited October 30, 2012 by SGray

[anek]

There were various battles in IWD2 after which I wished a replay feature would be available.

 

Interestingly, I don't think I ever missed it during the BG games though.

[anek]

It's not already in engine, so it'll take time to implement such a thing

 

How do you know it won't be?

 

As I already explained in another thread, the Unity engine is not the actual cRPG game engine for PE like the Infinity Engine was for BG. Unity is just a low-level framework and toolset on which Obsidian is building its own custom cRPG engine, which in turn will run the game content that will make up PE (and maybe additional games in the future).

 

So how do you know that replaying of scripted battle sequenced will not already be supported by this engine anyways?

It might very well be, for cutscene-like sequences etc.

[Carmelle]

It's not already in engine, so it'll take time to implement such a thing

 

How do you know it won't be?

 

As I already explained in another thread, the Unity engine is not the actual cRPG game engine for PE like the Infinity Engine was for BG. Unity is just a low-level framework and toolset on which Obsidian is building its own custom cRPG engine, which in turn will run the game content that will make up PE (and maybe additional games in the future).

 

So how do you know that replaying of scripted battle sequenced will not already be supported by this engine anyways?

It might very well be, for cutscene-like sequences etc.

It all depends on how they decide to implement it though. If it's used specifically for cutscenes, then it's not necessary to design, develop, test, a UI to let the user make recordings, play them back, etc.. And they'd likely be able to cut development time by making it less generic and specific to the cutscene scenario.

 

Anyways, when they do look over this thread, they may add it to some bucket list of "nice to haves" that fits after the "nicer to haves", since we also made it clear that it's not something that the community deems absolutely necessary either

[SGray]

Unity is just a low-level framework and toolset on which Obsidian is building its own custom cRPG engine

Hm, interesting information. Is it so, or they simply enhancing and adding what's missing to old&working one?

 

So how do you know that replaying of scripted battle sequenced will not already be supported by this engine anyways?

More often such scripted battles are either hand-made script sequences (play animation of a skill, explicitly apply specific effect to be sure) or spawning two groups of mobs with hand-tweaked parameters (immunity, insta-kill, etc) one near another. Hasn't ewer seen implementation of something like discussed in this thread in anything Unity-related. So, it has to be written by someone. Am I wrong?

[Aoyagi]

I don't know how did I not think of this. I've been praising similar feature that is in GTA 4 (flashback-like save, it goes like 40-60 seconds to past) and I guess PE would make a good use of replay features (no matter how executed)...unless it's too complicated to integrate, in which case there are better things to do.

[Ralewyn]

Recording actual video wouldn't be the way to go here for a myriad of reasons already discussed, but this feature is entirely possible.

 

The common implementation of this sort of system is to (and I'm very roughly paraphrasing here) record all of the events or 'messages' sent around the game logic over a certain period of time and save them. This includes both what they are and what data they contain. Essentially, every time the user hits a button, or a character attacks, or a physics object collides, or whatever sort of event the developer wants to immediately announce to the rest of the game engine, a message is sent that's only a few bytes large including all the data about the event through the messaging system to anything else that's listening. Depending on the game and how your messaging system is implemented, dozens or hundreds of messages can be processed every frame.

 

This is usually implemented in networked multiplayer games because they already have to record these messages and send them around and check them for consistency, so the process of recording a long stream of them sent to a server over a period of time and then adding in a feature where the engine can play the simulation back with all those messages later is relatively simple.

 

This is precisely how you can watch replays of Warcraft 3, DOTA 2, and Team Fortress 2 in-engine from any angle or perspective--there's no recorded video, the literal game was recorded and the engine itself is playing it back.

 

The good news is that Unity, like most modern game engines has a messaging system, so Obsidian won't have to build their own from scratch. However, Unity's messages are fairly bare-bones and mostly used for user input, so some groundwork would have to be done before this feature could be implemented. A little or a lot depending on whether user input was being recorded or whether it was actual game logic that was being recorded.

 

Usually this feature is implemented because all the groundwork for it is already there--as per the case with many networked multiplayer games. This would be an extra layer--even if relatively small--that would have to be implemented on top of the rest of the logic that would be exclusively for this recording & playback feature. There's also another layer of complication if you want to be able to replay a battle and pause/rewind/etc. during it, as with a Warcraft 3 replay.

[anek]

More often such scripted battles are either hand-made script sequences (play animation of a skill, explicitly apply specific effect to be sure)

 

If the cutscene scripts can actually specify the individual animations (e.g. show animation of spell X), then using this system for battle replays should be possible by simply generating such a script on-the fly during each battle.

 

However, if cutscene scripts can only specify actual character actions (e.g. cast spell X on Y) to be executed by the engine, then it would indeed not be useful for replays as each time the action is executed the associated dice rolls would end up differently. Come to think of it, I think this is indeed how cutscenes worked in the Infinity Engine games.

 

So yeah, you might be right that replays would need a completely separate recording system even if cutscene sequences are already supported...

[SGray]

If the cutscene scripts can actually specify the individual animations (e.g. show animation of spell X), then using this system for battle replays should be possible by simply generating such a script on-the fly during each battle.

 

However, if cutscene scripts can only specify actual character actions (e.g. cast spell X on Y) to be executed by the engine, then it would indeed not be useful for replays as each time the action is executed the associated dice rolls would end up differently. Come to think of it, I think this is indeed how cutscenes worked in the Infinity Engine games.

 

So yeah, you might be right that replays would need a completely separate recording system even if cutscene sequences are already supported...

Specifying the individual animations is totally possible. There are many games which allow such thing for modders - play animation of X, set effect of Y. Though, more often it's casting real ability to totally immune target, then applying effect by script.

I think that generating script just from visuals of battle and state of participants - would be a very troublesome way. Recording and replaying actual battle log (if there is complete one as said by Ralewyn) would be much easier way to achieve just the same thing, with same trouble of creating another logic layer (separate from actual battle mechanics) for replaying.

Another way it could be done - fixing in-game random seed and replaying just the user input. Less work on replaying itself, but possibly much more hassle with random seed implementation.