Recording Battles

[Valdae]

Sweet idea man.

[Malorn]

Rift has built-in recording into the game that can even upload to youtube automatically and its very useful and doesn't really impact performance all that much. Its a nice feature.

Its also really good for PS2 popularity. More youtube videos = more viral marketing for planetside 2.

It'll help get a few more eyeballs on the game for sure.

[Vancha]

Just the other day I was watching some "Top 10" videos on Halo 3/Halo Reach (fails, stickies, snipes etc.). I've never played either of them, but it was interesting to watch regardless due to the recording/video system. I'd love that to be in PS2, absolutely.

[Desoxy]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

It was just a quick worst-case calculation of say 50 bytes per player at a 20 tick update rate not including snapshots for interpolation. The other assumption is to store all changes players make to their characters over time.

50 bytes * 1000 players * 20 state changes per second * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 365 days * 8 years = 230 TB.

A state change would be things like key input and actions. The size I gave was to compensate for a data storage overhead. It could realistically be stored in a binary format for a fraction of that.

The basic idea would be to store just the state changes for each server update and use that to replay the game deterministically using periodic snapshots of the game to jump to specific intervals and simulate to a specific time.

Right after I posted this I did notice a major flaw. If the map was updated this could complicate the simulation unless they stores the old map data. (Imagine they changed a mountain or something for balancing reasons after the game was released you'd see players acting weird around it when the simulation was ran with the input data because the collisions would all be different). meh.

Ah yea, I first thought that making snapshots of the world, say every five minutes, (so that the poor little client does not have to render that much) but even with 100k assets at 50 bytes each and 10 continents you only add a mere 40 TB (in 8 years).

Should definitely be feasible.. especially considering CCP just started their community video platform for EVE..

[ANaKeR]

It would be an asset for organized outfit as training for tactical moves (ex. a generator hold to show new outfit members)

A further thought would be to optionally show the actions as they are doing them (ex. when Surge is turned on and off)

[Bravic]

I don't think they need to archive everything for years. Say the data is overwritten every week. If you didn't get the video edited and complete after a week then you sol. Providing that much storage is not cheap!

[headcrab13]

Originally Posted by Bravic

I don't think they need to archive everything for years. Say the data is overwritten every week. If you didn't get the video edited and complete after a week then you sol. Providing that much storage is not cheap!

Actually a few hundred TB of data should only be a drop in the bucket compared to the PS2 project as a whole, and the wealth of data that will be stored on their servers.

If it was technically possible, it would be epic to see a running timeline of everything that had happened since launch. I personally don't think it's feasible with current bandwidth limitations, but I'd at least like to see something where you could record the action you personally saw, and save it to Youtube or your HDD.

-HC13

[Bravic]

Actually a few hundred TB of data should only be a drop in the bucket compared to the PS2 project as a whole, and the wealth of data that will be stored on their servers.

Times that by 10 or 30. If your going to store that data, you also need to make it accessible to all the clients. You can't have 1000 or more people looking through 10 hard drives at once.

[NewSith]

I think even CS firstperson cam will be enough. At least that's the thing that doesn't hurt server perfomance. But still the idea is perfect. Hard to imply but worth it.

[nathanebht]

If a 3D recording of battles is a problem for some reason. A 2D map recording showing vehicle and troop positions would still be valuable. You could show positions for all 3 sides on a 24 hour delay.

Actually, it would be very atmospheric to see these kinds of clips in game and on a Youtube channel. Sweeping troop movements related to recent important battles.

[Duddy]

Love the idea, even if it could only be local (like Demos on the source engine) then I'd still love to have it.

5 stars.

[Sentrosi]

Considering Sony has Sony Vegas recording suite available to them, perhaps a nice slice of the suite could be available for those of us pondering a Collectors Edition. Would be really nice to have an in-game recorder along with the ability to edit the videos with a professional touch.

But I agree whole-heartedly that demos should be accessed easily, especially for catching cheaters and hackers. Just like in Pokemon, "Gotta catch them all!"

[Tapman]

As far as calculations go, it is a little more complex than just 1000 users. Each faction is going to have a population limit on each continent of 1,000 players, meaning that in theory we could have a maximum of 3,000 players on a single continent at one time. Multiply that by however many continents we have per server, then multiply that by the number of servers they end up having and you will have a better idea about the maximum amount of space required to keep a running record of the worlds. Granted, there will be continents that are empty sometimes and populations will fluctuate depending on the time zone that the server is in, basically there are too many variables to get an exact figure now but it is a very large number.

If Sony has the resources to store and archive footage with timestamps and whatnot, they could feasibly let users request footage from sector(s) for specific times for viewing purposes and then give each subscriber a weekly allowance for downloading the data. That way they can control the bandwidth and keep their server from being bogged down all the time, not to mention keeping a record of the data for GM/Appeal purposes. If there was a massive battle that took place over the span of days over an entire continent, I would like to see a way from Sony or the community itself to let subscribers combine their allowances to compile data into longer/larger scaled replays. Give the fans out there who have the time, energy, and resources what they need so that we can vote for our BODs (Battle Of the Day) BOWs (...Week) BOMs (...Month) BOYs (...Year) and the BOAT (Battle Of All Time) and for making fan-made trailers and such.

Thanks for supporting the idea everyone! Keep the ideas flowing!

[Pollo Jack]

Resurrecting this thread.

Hopefully we will have some form of replays in PS2.

[DSxGIIR]

I'm all for this, running fraps reduces frame rate which can hurt you gameplay experience.