Replay a turn

[Highwayman]

Good day. I am new to the game, I had an old version in 2003 or 2004, I recall I could rewatch turns and see my units get obliterated more than once. I am  following the campaign tutorial and I watched one of my t34 blow up. I have been searching for an hour or so to see if there was some way I could replay the turn and see what happened.  Any insight greatly appreciated.

[mjkerner]

You have to be playing in WEGO in order to replay the turn. If you are playing in Real Time, you are out of luck I'm afraid.

Edited November 29, 2020 by mjkerner

[Highwayman]

Thanks so much.

 

[Highwayman]

 

13 minutes ago, mjkerner said:

You have to be playing in WEGO in order to replay the turn. If you are playing in Real Time, you are out of luck I'm afraid.

Sorry, I guess I was playing wego. So how do you complete this function?

[Warts 'n' all]

Use the four small buttons above the red start button. You can go forwards or back as many times as you want, or jump in five second increments.

[MikeyD]

If you've ended the turn and gone to the next orders phase you can't go back to the previous turn. If you saved the scenario before the previous turn and try replaying the savegame events might not transpire the same way on the second runthrough.

[mjkerner]

To add to what Mikey D said, if you saved the turn but moved on to a new turn(s), you can rewatch the saved one(s) by closing out the scenario/battle you are playing and then go into Saved Games, select the turn you want to watch, and it will load and you can watch/re-watch to your heart’s content.

[Highwayman]

Thanks everybody for the effort to reply and providing insight. I'm really getting back into the groove. I recall the game back in 2003  and lost it when my comp overheated and I had lost the hard copy.  

 

[markshot]

I never understood why we cannot get a full scenario movie?  We can get minute by minute file.  Is it so hard to chain them together?

Thanks.

[Chibot Mk IX]

If you are in single player WEGO mode, you can watch pervious turn's replay. But remember after you hit done, the next turn will begin, and pervious turn's replay will lost.

 

However there is a trick to save the replay.  Hit save when it is in process of the replay. and when you load the file it will begin with a replay 

[A Canadian Cat]

7 hours ago, markshot said:

I never understood why we cannot get a full scenario movie?  We can get minute by minute file.  Is it so hard to chain them together?

Not sure. The "easy" way would be to allow you to put all the files in one place and have the game load them one at a time and play them. Even that exposes the program issues like: what happens if a file is missing? what about name changes? what about inconsistent numbering? All those issues take effort to program around. What about memory usage? This scenario would easily be the most memory intensive running of CM ever. In our normal usage how many turns do we load a turn in a single session? I think my record is 6 but usually its 1 or 2. A small memory issue will cause no one problems and never be hit or detected. Load 100 turns one after another in a single session of CM. I wonder if the memory handling is close enough to perfect for that.

From the user experience point of view that "easy" method would suck. Would you like to wait for the load times every minute? What if you want to go back a minute or two - more waiting for loading. Oh and you get to enter your password again and again too. Will that be fun?

Anything you, rightly, demand to mitigate those usability issues makes this non easy.

BFC have looked at the effort and decided the effort would benefit the game more if it were used on other features / content.

PS I would also very much enjoy this feature too and have asked / advocated for it in the past. Just trying to explain how much more to this there actually is.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

There's plenty of video editing software out there.

[Blazing 88's]

8 hours ago, markshot said:

I never understood why we cannot get a full scenario movie?  We can get minute by minute file.  Is it so hard to chain them together?

Thanks.

I would wishfully much rather have the BFC R&D department focus on how the heck they may be able to get CM North Africa into my hands...

[Glubokii Boy]

14 minutes ago, Blazing 88's said:

I would wishfully much rather have the BFC R&D department focus on how the heck they may be able to get CM North Africa into my hands...

Ship you a copy of CMAK ...

 

 

Sorry ! 

I also would like such a game (CM2...or 3)

 

[Blazing 88's]

1 minute ago, RepsolCBR said:

Ship you a copy of CMAK ...

 

 

Sorry ! 

I also would like such a game (CM2...or 3)

 

I do still have CMAK installed. Thanks though!

[markshot]

Ian,

I think the performance issues you site are a matter of implementation and not physical laws of the universe.

Suppose on Turn #1 no side receives any orders and the sides are not in contact.

Suppose on Turn #2 no side receives any orders and the sides are not in contact.

What can we say about the above example?  The resources needed to go from Turn #1 to Turn #2 are identical.

Thus, the loading for Turn #2 could be trivial, but it is not.

Why?  Because we assume it is not the same game (map and units with a small amount variation).  Most of the loading is instantiating the simulated objects, not the action.

But if we assume when creating a full game replay feature that the saved turn files are all the same game, then the objects from movie to the next should be 95% identical.

Thus, we only need to load those objects which are not already loaded.  So, beginning the replay will take like a scenario loading amount of time, but stepping between movie frame files should be relatively quick.  Effectively, you are caching resources rather than discarding them.  It is all a matter of correct implementation which is not that hard.

As for sequence and presence of turn files, you are the program author and have total control.  So, the only way this stuff can get corrupted is by a malicious user or crash.  If the next turn is missing, then it is this simple:  "CM ERROR:  The full game move is corrupted and cannot be played."

I know you understand all this, being a programmer yourself.

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, markshot said:

I know you understand all this, being a programmer yourself.

Absolutely. But what you just described is a lot of work. All of these requests take time and the one thing I can say for sure is nothing is as easy as anyone outside thinks it is. Heck nothing is as easy as anyone inside thinks it is either

That was the point I was trying to make.

Edited December 10, 2020 by IanL