Mana Games

[PattySchnyder]

like to be a spectator of a online match without playing

[TTennisfan]

I already suggest it like 5 times, it seems that it's not an ''important stuff'' for now ITO of manutoo

[Leena]

High pings and weak connection are already a problem, I don't see this being feasible.

Besides, Manutoo has given us the ability to record and share matches.

[manutoo]

it's not that it's not an ''important stuff'' (although, it's true ), but it's surely extremely hard to do.

Actually, now, if someone makes/configures the correct external tools, it should be possible to watch in almost live (only a few seconds of delay), u need to :
1- turn on recording on the playing PC (host or client)
2- share the recorded file with other viewing PCs
3- have a program downloads the recorded file on the viewing PCs, checking all the time if it has been updated (2- & 3- may be done through some streaming tool also, I guess)
4- set TE to replay the recorded file & launch it on the viewing PCs

[CC]

In considering the steps that Manutoo suggested, I don't see how this would work well as the recordings now strip out any chats and such. Also, someone watching the match by playing the "Last game.dmo" file or whatever would have no way of viewing near real-time unless they started playing the file as soon as it was made available and as near to the start of the match as possible; if someone starts playing the recording say after the match is half-way done, they will have to start at the beginning and possibly skip ahead to get near real-time. So, if someone starts playing a match from a recording that is being made with a few seconds of a delay from the real start of the match, and then during the match there is a pause or someone chats, what happens? Does the playing of the streamed file stop?

[manutoo]

CC, right now, the match would end when reaching the end of the replay file, but if someone was doing all the above described steps, I'd take 5 min to make the replay pausing instead of stopping, waiting for the new data to arrive, either coz the match is slow due to too much lag, or people chatting, or whatever else may happens...

[Elias]

Ow, nice you pointed this post Manutoo cause i didn't spotted it before. In fact you already described the idea since 2009 why didn't you do it then ! it would be better as a TE core feature than doing it with a third party program.

Maybe i'll put my hands on some code for this, not sure yet really (j'ai besoin d'exercice, mais une grosse flemme :p). I was indeed thinking the thing internally and thought about the end of file and replay ending issue (i tested this one using multiple TE sessions). Another issue i can imagine, is, if two players bring the chat and start talking during their match, the replay may end as well (though if you add a pause functionality before ending/closing the dmo then it would be fixed as well).

By the way, imagining a third party program to do this (with centralized realtime recorded dmo's on a server), the uploader would upload the dmo in chunks. and the viewer downloading it directly in their demo folder, in chunks as well, slowly building the full dmo file.

What would be important i think is also not being forced to fast forward when you start watching a "stream". Meaning, not downloading it from the very start, when the match is started already since some time. But then, it should rebuild the .dmo on the client computer, starting where the match is at the time the client connected to the "stream". For this, i may need some info about the .dmo format, at least it would be easyer than trial and error, if it's possible to get the header/structure formats, and if it's possible to read the score in it, for example, that would allow to rebuild a dmo from the right time and watch it live directly (as we can read the score via the lobby as well, i guess buffering one or two games would be enough, or maybe just 1-2 mins, no idea). Or if i know exactly where the header ends, i could then directly start concatening the n°xx chunk (last ones), but i have no idea if it would create a proper, readable dmo file then (?).

[n 201]

recording can never be equal to watching a match live. also recording never shows chat or lag turtles etc.,. i have seen few games where matches can be watched online like pokemon, balloono where there are many players in single match. may be manutoo shud figure out a way to build it in the game itself rather than us using a third party program because for suppose if i want to watch some top players match and those guys never give u links to third party program so it shud be in the game itself. people will learn by watching and play even better. it happens with realisation of what they are doing wrong
may be manutoo can include extra option with "join", "host" and "WATCH"

[Ayoub rima]

I had spoken about this in 2009 but Manu did not think about it !

