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Thread: GREATLY DISAPPOINTING NEWS!!! BATTLE RECORDER is ....@@@

  1. #1

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    MAD WAR COMPOSER... here goes

    Well, when I replayed the game, it started out as normal for the first 6 minutes.

    6 minutes had passed and the first skirmish combat began, and suddenly 3 group of my ally's units were routed off by approaching enemy's cav. I recalled that my ally did win with his cavalary and took 1 group of the opponent's foot-soliders or two. I was beginning to think I am a paranoid.


    Later on, my ally was attacked by the enemy, which the historical fact is that my ally progressed steadily and had his cav moved to the flank of the enemy. I kept saying WTH is wrong with me? As I think the recorder can't be wrong.


    Then when I came to fighting my enemy's units, woowoow... 3 groups of my units were routed and eventually ran to the edge of the map. Historically, I had conquered my enemy after my ally had conquered his. Now I suspect there's a problem with the recorder.
    Coz..

    Isn't this too Weird?
    The replay shows that there is a stalemate in the battle at my side and my partner was defeated severely at his side.


    Now I suspect that the battle recorder may contain serious BUGS. However, the possible altrenative is that some player is using cheats for the game, as I haven't found problem in two games, 1 custom and 1 with another player 1v1. Hmm...., what do you think?
    Making all sense makes no sense. Making no sense makes no sense.

  2. #2

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    The most likely cause is that your troopstats file for online play is different to what is used for offline. They must be exactly the same for the replay to work. I'm not entirely sure where all the different stats come from in the latest patch. Target can probably shed some more light on that.

    Second most likely cause is that the reorder is faulty, or hasn't been kept up to date as the game's been patched.

    It's unlikely that your opponent was cheating. It isn't really possible to cheat in Shogun in such a way that affects how the battle plays out, as the battle is played out simultaneously on both players' machines, and only the order's given are sent accross the network.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Senior Member Krasturak's Avatar
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    Perhaps the recorder keeps only a record of the orders given, and not the random results within the battles.

    This could lead to such strange different outcomes.

    Duunno.

  4. #4
    the goldfish Senior Member tootee's Avatar
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    so far the battle recorder is working fine for me..
    tootee the goldfish,
    loyal roach of Clan S.G.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Senior Member Vanya's Avatar
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    GAH! I saw the news on the main page here about this! Cool!

    But... I am confused... I couldn't follow exactly what it is they are trying to say... is there a 'shogun.exe' in a C:\...\Target' folder?!? WTF!?! Please explain this more clearly...

    Thanks


    [Sips sake, eats popcorn]

  6. #6
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    you should be a pc wiz...and don't know this?

    Any shortcut to Shogun links to shogun.exe
    You can see this in the field "Target" in your shortcut properties.

    Tera

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  7. #7

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    My shortcut was already called: "C:\Games\Shogun - Total War\ShogunM.exe" -Now what is it exactly I have to write? And same when I want to see the "movie" ?

    Thanks...

    and tera, plz. dun get mad

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  8. #8
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    Im not mad to noone
    Then just add EP for installing recorder. Your last battle will be saved in /DumpLog

    Create a copy of the shortcut and instead of EP write mEP
    Run it, and you should see the recording.

    Ter

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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally posted by Terazawa Tokugawa:
    Im not mad at noone Just jokin
    Then just add EP for installing recorder. Your last battle will be saved in /DumpLog

    Create a copy of the shortcut and instead of EP write mEP
    Run it, and you should see the recording.

    Ter

    [/QUOTE]



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  10. #10

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    ohh... Thanks.. I figured I had to add EP/mEP after these: " Now it is worjing finr!!!

    I have just tested it, me charged w. lots of h cav. enemy had like 5 nd and 4 archers.

    one archer were gen. and when my cav attacked only the gen army counter attacked!

    Now I thought that head on general attacks was fixed!
    Common Unreflected Drinking Only Smartens

  11. #11
    Member Member Gothmog's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Krasturak:
    Perhaps the recorder keeps only a record of the orders given, and not the random results within the battles.

