Chad Harrison Posted February 9, 2002 Share Posted February 9, 2002 I know that the idea was high on the list, and you all said that it might or might not be in. Any final word yet? Or has anyone else heard whether or not it will be in? Thanks in advance! Chad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted February 9, 2002 Share Posted February 9, 2002 No final word yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aka_tom_w Posted February 9, 2002 Share Posted February 9, 2002 the more I read about this one the more I wonder about it... what are the expecations of the those folks who are looking for a FULL battle movie? Do you expect you will be able to look at the battle in a full length move from ANY camera angle and move that camera around the battle field during the full length of the battle?? If so that seems to me to be VERY technically daunting! This may not be relevent but those here dealing with digital video editing will know that 5 minutes of the full frame DVD digital video takes up 1 Gigabyte of disk space :eek: thats ONLY 5 minutes. What I'm suggesting is that this stored file of the entire length of the battle will likely require a GREAT deal of disk space. Technically speaking I suspect that one minute movie that is SO miraculous seems to reside in RAM memory now (I could be wrong about this but I don't see the file being written to the disk (other that the autosave file) anywhere. ON The OTHER hand... Maybe, given that PBEM file sizes are not that large max file size there is only 1-2 megs that my concern about disk space may be totally irrelevant. But still if you want to see a 30 minute movie and the average file size is 1.5 megs (PBEM file says) the resulting full battle movie file should be about 45 megs. This sort of makes sense as other games (for instance Myth II) can record the whole battle in 3D from any angle and the file size there is usually less than 100 megs depending on the length of the battle, so since other 3D RTS games are recording this information it makes sense that is would be technically feasible for CMBB (MAYBE?) :confused: BUT it would be TOTALLY cool! your comments ? -tom w Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teggy Posted February 9, 2002 Share Posted February 9, 2002 I don't know anything about the guts of the game, but the movie is not video, persay, and filesize relating to video shouldn't apply. What it seems to be is a representation of data. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to view it in 3D. If I was to guess, as a minute plays out, the program records the x,y (and z?) coordinates of every unit as they move, and records changes in facing, angle, etc. Of course, if moving in a straight line, you only need to record the start and stop point along with the distance traveled. Also noted would have to be timing of shots, hits, and a great number of other things. Placed in a file, the program could then recreate the battle over and over again. What would be needed to play the whole battle would be to save the data from each turn. I don't know how much space 1 turn takes up. Of course, this all comes out of my a@# and could be completely wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mud Posted February 9, 2002 Share Posted February 9, 2002 Sure. You'd need - - the start state -- full information on where everything is, their status, et al. - the rules (game-world physics, et al) - the random number source state (a PRNG produces completely reproducible results if full status is saved. Could theoretically be platform-dependent depending on what they used. *shrug*) - the textures - the sound files - the orders That should be everything needed to regenerate the 3D views, I'd suspect. Of course, the texture and sound requirements mean that you probably won't be sending off fully navigable (player-controlled 3D camera transformations allowed) stand-alone videos to people who DON'T own CM, unless nobody minds the huge bandwith requirements... and even a recipient who owned CM wouldn't see the exact same video you do unless the .BMPs are identical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russellmz Posted February 9, 2002 Share Posted February 9, 2002 kman's utility to play pbem movies one after another is cool. and each pbem file isn't very big. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuerte Posted February 10, 2002 Share Posted February 10, 2002 Originally posted by russellmz: kman's utility to play pbem movies one after another is cool. and each pbem file isn't very big.Right. But what we ultimately would want is the ability to view the full movie from CM after the game has ended, and that we have full view of everything, so that we see what the enemy does as well, without having to change passwords. Implementing this requires that all PBEM turns are saved on hard disk, of course. I think that this thing would not be too hard to implement. But what about the suggestion for faster PBEM, so that we would have a replay on each turn? Has this been confirmed yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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