Eye level recording camera

Roshawn Terrell · Sep 7, 2016

I think it would be a great addition to the game if they added the ability to not only save and record fights, but also view those fights up close and eye level with the fight rather than top down, as if you were actually watching a fight in real life.

This could really do well with marketing the game, as fights in this game would look absolutely amazing from such a perspective, imagine playing it in slow motion watching fluid movement and attacks happen at eye level. It would be like watching a real sword fight.

bobchaos · Sep 7, 2016

I saw a lot of people calling for 1st person and thought it was inappropriate to the fighting mechanics, but for replay? I think you struck genius there! Can I like a message twice?

Roshawn Terrell · Sep 7, 2016

The camera really doesn't even have to be in first person, you could just let us place or control the camera from ground view of the fight. I mention that because a first person camera could prove to be a bit more difficult for implementation than a camera floating in space.

bobchaos · Sep 7, 2016

I've not done game design (or anything with graphics really

) but I understand cameras are easy in most engines. Then again, these guys made their own so I dunno, chances are they never planned for this

Worth looking into tho, even if it's just the replay bit. Fancy cams would be cherry on the sunday.

MrApophos · Sep 7, 2016

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. Replay is one of my biggest 'wants' for this game so far. I love playing, so I would love more to play then watch, to assess what went right/wrong.

Roshawn Terrell · Sep 7, 2016

The main thing i'm thinking of is that it would bring in more money to the developers because more people would want to get the game as fights from ground level or even eye level would look fucking amazing, would make great advertising material on youtube. Right now fights are cool but can look pretty lack luster due to the isometric view.

Stekkmen · Sep 8, 2016

Yeah, but, I'm pretty sure creating a replay system for this game has some challenges that other games don't need to think of. Like, you know how in some replay games, the ragdolls for when someone gets killed are different every time? Well, that' cant happen in this game. This game is ALL ragdoll physics. So, the developer would have to come up with a work around for that.

That, along with all the other things that are hard about making a replay system. It's already a small development team, this just seems like an unnecessary waste of time, when they could be working on things like...the actual game.

CharliePow · Sep 8, 2016

Stekkmen has a good point, I don't know how they'd be able to replicate ragdoll every time.

Possibly by recording the positions of the skeletons in every frame for each character and in the replay just replicating that information? But again, that shouldn't be a priority at this point anyway, there's a game to be made!

Roshawn Terrell · Sep 8, 2016

You guys don't understand the problem. That occurs in online games because the physics of the ragdoll is client side not server side. That won't be problem in this in game.

CharliePow · Sep 8, 2016

Roshawn Terrell said:
You guys don't understand the problem. That occurs in online games because the physics of the ragdoll is client side not server side. That won't be problem in this in game.

Ragdoll physics processing can still differ from machine to machine, there was a game I played once (some sort of physics/building/puzzle game) where some of the uploaded creations (automated ones, no keyboard input) wouldn't work properly, or took one or two tries to work properly.

Roshawn Terrell · Sep 8, 2016

That still wouldn't make a difference, all your doing is recording the gameplay, if the ragdoll physics are some how different on your machine (which i doubt), then your recording will record the scene playing out that way.

This really isn't that complicated.

Regardless the developers understand how to implement the idea and if its difficult, or if its worth doing. They will decide.

CharliePow · Sep 8, 2016

Yeah it depends on how it's saved. If it's saved as snapshots of skeletons then it would work easily because the physics wouldn't even be implemented, it would just appear so.

The only way it might not work is if the replay is based on commands (so like, key press ^ at this time for this long etc etc) even though it would be easier on processing and memory etc. I think the NPC's operate in the same way? I recall Devs saying that NPC's have the same restrictions and reactions as players.

Syllabear3 · Sep 8, 2016

Is not bad idea.

Stekkmen · Sep 9, 2016

Roshawn Terrell said:
That still wouldn't make a difference, all your doing is recording the gameplay, if the ragdoll physics are some how different on your machine (which i doubt), then your recording will record the scene playing out that way.

This really isn't that complicated.

Regardless the developers understand how to implement the idea and if its difficult, or if its worth doing. They will decide.

If you're just recording the gameplay, you won't be able to move the camera around at all, and it'll take up memory and slow down the game.

bobchaos · Sep 9, 2016

Stekkmen has a point, but most games do replays by injecting recorded user input into the game engine, this way other functions (like, say, the cameras!) remain available. Also, recording graphics (as opposed to user input) is a bitch on resources when it's not directly hardware assisted/controlled by a fancy GPU, which not everyone has (altho shadowplay and similar techs are getting widespread, so I guess that's up for debat :/ )

Point is: recordings would be great, I want them, but I'd totally get it if the devs said it can't be pulled off without major drawbacks. That said, I think it would be doable by user input injection. It's motion synthesis, not ragdoll physics, I suspect there's very little randomness to it all. If you do all the same inputs, timed perfectly, twice in a row, you should get the same movements twice in a row.

Side note: If any of you guys play Planetary Annihilation you'll know how big replays can be for an MP community. Folks watch them for entertainment, study them, and it's mostly through them that whatever is the ruling meta (at any given time) is set. I understand there's no major plans for MP just now, but there's some talk of post release MP, I hope they think of replays then!

Roshawn Terrell · Sep 9, 2016

replays could bring in more money by well advertising the great fights that happen in the game.

Once MP is released then replays are a must.