    This could lead to such strange different outcomes.

    Duunno.
    [/QUOTE]

    Sorry to burst you guys' bubble, but battle recorder can be a liar liar.

    I replayed a recent 1 hour long, 22 MB big battle record, guess what?

    At first, it was fine. The story unfold the way it was before.

    Things began to look goofy once the enemy's reinforcement arrived.

    *I found my units and AI's units standing back to back, doing nothing.

    *I found my BN charging half way across the map, toward a unit of muskets, got blown down to one man by the 3 units of Hojo muskets nearby. While in fact, this unit was attacking a lone musket unit and slaughtered them, and survived the battle with 11 men left.

    *I didn't get to see my last desperate attemp to envolop and defeat a large group of muskets, YS and No-dachi. This time, there was NO LARGE GROUP of muskets, YS and No-dachi. They were scattering all over.

    *I began to see the reinforcement that I never got.

    *I found several intact enemy units remaining when the battle record was over.
    *****************************************
    And this is campaign battle, thus no chance for inconsistant troopstats file.

    *****************************
    I tend to think Krasturak's speculation is right. Basically the recorder only record the orders that you gave.

    And this will give you very very inconsistent result.

    First, as General described, in multiplayer, when the troop quality of both sides are very close thus the casulty is high and both sides have a chance to win, the randomness might alter the result of the entire battle.

    Secondly, in my case, the randomness of reinforcement might cause the troops to appear at diffrent locations, thus COMPLETELY screw up the battle result.

    *******************
    All in all, battle recorder is a nice toy, but that's where the excitement ends. Don't count on it to tell the truth.

    [This message has been edited by Gothmog (edited 01-09-2002).]
    Pain is weakness leaving the body.

  12. #12
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    Ow Feck.
    Target can you confirm this please?


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  13. #13

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    Everytime, it offers a different end story to me, going against the outcome of the war. Every time I won online, I lost in the replay, and everytime I lost miserably, I won big.
    Now I'm getting used to this recorder as it's just more interesting to watch the comeback of a fight.

    Anyway, some players told me they were not experiencing problems so far with their MI version, and I am using the WE.
    Making all sense makes no sense. Making no sense makes no sense.

  14. #14
    Member Member Gothmog's Avatar
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    I am using WE as well, but I highly doubt that the MI will be any diffrent.

    Because if so, then the battle record of MI will be SIGNICANTLY larger, to a point that one single combat might take well over hundreds of MB. To record the precise order that the players gave to each unit is hard enough; to precisely record each individual soldier's movement will be near impossible.
    *************************

    As I said before, it really depend on how greatly the randomness can alter the result.

    For instance, if you envelop a unit of musket from three different angles with 3 HC, you bet that everytime the muskets will be decimated.

    On the other hand, suppose you charge the opponent's H2 YS head on with your own H2 YS on level ground. Then you bet that half of the time, you win; another half of the time, he wins.



    [This message has been edited by Gothmog (edited 01-09-2002).]
    Pain is weakness leaving the body.

  15. #15
    Member Member LETRIC's Avatar
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    I can't change the target command. I have WE and when I add ER to the end of the command a message pops up saying its not valid. What do I do? I'm so stoopid, maybe i've got it all wrong.

  16. #16
    Member Member LETRIC's Avatar
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    ALso after downloading patch I have version 1.02 showing when I begin, but see no new maps after I downloaded new map pack V 1.16 Y not? I see no discernable differences>

  17. #17

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    Ok it sounds like the battle recorder doesn't work with reinforcements, which is a pity, but understandable as I believe it was written to help debug multiplayer.

    Krasturak, you're right that the recorder only keeps a record of orders issued, but wrong about random numbers causing it to go astray. Computers don't generate truly random numbers, they just produce sequences of numbers that look random, but if you start from the same point in the sequence, you always get the same sequence of random numbers. The recorder stores the start of the random number sequence used for the battle, and can thus reproduce it exactly. However, if any little thing is different (such as the program version, or troopstats file) then the course of events will diverge. Orders will continue to be given, but will no longer make sense.

