Suggestion - Full Replay
Hero Academy can already do a replay of the last play. I suggest a full replay after a game is done. :)
True, replays would be good for the community. However, people would then start analysing how their opponents play prematch if their gameplays were uploaded by someone else. But I think everyone can adapt to that. Then we'll just have to strategise differently every match.
If there are going to implement the replays, I would suggest that we can only save, watch and share full replay after the game is completed and not mid game replay just to be fair and keep the intense gameplay going.
It will be fun to watch replays and look at how people play and strategise.
I definitely like the idea of the full replay after the game is done. There are so many games where I want to go back and watch where exactly that pivotal moment was that turned the tables!
Do I have to do this cheerleading thing again? Because I totally will!
RE!
RE PLAY!!
GOooooo REPLAYS!!
... I never said it was going to be good cheerleading shaddaupitslateimatired
+1 for replays.
That would be a great feature.
Outwitters has its problems but they did two things brilliantly
1. Replays! You can replay your game at any time, and save replays to post online. Wonderful resource both for remembering where you are in game and improving your strategy by watching the replays from the top players. Would also eliminate the need for an item counter.
2. In game seamless league integration. ( yeah the matchmaking is kinda off, but the way it is integrated into the game is perfect.)
If we could have HA gameplay, with Outwitters replays and leagues = Perfect Asynch game!
<Prays to the dev gods once again.>
It may not be easy. For example, Paul, the developer of Great Big War Game, said he was blown away by how awesome replays in Outwitters are but that his game was not really set up for them, and he wasnt even sure mechanically how it could get done.
The other thing to consider is that Hero Academy already loads somewhat slower than other asynch games using 3g.
A replay would need to store:
1) The actions on each turn. An action consists of two inputs (source, target). The board has 45 squares, plus 6 in hand, plus the door. So less than 64 options for each input--let's just call it less than 2 bytes to store an action
2) The tile draws after each turn. ~32 tiles in each deck. Less than a byte to store a draw.
The entire content of a game is less than 1kb of information. I doubt there's a hard technical issue there, just all the effort of implementing it.
A replay would need to store:
1) The actions on each turn. An action consists of two inputs (source, target). The board has 45 squares, plus 6 in hand, plus the door. So less than 64 options for each input--let's just call it less than 2 bytes to store an action
2) The tile draws after each turn. ~32 tiles in each deck. Less than a byte to store a draw.
The entire content of a game is less than 1kb of information. I doubt there's a hard technical issue there, just all the effort of implementing it.
Yeah, it really helps that HA's only randomness is in the draw.
It would also be cool to have replays that are viewable outside the client. For example, I'd enjoy tweeting out an interesting game or move, which would have the side benefit of exposing more of my friends to HA. Still, that's not nearly as important as an in-client replay, which I can just screenshot or record anyway.
* Heh, got a reply from Hamlet mid-edit. :P
Screenshots would probably be fine there.
One confusing thing you'd have to sort out for a replay viewer is the hidden information in hands. Assuming they want to avoid making a whole separate replay viewer, and just reuse the game engine as a replay viewer (like Starcraft), you'd probably just watch from the POV of one player.
Speaking of screenshots, I see people doing ones from steam with a web address. Is there some way to do screenies from Steam that avoids the need to use a service like image shack?
actually I really thought about recording all animation of units, then make a kind of sandbox flash application to make a kind of alternative replay for showing people lol.
I guess it will take a while to implement the full replay feature. For now, I guess I can just screencapture each of our moves then cut and paste it all together when the game is done. :D
+1 to full, shareable replays. The community would benefit a lot =)
I'd love full, publishable replays mid-game or after, anonymised if necessary for the players to want to keep their tactics secret.
Also, if it would be too hard to record the game, couldn't they just log the moves at the end of each players' turn? Like in chess, e2 to e4, just log moves, attacks, heals etc as simple grid-based code and then recreate it on the other end. I know naff all about code so this could be a good laugh to those in the know, but if you just had something like medB1, b1mC2, andD1, c2bD1, d1mD3 (mechanic deploy on deploy tile B1, mechanic move to C2, annihilator deploy on D1, mechanic bubble annihilator, annihilator move to D3). Surely it would be reasonably simple to implement a log of moves and you the game could recreate the moves on demand instead of storing a larger video file.
I posted a full replay of a game on YouTube a while back.
In my forum post about it, I lay out how I edited it all together, and it was not easy. If there was a full replay feature built-in, that would be amazing. I could see a whole commentary subculture sprout up, Starcraft-style.
