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o'dium
Eh?
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 04:22 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Eraser wrote:
you seem rather agitated


Hey, you know when somebody posts a topic called "call of duty 7 pics" and the last post is by "odium", what do you expect? You expect to see me bashing the graphics or something in the game yeah?

Well, when somebody posts "nintendo sucks", and the last post is by "eraser", do you know what people expect? A 98 page long reply by you, quoting everybody in the entire thread, and making YOUR opinion the correct one.

So, really mate, i'm not pissed, or moody or anything. In fact i'm leveling up in FFVII because i cant beat this fucking boss with no meterial (fucking yuffie), while watching TV. I couldn't be any more "not bothered" right now.
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 04:25 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
odium has a point about demo recording, and to extrapolate it into a general observation about id software and epic games seems entirely reasonable


Well I do agree with him that "we" have only scratched the surface of what's possible with demo recordings. However, this debate has erupted in a rather uncontrollable fashion (mostly due to o'dium increasing the scope of the discussion far beyond it's original borders). My original claim was that o'dium was wrong in his statements about in-game demos being obsolete by avidemos. I disagreed on that point. Nothing more.

I didn't say that id Software or Epic's implementation of in-game demos was great or bad. I'm just saying that if it's implemented right (and gave uFreeze as example), in-game demos are a rather powerful tool, which allows us to do things that aren't even remotely possible with pre-recorded videos.


If I have to comment on the expanded scope of the issue, then I have to agree with o'dium that if the industry continues to ignore the oppertunities behind in-game demos pre-recorded videos might be an easier solution at some time. I do feel however, that one factor still keeps the in-game demos in favor is filesize. With the exception of Doom3, in-game demos are many times smaller. The fact that AVI files offer viewability under any situation with good playback controls doesn't weigh up to the filesize problem IMO. Even on my fast connection, I wouldn't download a 150mb demo from a fatal1ty match. The 3mb it takes for the in-game demo is no problem though.
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Eraser
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 04:32 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


o'dium wrote:
Eraser wrote:
you seem rather agitated


Hey, you know when somebody posts a topic called "call of duty 7 pics" and the last post is by "odium", what do you expect? You expect to see me bashing the graphics or something in the game yeah?

Well, when somebody posts "nintendo sucks", and the last post is by "eraser", do you know what people expect? A 98 page long reply by you, quoting everybody in the entire thread, and making YOUR opinion the correct one.

So, really mate, i'm not pissed, or moody or anything. In fact i'm leveling up in FFVII because i cant beat this fucking boss with no meterial (fucking yuffie), while watching TV. I couldn't be any more "not bothered" right now.


I don't feel I ever force my opinion down on people. I do, however, think that I'm often slightly enthousiastic (frantic if you will) in taking down other people's arguments. When I do not agree with those arguments, I supply a counter argument, telling them that their argument is flawed for reasons X and Y. That isn't forcing down my opinion, that is exactly what a discussion is about.

If I quote 15 people in one thread, then I feel that there have been 15 arguments which are either incorrect, hypocritical or unacceptable in some other way, but I always supply a reason for why I think they're wrong with that argument. That's a debate. A discussion. It's not forcing down. I offer the opposition the same oppertunity. Strike down my arguments and I'll admit I'm wrong. I have explicitly done so a relatively large number of times here on Quake3World.

The reason why I'm drawn as a Nintendo fanboy who'll blindly follow them everywhere is because I am often a minority that enjoys certain Nintendo games. The arguments against those games are often no more than trolls, flames, "fashionable" or really ignorant statements. Yes, I take my time to combat those arguments. I simply hope to shed a different light on things. You will also notice that I take this whole "eraser is a nintendo fanboy" thing rather lightly. I make jokes about it myself.

Also, to wrap things up, I don't feel the initial "meta-discussion" was about me forcing down an opinion but rather me trying to keep the discussion within the scope of the original argument, which you didn't like (and you resorted to calling me a fanboy, even though I didn't even comment on id Software's attitude or technical and functional achievments)




Last edited by Eraser on 10-11-2005 04:38 AM, edited 1 time in total.
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MKJ
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 04:34 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


o'dium wrote:

So, really mate, i'm not pissed, or moody or anything. In fact i'm leveling up in FFVII because i cant beat this fucking boss with no meterial (fucking yuffie), while watching TV. I couldn't be any more "not bothered" right now.


get some skills then homo :icon32:
you dont need to be lvl 58 to beat this guy without any materia



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o'dium
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 04:35 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


MKJ wrote:
o'dium wrote:

So, really mate, i'm not pissed, or moody or anything. In fact i'm leveling up in FFVII because i cant beat this fucking boss with no meterial (fucking yuffie), while watching TV. I couldn't be any more "not bothered" right now.


get some skills then homo :icon32:
you dont need to be lvl 58 to beat this guy without any materia


Duh I know. :p Its just posing a problem because i tried twice so far :P
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hemostick
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 05:32 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


We don't see über demo system improvements because there are more important things on a todo list when you make a game. Some of these improvements only matter to a few hundred people, that makes it very low on the list.
The rest are done in a couple of binds or worked in in some popular mods that are actually played by the vast majority of the few people who would be interested.

