On April 08 2012 22:58 Bumblebee wrote: I am very much against it if it only saves like once a minute or so as DotA2 does. This game would suffer greatly from it and let's say a player drops during an all-in and his build is so all-in that is his only way to do it. He is winning the game and the engagement, but drops and the game saved 1 or 2 minutes earlier and he can't really get out of this build. That would be detrimental and a re-game would be more fair even to the winning player. However, if it can be done so it would save the second the game stops and nothing would change from that point in time, I'm very much for it.
They should be able to save the game the instant a player officially disconnect or give you the option to save when a player has officially disconnected. Like I said, the client still has the data on the game state before a person disconnects. The trick is to keep that data and auto-save it to a file, or pop up a dialogue to give you the option of saving the game. As a programmer myself, I'm pretty sure that saving the game data to a file is easy for them to do.
Maybe the harder part for Blizzard is loading the file so that players and observers can start off where the game last ended. This is an answer that only the Blizzard programmers can answer.
this should be easily done; blizzard just needs to take the replay data and reuse it for game state purposes. the instant the disconnect happens, the save file should be generated so there is minimal downtime to resume the game. (heck as others have stated, they could just use the replay data afterward and generated it post-game) it is up to blizzard to work out the details (one system only has the save? people editing the save file?), but I know they can do it. it's just a matter of them committing to such a fix.
I don't understand why my post on the 1st or 2nd page got missed: + Show Spoiler +
On April 08 2012 19:54 Hairy wrote: It's not hard to implement at all; they already have replay functionality built in in the form of replays! Replays already allow you to skip to any time you desire and replicate the exact game state at that time. All they need to do is allow players to resume gameplay from the point that someone dropped.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
On January 25 2012 10:36 turtles wrote: update: BIGGER, better and now also uploaded on EU!
Salt is a training tool which enables saving and loading the game in multiplayer matches with practice partners! It is designed to help people test out the timing and execution of all aspects of their play and I have recieved positive responses from Bronze players, pro players/casters (Qxc and Husky) and many people from all levels in between.
To use the tool a player simply types "save" or "load" into chat and they can jump to whatever point in the game they want. For a simple look at how this works and how it can be used you can watch the episode of HuskyStarcraft where he did a review/tutorial on it as part of a new series.
(note, near the end of the clip his opponent clicks on the "restart" button hence the confussion)
He does a good job of outlining some uses for this which are holding timing attacks and practicing micro in real world engagements. It is also useful to develop build orders to test out what a build order is weak against, different variations on a build order and which paths work best when transitioning, as well as practicing games where spawn location plays a role as it lets you chose which starting location each player begins at.
To use simply enter the custom maps section of Battlenet and search for "SALT" and there should be a number of the maps in the list.
LADDER / TOURNAMENT: SALT Antiga Shipyard SALT Entombed Valley SALT Cloud Kingdom SALT Metalopolis SALT Shakuras Plateau SALT Shattered Temple SALT Tal'Darim Altar
TOURNAMENT: SALT Dual Sight SALT Crevasse SALT Daybreak SALT Terminus
NOT IN COMPETITIVE USE: SALT Xel'naga Caverns SALT Bel'shir swamp (one of my own maps, not balance tested)
MORE MAPS: coming soon
If you use custom hotkeys for control groups then you will need to edit the file SALTkeybindings.SC2Banks which will be found in your banks file.+ Show Spoiler +
Start the game and it will create a default file for you, if you do not know where it is located do a search of you SC2 folder and you should find it. To change the hotkey for control group 1 to the letter 'q' find the line that says <Value string="1"/> and change it to <Value string="q"/>. all letters, numbers and F1-F12 keys are allowed.
In the future I will be looking into being able to save the game as a file so that it can be shared with others, distributed to help people become better gamers, included in help requests (eg. "Help. What should I do in this situation?") and used in tournaments in the case of a player who gets disconnected.
I sincerely hope that you all find this to be a useful tool.
Jumping in to observe a game is something league of legends was doing before SC2 launched. Any excuses for blizzard are just that, excuses. The technology is there and it's not some unforeseen development they could not have predicted.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
On April 08 2012 23:00 Tyree wrote: is not some sort of button they can just press and voila! Its there. I can imagine something like this would be a huge undertaking for them
As a professional programmer myself, if their code is structured flexibily and well designed, it shouldn't be too hard for them to do. If not, then I guess us fans will have to wait. Only the Blizzard programmers really know in the end.
As a professional programmer, what would you say to a PM that came up to you and said:
"Hey, make sure your code is flexible". - "Why?" "So that implementing new features in the future is possible." - "What features?" "Nothing specific right now, just make if flexible."
I was a programmer for some time, but never got into design patterns too heavily. Is this kind of flexibility actually achievable? In that can you program it in such a way that "New Feature X" is easy to implement for any values of X? And maybe more pertinent, how much does this add to time and cost?
Of course perfect flexibility is not possible. Still this should be possible to implement in reasonable time. But even if it's not when a player drops all the information about the game must still be available in memory like building positions, unit positions, health and ressources etc. Now serializing all the information is a tedious thing to programm probably but nothing difficult once you have the format specified. Now you could even run an external script on this file to use the mapeditor to generate a new custom map with the buildings and units and ressources placed accordingly. This map can then be hosted and the players rejoin. Implementing it like this would require no real change to the hosting/game creation implementation.
Saw this in the Reddit thread - it's supposed to be a picture of Mike Morhaime and Dustin Bowder during the disconnect. Can anyone confirm this picture is authentic?
