Replay server fixing - volunteers needed!

A major use for live replays is tournaments. It's pretty bad when people are trying to cast tournament games w/ delay and they have to stop casting it 10 minutes before the game ends. It makes us look like idiots and amateurs to people who might be dropping in to watch a tourney. People who don't know about FAF might get a negative impression of it.

@arma473 cool story. How about commenting something constructive tho. You volunteering to help test the new replay server?

Jesus @Askaholic relax. I don't care about complaints or people being annoyed, I just want to get something done.

Alright alright xD

@mazornoob said in Replay server fixing - volunteers needed!:

  • First, I need to hear your opinion on live replays so us devs can gauge how serious of an issue this is.

@arma473 said in Replay server fixing - volunteers needed!:

A major use for live replays is tournaments. It's pretty bad when people are trying to cast tournament games w/ delay and they have to stop casting it 10 minutes before the game ends. It makes us look like idiots and amateurs to people who might be dropping in to watch a tourney. People who don't know about FAF might get a negative impression of it.

@askaholic said in Replay server fixing - volunteers needed!:

@arma473 cool story. How about commenting something constructive tho. You volunteering to help test the new replay server?

πŸ™„

@Th3-11 πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

Many of you know that there's a bug with live replays where if you're behind on replays and the game ends, the replay ends abruptly. I know about this bug, but never managed to fix it.

@arma473 Even if this issue was fixed, the preferred method for tournament casting is still likely to be live observer because there is no way to sync 2 casters watching a live replay.

Not to say this isn't a big problem in general. I'd like to be able to use live replay to watch random ladder games and such without it breaking horribly.

Interested into helping testing the live replay function.

I am at discord contact me anytime under same username.

As for my feedback with the current one it does break 1 in 5 games that i watch live with minimal input on my end. (Sometimes i leave it as a background noise and replay ends the game with no acu dead.)

Analyze, Adapt, Overcome...

@askaholic You complained about someone honestly responding to Mazor literally EXACTLY AS HE REQUESTED (as Th3-11 explicitly showed). Based on your pointless response to Th3-11, are you honestly incapable of seeing why that is not just a dick move, but also really stupid? Come on.

@swkoll said in Replay server fixing - volunteers needed!:

@arma473 Even if this issue was fixed, the preferred method for tournament casting is still likely to be live observer because there is no way to sync 2 casters watching a live replay.

A mod does exist to do this I believe? At least I heard about it, never actually tested it out myself.

@ftxcommando
It worked really well in the past, haven't used it in years though, so idk what the state is.

https://github.com/fafafaf/livereplayserver
https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=5774

@aulex Despite it's name, I believe this is only for syncing replays that already finished, ie where a full replay file exists not live replays. I remember hearing this was broken too, but I haven't tested it recently.

Is there a way to use the synced replay feature to "step into" a match at a particular point in time? E.g. if tex and swkoll had a match on Point of Reach, could I start a synced replay with a pal, and at 8 minutes, I take Tex's position (his units, his buildings, including all existing orders) and my friend takes Swkoll's and we play the game out from there?

This would be a lot of fun and it would let people settle disputes like "if I didn't lose connection, I totally would have won" or "If I didn't forget to build TMD, I totally would have won" or "I think at 15 minutes, blackheart had a stronger position, but at 22 minutes, Blodir is in the stronger position" -- we don't have to just guess, we could play the match out multiple times and see what happens.

@arma473 If this was possible, I would run a "relay race" tournament where a team of players swaps control of a 1v1 game every few minutes.

If I'm available I'd be happy to help test this. Not sure about my availability though because I'm traveling a lot atm. I've had all of the issues mentioned in this thread, the most annoying for me has been the live replay randomly ending when the game ends.

Also, out of curiosity is there any possibility of being able to go back in time in a replay? I'd love that feature but have no idea how easy or even possible it would be to do that.

Edit: I'd like that feature enough that if it's possible to do I'd consider personally putting in some dev time to accomplish that if I can find some bandwidth in me to do some more dev work outside of my main job πŸ™‚

@arma473 @Swkoll If it's possible I love those ideas

@swkoll said in Replay server fixing - volunteers needed!:

@arma473 If this was possible, I would run a "relay race" tournament where a team of players swaps control of a 1v1 game every few minutes.

@swkoll I never understood why this isn't possible. You can save the game in single player mode and resume at that exact point without having to rerun the simulation so clearly there is a serialization format for saving the current state of the game. I'm sure it's possible to adapt it to multiplayer, just not very easy πŸ™‚ .

@Exselsior running the replay in reverse will probably never be possible as that requires running the simulation in reverse which is not possible in the engine afaik.

As for multiplayer saves I think the hardest part about that is getting the correct save.lua to every player in order to start the game and not have any desyncs.

@sheikah Hmm unfortunate. Thanks though!

@corvathranoob yea tbh I misunderstood his post. I thought he was just complaining but after reading it again I see that’s not the case.