Myth II 1.7.1 Public Beta #2

[Pyro]

I don't know if this was already implemented into v1.7 of Myth II, so if not I'd like to ask a small thing about the game films (the recorded game films, please do not mistake them for the intro and SMK ones!): when viewing the film, can't it have some "controls" to REW and/or PAUSE the film for example, without quitting it and viewing again from the start? Kind of, in the same style of those old VHS players (now modern DVD/Blu-Ray players)?

The way Myth was designed, it can't be easily made to do that. The programmers would be able to give more details, but they have stated that this idea is no small task by far. It would require rewriting a lot, too much actually.

[Graydon]

Instead, the remedy of adding up to 64x speed while watching was implemented. So if you have to re-watch a section it takes considerably less time to "fast forward" from the start to that point.

[vinylrake]

as someone who knows a little about programming it makes my brain hurt to think about what you would have to do to make this work. when you watch a recording you aren't playing back a visual recording you are actually replaying the game - just the user input is replaced by the info in the recording so it replaces you pointing and clicking and selecting units with a log of what you did in the game. so what looks like an interactive movie isn't really at all.

basically i think to be able to rewind a recording you'd have to rewrite the myth engine so it runs completely backwards so everything from physics to damage to sprite animations to every single cause and effect in the game goes backwards. and being able to switch from forward-chronological-cause-and-effect to backwards and then back to forwards again really makes my brain hurt.

but i could be wrong. maybe it's really simple....

[Myrd]

but i could be wrong. maybe it's really simple....

Nope, it's exactly as you describe. The only other possibility is to create a diff between the game state for every tick (e.g. an omnipatch of the data each tick), and then play it backwards using these rather than actually executing game code. I think this would involve enough computation to be slower than realime (not to mention the crazy amount of RAM you'd need to keep all that info) - making it useless.

[Renwood]

just imagine it if it was easy (and its not) i can see it now large group of people explode in game, and you reverse it and they slowly go back together. then play it forward again and they blow up, then reverse it. man that sounds fun.

Im sure it would be REALLY GREAT for bug finding, as you could replay an event over and over, and not have to start the film all over again because you missed the expect part you wanted to see, or had a bad angle and couldnt.

i think the closest we will come to that with myth2 is:
recording a film in high def with some video editing program and then editing the footage to play in reverse whenever you want with. i know i know it wont be like seeying in happen in game and being able to move the camera around. But o well ive never seen anything happen in reverse slow motion that was myth related ever. and i think now i will have to do just that!

[Renwood]

O and Myrd, how much RAM are you thinking would be needed?

[Graydon]

I think he was implying the amount of RAM required for such a task doesnt even exist yet.... that is there's probably VERY FEW computers on the market that can even house enough RAM for the task. We're talking well over 4 GB.

The only machine that comes to top of my mind would be a Mac Pro with I think room for 32GB of RAM. There may be comparable PC boxes, I'm not sure.