    General. Try recording a single player custom battle, and see if that works. If it does, then I'm pretty sure the problem is having different troopstats for single player and online.

    Sorry about the problems, but please understand that this was written as an internal debugging tool, and was not intended to be used by the general public.

  18. #18
    Member Member Gothmog's Avatar
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    Hi, longjohn2:

    Just curious. Do you happen to work for CA or EA?

    Your explaination sounds so professionl, informative and confident.
    Pain is weakness leaving the body.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally posted by Gothmog:
    Hi, longjohn2:

    Just curious. Do you happen to work for CA or EA?

    Your explaination sounds so professionl, informative and confident.
    [/QUOTE]

    He does.

    Thanks for the explanation...
    I will try it myself out and see if all works smoothly...we all here mainly want it for MP...



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  20. #20

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    Yes I'm a programmer at CA.
    I wrote most of the soldier and unit behaviour stuff, and the battle a.i.

  21. #21

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    thx Long John my Great Khan, Khan of Khans and "Ocean Ruler" is delighted to see u around. He just want to encourage u to make a fullworthy recorder for tw2. ur close to it and with some extra effort my 2nd main man Target has something to hype around.
    quote:I gallop messages around, dont track me I can bring war as well

  22. #22

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    I'm not sure if this makes my online and offline stats different, but probably sure it is the same.
    I installed the game, and then I download the latest version. I installed the map pack and started playing. I didn't alter anything in the troopstats.
    So I think the troopstats online and offline is the same. I can even see 48 mongols cav offline in a custom. I have 1 normal custom game replay and 2 normal online game replay, though 1 of them seems to be just similar. I suspect that, though may turn out to be ridiculous, factors about this problem include lag, several mistranslated code in the record (such as that troops rally by different factor, troops honor is boosted from the start, honor gained in the game is not recorded, or whatever it may be) and also the cause with increasing and decreasing the flow of time from time to time.

    long john, as you are a programmer, can you tell us if cheating is possible in MP, such as morale cheat and koku cheat and forseeing weather/enemy's troops or deployment/other miscellaneous?
    Making all sense makes no sense. Making no sense makes no sense.

  23. #23

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    I recorded a custom battle of 1 monk vs 1 monk on a flat test map, and the playback is exactly the same as the original battle. So, it does work since the precise sequence of random events is recreated as longjohn2 pointed out. For online play, I wonder if the recording has to be made by the host machine for proper playback because the joiners are not being given the host's random seed number. I would imagine that all the battle calculations are being done on the host. I know Kraellin has a recording of a 2v2 online battle where he was not the host. Did that battle playback ok Krae?

    MizuYuuki ~~~
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    Beta 8 + Beta 8.1 patch + New Maps + Sound add-on + Castles 2

  24. #24
    the goldfish Senior Member tootee's Avatar
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    I replay a few games of which I was not host, and they, all 1v1, looked okay. Using MI. Just curious, is the inconsistency appearing only in WE recorder?



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  25. #25
    Senior Member Senior Member Kraellin's Avatar
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    i have no idea what others are doing to get those screwy results, but mine are working perfectly. yes, yuuki, that game on tosa's new map played back perfectly...all 53 minute's worth. and longjohn2, it has nothing to do with reinforcements that i can tell. that recording i just mentioned was using reinforcements, so i dont think it's that.

    i suspect what may be going on is that a few folks are setting things up incorrectly, or like longjohn suggests, have altered stats someewhere. or perhaps it's even a WE as opposed to MI thing. i'm running WE, ver 1.02 and it works just fine for me. i have 3 desktop icons set up; one for normal play, one for record play, and one for playback. they all 3 work fine. or maybe it has to do with localised versions...dunno, but mine is working flawlessly. i also have camera limit turned off, playing with 60 men, fatigue on, morale on and have had it work in every custom and online game i've played so far.

