ET-TV

[nate.h]

I don’t see why any source code is needed; the network protocols should be relatively straightforward to reverse-engineer, and from there a proxy could be created very easily. All you need to do is write a program that can connect to a server and behave itself as a spectator; have the same program accept incoming connections from other clients (i.e. make it a server itself) and tell the clients that they are spectators. Then relay the data from one server to the next, and its all good.

The only real potential problem would be if the network traffic is encrypted (to prevent things like proxy hacks, for example ). Still, if you can get pastthis, it should in theory be possible. Of course, the connected spectators would not be able to have any control over their perspective in the world; they’d have to be slaved to whatever it is the proxy is sending the server as its position.

[bani]

Of course, the connected spectators would not be able to have any control over their perspective in the world; they’d have to be slaved to whatever it is the proxy is sending the server as its position.

not true. you can do free floating spectator easily enough. the problem would be that you wouldnt be able to see anything outside of the spectator’s PVS.

[nate.h]

[quote=nate.h]Of course, the connected spectators would not be able to have any control over their perspective in the world; they’d have to be slaved to whatever it is the proxy is sending the server as its position.

not true. you can do free floating spectator easily enough. the problem would be that you wouldnt be able to see anything outside of the spectator’s PVS.[/quote]

Well, right. What I meant was, in the above model of a proxy that just forwarded messages between specs and the server, it probably wouldn’t work. The server would likely get a little confused if it had some client giving it 15 different, conflicting control every frame.

Now, if you could trick the server to giving you the /whole/ world state…

[b]Edit: Well, I figure I might as well tip my hand as to what I am working on, related to this. I am writing a mod for ET that will enhance the ability of the ET spectator to see more global behavior patterns and watch the game from a new and interesting angle.

Details are in this thread…
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5074

It’s no ET-TV (yet), but, once I get it working, that is definitely one of the things I will look at implementing, as it would make the system alot more practical.[/b]

[bani]

Now, if you could trick the server to giving you the /whole/ world state…

you can do that easily enough, but you wont have enough bandwidth for it. youll end up dropping events all over the place as they wont fit in the snaps, etc. etc.

there are ways around this but you will end up bypassing the engine to do it. its quite a lot of work to do a ‘proper’ ettv. the best place to do this kind of thing is inside the engine itself. doing ettv outside the engine you will end up duplicating a lot of the engine logic itself, writing a “mini-et-server”, basically a sophisticated proxy which speaks dm_83 protocol. it’s a lot of work.

[sib_blue]

ET-TV would mean a lot to the scene, a lot and then some.

[nate.h]

http://boozze.besthost.be/gamecast/index.html

Hmm. Seems very similar to what we were already discussing here…

[rgoer]

Yeah, those punks stole my idea :moo: :drink:

Alas, I kid, I kid… just glad somebody got something like this out the door. How’s your project coming along, by they way, nate?

[pack]

Yeah, those punks stole my idea :moo: :drink:

Alas, I kid, I kid… just glad somebody got something like this out the door. How’s your project coming along, by they way, nate?

Oie, we started working on it a bit earlier than the ettv threads here though

When I recently did a search for ettv here I noticed some similar ideas and that only encouraged us only to work a bit harder Afaik nowhere it was described the way we do it (webserver), most of it still needed some gameserver where viewers could connect or there was some discussion about using streaming videos:

http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5211&highlight=ettv

I don’t think that’s true. The system described above, using streaming video, would be perfectly implementable without any access to the ET source at all. That would just be a question of bandwidth, but if the Cameraman had a solid enough connection, it’d be perfectly fesable.

I don’t think that idea is that similar of that of us nate.h (?). Anyway - our idea is simple and straightforward. It should be strange if we were the first to think of it but apparently we were the first to make a tool for it ?

cheers & have fun watching gc

nb: gc allows people watching in every mod they want to watch a match

[rgoer]

I think that when nate mentioned similarity he meant (and this is the same thing I meant when I was kidding about “stole my idea” and what-not) the stuff in one of the et-tv threads around here about the possibility of recording an et demo and “broadcasting” it via webserver simultaneously–which sounds a lot like what you guys accomplished, right? Cheers, by the way, and way to go! I’m sure that gc will catch on really quickly, it looks quite good so far. And the features you plan on implimenting in the future sound great too! Good shot, fellas!

[pack]

Yeah that promised features stuff is nice eyecandy cough¨ :moo:

atm if some real ettv would come it would probably make gc useless i think. This is just some (temporary) workaround.

If you want to see some live broadcasts you should try idling in some big channels at quakenet. Yesterday there were at least 3 broadcasts I heard of. (finland-russia and two ocrana matches)

You still can test it with ocrana vs plan b reds match:
http://www.emdec.de/cast.bzz (oasis)

It isn’t “live” anymore though…

[nate.h]

Well, the great thing is, my mod will work with regular demo playbacks, so in theory I (or anyone) can just use it to watch any game you broadcast without any changes on your side (which is very ). There are definitely some cool enhancements that can be made with spectator-side modules.

I agree, congrats on making a great system. Oh, and good work with the optional delay. That’s the best way I can think of to reduce spectator-based cheating.