Is spectating features a longterm goal of the CDT?
SantaClaws
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
One of my biggest griefs about the state of ns2, is not the performance, balance or even a lack of gameplay features. Sure there is room for improvement in all of these departments, but I honestly think ns2 is in a good place in terms of that, even now in build 266
My biggest issue with ns2; is the lack of spectating features.
There is no replay function - no hltv - not even a functioning first person spectate (in a first person shooter? come on).
Keep in mind, I am not talking about UI improvements, like what we've seen from ns2+, which is awesome btw, keep it up!. I want the abillity to record matches from every angle.
I would like to hear from @CDT,
1) Is improving the spectating tools a priority at all, outside the UI stuff we got from ns2+?
2) If so, in what capacity?
3) If it is not a priority, or if it is low on the list, what are the main priorities instead?
I don't need these features in 268 or even 275 - but I really need to know if there's going to be progress at all in this department.
The reason I ask this now, rather than 12-18 months ago, is because I have so much more faith in the CDT than I ever did UWE. UWE did a great job with the game imo, but the CDT has just blown me away with their amazing progress in the short time they've been steering the ship. So I really hope that you guys will look in to this - and thanks for all the hard work so far!
My biggest issue with ns2; is the lack of spectating features.
There is no replay function - no hltv - not even a functioning first person spectate (in a first person shooter? come on).
Keep in mind, I am not talking about UI improvements, like what we've seen from ns2+, which is awesome btw, keep it up!. I want the abillity to record matches from every angle.
I would like to hear from @CDT,
1) Is improving the spectating tools a priority at all, outside the UI stuff we got from ns2+?
2) If so, in what capacity?
3) If it is not a priority, or if it is low on the list, what are the main priorities instead?
I don't need these features in 268 or even 275 - but I really need to know if there's going to be progress at all in this department.
The reason I ask this now, rather than 12-18 months ago, is because I have so much more faith in the CDT than I ever did UWE. UWE did a great job with the game imo, but the CDT has just blown me away with their amazing progress in the short time they've been steering the ship. So I really hope that you guys will look in to this - and thanks for all the hard work so far!
Comments
Without proper 'hltv', demo recording or first person spectate, it's next to impossible to make frag movies. Something that has been part of fps culture since quake.
It makes it incredibly difficult to analyze matches in depth unless you have a good spectator stream it - but even then, you can't always get a full idea of the battle, because you're stuck with that one perspective. You can't investigate exactly what made player1 miss that crucial pistol shot at player2 - so you're left with guessing. We're missing learning opportunities.
If someone wanted to make a show, in the similar mannor as day9, where he watches a replay, he rewinds, fast forwards, pauses etc. a thousand times during a daily and uses it to convey really deep and abstract concepts. This is almost impossible to do in ns2 - and I know some people have expressed that they wanted to do a show like that, it's just too difficult to do with the lack of spectating tools, in a job that is already extremely difficult.
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It seems to me odd that this would be an engine issue rather than game code; countless other games with various engines manage to do it well.
It looks a bit shitty for spark too if the flagship game created using the engine can't accommodate what is historically one of the most basic FPS functions.
CDT has been freaking great at providing behind-the-scenes info regarding game code etc so far and maybe this is a subject that requires one of those posts! And i'm sure you know that sometimes, writing these things down for peer scrutiny can open doors. Doors in the miiiind
While I'd LOVE at the very least HLTV (server-side) demos so you can review an entire match after the fact, it isn't trivial to do and I assume that people want better performance, faster load times, etc.
Also did they add the player glow to first person spectating like in CS:GO, shouldn't need to remind about the drama that happened from the lack of it.
It has not been fixed no. Iirc, it's technically still in the vanilla build, but on the competetive servers it has been disabled and replaced with 3rd person spec.
But any time you actually do spec from the first person, the aim is just going all over the place, it's not accurate at all.
When did you play last? Because the player outline has been added a very long time ago (before the last ns2wc actually)
I don't spectate very often. :P Just wanted to know. I saw them for the commander view of course but at the time they weren't in first person view as well.
Thanks for clarifying.
