Allow watching replays while in queue

Hello everyone, I'd love it if the feature that allows you to watch replays while in a lobby would also be available when waiting on a (tmm) queue!

TMM queues can be quite long sometimes and if you could watch replays while in one, it would significantly increase my enjoyment of the entire tmm system.

this is already a thing, go to forged alliance section in settings, and scroll to bottom and enable experimental feature

No, that's for watching replays in custom games.

Are there any bugs that could happen if a replay was open (running) when a game launched from queue? For example, if you were watching a replay of a game from 2 years ago, you would be using different data, e.g. the "units.nx2" file would be different, and that causes bugs?

Would there be any bugs if you're watching a replay from the current version of the game?

Is it possible to implement a feature that will auto-quit you from a replay when you are queueing for a game and it's ready to launch?

Is it possible to implement a feature that will auto-pause your replay when you are queueing for a game and it's ready to launch?

If you are watching an old replay during game launch then the launched game will desync because the files could not be updated. This is why you cannot watch replays while in queue

Can probably still get around it using the python client.

Can we allow wathing replays from the current patch then?

@sheikah How does the "watch replay while in lobby" feature work then?

I could swear I have played dozens of games with paused or still running replays in the background without any desyncs happening.

Is that a different case? Was I just lucky?

Watch replay while in lobby -> you x up -> game launches -> correct game version exists since in order to join the lobby you need to have the same version as host.

This doesn't exist in automatching.

If I understand this correctly, this means that what I'm proposing is technically possible, as it works in the lobby, but the implementation for the queue is just not straightforward due to not using the lobby system?

Hmm, if that's the case, can we do what Tagada suggested and allow watching replays of the same version number? That would cover like 90% of use cases already (those being watching the replay of the last game you played or a live replay while you wait)

The reason in lobby works is because the files are already updated and also in use so they can't be changed.

Allowing to run on the current version is possible but also annoying to implement. Would rather move forward with having files for replays and files for games so they are independent, but that is not super high on the priority list at the moment.

Can't we force a download of a patch as you queue? Then it would work the same as you were in the lobby.

It already does update when you hit the queue button. The issue is the replay would then try to update the patch when you play it. And since the files are not in use it would overwrite them

so it should lock files while you are in queue? and that way you would not be able to shoot yourself in the leg?

There is a potential that the file lock could prevent the game from launching. But not sure as I have never tested it.

Keeping separate files for replay watching seems less error prone. It will take a while until it's implemented though. As Sheikah said it is not a priority at the moment

Have been playing a bit more tmm, and being able to watch a replay while in queue would make the entire experience so much more enjoyable.

I know it's dangerous in that you can accidentally load the wrong game files and crash, but making it an experimental feature in the settings with some warnings, explaining the danger seems to me preferable to not allowing it at all.

@sheikah said in Allow watching replays while in queue:

The reason in lobby works is because the files are already updated and also in use so they can't be changed.
Allowing to run on the current version is possible but also annoying to implement. Would rather move forward with having files for replays and files for games so they are independent, but that is not super high on the priority list at the moment.

I'd prefer to see the client support having multiple installed versions simultaneously (i.e. store game files under $FAF/$VER/gamedata etc.). This would make it much easier to watch old replays and to try experimental versions.

Sure that is possible from a file storage perspective but doesn't necessarily account for the different mod versions and settings in the game.prefs file which are shared even across versions but can still conflict with each other

Let alone that the game instances lock files, and because of that it can cause the renderer of the game to crash.