Bone, please! Are the full-game movie replays in CMBB yet?

[Dschugaschwili]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

My apologies if this has been suggested before, but would it be possible to just 'stitch' the movie files together? IOW, create a feature that would allow you to merge all of the movie files into one larger file (no more HD space than just saving all of the movie files one by one).

You'd still have to click on the 'Done' button at the end of each turn to load the movie file for the next turn, but at least you wouldn't have to shell out back to the intro screen and load the next file.

Anyway, just a suggestion. I have only a very general knowledge of how stuff like this is coded, but my guess is that this would require substanitally less recoding to implement than true full movie playback.

Cheers,

YD

As I said before in this thread, to me the main problem seems to be the overtime at the end of the turns. This would obviously "pause" the movie every minute until all projectiles have disappeared, making the movie not really movie-like. And getting rid of this limitation would require lots of coding.

Dschugaschwili

[ThomasZ]

Not sure if I'm in the majority on this one but "I" for one would rather the movie with a pause overy min then no movie at all.

I get some of my greatest joys out of looking at battles after they are done, against AI or Humans..would make AAR SO easy.

Hope they get this in but I've heard rumor it's a "no"

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Dschugaschwili:

As I said before in this thread, to me the main problem seems to be the overtime at the end of the turns. This would obviously "pause" the movie every minute until all projectiles have disappeared, making the movie not really movie-like. And getting rid of this limitation would require lots of coding.

Dschugaschwili

You misunderstood my idea. All I am suggesting is that CM allow you to view multiple movie files in sequence without shelling out back to the intro screen to load each one.

IOW, the 'extra' time at the end of each turn would still be there. You would watch the movie for one turn, including the 'extra' time at the end to resolve shells in flight, and then you would click the 'DONE' button, just as you do now. The difference is that CM would then jump immediately to the next movie, rather than to the orders stage or back to the intro screen to generate a return PBEM file.

Is it full movie playback? No, certainly not. Is it an added convenience when you want to review the movie files of a whole battle, either to reacquaint yourself with what has happened so far, or if you are watching someone else's game for entertainment/educational purposes?? Most certainly.

I could go on about how this feature could be refined. For example, it would be cool if while viewing the "Combined Movie File" you could, for example, switch FOW settings on the fly so you could see all units from both sides, or just from the perspective of what one player could see. This might be trickier to do, though - I'm not sure how the FOW setting and the movie file generation interact. It appears that all of the information about every unit is contained in every file, because you can pick up a game from any PBEM file without the program needing to refer to previous files, so this might be possible.

The point is, all of this uses features and functions that are already in the game. It doesn't require a workaround of the "extra time" problem, it just uses the current way that CM plays turn movie files, but organizes it a bit more conveniently.

Maybe it would be harder to implement than I think, though. I think this would be a nice little added feature, and it might mollify those who are really clamoring for full movie playback a bit until there's an engine rewrite, but I wouldn't want to lose a game feature like covered arcs or something for it.

Cheers,

YD

[Thraka]

Originally posted by Grisha:

dragoon,

Further up the thread, Kwazydog has already responded on behalf of BFC, saying that fullgame playback will not make CMBB, though it will be given serious consideration when they do the engine rewrite.

yeah but thats like what? 2 years away? thats a long time for movie playback :\

[Marlow]

Just one more voice in support of accuracy in gameplay over a movie replay feature. Thanks for keeping the right priorities.