Btw, rewinding is pretty much out of question. Ask some people who've made their own demo formats.
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o'dium
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 05:36 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


hemostick wrote:
Btw, rewinding is pretty much out of question. Ask some people who've made their own demo formats.


What, like, UT...? Which has it...?
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hemostick
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 05:44 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Apparently, not in t3h quakes, engine stuff.
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o'dium
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 05:52 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


hemostick wrote:
Apparently, not in t3h quakes, engine stuff.


Then surely that means id have lost the skill to think ahead...? At least in regards to Doom 3. Sure, it wasn't designed as a MP game, but come on neither were Quake 1/2 (Q2 never even shipped with MP maps), ut both were huge online. So it could of been a secret hit for all they knew.
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Foo
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 06:16 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


UT rewind support is quite broken TBH. I don't know of any proper implementations of rewind, I think it's mostly down to the nature of the networking code being the games.



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hemostick
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 06:18 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Well, Epic is practically coming back from the dead with their demo support in unreal games.
I think U1 didn't have any. Don't know how UT99's evolved over time. When demos were introduced to 2k3 (after its release), they were nasty, like almost 1MB/minute and didn't play at normal speed, nor at a consistant one. It got better over time and in 2k4 but they still can't make demo playback silky smooth, and you don't see the gun viewmodel if the recorder had it off.

Plus you still need to have all the exact versions of all the server packages to play the demo back. There are some demo tools that grab these for you nowadays with 2k4 though, but you didn't have that luxury in ut99.
So, people put up pages and pages of deprecated packages, which often wouldn't prevent some from just disappearing and therefore preventing playback of certain demos.

The gui for speeds and avidemo + backward are the only things going in favour of their demo system.
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^misantropia^
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 07:19 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


hemostick wrote:
Btw, rewinding is pretty much out of question. Ask some people who've made their own demo formats.


It's possible but quite hard to implement. Essentially, a demo is an incremental dump of server snapshots. The client interpolates between snapshots while continuously discarding the old game state, making it impossible to backtrack.

However...

You're watching a demo. After 40 seconds you want to rewind by 10 seconds. Now the client needs to restart the demo in order to obtain the original game state, and interpolate as fast as it can from 0 to 30 seconds (obviously without rendering anything) before continuing regular playback.

This can be optimized in various ways. For example, buffer the game state once every minute so that, when you decide to rewind 10 minutes into a demo, the client only needs to interpolate at most 1,200 snapshots instead of 12,000.

I'm thinking about adding a rewind feature to the Q3A engine.
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Foo
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 07:42 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I'm pretty sure that once every x updates, the server flashes out a full absolute position of all entities, to keep everyone synchronised?

EDIT: A bit like a Key Frame for video formats.



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^misantropia^
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 08:39 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


No, never. It only sends the status of entities within the PVS (which differs from client to client).
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Fjoggs
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 08:47 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Is there a avidemo command implemented? To dump .tga pictures to a folder for movie-creation.
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Foo
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 08:52 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


^misantropia^ wrote:
No, never. It only sends the status of entities within the PVS (which differs from client to client).


Oh right. On that basis, and given the use of UDP communication, if the client misses an update, how does it keep on the same track as all the other clients?



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hemostick
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 09:24 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


There is in d3 Fjoggs, they probably let it in.
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Fjoggs
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 09:25 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I hope, altough it sucked in doom3. :|
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hemostick
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 09:36 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Well, it's just the demo system that sucked. The avidemo itself worked fine ! It even let you oversample each image + jitter to generate some neat anti aliasing (although using the graphics card's built in fsaa would be faster).
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^misantropia^
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 10:06 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
Oh right. On that basis, and given the use of UDP communication, if the client misses an update, how does it keep on the same track as all the other clients?


Through a quite clever mechanism. Read more here.
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^misantropia^
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PostPosted: 10-11-2005 10:10 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


BTW, the key is that the server delta-compresses the current snapshot for this client against the last snapshot said client acknowledged having received.
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