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On April 09 2012 02:00 hzflank wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 01:58 urashimakt wrote:On April 09 2012 01:55 Xapti wrote:On April 08 2012 19:14 tomatriedes wrote: Completely agree with this, though I'm not a programmer so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement. The multiplayer save/load feature was already there from Brood War, so it should/would be very easy to implement. Whether or not Brood War had the feature has no bearing on how much work it'd take them to incorporate it into SC2, just fyi. I guarantee that incorporating this into SC2 would take far less work than the 'Arcade' feature that is being added in patch 1.5. I suppose that's true...did you mean to quote me? That seemed unrelated.
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Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
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is this post posted on battle.net and if so where is the link? no point of discussing it here if blizzard never sees it
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I was just saying that it would not be an extreme amount of work to add this. Blizzard obviously have a huge codebase so any change will take a bit of time, but unless there is some strange issue with their original code not supporting multiplayer save in any way (not too likely) they could add this feature in a small patch.
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Just to add to the list of decade old RTSs games that had this feature, Age of Empires 2 had this feature as well (probably other ones as well, I just know for sure on this one because I played it like a few weeks ago).
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On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old. no no no no no. It's not more complicated. SC2 is a more advanced game, but the systems haven't changed.
Starcraft 2 uses replays exactly like brood war, and that's how you can save/load games — let alone other methods. (Brood war probably didn't use a replay system for save/load because replays didn't exist when the save/load first existed, but that doesn't mean the replay system couldn't be used for loading games) Even the standard non-replay method (which consists of of just counting all the units on the map, all the sprites, all the statuses of objects, all the statuses of statuses, etc.) exists in Starcraft 2 already, it's just only for Single Player.
The disconnect time does not need to be known — the observer/player(s) just need to be able to save during or immediately after the disconnect. It's not an automatic system being implemented that would be used on the ladder or anything. It would be for specific cases where there's a 3rd party observer (or two trusted parties playing the game without a third party) to ensure there's no exploitation of the system
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I am not sure why people keep pushing the "if there is lan people will pirate and play the game off of battle.net" Well if any of you track any places like darkblizz and communities like that you'd know that there is a piece of software (which I will not name) that already exists, allowing people to play over lan and hamachi networks. People are already pirating starcarft 2 and playing in 'offline' communities. . . . the game and systems have been hacked wide open it's just that not everyone knows this..
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On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
As a programmer, dumping the game state to a file should be straight forward and easy. If there is any tricky part, it's loading the game file for multiple players, observers, etc, so that the game can resume from its last state. This is something that only Blizzard programmers would know.
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On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old.
I am a computer programmer, and have been doing it professionally since 2006.
The replay files are stored as a sequence of commands, I believe. If this is not true, then disregard everything else I say. But, if it is a sequence of commands (player A clicked here, player B pressed 'a'), then restoring from a partial save is possible with how the save file is structured. You just fast-forward / rewind the save to the point you want, and then hit resume and essentially fork the game. This same method could be used to take an existing replay and fork the game, which could make for some interesting training sessions (if I would have noticed this drop faster, could I have won? let's go re-play the game right before then and you stop the drop and see what happens).
As far as how difficult it would be to implement in game, I can't say. Being a computer programmer doesn't tell you how they wrote their code. They could have some stuff in there that makes this harder than it should be. That's not at all uncommon.
All I can say with reasonable certainty is that if the save file is stored as a timestamped list of player commands, and the game engine recreates the game from that data, then the save file format already supports restoring from a partial save very easily.
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Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games.
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On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games. That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve.
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On April 09 2012 02:16 Xapti wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games. That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve.
But what incentive does Blizzard have to change anything when people are still buying their games en masse? Not giving them money is the ONLY way they'll improve.
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On April 09 2012 02:19 branflakes14 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 02:16 Xapti wrote:On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games. That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve. But what incentive does Blizzard have to change anything when people are still buying their games en masse? Not giving them money is the ONLY way they'll improve. For one, e-mailing them directly in a reasoned manner? Politicians usually take action when (many) citizens sends a letter addressed directly to them. Or e-mailing E-Sports organizers, who could then tell Blizzard just how unacceptable it is to not have a save-game state feature.
