[Feature Request] Scenario Replay

[PeterH]

First of all I'm very sorry if this is the wrong place to put this. As Red Thunder is the first of the new generation of games I thought this would be most appropriate home even though this request should be considered for older CM titles as well.

It seems to me that Combat Mission is getting some more attention over on youtube, twitch and other video sites. Obviously this is a great thing and video AARs can be awesome, however right now you have very limited choices for presenting a video of a battle. You can either run the whole thing in real time issuing orders on the go, use the turn based system and show orders as well as the battle videos, or lastly (and in my opinion by far the best looking) purely show the turn result videos. This means you have to play through the entire battle, recording only the replays. This process takes a very, very long time and coupled with editing can be rather painful. On top of that the constant breaks in combat serve to ruin the viewers immersion in the conflict.

The question is this then:

Would it be possible in Combat Mission to get a prompt at the end of a scenario asking if the full scenario replay should be saved or not. This would just be a combination of all of the battle turns laid out seamlessly one after another, with the simple ability of being able to pause, rewind etc like you can in game. This means video creators like myself have the ability to fight a battle with our minds completely in the game, then save a replay of that battle to then use in a video which we can film and add things to to our hearts content much more easily than we can presently. It also means the videos will be a little more interesting and flow nicer as a battle plays out with no constant breaks.

I actually think this feature may be rather popular with non-video creators as well, some folk (correct me if I'm wrong) may really enjoy being able to seamlessly watch their recent amazing victory/defeat that had been played out over three months in a glorious and bloody hour or less.

I realise that this may be something that needs to be added in to an early design paper for a new game instead of something that can just be tacked on to an existing title, but I would ask you to consider this for future releases if that is the case.

Thanks for your time.

Peter

[Holman]

People have been asking for this for years. There must be something in the code that makes it more complicated than it seems, or we would have had it long ago.

[PeterH]

Ah, sorry for wasting time then I should have guessed it had been brought up before. Maybe with the increasing media attention CM is getting it will shoot up the priority list.

[Holman]

Oh, not a waste of time. It's a pretty natural question to ask when you consider how the game plays.

[Tarquelne]

At some point BFC will want to shed some of its CM fanbase*. They'll ask us to vote for one of scenario replay, extra TCP/IP features including full replay for both WEGO and RT, and co-op. Then they'll sit back and watch the bloodletting.

*Older machines, Peng-fatigue, and Soylent Green stock.

[sburke]

Ah, sorry for wasting time then I should have guessed it had been brought up before. Maybe with the increasing media attention CM is getting it will shoot up the priority list.

You can post all the turns of a game online. Actually did that for the Hamel Vallee AAR. Only problem is they are tied to the version you saved them under and have a limited shelf life. The upside is you see all the action and are not tied to a camera POV.

[Holman]

I'm curious. Suppose, in theory, a complete-game continuous re-player were developed. Would the file storing a whole game be as large (or nearly as large) as all of the turn files added together?

I've seen single turn files grow as large as 20 or 30 MB each. How large would a complete 120-turn game save be?

[Lt Belenko]

I'm curious. Suppose, in theory, a complete-game continuous re-player were developed. Would the file storing a whole game be as large (or nearly as large) as all of the turn files added together?

I've seen single turn files grow as large as 20 or 30 MB each. How large would a complete 120-turn game save be?

Just add another terra drive.

[PeterH]

Hence the logic behind the "do you want to save" prompt!

Posting the turns works, yet is not the ease of access and immersing experience like creating a video from a full replay.

[womble]

I've always thought that it would be best to have the game regenerate the game from a record of orders issued and (random/arbitrary) values assigned. Much less to store than a record of the entire 3D environment, and we know it can calculate faster than it replays because RealTime works (and it wouldn't be needing to do some of the calculations, since their results have been pregenerated - AI reaction assesments and such). So if you had it generate the next minute while it was playing the first part of the current minute, you'd only have to hold 2 minutes' record at maximum; one on disc and being played off-disc into memory. Hopping back past the turn break probably couldn't be seamless, and you'd need better FFWD and RWD controls, and a slo-mo would be nice...

[mjkerner]

I've always thought that it would be best to have the game regenerate the game from a record of orders issued and (random/arbitrary) values assigned. Much less to store than a record of the entire 3D environment, and we know it can calculate faster than it replays because RealTime works (and it wouldn't be needing to do some of the calculations, since their results have been pregenerated - AI reaction assesments and such). So if you had it generate the next minute while it was playing the first part of the current minute, you'd only have to hold 2 minutes' record at maximum; one on disc and being played off-disc into memory. Hopping back past the turn break probably couldn't be seamless, and you'd need better FFWD and RWD controls, and a slo-mo would be nice...

That's basically how IL2 Sturmovik did it. I hope BFC can do the same at some point. Don't have any idea if the CM engine is potentially capable of doing that, though.