Any spectate or replay function for Dom3 games?

[Radioheart]

A favorite feature of other strategy games I've played is to spectate other players and to view my own and other's replays from a omniscient perspective.

As PBEM games, via llamaserver e.g, must contain a master list of .trn files and everyone's .2h's shouldn't an omnipresent replay be available as an AAR? Maybe I haven't looked hard enough or there are some other limitations in creating a full replay.

While an omniscient spectator mode would probably compromise game integrity, could it be an option for some games?

[lch]

The problem is that you will need one savegame (slot) per turn of the game and go back and forth in the "Load game" option for the different nations and different turns there are. That makes it a little hard to really follow through with the games. I have made the turn files available for some finished games after asking the players if they're okay with it, though, in a similar thread to this one.

You will probably need the right patch version of the game to view the mod nation games, but the two blitzes that I posted later are good to go.

[Gandalf Parker]

The game does have those features. But they are part of the basic PbEM game on Linux setup so they dont tend to get explained well for people on Macs and Windows. Its not on the menu, so they dont think its a feature of the game.

The pbem setup means that the turns are a seperate file.
To get a spectator view of a game, simply ask to have someones turns emailed to you also.
To get a replay function (or backups), simply arrange for a turn file to NOT overwrite the previous turn file each time. (some people have written utilities to make that easier)

With direct-connect games it can be more difficult to do both. Such as, if care isnt taken then a spectator can save a turn to the server. But it can be done if you really know your way around the windows program (by setting permissions).

Hmmmm Im thinking that there might be a way to insure at the hosts end that only the correct file gets used. Maybe I will think on that abit and see about setting up a spectator game. We could have the experts on IRC play a game against each other and allow everyone to watch it. (allow direct connect for watching but only emailed turns from the real players get swapped in by the preexec prior to running host?)

Gandalf Parker

[Alneyan]

Oh, I like the sound of that! I loved running PBEM games without actually playing in them, so I could peek around and see what all the players did... it's great fun, so I can see where you're coming from.

The biggest problem is, like lch said, that the game makes it so awkward to switch back and forth between turns, so looking at more than a few turns can be pretty frustrating. It should be possible to improve the state of affairs somewhat by using a third party program that allows you to see what the game looked like on turn X with just a click. You'd still need to have all the turn files saved up, though, but that's very easy to set up.

I can see a pretty straightforward way of allowing spectators in a TCP/IP game, though: just run two instances of the game, one for the actual players, and the other one for the spectators. When a turn runs, have the first game copy its files to the second one.

Does that sound like what you were looking for? I know the game doesn't have those two features in a convenient form, but I think it's possible to get a pretty close approximation with a limited amount of hackery. The hackery itself is easy enough to do, but I'm just not sure if it's going to be good enough for what you have in mind. Let me know

[lch]

Originally Posted by Alneyan

I can see a pretty straightforward way of allowing spectators in a TCP/IP game, though: just run two instances of the game, one for the actual players, and the other one for the spectators. When a turn runs, have the first game copy its files to the second one.

The problem with "spectators" is that they could talk about the info that they gained from spectating. Thus I only prepare savegames for finished MP games, or allow spectators in blitzes only where it's not that big an issue of having invested weeks on a game.

If you have a friend in a MP game and he trusts you then you can just reuse his turn files like said earlier. For PBEM, let him forward you the turns by mail, for networked, just log in with his password and immediately log out again when you see the status screen, then go to your local games. You should always use "Quit without saving" instead of "End turn" for safety.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Alneyan

I can see a pretty straightforward way of allowing spectators in a TCP/IP game, though: just run two instances of the game, one for the actual players, and the other one for the spectators. When a turn runs, have the first game copy its files to the second one.

Does that sound like what you were looking for? I know the game doesn't have those two features in a convenient form, but I think it's possible to get a pretty close approximation with a limited amount of hackery. The hackery itself is easy enough to do, but I'm just not sure if it's going to be good enough for what you have in mind. Let me know

EXCELLENT. Yes that would be really easy to setup. Having the post-exec command do the copying.