Not buying the game won't send the message that you aren't buying the game BECAUSE of the lack of save-game/LAN feature. There is no way Blizzard would ever know. Taking other actions may though.
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Why not just have a rejoin like they have in Dota 2, LoL and HoN. HoN is a small relatively unknown company (at least before they made HoN) and they were able to implement it, so I imagine Blizzard could. Then when someone drops, they could just pause the game and wait for the other player to reconnect.
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Hm.. you could save games in BroodWar....In 2012, i really think this can be achieved in StarCraft II? I mean, that is probably totally up the UI of the game, but...i wouldn't want to hear that it's impossible by todays technology standards
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"why doesn't blizzard..." is a community catchphrase here to stay
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On April 09 2012 02:28 Chicane wrote: Why not just have a rejoin like they have in Dota 2, LoL and HoN. HoN is a small relatively unknown company (at least before they made HoN) and they were able to implement it, so I imagine Blizzard could. Then when someone drops, they could just pause the game and wait for the other player to reconnect.
You mean S2*
Also, please, for the love of all programmers in the world, don't say stuff like: "Well completely different game A does it, so game B should do it too."
None can say how much work it is for Blizzard to implement this, other than their engine, game and BNet programmers or guys like Dustin Browder who have to know pretty well how stuff works, the interface at least (not the complete implementation).
I mean as far as SC2 goes, I myself would imagine this is certainly something doable and we will see it at least with the release of HotS. Still, one just cannot easily draw strings between 2 different games.
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On April 09 2012 02:13 visual77 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 02:02 Mauldo wrote: Do any of you know how hard it would be to do this? The coding alone must be horrendous, let alone determining the exact moment of disconnect, the exact moment that commands stopped coming in, and the exact state of everything on the fucking game map. The game's code is infinitely more complicated that Brood War, and all of these "Oh, well, it was in Brood War. Should be easy to implement" really shouldn't even be posted. Unless, of course, you're a computer programmer. Because I'm not, so any post from a legit programmer (RICH) telling me it's easy enough to do would be welcome. But the same rando-TL international business lawyers becoming rando-TL computer programmers is getting more than just a little old. I am a computer programmer, and have been doing it professionally since 2006. The replay files are stored as a sequence of commands, I believe. If this is not true, then disregard everything else I say. But, if it is a sequence of commands (player A clicked here, player B pressed 'a'), then restoring from a partial save is possible with how the save file is structured. You just fast-forward / rewind the save to the point you want, and then hit resume and essentially fork the game. This same method could be used to take an existing replay and fork the game, which could make for some interesting training sessions (if I would have noticed this drop faster, could I have won? let's go re-play the game right before then and you stop the drop and see what happens). As far as how difficult it would be to implement in game, I can't say. Being a computer programmer doesn't tell you how they wrote their code. They could have some stuff in there that makes this harder than it should be. That's not at all uncommon. All I can say with reasonable certainty is that if the save file is stored as a timestamped list of player commands, and the game engine recreates the game from that data, then the save file format already supports restoring from a partial save very easily.
I agree with this 100%. In addition, if the game would not store the camera movement of the observers, or make those optional, in my opinion observers would no longer be able to slow down games if the observer lags.
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It seems like unless there is a save just as one player drops, it is kind of pointless. If a player disconnect, and last save was a minute prior to the disconnect, that is a full minute of information that both players will have about the game before it is played out. This could be dt's in your base, a doom drop en-route, or any tech choice made that hadn't been scouted at the save point, but was revealed prior to the disconnect. This would create more problems than it would solve, imo.
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On April 09 2012 02:19 branflakes14 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2012 02:16 Xapti wrote:On April 09 2012 02:14 branflakes14 wrote: Vote with your wallet then. It's pointless throwing a tantrum when you keep buying their games. That's not really the way to go about things. they're not the best analogies, but it's kinda like not voting or not paying taxes and expecting the government to improve. But what incentive does Blizzard have to change anything when people are still buying their games en masse? Not giving them money is the ONLY way they'll improve.
Um...they already have our money. If you don't buy HotS I guess that could work, but most of the buyers only play the single player anyways. I think this route is much better.
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