Speeding up battles

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
What do you mean by separate? Done from existing files by the game or by manually using that program Gandalf has found? Or a script/ macro/ whatever that uses Gandalf's program automatically with every battle?

My original proposal, before Gandalf found a util, is for Dom 2 to create an entirely new type of file, completely unrelated to the 3 turn files, that is only created if:

1. the option for "turn movies" is enabled,
2. a particular battle report is viewed.

For a given turn, assuming you have the feature turned on, and you viewed 5 battles, you'd get 5 separate movie files put somewhere in the Dom directory structure. Players can save these files if they wish, they same way we do now with turn files (by zip, or by DomSaver). When you "host", the game would delete these "temporary" movie files, just so that they don't clutter up your drive. The movie files are strictly local, and not involved in game play (SP or MP) at all. It's just something for the player to look at.

EDIT: To clarify, the movie files are generated based on the data that is already being stored in the game's turn file. It saves viewing time by not having the computer regenerate each battle each time it's to be viewed. The game only does it the first time. After that, you can use the movie file to review the battle and do the normal things you do with movies (fast-forward, rewind, etc.)

If the devs don't want to add this feature, for whatever reason, then I hope that we fans can do something. I'm anxiously waiting to hear what Gandalf will have to say tomorrow ...

[ March 03, 2004, 20:30: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Karacan]

There are a couple of shareware solutions to grabbing a video from the current screen (somewhat like capturing a screenshot). My personal favourite, Fraps, requires little enough overall computer power that it's running just fine alongside everything I launch at it. That's a hassle for normal battle reviews, though... start the game, open the battlereport, hit the key to start recording, hit the key to stop recording, minimize Dominions, get out your movie-viewer, launch the captured file, and then jump to the position you want to see again... hrmmm... Can we have adjustable battle-replay-speed like in DomI?

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Karacan:
There are a couple of shareware solutions to grabbing a video from the current screen (somewhat like capturing a screenshot). My personal favourite, Fraps, requires little enough overall computer power that it's running just fine alongside everything I launch at it. That's a hassle for normal battle reviews, though... start the game, open the battlereport, hit the key to start recording, hit the key to stop recording, minimize Dominions, get out your movie-viewer, launch the captured file, and then jump to the position you want to see again... hrmmm... Can we have adjustable battle-replay-speed like in DomI?

Something that isn't part of the game engine would be mostly useless, IMHO. If you decide to watch a battle replay closely, you'll want to click on units to see what their current state is; you won't be able to do this if you simply capture the movie.

[Davidious]

Originally posted by PhilD:
Something that isn't part of the game engine would be mostly useless, IMHO. If you decide to watch a battle replay closely, you'll want to click on units to see what their current state is; you won't be able to do this if you simply capture the movie.

This is correct. besides, I don't actually want to 'watch' the battle replays (although it's fun).

What I want to do is READ the battle replay. So something that generated a text file with all the 'to-hit' rolls, damge, current state of the unit, etc. Basicaly a blow-by-blow text account of the battle would be awesome.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Karacan:
There are a couple of shareware solutions to grabbing a video from the current screen (somewhat like capturing a screenshot). My personal favourite, Fraps, requires little enough overall computer power that it's running just fine alongside everything I launch at it. That's a hassle for normal battle reviews, though... start the game, open the battlereport, hit the key to start recording, hit the key to stop recording, minimize Dominions, get out your movie-viewer, launch the captured file, and then jump to the position you want to see again... hrmmm... Can we have adjustable battle-replay-speed like in DomI?

OK I have to agree with everything here. For one thing FRAPS does seem to be the winner so far.
http://www.fraps.com/download.htm
But I will keep looking. For another thing a recording isnt going to be very good. You lose ability to zoom in, check units, all the nice in-game options. Some sort of "movie viewer" option would be needed if Dominions made us a movie. If all its going to do is record the video then FRAPS will do it fine.

[Arryn]

FRAPS is a handy snapshot tool, even if you use it for nothing else.

[ March 03, 2004, 23:04: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[alexti]

Originally posted by PhilD:
Well, how much more space would the turn files take (they're already rather large) if, instead of just the battle's initial placement, they included the situation at the start of each turn of each battle? that should let the battle replay "jump" to any single turn of the battle with no additional calculations, which would help a lot with the battle replays (right now, if you want to watch something in a battle and miss it, you have to restart the replay from the beginning!)...

Battles, especially large battles, tend to Last what, 10-20 turns? If the result is to make the turn files 10 times larger, I guess that's not feasible (but I don't know how much of the file is battle placement... I just had a look at my "UlmWorld" game files - World map, about turn 90), and the .trn files are about 360KB, while the .2h files are about 160KB.

Still, there might be another solution, like doing the "battle effect" computations at the start of the replay, and storing the exact state of the battle at the start of each round. Obviously, the complete movement of arrows is just graphical display, and does not need to be stored - it can be recomputed on the fly. It might add a few seconds of precomputation for each battle, but then the battle could be replayed at leisure.

And, adding an option to turn off missile/spell volley would be nice. I like the Spirit Helmet, but since each and every one of them fires in its own time slot, it just makes battles unbearably sllooooooow...


I'm not a (real) programmer, but I really believe an at least partial fix to the battle replay thing should be doable with reasonable effort. I mean, the battle results have already been computed, with no display, and they're being re-computed, with display. There shouldn't be that much of a difference...

Current turn files may not contain actual unit placement (I don't know if they do, but it is not necessary to store them). The user can only control placement of commanders and squads which implies that the initial placement of all units can be reconstructed from these data. During the battle each unit moves on its own, thus the state after each round of the battle has to be saved completely, which will make it large (and what's worse Illwinter may not have code that can do it, meaning that it will require additional development).

I don't think that there's a need to pass this information, because it can be recomputed locally. It is drawing that slows down the battle replay, not computations. For example, on Orania map one turn hosting (about turn 80) takes 1-2 minutes (on my computer). This includes 6-10 battles with my participation with 1 or 2 including large number of units. With about 10 nations left, this means that an approximate total of 8*10/2 = 40 battles is processed including 7-8 large ones. It's easy to see that the large battle resolution isn't taking more than 5-10 seconds. So the state of the battle after every round can be calculated locally.

More difficult question is how to manage these data, depending on the internal program organization it may vary from very easy to very hard. But developers mentioned that the feature was in game, but was pulled out because of bugs.
And considering that recently Johan K. made few comments implying that he was using unpatched MSVC (ouch!) with unpatched STL, I believe our prospects of getting advanced battle replay capabilities are good