New Bot to Record Matches

[MakeSSBetter]

Just an idea being thrown around in other SS forums-
A new bot should be made to record matches, so they can be watched again later. IE- you could spec any player, watch any part of the map, over and over again.
One of the SVS programmers, Cerium, was talking about--->
http://ssleague.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2033


SSTiVo would benefite every zone out there. You TW players have any ideas?

Like he said, if anyone could get priitK or ekted to send him the game engine.....everyone would benefit.

[50% Packetloss]

No one will get the physics engine or any part of continuum. The idea is not doable, unless someone wants to spend years on it.

[Overburn]

its possible, but not practical. you would have to get a lot of bots to spectate every player and record their position packets for the length of the game.

[MakeSSBetter]

wrong again....read the posts, guys...
the idea is to intercept the packets themselves.
to quote my buddy cerium...
"thats the point. were not using a video format and recording images... youd record packets and have a view play them back. 8 players * 32 bytes makes for some tiny frames..."
frames woul d be less than 1 MB....

[Overburn]

the reason for the "1 bot speccing each player" is so that you can intercept the packets and save them to your computer, you wouldent record a video of it, you would save the packets to a file. the file would be about 5 MB for a 15 minute game with 10 players (without compression).

thats the only way I can think of intercepting packets, unless you get the bot to login and tell the server its screen res is 16384 x 16384 (the size of the continuum map) so the server sends everyones position packets to the bot, but I have no idea if that will work or not.

I could make a "video" player for the save files, but it would take some time since I have to figure out how this GUI stuff works in c++ <_<

[MakeSSBetter]

!

If you are serious and willing to make a viewer, contact Cerium on the ssleague.net/forum boards. He's gotten all the details worked out, just needs access to the game engine or something, and islooking for someone to make the viewer.
Cheers!

[Ewan]

frames woul d be less than 1 MB....

I may have interpreted what you said wrong, but if 1 frame is 1MB, then a 1 minute video will be 60MB (yes I know you said "less than", but I am assuming it is at least significantly close to 1MB)

EDIT: After reading the post in the link, I assume you actually meant "Videos will be less than 1MB".

[50% Packetloss]

I think you guys lack an understanding of how difficult the video idea is. Intercepting packets is easy, but then someone has to design a program that will render the graphics. You can record packets with mervbot (or any client) or ASSS but then you need to figure out all of the games physics (which probably requires a bit of ASM knowledge for disassembling subspace.exe). Plus you have to render the map, lvz, plus countless other things. Nothing like this has ever been done except by those whom wrote the two existing clients.

Ewan, he is talking about recording packets in a file; a packet is just a large string, so the file would be very small compared to a video file. That's why he placed "video" in quotes; the program wouldnt work in the manner a video player such as Windows Media Player, it would need to be exactly like continuum/subspace except it wouldn't connect to zones.

[Overburn]

I think you guys lack an understanding of how difficult the video idea is. Intercepting packets is easy, but then someone has to design a program that will render the graphics. You can record packets with mervbot (or any client) or ASSS but then you need to figure out all of the games physics (which probably requires a bit of ASM knowledge for disassembling subspace.exe). Plus you have to render the map, lvz, plus countless other things. Nothing like this has ever been done except by those whom wrote the two existing clients.

about a year ago I wrote a copy of subspace in VB, I pretty much figured out the physics through reverse engineering. It loaded maps, had pretty much the same game physics, and even displyed the stars/planets in the background perfectly. If I had taken a screenshot of it running, you wouldnt be able to tell the diffrence between my program and continuum. unfortunately I deleted the source and I only have an old copy of the compiled code, but I remember all of the stuff I did in it so its no problem. the only thing I didnt get working correctly is the collision detection (which wasnt fast enough) and LVZ rendering (never got to it), but Im working on a new method and it should work alot better, especially in c++ (compared to VB ).

writing a "video" player for the files would be somewhat easy compared to writing it from scratch and no prior knowledge of how to do it. I already have experience with this so it doesent seem so hard.

[Arc]

I don't think anyone would care about recorded records. And if by some miracle you get a good rec in a previous game just take a screenshot.

[Overburn]

Its not about the rec, its about watching the game later. Pretty much like you would with a dvd or vcr (or TiVo, hence "SSTiVo").

[Kolar]

Still lots of work for something that will probably be too difficult for a normal user to use. I've done a few recordings for TWLB games using a screen capturing application and have gotten good results. Using Real media I can compress around 1 min of game play into at 1mb. Even then I haven't gotten too much of a responce from people so I don't know if you'll find this to be popular.

[50% Packetloss]

Well good luck overburn. You might be able to find Catid's ssbot2, it's client that renders the graphics but a lot of the physics he implemented he kinda guessed at. I have a copy if you want it, it was written in C++. You'll find plenty of help on http://forums.minegoboom.com .

[Ewan]

Ewan, he is talking about recording packets in a file; a packet is just a large string, so the file would be very small compared to a video file. That's why he placed "video" in quotes; the program wouldnt work in the manner a video player such as Windows Media Player, it would need to be exactly like continuum/subspace except it wouldn't connect to zones.

Please re-read what I said, I was simply correcting an error in what he said that may cause confusion in others. I know exactly what it is he wants to do.

[Cerium]

As 50% said, the problem itself isnt in recording packets, its the viewer.

To do it properly and allow it to adapt to any zone, it would need to be able to read and handle the entire array of arena settings... which is huge (but thanks to a number of bot devs before us, its already mapped out).

Then youve got the physics engine to duplicate... which only gets more complicated when your realize at times you have to do things incorrectly to perfectly emulate how continuum does things (Hi, bomb prox anybody? yeah it still isnt right priitk, you fucker =P). Basicly when (if) this is done, youd have most of a client written.

The reason I asked if anyone could convince priitk to send out anything having to do with the physics is it would make the project a whole lot easier... since the poor soul doing the work wouldnt have to spend time reverse engineering anything. Not only that, releasing the code that handles the display and physics wouldnt compromise the protocol. Or atleast, it shouldnt.

Overburn -- Thats awesome... it would seem youre one of the best men for the job given your experience. If youre willing to add this functionality to it, let me know -- Cerium@x2productions.net
One thing I do want to correct you on though: The resolution you use has no effect on the range the server will send packets to you. Its actually based on the misc:mapzoomfactor arena setting. You can crank it up to 50 to get everything at all times, but then the players dont get a radar.
(for those of you who dont believe me, have a sysop set the map zoom factor to 2 or 3, then login with 2048x1536 and have someone fly around. The outer 25% of your screen will be a 'dead zone').

Kolar -- using a video is a workaround for this problem, at best. Videos themselves are large (1mb for 1 minute?) For dialup users like myself, it would make 4v4 games that last 5 minutes or longer (see: all of them) not worth the download. Not only that, the viewer is at the liberty of your directing skills. Better hope you dont miss anything good.

No matter what anyone says, this game is no where near as complicated as some people tend to make it out. With enough time and effort any of the guys whove made a core could write a client, and im sure the same holds true for a number of bot devs. Feel free to question any of this... all youre doing is discouraging development.


Well, thats enough babbling for one day.
-C