Is SEIV going the way of the dodo? - Page 3

Kana · #21 November 7th, 2006, 03:18 PM

Quote:

Suicide Junkie said:
Well, there are some practical downsides to the beefiness of SE5.

25 megs of (beautiful) combat replay. For a 50 ship/150 fighter warppoint assault in GGmod.

Then next turn, 75 more megs of combat replay... Of the survivors chasing fleeing ships that they have no chance of catching, since they have the same speed, and the combat map is infinite.

The turn after that, I ran out of hard disk space... so there was no replay saved.

Compare to SE4, where five megs of combat replay takes only an hour to create, and involves upwards of 700 ships / 10000 fighters.

Welcome to the 21st century. They have these things now...they call them 3d graphics...and they also have these HD, with GB behind the numbers...

Fyron · #22 November 7th, 2006, 03:22 PM

Kana... 100 MB combat replay files are terrible things. How do you play PBEM/PBW with that? You need the replays to see how combat went, to refine ship designs and such.

Captain Kwok · #23 November 7th, 2006, 05:13 PM

I don't think it has anything to do though with the 3d graphics. It's probably all of the extra data that has to be saved for each component and the fact that each combat round is ~8x longer than in SE:IV. The retreat feature should help cut down on the sizes though.

Suicide Junkie · #24 November 7th, 2006, 07:34 PM

I would estimate that SE5 combat is roughly 300x longer.
30 turns, vs 300 seconds at ~30FPS.

In addition, the locations are real numbers instead of single byte coordinates.
Plus there are facings and speeds to record.

Kana · #25 November 8th, 2006, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
Kana... 100 MB combat replay files are terrible things. How do you play PBEM/PBW with that? You need the replays to see how combat went, to refine ship designs and such.

Oh I agree...yet I just installed NWN2 on my computer, and that took up 6 GB of space. The 1st patch requires that you have 7 GB free on your HD to even run the patch. I know this isnt the same type of game or anything like that. I'm just saying that games are going to require more of your computer weither its a highend RPG, or a lowend strategy game. I would much rather play a strategy game, but I accept the fact that improvements are going to require more resources. It would be easier, if we didnt have to use a PBEM/PBW format. CivIV for example has a pitboss mode, which allows a free standing game to be logged into and a turn played. Or so I've heard. I have played CivIV MP, and enjoy it for the 3 or so hours you can invest in it at one sitting. You then save the game, and make a new date to play. Yet there are many advantages to the PBEM/PBW style, especially the play when you have time advantage. I'm certainly wowed initially by stunning graphics, but in the end gameplay and depth are always more important. Heck I would be quite happy if SE5 was SE3/SE4 with the added modding options.

Black_Knyght · #26 November 8th, 2006, 04:11 PM

That's really what I was hoping for when I'd heard it was being done.

PvK · #27 November 8th, 2006, 04:31 PM

Even a few megs per combat replay is really going to torpedo SE5 PBEM/PBW, and it seems to me like it really shouldn't be necessary. It shouldn't need to record every particle movement. Ideally it could just record the participants, their detailed starting status, formations and orders, and one or more pseudo-random number seeds. The game engine could then regenerate what happened by rolling the dice the same way, unless it's implemented in such a way that what happens actually depends on the machine itself, which might be a bug itself even independent of the replay issue.

Combat Wombat · #28 November 8th, 2006, 04:33 PM

Quote:

PvK said:
Even a few megs per combat replay is really going to torpedo SE5 PBEM/PBW, and it seems to me like it really shouldn't be necessary. It shouldn't need to record every particle movement. Ideally it could just record the participants, their detailed starting status, formations and orders, and one or more pseudo-random number seeds. The game engine could then regenerate what happened by rolling the dice the same way, unless it's implemented in such a way that what happens actually depends on the machine itself, which might be a bug itself even independent of the replay issue.

I am emailing that to aaron

its a good idea.

Fyron · #29 November 8th, 2006, 06:25 PM

Kana:
Install size or size on disk is not the issue at all... The issue is having to transfer around dozens of megabytes per turn. It doesn't matter whether you use PBEM or TCP/IP (aka Civ4's pitboss), the sheer amount of data to transfer is staggering. Civ4 can't hardly compare for game file sizes anyways... It has no combat system to speak of, just some comparisons of strength numbers.

PvK:
I certainly hope an entire combat can't be regenerated just by sending a few random seeds...

PvK · #30 November 9th, 2006, 01:48 AM

Fyron:
Why not? In general it can and is a very common practice in other computer games that store replays. Typically only the starting situation, human input, and a few or one random seed number are all that are needed. In a game system like this where there is no human input during the battle, there is no human input to record during the battle.