[GL] Playback/Replay/Rewind/Review/History Game Feature

[paulk]

Watch animated game through history:

• Good for quickly watching how a game has developed since last turn
• Fun to watch a whole game in retrospect
• Interesting if you try to figure out someone elses play style
• No more timeconsuming deschiffer of the history list

Specifics:

• Drop down for how many turns back you want the animation to go on
• Option for speed of movements
• Should be based on javascript, with a javascript timer function

This will improve the following aspects of the site:

• Less mishaps in diplomacy, let's say you walked over someone elses territory to eliminate a player that did the initial attack and end up like looking like the attacker.
• Fun, Interesting, Cool

In short:

I have many times longed for a button that gave me the last turn, or the whole game, played up for me in retrospective, to find out who did what where, or to find out what game I played if I go through my own games.

This could be done with JavaScript. The history list is already there, just make it animated on the map and have a JavaSrcipt timer change the innerHTML of DIV's with the troop numbers on the map, or something similar.

For non programmers this means that the troop numbers change every 1/2 second (?) according to how someone deployed, attacked, reinforced etc.

Since it would be based on JavaScript it would not strain the server.

It could even be a greasemonkey addition?

[spiesr]

This has been suggested a lot of times, but it can not be made until the game log is upgraded.

[paulk]

Really?

How hard is it then to upgrade the game log?

[The Neon Peon]

I don't know the answer to that, but I'd first rather see Clickable maps become a part of the site, single player team games, and Zombie neutrals.

[wolfpack0530]

I don't know the answer to that, but I'd first rather see Clickable maps become a part of the site, single player team games, and Zombie neutrals.

I like the OP's idea alot! But I agree with NEON!!! I WANT ZOMBIE NEUTRALS!!!!!

[paulk]

I'd like zombie neutrals as an option too, but I don't see why one has to exclude the other?

[mibi]

other sites do this well. I have even see one site turn the enture game into an avi file on the fly. Sweet!

[ender516]

I'd like zombie neutrals as an option too, but I don't see why one has to exclude the other?

It's a matter of priorities: lackattack only has so much time to devote to changes, and any engineer knows that if you want to keep a system running while you change it, you don't change too much too fast.

[sully800]

It's not just that updating the game log would take time, but a matter of how much file space the new logs would take up. The things that are currently missing: Initial army placements (not a big deal) and the results of each press of the attack button (tons of missing data).

You see, we currently get a result in the game log if you attack 200 troops and conquer the country, but we get no game log info if you attack 199 troops and don't conquer anything. This means that current data recording would be completely inaccurate.

Some suggestions to get around this: Record the total number of troops on each territory after each round (including round zero for deployment) and that is all the new data that would be needed. This wouldn't be much data at all, but it also wouldn't be a complete picture of each person's turn.

Alternatively you could record the total number of troops on each territory after each person finishes a round. I think this would give a complete view of sequential games and still isn't that much new data (unless the game is very long). This method would not be great for freestyle games where multiple people are attacking at once, but for the overall suggestion I think that is a minor concern.

Once it's decided how the new data should be recorded lack also needs to decide how it should be stored (permanently? Or is the detailed log only available for a week or two in which time you can make a replay video to watch and possible save on your personal computer).

[paulk]

@ sully800:
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I forgot about the fact that the gamelog doesn't record uncompleted/unsucessful attacks.

If it "only" is a question of storage space to keep record of dice attacks or army count/turn, then I have great hopes to see this within a reasonable time. The prices for web storage space (Megabytes and Terrabytes) goes down all the time, so soon it won't matter much if CC stores all available data from every game ever made, for ever.

Personally I wouldnt mind a cheaper middle way until storage is dirt dirt cheap, so for me it would be just enough to see the end result of each attack (sucessful or not) and not show each dice result in between.
Storage wise that would mean add to the gamelog:
A) What country attacks another and number of armies both have.
B) Number of armies both territories have when a change appears.

Right now since I personally know about this "flaw" in the gamelog I sometimes use it to my favor to reduce the number of armies in a territory to stimulate for another player to invade (and take the heat for invading, hehe...)

@ ender516
of course it's a matter of priorities. But for me this seem easier to implement and would be more useful as the game is right now.

[mibi]

Filespace? Are we seriously saying that filespace is the biggest limitation here?

[SuicidalSnowman]

Filespace? Are we seriously saying that filespace is the biggest limitation here?

I created a game last night, at about this time, it was Game 5652592. I just created (and deleted) a second. It was # 5657201. In the last 24 hours 5,000 games have been created.

I don't know if this is a slow day or not, but when you consider 5,000 per day, even adding a small amount to the size of each adds up fast. Also, I think the bigger the files, the more bandwidth that it would cost too. So file space may be a pretty big hold up.

Having said that, this would be a really neat option. I don't think you need it for every game, but imagine being able to record the finals of a huge tournament, and then show the replays later. Or that you could make awesome teaching tools with them.

Maybe it could be implemented as premium only. Or possibly some other restriction, like 1 use per week.

[paulk]

Filespace? Are we seriously saying that filespace is the biggest limitation here?

Yes, I would say so. A few years back watching a video on internet was almost unheard of. You were limited to 5Mb space when buying some hosting, and everybody sat with 24Kb/s dialup. Remember those days? They were not that far back.

