Game Movie/Replay Feature

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

The following info is for TacOps Newbies.

The TacOps game movie/replay feature is not adequately explained in the user guide so a detailed review follows.

The game replay feature automatically links and displays a series of saved game files. The feature is controlled with an on-screen control panel containing play, pause, and skip buttons similar to a CD player. This feature is intended mainly for viewing a completed game. It is not intended for replaying turns merely to refresh the player's memory of recent game events. The latter usage is possible but it is intentionally inconvenient.

If any force color is protected by a password, the replay feature will not work unless the viewer knows the password for that force color.

In order for the automatic linking to work correctly, the saved game files must follow the following naming rules. The user does not normally have to worry about this because the program automatically and silently names and saves the files with the correct names without prompting the user.

(1) Each filename must begin with a twelve character sequence that consists of "AutoSave" followed by four numeric characters (0 through 9) with padding zeros if needed to produce a four digit number. Examples: "AutoSave0000", "AutoSave0001", "AutoSave0100", "AutoSave9999", etc.

(2) Each filename must end with an extension of ".tac".

(3) It does not matter what if any characters appear in the filename between the first twelve characters and the ".tac" extension.

(4) There can not be a numerical gap between consecutive files that is larger than five. If a gap greater than five is encountered then the replay will stop at the gap.

Examples:

OK -> AutoSave0002.tac, AutoSave0007.tac, AutoSave0010.tac, etc.

NOT OK -> AutoSave0002.tac, AutoSave0008.tac

Note that it is possible for a folder to contain several auto save files that begin with the same twelve characters. The replay feature will display the first file that it finds that begins with the twelve characters that the program is looking for.

Example: A folder contains the following files.

AutoSave0005 021115_1835.tac

AutoSave0005 021115_1840.tac

AutoSave0005 021115_1843.tac

The program will display the file named AutoSave0005 021115_1835.tac and skip the other two.