    ok, now here's an interesting something i just noticed. the checksum file is growing. after recording my last game, i checked the checksum file and it was around 9 megs. after playing back a part of it once, and then the full file, the checksum files is now 34.5 megs! this could get ugly. apparently, every recording and every playback doesnt just overwrite that file, it appends it! but, since longjohn informs us we dont need it for playbacks and since a new one will be made if we wipe the current one, this shldnt be a problem...unless you forget to wipe this periodically. gonna have to watch this one. thus, some of you may also be getting corrupted recordings if you dont have enough disk space to handle the growing file.

    frankly, i love this thing. i would also request that this be included as a normal feature in future games. it would also be nice to have a feature within it to record online text speech and be able to turn this on or off in the playback. but this thing is very nice. i can look at all player positions, move around anywhere on the map, watch what i did wrong and what i did right and moreover, what everyone else did right or wrong...watch the birdie, folks...or maybe it shld be, 'smile, you're on shogun camera!' the only complaint i have so far is that i cant alter the outcome of the battle, and that, in particular, i cant alter the recording on other folk's computers ;)

    K.


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  26. #26
    Senior Member Senior Member Erado San's Avatar
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    Krae, you may have hit the nail there.

    If someone hosts a battle with fatigue and morale on, and one of the people joining plays it back afterwards with fatigue and morale off, the outcome would be very different if the playback does all the calculations again.
    A voice from the past is heard in the lands...

  27. #27
    Senior Member Senior Member Kraellin's Avatar
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    erado,

    makes sense to me. it might even be having limited camera on or off. this would be easy to verify. join a host game where the settings are different from yours. in that game you would record using the host's settings and in playback the game would most likely use your current settings.

    someone of you guys that are having problems could try this, play on a host machine that uses different game settings than yours, play the recording back once and see if it recorded correctly, and if not, then change your game settings to match what the host had and try it again. if it now works then that's prolly what's going on.

    that could be it, erado, but then folks shld be able to play a custom game and play it back with no alterations, since all yer using is your own settings. if, like longjohn2 said, it's dependent also on no modded stats, then the only thing that would make it screw up in custom games or historical or campaign would be altered stat files.

    so, if it is modded stats that are causing alterations, this could also be verified by someone that's having difficulty.

    K.


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  28. #28
    member of ELITE-FORCE Member BomilkarDate's Avatar
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    Letric

    Try this (if you get an error trying to change the shortcut)

    Now there is:
    "C: program files/.../...shogun.exe"
    You have to change it to
    "C: program files/.../...shogunM.exe" ER
    or
    "C: program files/.../...shogunM.exe" mEP
    (It's shogunW.exe if you are using the warlord edition.)
    the ER or mEP is behind the "
    I had the same error I think



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  29. #29

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    Nice Theory Erado San. In theory all the settings needed to recreate the battle should be stored, but if one of them was not recorded it probably wouldn't show up in the use made of it at CA.

    General, if you're still having problems, then I don't know what else it can be. Maybe Erado San's idea is correct.

    As far as cheating goes, it isn't possible to cheat in any way that affects the outcome of the game, as the game is calculated simultaniously on all players' computers. You could theoretically modify your own copy of the program to show things that should be hidden, You could also modify it to allow you to spend more koku at the start, but this'd show up in the log file. However, modifying your program in this way would be a lot of effort, and I'd be really surprised if anyone has. It also wouldn't affect the battle recorder as this records what happened on your own machine.

  30. #30

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    longjohn2,

    Well that's quite interesting that all machines in a game are making the same battle calculations. That would account for the out-of-sync and subsequent drop of any machine that calculated a result different from the host. So, it would seem that only commands and checksums have to go back and forth over the network connection and not the status of every man which would greatly increase the network traffic.

    MizuYuuki ~~~
    Clan Takiyama ~~~

    _________Designed to match Original STW gameplay.


    Beta 8 + Beta 8.1 patch + New Maps + Sound add-on + Castles 2

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