Combat Log

igster · 2012-01-14, 05:59 PM

Do you think that we will get some kind of combat log in Planetside 2? One of the shortcomings of PS1 was the overused accusations of hackings. I wholly believe that most of this was, in part, due to people not being given full information about the damage that was done to them and by them to other players.
The number of times people I was grouped with on team speak would accuse people of being hackers when it was quite obvious that they were just better players that didnt miss as much. People going one on one and accusing the other player of being 'dodgy' because they were just bad at aiming.
Also, being able to see exactly how much damage was being done by being shot by your own team would also be an interesting point of debate.
It would also be good evidence of hacking since u can see exactly the rates of damage.

ThGlump · 2012-01-14, 06:33 PM

If actions are performed/checked server side, best they can do is to record all that data, and provide it to us later. You could replay it in planetside client. Great for checking if someone is cheating (looking from his view if he could see/shot you), and filmmakers could use that for making promotional or fan films with if there would be floating camera.
They want to provide us various data, stats etc, why not provide complete recording.

sylphaen · 2012-01-14, 10:13 PM

Customizable UI would be nice.

World of Warcraft was great in that aspect.

Death2All · 2012-01-14, 10:40 PM

Originally Posted by sylphaen

Customizable UI would be nice.

World of Warcraft was great in that aspect.

sylphaen · 2012-01-15, 12:10 AM

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

Originally Posted by sylphaen

Customizable UI would be nice.

World of Warcraft was great in that aspect.

I should have been more explicit.

When I played WoW, the way you could modify your UI to see what you wanted to see the most was very nice. Especially for 40 people raids as I played a priest.

I switched it around a lot.

Combat log being part of the UI, I just wanted to reiterate that imo, the most customizable UI possible would be best.

Sorry, I may have been off-topic.

CutterJohn · 2012-01-15, 03:34 AM

I want built in replays!

SKYeXile · 2012-01-14, 10:40 PM

Originally Posted by ThGlump

If actions are performed/checked server side, best they can do is to record all that data, and provide it to us later. You could replay it in planetside client. Great for checking if someone is cheating (looking from his view if he could see/shot you), and filmmakers could use that for making promotional or fan films with if there would be floating camera.
They want to provide us various data, stats etc, why not provide complete recording.

Best not to give that power to the lesser minded fools who think everybody is hacking and don't understand netcode. Remember not everybody's data is in sync with yours, what they can see isn't always what you can see.

Sirisian · 2012-01-14, 11:08 PM

Already discussed. Would be nice if Higby and friends commented on it. Was hoping we'd see such a system. Would make creating videos 100 times easier.

igster · 2012-01-15, 04:28 AM

Although the 'playback' idea does sound pretty cool - i suspect that this would be pretty taxing on the poor servers.
I was more wanting to have a true combat log, ie. data that isn't necessarily stored anywhere other than as a 'log' of the hits that happen around a client that directly involve that client. In most games this is simply passed down to that client and then there is an option to put that log information somewhere on the client which ultimately will be thrown away.
I would think that we should save the server for statistics gathering only, count of kills, base captures, armor kills etc - dont make the server store play by play replays, i.e. every single packet of information that is ever sent to it. That is a huge amount of data to store. Just pass back to each client damage taken and damage done by that client.
This simple mechanism would solve the issue of players crying wolf when they miss their target all the time and then claim that the other player was hacking so that they took no damage. The answer is in the combat log. They just need to use their mouse!!
I'm one of the worst aims in the game and was asked by quite a good friend last night if we weren't dodgy when we killed a pounder in a CY with a Magrider. My friend couldnt believe that we survived an assault from his pounder max - we started on quite low health and he had simply missed a lot of shots. He has no way of knowing just how much he was missing.
A combat log would clear that up.

SKYeXile · 2012-01-15, 05:06 AM

How is it taxing on the servers?

the server sends you packets, your computer saves those packets to the HD and then when you load the file the game client reimages them.

**CyclesMcHurtz** · 2012-01-15, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

How is it taxing on the servers?

the server sends you packets, your computer saves those packets to the HD and then when you load the file the game client reimages them.

I wish it was this simple! It isn't always apparent, but trust me - there's more to it that just this. On a single-player game, it's fairly simple. On a multi-player online game, there are significant difficulties.

SKYeXile · 2012-01-15, 03:22 PM

Originally Posted by CyclesMcHurtz

I wish it was this simple! It isn't always apparent, but trust me - there's more to it that just this. On a single-player game, it's fairly simple. On a multi-player online game, there are significant difficulties.

World of tanks does it, but its limited to the view of the person who is recording, do you know if they're doing something special? because im not getting any additional lag when i save a game recording...i should know...im from Australia.

their whole game is practically server side though, even your own movement, with no client side prediction.

Sirisian · 2012-01-15, 04:09 PM

There's a reason I suggested doing it all on the server. As Cycles would probably mention clients only get the data pertinent to them. A server authoritive recorder could record everything and let a user replay any part of the battlefield. A client version would only include stuff immediately around the player. Even stuff immediately on the other side of the door or down a hallway might be portal tested away until it's important.

As a programmer I'd design the server to send packets to a recording server treating it as a client with unlimited bandwidth and an unlimited area of interest. Then write the packets to a database after deserializing them. This would ideally record the full simulation in such a way it can be replayed from any point given key frames of fullstate every few seconds to apply the delta information to.

igster · 2012-01-15, 05:54 AM

It is taxing on the server if you need to send all data about all users in an area back to the client as opposed to just sending you data about damage taken and received by the one individual client.

The snapshot sent between client and server needs to contain the bare minimum of information from client to server and back in order to support so many users. I'm just asking for the numbers for individual units of damage taken/put out by the client alone being included in the snapshot. (for example if u are hit by 2 other ppl shooting you, the snapshot describes each hit that reduced your health and your new health value rather than just the new value of your health. Only the updated health values of all other users in an area need to be included in the snapshot)

The system described the Thglump above involved the server performing replays as opposed to the client. I completely agree that client side replays would be fine. I dont want the poor servers to be storing and replaying real time data back to the clients for replays - they have enough work to do telling me that I have crap aim!

(Although generally I'm not so keen on replays in these games because of giving away sniping positions etc)