[Unknown Target]

A lot of sims and RTS's have the ability to record a game. Is this doable for FS2? It would also really help with recording demo movies, as the system load would be much reduced if the game had already played through, and doesn't need to compute the player's movements.

EDIT: It would be easier for demo recording, in that the players moves would not have to be computed in real time. You record a match, then play it over again later with the vid recorder running in the background.

[redsniper]

Heh heh... I remember this from Tie Fighter

[Black_Knight]

Just lurking from time to time, but from what I have seen the folks that play IL2:FB and Lock On do, FRAPS 2 does the job quite well.  Lock On is framerate HOG too, but some folks are releasing some awesome in-game videos using that.  Mind you, they are all large AVI files, and are edited for appeal and not from an entire game...  *shrug*

[Goober5000]

How many FPS does FRAPS get?

[Black_Knight]

Well, I'm not sure - I have to try it myself.  On the avi's that I have viewed though, they are pretty smooth, with some odd 'burps' and distortions, but all in all, the videos come out fairly good looking, considering the method on the process.  Check out some Lock On videos here: http://www.netwings.org/library/LOMAC/Videos/   and try first the LockOnSTE3 video first.  Its an edited video, but still is made entirely of in-game flight, some added music, and sounds.

Also I should add that Lock On runs about 20-30 fps on the best computers, so the resolutions on these videos came out quite good.


EDIT:  BTW, you'll notice in the STE3 video that the engines give off heat blur effects - its really in the game.    Is this something (or a plasma/heat effect, or whatever) the FS2 Source Code Project could add into the game, or is it out of the question?

[Flipside]

I've always preferred the technique in games that store the data rather than actual video, that way you can skip from ship to ship, view at different angles etc etc.
Though , of course, this is much harder to implement, mainly because you'd need some kind of playback facility

[kasperl]

uhm, would be just be looking at a keylogger, or atg something that remembers AI stuff too? the latter seems to be the case, and that sounds very, very hard to do. the former shouldn't be so hard, log the keypresses and have them re-used for the player ship.

[Flipside]

Depends, you'd need to record, at the very least, all ship movements and 'trigger' moments when certain turrets/guns are activated, and how long for, Hull levels etc.
It's not really that which makes this difficult, it's finding a way to play it all back

[kasperl]

if you say so, read tha siggy, i haven't got a clue what i am talking about.

[phreak]

i found an article on gamasutra.  its worth a look (you need to register though)

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010713/dickinson_01.htm

[Flipside]

Had a look at this, interesting stuff, I've seen Homeworld confuse itself to death doing playbacks on occasion

I must admit, the idea of the Data stream rather than a video one is more appealing, but I would have thought that to lace it into the FS2 code would be the ultimate nightmare, even if you tapped into the Networking stuff (i.e. I'm assuming that the Multiplayer system transmits exactly the kind of data you'd want to record?).

[phreak]

im kinda worried if it can possibly confuse itself during play.  but loading/save the state of every object out of a data stream isn't really a good (or fast) idea.

[comic]

"the engines give off heat blur effects" originaly posted by Black_Knight
_____________________________________________

the haze generate dby the engines of fighter jets is purely the lensing effect of hot air currents rising through cold and refracting the light.

no such effect would occur under any sucomstances in space.

[Black_Knight]

Originally posted by comic
"the engines give off heat blur effects" originaly posted by Black_Knight
_____________________________________________

the haze generate dby the engines of fighter jets is purely the lensing effect of hot air currents rising through cold and refracting the light.

no such effect would occur under any sucomstances in space.

And I relize that totally.  No need to insult my intella..  intellug...    smarts.  

Besides, are we talking about a realistic game here?  Where in the realities of space could you make a vehicle do the manuevers that these fighters can in the game?  (currently OR futureisticly, it would be impossible).  Or the fact that you can hear all those sounds?

I just thought it would add to the beauty of the sci-fi fantasy that Freespace is, that's all.  It would be a nice thing to see a little distortion effect of some sort when you punch up the afterburners...

[comic]

sorry, didnt mean to offend anyone.

Just feel somthing you so obviously associate with atmospheric flight should stay just that atmaoshperic.

Im very keen on new engine effects for the game i just think there are more rpoductive lines of thought.

Again, no offence intended.

[Flipside]

Hmmm... oh well, even the article says it only really works if you write the original program with the recording in mind
It would have been nice, but too much, too late really

[SA22C]

I remember playbacks from the old TIE Fighter and X-Wing games.  As often as not, the playback showed little resemblance to the real thing.  Ships that were destroyed stayed intact and vise-versa.  It was a real mess.

[Stealth[cro]]

A similar thing happens in Sturmovik too... In-game, I made a perfect touchdown on an airstrip. When replaying, it made my plane land twenty meters to the west, and smack bang into the buildings...

I know AVI-capturing would be an interesting idea, but think again, not everyone has an XviD codec (not everyone enjoys downloading 20+MB vids) and not everyone wants to bother with encoding it anyway. A "datastream" idea would be a much better one, but it'd have to be extremely accurate. Ideally, it'd capture the x, y, z and rot(x), rot(y), rot(z) of every ship, and assign an event to each second (and the outcome, so if an AAAf hit twice out of three times, it'd play it back exactly as the beam hit, whether it's "first-second", "first-third" or "second-third".)

But that's all just theory.

[Black_Knight]

If I recall, the reasons for those odd recordings in playback are/were caused by differences in versions.  i.e. - IL2:FB version 1.21 will not play an accurate mission replay that was made in v1.0 due to the major changes in the weapons stats and tweaks in the code.

I seem to recall it being the same for XWA when they first released the recording part in a patch to the v2.02 patch - there were some glitches between versions.

For the most part, its all pretty accurate, with a few glitches.  I think it could work despite that, but then again, I don't program.  I for one, would appreciate having that kind of feature.

[Unknown Target]

An IL-2 Sturmovik-type system would probably be the best bet. It uses the same data-recording system that we all want.
And I think Black_Knight is right about those glitches