Track system

[Boberro]

Hey, sometimes when there is an error in something mods and devs wanna track of it. It is nothing if problem occurred on the beginning of game but what if it started one hour later?

 

What if game "chopped" track on the smaller parts? Game could record one big long file and other smaller example for 1-2 minutes long.

If I have an error after 30 mins of playing I rather won't send whole track because nobody in dev team would lose time watching 28 minutes till error occurs. Also the longer you replay track the more incoherent it is.

 

Having track in parts I could send only these last minutes of it and it would be needed to watch this minute or two.

 

In short words:

Game creates many small track pieces long for X minute each. Each part starts there where the last ends and so on for the next ones.

I send track with the problem without need of whole track.

 

Is it even possible?

 

Now I have question regarding track itself.

 

• How track is being recorded? What FPS value is taken during recording?
  
  • Is it stable - example 30 FPS
    
  • or user real time FPS (once 20, once 50 and so on)
    

   

  [*]In what way track is being replayed on the other's computers?

  • In stable FPS (constant),
    
  • in FPS what track was recorded
    
  • in current FPS which computer can generate replaying the track
    

   

Longer tracks are not playable at all... many errors can be found. Missiles don't hit what was supposed to be killed, during RTB plane lands on the grass instead of runway...

 

Perhaps recording tracks in stable, constant FPS would help to keep track "originality" to the real game which had been played?

[Corrigan]

Regarding the FPS of the tracks: I don't really think that's how it works. It's not a movie. Each time the track is played, everything is rendered, and thus the frame rate would depend on the computer used to play the track.

[winz]

The principle of track system is very simple. It's just a record of timestamped in-game events and keystrokes packed with the mission itself.

So the track playback is done by executing the same in-game events and doing the same key-strokes at the recorded time while running the mission. That's why you cannot rewind a track or quick-jump to a specific time.

The track are played at fps the computer can handle, becuase for the simulation engine it's just a normal mission.

 

Having a split functionality would require some kind of save mechanism, that would be able to save a complete mission state, including triggers, AI routines states and every other underlying simulation variables, and that's not a simple task.

Edited July 16, 2012 by winz