You activate the outlines with the flashlight key, just in case
And what about the spectator bug? that forces us to have the third person view for all scrims & matches thanks to the NSL Mod? It has been added because of this bug, right?
It's definitely in our sights.
We've had a recent discussion around this topic, and did brainstorm on a means to implement it. However, as @Asraniel said, it would require a crapload of work. Personally, I would want two full-time engine & Lua programmers on it for at least 2-4 months. Properly implementing Demos, HLTV-Like streaming, integrated Twitch support, etc requires touching a ton of stuff in the engine. In addition to that, we'd then have to create new stuff in the game-code and reworking existing spectator mode(s).
Long story short, we've been looking into this but it isn't our top priority...for now.
Thanks for the answer, that's really nice to know people are working on this.
in short, yes!
2) If so, in what capacity?
Well with an only volunteer work force it is difficult to address some of the issues that you have brought up. Would we love a replay system? yes, but it would require a significant amount of work and even UWE has said making it work could be problematic. 1st person spec is also something we are looking into fixing as its current iteration is glitchy and causes other issues as well.
3) If it is not a priority, or if it is low on the list, what are the main priorities instead?
Check the trello board over the next month to see items as they are added for the next few builds.
Although I won't do it anymore just imagine what a day9 like show could help the gaming community - imo 10 times more worth than any single update has ever offered in ns2 lifetime history.
So, to add my personal opinion, this feature would have been the most important feature of ns2 of all times, but maybe it's already too late for that. The time it could have hit hard is over imo.
About it being too late, I sort of agree, but not because I think there's no audience for that kind of a show - I think there is. ISE is getting a fair amount of viewers for his tutorials and that is, forgive me, at a very low level. Many of these viewers could easily be carried over to a high level analytical show for ns2 - along with many of the competetive players or 'aspiring-to-be' who wouldn't watch an ISE tutorial.
However, the reason I agree that it may be too late, is simply because of the lack of high level games to analyze. But my hope is, that those will come back in the future as well, as the CDT and compmod team continuously work to improve the game.
Edit: Triple negative rofl
Edit: Sorry overread the "my", thought you were generallizing. I appologize.
Well obviously, it depends on what your vision for the game is. If your vision of the game is simply to have a game that you enjoy to play, which is a valiant vision I will admit, then you'd be correct that spectating tools are completely irrelevant.
My dream however, is for ns2 to become a competetive spectator sport. A game where the pro players would not just be able to display their skill and compete against each other, but for other players to truly learn from them by studying them from different perspectives, like we've been able to in pretty much every competetive game from Warcraft II to CS:GO.
First person shooters in general, don't do so well today in streaming. But Starcraft i.e. still does - because it is ideal for spectating (and has tons of money poured in to it, but that's an entirely separate discussion). You wouldn't really get a good experience watching a CS:GO game from a top-down-view, but in SC you get all the information you need as well as all the action.
NS2 could've potentially been the perfect mix between these two genres, and bring together the demographics. Because it has the FPS action element, that so many players enjoy, but also the spectating capabillities of an rts. Except, we don't really have those spectating tools..
TL;DR - In short. The priorities of game development depends on the overall vision for the game. Before you agree on a vision, you can never establish what the priorities should be. I thought the majority of the remaining players in this community shared my dream, but perhaps I was being too romantic.
That isn't to say that the hours that many passionate people gave it and will continue to give it for months are wasted or devalued in any way. I think I am qualified enough to say that I wouldn't have met a lot of amazing people and had the opportunity to organise events and games if it wasn't for NS2. But it is too late for a dramatic uptake in the amount of interest that isn't already here.
Yes demos and proper first person spec would have been amazing for competitive play and spectating, but that isn't the only reason that system can be great. If you play an FPS casually as well it helps so much to go back into demos and look at why you missed that shot or go into someone else's perspective to see why he got the drop on you or something. There are so many uses for this kind of system.
LoL, this reminds me of an actual table flipping incident years and years ago. I beat this guy in chess (at school) when I was 12 (he was 17), and my friends were heckling him so much, he tried to flip the table, but couldn't because the 3 of us were leaning on the other side (small table). He got even more crappy and got up and left. Funny at the time, but I feel sorry for him now.