Enhanced Spectator Mode (New ET Project)

[duke_ku]

Actually, that is a very good idea. Talk to some of the TSN (The Shoutcast Network, I think). They shoutcast a lot of RTCW and ET matches. I’m sure they are looking for a way where they can track overall action, with name, and then zoom in on the action when they spot it.

that wouldn’t work, as matches are played with etpro. nate.h is talking about making an entirely new mod.

[rgoer]

Bani has spoken up in some other, similar threads–I’m sure that if/when this thing gets off the ground, a coordinated effort can be made to allow the interoperability of Nate’s project with the established ETPro competitive community.

[nate.h]

Bani has spoken up in some other, similar threads–I’m sure that if/when this thing gets off the ground, a coordinated effort can be made to allow the interoperability of Nate’s project with the established ETPro competitive community.

Ultimately, I think this would be an excellent idea, and was kinda what I was thinking from the start.

I would like this Very Very Much ™

[bani]

i cant imagine how bad the fps are in those overview shots

[Ifurita]

[quote=Ifurita]Actually, that is a very good idea. Talk to some of the TSN (The Shoutcast Network, I think). They shoutcast a lot of RTCW and ET matches. I’m sure they are looking for a way where they can track overall action, with name, and then zoom in on the action when they spot it.

that wouldn’t work, as matches are played with etpro. nate.h is talking about making an entirely new mod.[/quote]

No, I meant get their input, not get them to run it.

[duke_ku]

[quote=duke’ku][quote=Ifurita]Actually, that is a very good idea. Talk to some of the TSN (The Shoutcast Network, I think). They shoutcast a lot of RTCW and ET matches. I’m sure they are looking for a way where they can track overall action, with name, and then zoom in on the action when they spot it.

that wouldn’t work, as matches are played with etpro. nate.h is talking about making an entirely new mod.[/quote]

No, I meant get their input, not get them to run it.[/quote]

ah.

[nate.h]

i cant imagine how bad the fps are in those overview shots

50+ FPS

Of course, the test system is currently running a GeForce FX 5900:)

None the less, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire system isn’t fill-rate limited, and so the addded geometry really doesn’t hurt that much (most games on todays hardware are).

[bani]

when i do overviews like that on my geforce4 mx440 I get like 5fps :bash:

[nate.h]

when i do overviews like that on my geforce4 mx440 I get like 5fps :bash:

Interesting… do you just do a noclip and move really high up? Because I’m actually modifying the code so it leaves the player entity still, and just moves the actual eye-point around. I wonder if that would change performance any…

Edit: Also, looking at the pictures, I was noticing that, in alot of the scenes, I’m getting info on most all of the players at a fairly fast rate. It’s true that I am on the same subnet as the server I filmed these from, but it seems promising that it might still be able to record some kind of “Master Demo” that has all of the information on it at suitable speeds. It wouldn’t be good to stream it (shared bandwidth problems), but it might still be good for archiving and playback of matches (perhaps using some kind of enhanced viewer like mine )

[bedrock]

howabout if you had something to show players field of veiw?

(i’d do it in photoshop but i’ve got a nice trojan raping my dll’s at the moment, so instead you’re gonna have to settle with ascii)

if anyone’s ever seen how Metal Gear Solid’s fov think works its really basic, O< (o being the person < being fov)

you could simply put this in by a yellow < so to say, maybe it’d be different depending on players cg_fov’s

[nate.h]

howabout if you had something to show players field of veiw?

(i’d do it in photoshop but i’ve got a nice trojan raping my dll’s at the moment, so instead you’re gonna have to settle with ascii)

if anyone’s ever seen how Metal Gear Solid’s fov think works its really basic, O< (o being the person < being fov)

you could simply put this in by a yellow < so to say, maybe it’d be different depending on players cg_fov’s

Yes, I would like to visualize that, as well as the current player health. The latter is a slight problem, however, as it seems that the spectator (or perhaps just the demo file) does not get the health of every client. I’m not quite sure why this is, or how I can change it without the low level source :-/. The angles thing could be done, tho.