/bump
This would be a great feature, not only function-wise, it would help to improve the community skills and the game strategic level.
please RE, tell us if you are planning to implement these feature soon =)
Replays would be a huge deal. We could then do strategy guides, play back reviews etc on YouTube. Not to mention sharing games with others, watching tournament replays...... This feature surely should be right up there!!! Right along next to... In game league of course! Outwitters really has it nailed in this regard. Check out how great the coffin is they've built. This game really needs those features.
Example: Shaolin team, people have different ideas... Sharing replays lets people review games to see if the team is actually under powered or if its just player error/ lack of understanding strategies to use with them. Good players with Shaolin could then share how they win.
I believe that once upon a time, they did issue a comment to the effect of "we never rule anything out, but the code isnt really set up to allow it." Or maybe I'm just imagining that, but either way, pretty darn sure its not in the cards, sorry!
I believe that once upon a time, they did issue a comment to the effect of "we never rule anything out, but the code isnt really set up to allow it." Or maybe I'm just imagining that, but either way, pretty darn sure its not in the cards, sorry!
That is correct. :)
I believe that once upon a time, they did issue a comment to the effect of "we never rule anything out, but the code isnt really set up to allow it." Or maybe I'm just imagining that, but either way, pretty darn sure its not in the cards, sorry!
Sorry, but as a coder by profession, I cannot an accept this answer (if it was indeed the explanation).
Simply record the telemetry. HA is a grid based, simple unit, simple move-rule based game and the individual moves can be algebraically recorded - much like a chess game can be recorded in a book algebraically. Put the game into an "automatic/batch mode" and feed the recorded moves in one at a time a step through it. I'm sure this is exactly how they debug the darn game when they have to trap the errors. It's how I debug at work.
They could even opt for the files to be recorded locally to avoid extra storage overhead on their servers as well as making the the playbacks available for offline replay. BTW, these files as algebraic hex representations would be relatively small. Think about average 50 rounds at 10AP per round (2 sides * 5AP) thats only 500 moves. Each move is source,action, target (e.g. A1-attack-B4, HomeDeck-dropSword-G3, AwayDeck-dropCasterPuppet-Deploy2, HomeStore-dropHelm-HomeDeck, etc.). A 2-byte hexcouplet can represent 255 possibilities, that more than covers the possible puppets, spells,gear for 2 teams on a board and so far there are not more than 255 possible unique actions (though the combined result is more). So a set of 3 hex couplets (or six bytes) can represent an entire action. Multiply by 500 actions per average game thats about 3k. Only 3k!!! Even if it got more sophisticated and the needed 3 more byes per AP, that's 6.5k. Trivial Sure you might have an envelope that recorded the acompanying texting or players name, time-date stamps, etc, but still, very minor.
The only drawback of this approach is that with each new patch, the recorded games become unplayable. For example a damage value goes up on a buff, and target might die with the patch but not not in the older version. But the recording has the now KO'd unit (prio version close to KO but not) retreating to safety. Or the opposite, a nerfed spell doesn't KO like before and all of a suddent the recorded puppet would dutifully move for the stomp and then herp-a-derp *CRASH-DUMP.*
I mean, for a company that's named after automatons, you would think that was pretty intuituve, right?
I believe that once upon a time, they did issue a comment to the effect of "we never rule anything out, but the code isnt really set up to allow it." Or maybe I'm just imagining that, but either way, pretty darn sure its not in the cards, sorry!
Sorry, but as a coder by profession, I cannot an accept this answer (if it was indeed the explanation).
Simply record the telemetry. HA is a grid based, simple unit, simple move-rule based game and the individual moves can be algebraically recorded - much like a chess game can be recorded in a book algebraically. Put the game into an "automatic/batch mode" and feed the recorded moves in one at a time a step through it. I'm sure this is exactly how they debug the darn game when they have to trap the errors. It's how I debug at work.
They could even opt for the files to be recorded locally to avoid extra storage overhead on their servers as well as making the the playbacks available for offline replay. BTW, these files as algebraic hex representations would be relatively small. Think about average 50 rounds at 10AP per round (2 sides * 5AP) thats only 500 moves. Each move is source,action, target (e.g. A1-attack-B4, HomeDeck-dropSword-G3, AwayDeck-dropCasterPuppet-Deploy2, HomeStore-dropHelm-HomeDeck, etc.). A 2-byte hexcouplet can represent 255 possibilities, that more than covers the possible puppets, spells,gear for 2 teams on a board and so far there are not more than 255 possible unique actions (though the combined result is more). So a set of 3 hex couplets (or six bytes) can represent an entire action. Multiply by 500 actions per average game thats about 3k. Only 3k!!! Even if it got more sophisticated and the needed 3 more byes per AP, that's 6.5k. Trivial Sure you might have an envelope that recorded the acompanying texting or players name, time-date stamps, etc, but still, very minor.