[Stajus]

Lol even recording doesn't work properly...There is a large percentage of points that don't show correctly in a .dmo. So maybe better to first look at this
Spectator mode would probably add additional lag, and I'm sure that's not needed because there are plenty of laggers as it is

[Elias]

Lol even recording doesn't work properly...There is a large percentage of points that don't show correctly in a .dmo. So maybe better to first look at this
Spectator mode would probably add additional lag, and I'm sure that's not needed because there are plenty of laggers as it is

well if it's an optional hosting feature and not mandatory, that's still ok imo.

We're talking of streaming a small dmo file here (like <100k), not even uploading it as a whole, but by chunks of 1kbytes or so. So i think it won't create any lag (especially if it's possible to schedule the chunks upload in between games, that could be interesting, using a 1-2 games delay/buffering then). ALthough of course people having already a crappy connexion with very low upload bandwith should avoid it of course. Currently we have some people streaming their matches from time to time on twitch (video streaming), but there of course it's very heavy demanding for the cpu (realtime screen capture and encoding), and also bandwith consuming (the guys doing this mostly have fiber optics and powerful cpu's).

[manutoo]

Elias,
there were (and still have, but not that much anymore) many things more important to do than this feature, especially if you take into account the ratio "time needed to do it" / "people who will enjoy it". So if I have to chose between this & only this for next update, and a dozen of small improvements / fixes, and I'll always go for the latter.

Yup, I'd add a "end of file" statement + a "waiting for data" flag so it'd be possible to show it on-screen.

I won't provide the format of .dmo (it'd be just too long to dig it out). For matches with CPU (ie: doubles), it's not possible to fast forward. For singles, it could work though, but I could also change the current fast forward so it'd not display anything while fast forwarding.

It'd be better to upload at end of each point, but actually, TE requires only ~1.5KB/s for upload, and .dmo = ~0.15KB/s + upload data => 0.5KB/s at most (for a binary stream). Most (if not all) connections have at least 128Kbits = 32KB/s ; so adding 0.5KB/s won't be an issue and should add almost no lag, if any.

Stajus,
if you find a way that systematically creates a desynch in the .dmo replaying (ie: do "this" in game, then you'll get desync in .dmo), then I'm all ears..!
From what I see, it's not more than 5% of points that desync, so it's pretty tedious to line out what's wrong exactly.

[Tene]

Wow cool idea. Never thought about watching in this game. Well i know a fair bit of online gaming so i would write something i know here. Well as Elias pointed out, there will be few problems with lag but there are many games which solved those. The thing about lag created by slower connections on the match is realizable. Some games turn off "watch" on people who lag, which means when the game network detects higher lag than a prescribed delay then such spectators will be discarded to watch, which i think Manutoo is working on i guess.

[Elias]

Well, no watchers wouldn't create any lags to the players. Conceptually : the player streaming his match, uploads in small parts, the .dmo wich is recording real-time during play, to a central server (eg: managames server for example, but any small web server can handle it). This server handles these files in building, and a little database with available live streams to watch (dmo's), with some cgi, php, pearl, python script, whatever. The watchers (clients), can list the available games to watch, accessing this small database, and launch them to play in their own TE (with the help of a third party software if not created inside TE itself) => they will only download from the "middleman" server, never directly from the streaming players, so that won't ever overload their connexion, being there 1 or 20 watchers wouldn't change this aspect.

[Tene]

Well, no watchers wouldn't create any lags to the players. Conceptually : the player streaming his match, uploads in small parts, the .dmo wich is recording real-time during play, to a central server (eg: managames server for example, but any small web server can handle it). This server handles these files in building, and a little database with available live streams to watch (dmo's), with some cgi, php, pearl, python script, whatever. The watchers (clients), can list the available games to watch, accessing this small database, and launch them to play in their own TE (with the help of a third party software if not created inside TE itself) => they will only download from the "middleman" server, never directly from the streaming players, so that won't ever overload their connexion, being there 1 or 20 watchers wouldn't change this aspect.

Nice to hear that. What is the problem then? is it anything related to the investment or the time of work adding this to the game? I hope Manutoo can consider this idea of watching games, which could be very successful.