[rgoer]

Does the spectator get information about what each client has their cg_fov set to? What about the fov changes caused by +zoom? I agree that a “cone-of-vision” illustration would be cool for this project; I don’t know enough about how quake spectators work, though, to say whether or not I think it’s possible.

[The_Jesus_Zeppelin]

i think it be neat if youd highlight the gunfire and kinda did a cut screen or a replay on the fight you were just watching to see that person die!
if you could do that id be really cool. but i like what i see so far.

doo daa: what about a gunfire view. not first person i mean staring down their barrel and watching them get hit!

[Rain]

Does the spectator get information about what each client has their cg_fov set to? What about the fov changes caused by +zoom?

Nay and nay¹ (although zoom changes WERE sent in RtCW.)

¹ Well, +zoom is technically the binoculars, and the spectators DO get information about whether or not a player is using them. No additional information about zoom levels or anything, though.

[Hazzie]

Is this meant to be a real time play back of the game? If so how do you plan on stopping people who are spectating from broadcasting to the playing teams the positions of the enemy? Are you introducing some sort of time lag, such as the play shown actualy happened x amount of seconds ago?

apologies if that was a dumb-ass question.

[nate.h]

Is this meant to be a real time play back of the game? If so how do you plan on stopping people who are spectating from broadcasting to the playing teams the positions of the enemy? Are you introducing some sort of time lag, such as the play shown actualy happened x amount of seconds ago

The mod is capable of live playback.

This is a problem which, on the whole, I choose to just leave it unaddressed. Spectator cheating (“ghosting”) is and has been a problem with any game that allows spectators. I don’t think it’s something new introduced with what I’ve done. The truth is, anyone with two computers in the same room can do this on any server right now. Even on servers that might not allow spectators, he can still just drop a dummy player into the other team.

cheating is a problem, and one that I have not completely figured out yet. The introduced latency method might work fairly well, but I’m not sure how I would implement it using just the mod source. However, it does seem like a resonable solution.

It should be added that, since this is a full client and server-side mod, the players will at least know when such features are available. For tournament games, a single spectator could be logged in to be used by an announcer, and/or to be logged to a demo file that can be made available for playback later.

[sib_blue]

Will the real time playback be somewhat similar to WTV and such, as in, will one spectator be able to log on to the server and others watch the game through his eyes? To be honest, that is one of the features that the community needs the most, and that is what should be on top of the to-do lists for anyone given the source code. Such as you have been.

[sib_blue]

Taken from your website:

Improved Content Distribution
Systems exist for other games that allow a special client to be created that acts as a “spectator server”. This one client gets as much world data as it can from the server, and then forwards it to other clients who are connected directly to it, instead of the server itself. This reduces the overall bandwidth demand on the gameplay server, allowing for many more spectators (up to an order of magnitude, in some implementations) to watch the same game live without impacting the server.

So basically, you want to get in touch with someone willing to join the lithium team and make “ET-TV” a part of the mod?

[nate.h]

Taken from your website:

Improved Content Distribution
Systems exist for other games that allow a special client to be created that acts as a “spectator server”. This one client gets as much world data as it can from the server, and then forwards it to other clients who are connected directly to it, instead of the server itself. This reduces the overall bandwidth demand on the gameplay server, allowing for many more spectators (up to an order of magnitude, in some implementations) to watch the same game live without impacting the server.

So basically, you want to get in touch with someone willing to join the lithium team and make “ET-TV” a part of the mod?

Essentially, Yeah. This is somewhat of a non-immediate goal, as (a) I have other research issues to address (ET-TV, while cool and useful, isn’t really new ground), and (b) basically requires access to the engine source (modifications to the network code needs to be made). Of course, I’ve come to realize that some of the better features of Lithium would also require modifying the engine, so I’m not entirely sure how I am going to address that.