One very important feature missing from Shogun

[Nyarlathotep]

This is a feature that Myth and MythII had and I've missed since I've stopped playing them: the ability to have a recording of the games you play!

One could learn how to play by watching others do it. Strategies were learned through them. Talk was generated around them (actually, whole websites were devoted to collecting the brilliant or amusing ones and critiquing them) and the community (which was small - they had virtually no marketting money) was stronger for it.

Newbies were frequently directed to a specific movie if they were having trouble playing a certain kind of game. And contests were held to, say, finish the single player game with no losses and no saving or pausing (which was verified by the game being recorded online).

Anyway, I think Shogun really missed the boat on this... I find myself wanting to review some of my victories vs the computer and I just don't have that ability (especially the one where I won the battle by starting with a cavalry charge; kills: 1360, deaths: 72).

Oh, and before someone tells me that the filesize would be too large... the largest filesize for a movie I saw in MythII was around 200k but most hovered around 50k. The movies don't actually record the action, they record the keystrokes and clicks so they can play back the action (that's why you couldn't rewind the movies but could fast forward them).

The Crawling Chaos

[barocca]

i'm sure some of the more technical minded gentlemen around here will think of other problems,

but one springs instantly to mind,

the file would have to record unit position co-ordinates on a second by second basis, unit facing, and in mellee individual mens positions, actions, deaths, arrow flights,
while smoke etc. could be discarded, you would still have up to 15,360 men for the file to keep track of every second...
(8 players x 16 units x 120 men/per unit)

thats an awful lot of data!


1 possible shortcut,

unit data is recorded as a whole unit until an event occurs (charge, mellee, missile impact etc.) only then does it switch to individual men, and capable of switching back to unit as a whole once the situation stabalises (unit stops moving/fighting)

but still a lot of data!


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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[MagyarKhans Cham]

i invented a method which reduces the amount of data bigtime, without slowing the game. if u do a search in the forums u will perhaps find some about it.

sadly this is discussed and not picked up by the developers. a wargame without a recorder is like a mongol without an enemy.

[ReturnOfTheJordi]

Recording just the keystrokes & start positions would surely produce a different result every time wouldn't it? I believe that battles happen on a man to man basis and chance plays a part in every single one so the outcomes would never replicate. A full video record is surely the only solution and the file size would be massive.
Desirable but probably very impractical?

[BakaGaijin]

Well, recording enough data to accurately reproduce each battle and allow the viewer to scroll to any viewpoint would be really hard. Imagine generating one of Shogun's huge battle logfiles multiple times every second. Not practical.

It might, however, be slightly more practical to devise a method of recording the players exact view at a greatly reduced resolution to Divx AVI format. I'm not sure how much data a Divx-compressed AVI needs for each minute, but most full-length movies are around 500 megs at high-res. Most Shogun games are much shorter, in the range of 5-20 minutes. Recorded at around 320x240 res, that would result in a large, but relatively reasonable file, perhaps in the range of 6MB at the upper end. If recording were an option and not permanent, this could be a solution.

With most RTS games, it would be far more practical to continuously record individual unit stats and produce a proprietary recording file, but I think that, for Shogun's much large armies (even low-koku games can get armies sized into the mid-hundreds), AVI recording of the video output would be much more practical. The main issue with THAT is, of course, the massive performance hit the player's machine would take from encoding an AVI while playing.

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Disappear into the Darkness!!

[Nyarlathotep]

Actually the recordings in Myth/Myth2 recorded keystrokes and the results of any toss-up action. So if you clicked to attack army A: it would record the click and any numbers that were generated during the fight (if a soldier has a 50% chance of killing another it will record the result - it won't actually randomly determine it again at playback).

Facing and any other things don't matter - only the keystrokes and the randomly generated numbers that get plugged in again at playback.

The Crawling Chaos

[barocca]

ah,
if want to 'watch' what is happening the location and facing of every man needs to be recorded. else how will it know where to put the men for playback?

On the old server Lag was so bad at times that minutes might pass between keystrokes
- you had given your units their orders, and had to wait for them to arrive in the 'combat zone' etc.

only recording keystrokes and generated numbers wouldn't allow you to playback anything...

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[Nyarlathotep]

Um, it records their starting positions and then, from there, all it takes to know where they'll end up is the keystrokes (including mouse clicks) and the numbers that were generated when a < 100% event happens.

Don't tell me it doesn't work: Myth/Myth2 (at least) did it. Those games also have facing and positions and sometimes the units attack things without you having to click.

Stop arguing over if it's possible - I know it's possible. Argue over if it would have been a good feature or not. Jeez.

[SlackerXS]

What about recording of mini maps from both sides...plus some indication of what type of armies on mini map w/ dif color dots or something....

I think it'll help me decide the timing of setting up flanking and allowing me to count the proper time to charge in....