The only drawback of this approach is that with each new patch, the recorded games become unplayable. For example a damage value goes up on a buff, and target might die with the patch but not not in the older version. But the recording has the now KO'd unit (prio version close to KO but not) retreating to safety. Or the opposite, a nerfed spell doesn't KO like before and all of a suddent the recorded puppet would dutifully move for the stomp and then herp-a-derp *CRASH-DUMP.*
I mean, for a company that's named after automatons, you would think that was pretty intuituve, right?
I agree with Writch. (There's another similar, though much less detailed, discussion somewhere.)
I think they thought that excuse sounded better than "It's a quite a bit of work and we don't see a return on investment."
Speaking of screenshots, I see people doing ones from steam with a web address. Is there some way to do screenies from Steam that avoids the need to use a service like image shack?
You will always need a host. Imgur is superior though
Yeah I'm also a programmer. It's not possible that it's impossible... instead it can be "dificult" because of something that needs refactoring... but I am one to believe that such a feature is prety darn essential!
1. in-game league, with better stats, and with automatic match making
2. watch full replay when done with a game
3. share replays / load other people's replays
Those are the most important feautres for the games future!
Yeah I'm also a programmer. It's not possible that it's impossible... instead it can be "dificult" because of something that needs refactoring... but I am one to believe that such a feature is prety darn essential!
1. in-game league, with better stats, and with automatic match making
2. watch full replay when done with a game
3. share replays / load other people's replays
Those are the most important feautres for the games future!
I get the impression that the game uses a fairly large amount of data (this is based on the significant difference in loading times when playing with different connection speeds) this might make full replays challenging
Yeah I'm also a programmer. It's not possible that it's impossible... instead it can be "dificult" because of something that needs refactoring... but I am one to believe that such a feature is prety darn essential!
1. in-game league, with better stats, and with automatic match making
2. watch full replay when done with a game
3. share replays / load other people's replays
Those are the most important feautres for the games future!
I get the impression that the game uses a fairly large amount of data (this is based on the significant difference in loading times when playing with different connection speeds) this might make full replays challenging
That shouldn't be an issue because your moves are just simple numbers. unit name, coordinates x/y, moves to another set of coordinates x2/y2, hits unit at coordinate x3,y3 with attack, deduct life by 200... this is all VEYR basic math. Just two numbers for the coordiante and a single digit with some basic math for the life.
the loading time has to do with loading the visual assets, which is just done once. You need to load the visual assets to play the game, whether you are watching a replay or not. You already see a replay of last turn when you start, so the structure is there.
All that needs to be done, is at the end of every turn, when you submit your move, the server stores a table for your game that not only has in it just the last turn, but an additional row of data for previous turns too. New data doesn't over-write but is added-to the data for your game. This shouldn't be a lot of additional data per game (probably just a paragraph or two of text) but granted if tons of people all play 20 games at a time and then old games are retained for a while (a week?) then a couple paragraphs of text per game can equate to perhaps a few more gigabytes of storage for the server. Note that this is data storage, and it doesn't impact performance speeds, nor does it slow down the game, its just more data that can be accessed.
Now we did have server isseus till just recently. Maybe now with the move there is more disk space and sotring this becomes more feasible.
It would already be a start if you could watch your own games, when done, from start to finish. Because then you can just use a screen-capture to grab it as a screen cast and post it. Sharring and loading other people's replays can come later, the founation is just being able to rewatch your own games.
Anyways, sorry for goign technical. Long story short: it can't be related to load times.
:-)
+1
See I thought the loading time had more to do with the visual assets, but if that was the case the increased load time would suggest that such assets are not stored locally. Not storing that kind of thing locally seems like a questionable design choice I'm sure you would agree. However, I could be wrong.
See I thought the loading time had more to do with the visual assets, but if that was the case the increased load time would suggest that such assets are not stored locally. Not storing that kind of thing locally seems like a questionable design choice I'm sure you would agree. However, I could be wrong.
It has to be stored locally, there is no way assets are being constantly sent to you via wifi or your 4g connection...
:-P
It's been suggested before. And it's still a great suggestion. Especially if you could watch a mid-game replay, up to the round you're currently on. (ala Outwitters style). Being able to post replays online, or upload them to YouTube would really bring the community alive. And just being able to watch a replay mid-game would enable players to recall better what items have been used and to get a better sense of the flow of the game.
HA username: PixelTiger
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