Yet Another Proposal For Game Replays

[Dale Larson]

I apologize if this idea was already presented. If it has, then I guess great minds think alike.

CM *really* needs a painless way to watch a complete battle replay.

It seems pretty clear that when the 60 second battle results arrives by EMail for replay everything that is needed to reconstitute unit states along with the events of the next 60 seconds are in the self contained PBEM file. If this is taken as true then a replay feature could be added like so:

-- Each time a replay is opened the same information that is sent with PBEM EMail should automatically be appended to a separate replay file. I’ll call this appended unit of playback a chapter. If the replay file doesn't exist, create it. If this particular turn is already in the file, this append step isn't done.

-- When CM loads a replay file (identified by its unique file header) the program enters playback mode. When the play button is pressed, CM would replay all replay chapters from start to finish. The back and forward would operate the same as now. Two more buttons would be needed to move backwards and forwards through chapters much like the chapter button on a DVD player.

Of course the disadvantage of this approach for some people is that the replay would only be observed from one side of the battle. For me that would be just fine. If I want to see what the other guy saw I could get his file. Perhaps a tool could be developed to interleave the two files so the views could be alternated on each chapter playback.

On the face of it this approach doesn't appear to use any features that aren’t already built into CM. It just needs some work to glue it together.

Thanks for reading…

Dale Larson

[tss]

Dale Larson wrote:

CM *really* needs a painless way to watch a complete battle replay.

Yup. Unfortunately the developers have said it many times that it is pretty difficult to do as the whole replay code is written from 60 second perspective.

Full-battle replays are on The List that contains all the nifty stuff that they will some day add.

- Tommi