Today we have youtube as the biggest transmitter of data over internet (52% of all internet traffic) and almost everybody sit with broad band. The storage space when you host a web site is 5Gb or more. That is an increase of 100 times in a few years. And it is possible becasue the memory/filespace get cheaper and better, and broadband becomes faster and faster.

The real problem is how hard it is to implement. And if the improvement is worth the extra cost of filespace. But I have my hopes up.

[sully800]

I don't think file space is what is preventing this from being added, it's just something that needs to be considered (because as I said, documenting every roll of the dice would create the most accurate log, but it would also be way more data than is currently recorded). I think capturing the total army counts after each player finishes a turn would work quite nicely and wouldn't produce too much data.

As for why this hasn't yet been done, I'm not sure. They were hinting about big updates in fall of 2006, and I'm pretty sure Game log 2.0 was included in that huge update for the new year. It just never happened, and so we wait.

[paulk]

I think capturing the total army counts after each player finishes a turn would work quite nicely and wouldn't produce too much data.

That would create some confusion if we are talking about an animated game, where you see the "action" animated after the game log.
You would then have to add 3) adjustment of the board
after 1) all deploys
and 2) all attacks but
...
before 4) reinforcements.

Unless you are talking about skipping animating games following the gamelog and instead just show "screen shots" after each person has finished their turn. Which could work for seq games until something better.

[paulk]

What really happens with all the ideas? Are they summoned up on some secret laugh-at list on the programmers desk? or just left to disappear into the grey history of the forum?

[Baron Von PWN]

Maybe not a video, but at least a picture of the map at the end of each round, this would be pretty cool. I think this would be sepecialy nice for fog of war games, so players couldsee what was realy going on after the game is over.

just my 2 cents.

[Tupence]

What really happens with all the ideas? Are they summoned up on some secret laugh-at list on the programmers desk? or just left to disappear into the grey history of the forum?

Any valid suggestions that Lack takes on board and decides to implement will get done sometime, but obviously we don't know when - he's got loads to do. Before things get to that stage, it can take a while before every suggestion comes to Lack's attention - as you can see, in this forum there have been literally thousands of suggestions and bug reports.

[paulk]

Yeah, I was thinking about that... it would be like a half time job just to keep up with all the stuff written in the forums.

[babohtea]

I know that logs can be read, but often they don't give the same effect that seeing a game go by visually would have. I know this can be very difficult to code, but there are frequently those games in which you got extremely lucky or the game was extremely exciting that you want to show your friends.

Just a suggestion.

[spiesr]

This has been suggested before. It can not be implemented until the game log is upgraded to contain information about failed attacks and how many armies are lost. In the future please search before making suggestions to see if they have been previously suggested and properly fill out the form that was displayed when you made this topic.

[mookhaz]

I'm relatively new. I bought this game two weeks after my first game because it was so fun, but they were moving so slow I wanted more games open!

I was completely shocked and upset to find that there was absolutely no way to figure out what happened in a game that people were talking about. Another example of my disappointment was when my partner would tell me something about turn X, and by the time i log on, there is no indication of what happened in what order, and so there is no way to put context to chat. Maybe this adds to the strategy of the game somehow?

My main concern is that I have no way to review a fog of war game after it is over. I love playing fog of war (I'm a former starcraft player/fanatic) but part of the thrill is learning from people who are better than you, and emulating them and their strategies. Is there not an option, perhaps, because it somehow exposes a players strategy, and therefore invading their privacy?

Even in standard no fog of war, I can't go to an "epic" game of less than 30 rounds and review what was so "epic" about it. That is always fun to do!

I play a lot of Chess on Pogo (I go through phases) where they have a flash format. The back button is awesome for, at least while you are in game, reminiscing about the "what if's" and "might have beens." The "if I only logged on before him's" etc. I know this isn't flash, and I'm not suggesting that the entire game be changed to a different format, but is is that a back button, or a review option, is not available due to privacy issues? or server space?

I know I'd pay an extra 5 bucks a year for a back button. I don't mean to come off as someone who complains, but I just don't think I could stay interested in a game where I can not measure my own improvement over time (be it years or months). Is asking for a limited number of save spaces (if it is a server issue) too much? 50 games each, for the people who pay?

-Mook

[The Neon Peon]

The game log currently only displays deployments, successful attacks, and reinforcements. To have a "back" button, it first needs to be updated to have information about how many troops are on each territory etc, which is on the *to do* list (but there are things on the for 3 years now without having been done).

[DeadCenter]

Suggestion: replay function.

Specifics: The GAME LOG is great, but a replay button would be more sophisticated and more pleasing to the eyes. Games you can use as a template as to what I am talking about (use for an example if you will) are Age of Wonders & more especially Age of Wonders II. These games offer simplified, condensed replay sequences of battles between opposing armies. As this is a lower graphic game (compared to AoW2 at least) it could be even more simple.

This will improve the following aspects of the site: will improve the ease with which players on a map can view what transpired on the previous turns. It is also helpful to learn strategy from others- whether viewing your own game, previous games or games others have played independently of the player viewing.

[drunkmonkey]

For the time being, BOB's Snapshots feature might suit your needs.