feature request for spectators

What do you want to see in Armagetron soon? Any new feature ideas? Let's ponder these ground breaking ideas...
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Word
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feature request for spectators

Post by Word »

Wouldn't it be nice to have an option to see the game 'through the eyes' the way a specific player does? So everytime you switch the player, you get to see his camera mode and also see when he's glancing. What do you think? Maybe more people would even use the incam mode then. And you would get less stupid commentary whenever you didn't see something that made you die. :P
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LOVER$BOY
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by LOVER$BOY »

mmm... very interesting to be frank :)
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Fippmam
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by Fippmam »

it'd basically be like streaming gameplay wouldn't it?

Sounds cool.
Word
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by Word »

Well, yes, that is how I came to think about it - for many players glancing is just as important as turning. and it would also educate new players. Maybe even add some box to show what keys were used. Then you don't need to explain double-binding, and mazing would be easier as well if people would be able to take notes when they see Xyron (superimpose the letters of the keys and the timestamps above the respective walls?). >_<
Sorry if that's going too far already, I just thought of it.
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Z-Man
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by Z-Man »

This requires a different networking paradigm. We currently follow the 'need to know' philosophy, clients only send to the server what we think is necessary, same for server to client communication. For this to work, one would need the wasteful 'send everything' approach. This includes player input and all local client settings. Bandwidth availability has changed since the game was started so I would not be opposed to such an approach in a new project, but a switch is probably not going to happen.
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delinquent
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by delinquent »

I think it's possible to get around that. By using representatives that the program translates into usable camera directions, the amount of data sent is considerably reduced. Plus, I think it would work if it was built as a plugin for the existing build of arma.

Note as follows:
Three symbols for the camera position (we can forget looking back, it's less common) "[" "-" "]"
afaik, these three symbols are latinscrpt, ergo should be small in size.
Pretty much everything else is covered. The client watchng already does nearly all of the work, whilst the client sending only relays a position vector.
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Z-Man
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by Z-Man »

You're neglecting the settings that govern the camera behaviour and the other camera input options. And I am less worried about the amount of data needed to be transmitted and more worried about the organization effort required to get it from where it is today to where it would need to be.
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delinquent
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by delinquent »

Oh yeah... I forgot about custom cams etc. What about a conf file that is parsed into the server's temporary memory at the end of each round? Between the grid deletion and creation, say? Then the client can access it pre-round-start, and activate it upon spectation? It seems fairly simple to me, in this day and age, to pass a cfg file to the client that only totals, say, 100kb? I'm not sure how custom glancing works, or even if there is such a thing, but providing the client has all the required data, it might serve well to treat each vehicle as a controllable sprite, with the server only accepting control input from the IP designated to it. Failing that, there remains the possibility of requesting a players camera settings before the start of a round, if the observer is already spectating.
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Z-Man
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by Z-Man »

Apart from many missing pieces (like, properly restoring the spectating client's own settings, how to create the config file, how to pass it around, how to make sure the files don't do something malicious on the target client, how to relay the camera input to the spectating clients, DON'T MAKE SUGGESTIONS, I'd know the answers), that would work. But: it's a specialized solution with a lot of work for a not very important feature. Clean patches welcome, but I won't implement it myself.
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delinquent
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by delinquent »

Maybe it would be nice to have a section devoted to add-ons for arma. This could be the first, I dunno.
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LOVER$BOY
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Re: feature request for spectators

Post by LOVER$BOY »

That would be a good idea but the problem is the implementation. Experimenting with the code is so much fun than anything else.
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