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
Seriously, so far I wouldn't say Blizzard have proven to be at their best when it comes to tech optimization (apart from the BW engine, which has some very neat optimizations, but mostly because that one smart dude made it almost entirely by himself from scratch).
Another very important question is - why 400 vs 400 lings tend to lag on beyond Recommended specs machines? The pathing algorithm as it is now is ridiculously heavy for the CPU, compared to any other elements of the game. We regularly see in major tournaments some computer to have issues with low FPS even in offline play. Streamers often have non-network lag, despite having top-notch hardware. I hope Blizzard's core programmers find ways to optimize the CPU consumption a little bit, which would require delving into the very basics.
On April 08 2012 22:58 Bumblebee wrote: I am very much against it if it only saves like once a minute or so as DotA2 does. This game would suffer greatly from it and let's say a player drops during an all-in and his build is so all-in that is his only way to do it. He is winning the game and the engagement, but drops and the game saved 1 or 2 minutes earlier and he can't really get out of this build. That would be detrimental and a re-game would be more fair even to the winning player. However, if it can be done so it would save the second the game stops and nothing would change from that point in time, I'm very much for it.
I assume they'd probably design it so that players who don't get a fatal error save the same information that goes into a replay (original map seed + player actions).
On April 08 2012 23:35 Hairy wrote: I don't understand why my post on the 1st or 2nd page got missed: + Show Spoiler +
On April 08 2012 19:54 Hairy wrote: It's not hard to implement at all; they already have replay functionality built in in the form of replays! Replays already allow you to skip to any time you desire and replicate the exact game state at that time. All they need to do is allow players to resume gameplay from the point that someone dropped.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
On January 25 2012 10:36 turtles wrote: update: BIGGER, better and now also uploaded on EU!
Salt is a training tool which enables saving and loading the game in multiplayer matches with practice partners! It is designed to help people test out the timing and execution of all aspects of their play and I have recieved positive responses from Bronze players, pro players/casters (Qxc and Husky) and many people from all levels in between.
To use the tool a player simply types "save" or "load" into chat and they can jump to whatever point in the game they want. For a simple look at how this works and how it can be used you can watch the episode of HuskyStarcraft where he did a review/tutorial on it as part of a new series.
He does a good job of outlining some uses for this which are holding timing attacks and practicing micro in real world engagements. It is also useful to develop build orders to test out what a build order is weak against, different variations on a build order and which paths work best when transitioning, as well as practicing games where spawn location plays a role as it lets you chose which starting location each player begins at.
To use simply enter the custom maps section of Battlenet and search for "SALT" and there should be a number of the maps in the list.
LADDER / TOURNAMENT: SALT Antiga Shipyard SALT Entombed Valley SALT Cloud Kingdom SALT Metalopolis SALT Shakuras Plateau SALT Shattered Temple SALT Tal'Darim Altar
TOURNAMENT: SALT Dual Sight SALT Crevasse SALT Daybreak SALT Terminus
NOT IN COMPETITIVE USE: SALT Xel'naga Caverns SALT Bel'shir swamp (one of my own maps, not balance tested)
MORE MAPS: coming soon
If you use custom hotkeys for control groups then you will need to edit the file SALTkeybindings.SC2Banks which will be found in your banks file.+ Show Spoiler +
Start the game and it will create a default file for you, if you do not know where it is located do a search of you SC2 folder and you should find it. To change the hotkey for control group 1 to the letter 'q' find the line that says <Value string="1"/> and change it to <Value string="q"/>. all letters, numbers and F1-F12 keys are allowed.
In the future I will be looking into being able to save the game as a file so that it can be shared with others, distributed to help people become better gamers, included in help requests (eg. "Help. What should I do in this situation?") and used in tournaments in the case of a player who gets disconnected.
I sincerely hope that you all find this to be a useful tool.
Thank you for your time, Turtles
Again, how does a map that saves/reloads as long as you don't disconnect from the game help in the situations at hand (one player crashes or disconnects)? Replays are already a record of all actions taken in the match, the whole problem is getting back into a game or recreating the same game with a new lobby.
SOMEONE ALREADY MADE A CUSTOM MAP WHERE YOU CAN SAVE ANY TIME YOU LIKE AND GO BACK TO THAT POINT
Forgive the caps/red etc, but the first time my post was completely overlooked. People need to stop the pointless speculation - this feature has already almost been fully implemented by modders, so it would be trivial or blizz to do themselves:
Maybe Blizzard needs to hire this guy, lol. I wonder if the major tournaments could make use of this map.
Maybe they also fear that this feature could somehow be exploited, since a copy of the state of the current game must be saved somewhere (which would probably make it easier for cheaters to access it and watch it during their play). Storing it on servers perhaps would be to much of a storage/organization problem for Blizzard. Still I think as i stated before they already discussed it at length in 2009 and just don't want it.
On April 08 2012 23:37 Bigtony wrote: Jumping in to observe a game is something league of legends was doing before SC2 launched. Any excuses for blizzard are just that, excuses. The technology is there and it's not some unforeseen development they could not have predicted.
The part about technology is true. What you say about League is pure nonsense. What was always in LoL is reconnecting to games after a drop. Observing is relatively new (~this summer).
Blizzard is developing blizzard dota, and coming along with blizzard dota is the ability to reconnect to games after a d/c. So lan is not needed to fix this d/c issue. This is a solution that helps much better, even if there is a meteor destroyed the computer, the player can still reconnect via a new computer.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6D8fb.jpg)