And Yes lch, there would be some drawbacks. The first one I thought of was that an unscrupulous player could view the files of his enemies. The best option for a lurker is to ask one player if they can get copies of the turn files. I think that for the next mid-to-large game I host I will make the option for emailing turns to multiple addresses.

But what I had in mind was an exhibition game. I think that the IRC crowd could put together a game where the abuses would be few, and allow all of the eager learners lurking here to peek into their actions. It wouldnt be a serious game since there would be too many factors. Such as, there would be too much temptation to discuss everything that we see even while the strategy is in play and possibly give it away to the enemy.

[Alneyan]

Originally Posted by lch

The problem with "spectators" is that they could talk about the info that they gained from spectating.

Yes, that's the obvious problem with spectating (the other one being active players posing as spectators).. but that's a social issue, so no amount of hackery is going to help.

I know I wouldn't allow spectating in an ongoing game unless it was agreed beforehand, as it just seems too likely to end up with possibly unfounded suspicions if a player happens to be very lucky in their wars.

I do think an exhibition game would be a lot of fun to watch, though, so count me in as a cheerleader for that one

[lch]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

But what I had in mind was an exhibition game. I think that the IRC crowd could put together a game where the abuses would be few, and allow all of the eager learners lurking here to peek into their actions.

As I said, for blitzes it has become quite popular to spectate at others, and the players are usually okay with it as they play without any pretender passwords set anyway. The users namad and especially moderation quite often take a look over another one's shoulder.

I prepared a shell script a while ago which repackages my backups of games played on my server into that form where they are being renamed into folders carrying the turn number, and so on. So if the players are okay with it, I could prepare finished games for spectators. Here it is:

#!/bin/bash

for file in *-pre.tgz
do
  game=`echo $file | sed "s/-[0-9]*-pre.tgz$//g"`
  tar xzf $file
  title=`grep -oEm 1 "Dominions 3 Scores, [^<]*" $game/scores.html | sed "s/Dominions 3 Scores, //g"`
  if [ -z "$title" ]
  then
    title="$game turn 1"
  fi
  mv "$game" "$title"
done

It needs all the backups for that game in the current directory and the games to be hosted with the --scoredump switch. Here's how I create my backups, to be run in the "savedgames" folder:

tar czf "/home/dom3/dominions3/backups/"$GAME-$(date +%s)-pre.tgz $GAME

Using the backups from the --preexec commands has the added bonus that you can see the orders that the players gave, all the army movement arrows and so on. I could probably come up with a couple of more games to peek into by asking a crowd of players that frequently play on my server, if there's interest in that.

[Gandalf Parker]

You are right. Using the pre would be better than post.
That would be interesting. Using date-named zipz for storing each turn then you could avoid having to have a savedgames directory for each turn that you wanted viewable.

if the game was called Exhibition on port 12345 and every turn that processed saved the orders file (pre) as exhi+date.zip then a webapp could allow viewing the file and create a temporary savedgame dir with all the files as something like a game called exhi726354 on port 34344. The pre could look and remember which turn was being viewed then copy a dummy .2h into place creating a fast "stale turn" result, and the post would unzip the next save in the sequence. That way the person viewing the game could login to 34344 and look at that turn all they wanted including the original players changed commands for that turn and all battle views. Then hit "end", get the next turn with all the planned actions, look at it, hit "end", look at the next one, etc etc thru the whole game.

That might be worth setting up for myself (its great to be the server) just to be able to backcheck my own actions in some of my larger games.

A webapp could also make the entire zip for a particular turn available for download so that at any point in the game they could decide to turn it into a local game on their own machine to continue the game live from that point on. This would be fantastic to offer with one of the more creative AAR writers here. A person could read the AAR, view the game turns, and at any point take over a personal version of the game to play from that point on. I get that something like that would be publicized by Shrapnel.

Gandalf Parker

[Gandalf Parker]

OK that wont work. The game would receive the .trn not the .2h so the commands would not be viewable. But in many other ways that still might work. Have to think on it when I wake up later.

Edit: are the formats the same? I wonder what happens if a .2h is copied over a .trn file then delivered from the host.