Spectator Feedback (Short and Sweet!)

(potty200) #1

As some of you are aware, I have been doing casts over the last 2 months on Dirtybomb. I am fairly rusty as I haven’t casted (properly) since about 2006. Anyway, thought about what I like/dislike and things I would personally LOVE to see as a spectator/Shoutcaster.

  • Right now the spectator mode is completely broken, since the latest patch. It is completely impossible to tell who is on whos team! I feel Big BOLD names should be an option that you can toggle on/off as a spectator only. Also, would be nice to see the players health and class when you are free camming. Also, going back to named player names, it would make it FAR easier to tell the difference if players used their clan colours like back in RTCW/ET days!

  • Up to date in game stats. So you can see K/D Accuracy, damage given/recieved, XP gained from cartain things. One of the biggest things on stats needs to be GIBS.

  • A notifcation system for when someone is completing an objective. I have managed to miss so many plants and difuses because as a spectator, and in some aspects a player, it isn’t clear enough when a plan or something has been done!

  • Ability to CLICK while looking at a player in free cam mode and follow that person.

  • (NOTE: Not sure if you can do this yet or not) Be able to BIND buttons to follow player X; e.g: Bind f1 follow player 1, Bind f4 follow player 4.

  • Copy CS:GO with their team overlays and be able to toggle seeing shadows through walls like CSGO… This is SO important from a spectators point of view!!!

  • An ACTION button. This links in with a notification but if someone is planting and you get the notification be able to HIT like “F” and it specs that person at that moment.

  • On TAB options be able to see what loadout each player is using.

  • FIFA style end of match Replays. Big multi kills, important plants/ defuses, multi revives and so on. Played while stats are being shown and/or while we are waiting for both teams to ready up for the next map/round.

I could go on a lot more, but I have been working since 5am this morning and my eyes cannot focus and my brain hurts too! I would love to know what you guys think about what I have put. See if you can further my ideas or add completely new ones of your own!

(DB Genome editor) #2

All good points, can’t think of anything obvious you overlooked…

Maybe an option to see death ghosts? Sort of a history trail of the combat. Would need some sort of timeout or max count to limit clutter though.

(INF3RN0) #3

I think it would be cool if there was a feature that could do a quick instant replay of any large kill streaks in a mini window or something. No idea if that would be possible or cause too many issues, but that way people could watch stuff that got accidentally missed by casters.

(potty200) #4

I have given this some thought and a little pop up box for casters saying someing thing like “Inferno 3 man kill Hit F to replay”.
I guess it would be quite easy to do if the server is recording the demo, which it is. All you have to do is have the console check for kills within a certain period of time un-interupted. But what do I know? I am a noob! :smiley:

(potty200) #5

Just thought of a major point I missed out, maybe one of the biggest things I would like to see!

When spectating players there is a huge delay in what they are aiming at. With the lack of spectator hitsounds it is imposible to know how accruate they are being! Always aiming 2 feet behind players.

(Anti) #6

[QUOTE=potty200;455895]Just thought of a major point I missed out, maybe one of the biggest things I would like to see!

When spectating players there is a huge delay in what they are aiming at. With the lack of spectator hitsounds it is imposible to know how accruate they are being! Always aiming 2 feet behind players.[/QUOTE]

I wouldn’t say it’s quite that far off but there is a delay, it’s a bit of a limitation with how UE demos work. We’ll try to improve it when we give spec a full pass later in development but it might be a tough one to get pixel perfect.

(ImageOmega) #7

Good feature request list potty.

I would add a multiple person camera that would split the screen into 4 boxes to show off 4 people at once. Or at least PIP.

(Mustang) #8

You’re talking about not that much delay over LAN right?

Because I thought 2 feet was being generous, for me it’s more like 4-6 feet, completely unusable as it stands.

(Anti) #9

[QUOTE=Mustang;455918]You’re talking about not that much delay over LAN right?

Because I thought 2 feet was being generous, for me it’s more like 4-6 feet, completely unusable as it stands.[/QUOTE]

I’m talking about spec or demos, regardless of LAN or net, those wont affect how the client viewing the demo or spec sees what the spectator player did. What causes the offset is small amounts of missing view position information that are not synced to the server, so when you view from another client’s perspective it is off slightly.

As the server gives you everything it has you won’t see things differently to any other spectator regardless of connection, as I understand it. I’ve never seen the crosshairs offset by 4 to 6 feet, so it shouldn’t be possible for you either. We did some work earlier in the game to ensure offset was by just a few pixels at most.

If you have a video of this though then I’d like to see it as it means there are bugs somewhere.

(Mustang) #10

I see, thanks for the explanation, I’ll try to record something.

(Wezelkrozum) #11

There are definitely some bugs somewhere. It seems to happen fairly randomly.

Here are some fight scenes from the first Showmatch of last Sunday. As you can see the second one is far off aim like Mustang said.

//youtu.be/MT4YPDY689M

(INF3RN0) #12

200 ping + granny aim imo :).

(Mustang) #13

Anti already said ping has no effect on spectator view.

(INF3RN0) #14

It must lol. Considering only NA players with 200 ping here are shown killing targets 5ft off the crosshair.

(Rex) #15
  • Please remove the many invisible walls on the maps for spectator! This is really important as you don’t want to get stuck every time while casting.
(Anti) #16

Actually, I was wrong :frowning:

After talking with Kap there was, bizarrely a link. Since then (a few months ago now) we’ve tweaked that behaviour so it shouldn’t be an issue now, but if you still noticed problems then let us know in the bug forum and provide some examples (video + latency info)

(FireWater) #17

Believe it or not firefall’s pvp spectator mode was great! I’ll try to get some videos linked

(potty200) #18

Damn, this was made when the spectator features were awful. SD have made huge steps forward in DB when it comes to spectating. Sadly, I haven’t got a decent microphone to cast any games right now :frowning:

(Mustang) #19

[QUOTE=Anti;473393]Actually, I was wrong :frowning:

After talking with Kap there was, bizarrely a link. Since then (a few months ago now) we’ve tweaked that behaviour so it shouldn’t be an issue now, but if you still noticed problems then let us know in the bug forum and provide some examples (video + latency info)[/QUOTE]
Didn’t even have to try to capture this, this was the first thing I saw upon jumping on the server.

You might want to ignore the TS audio. :tongue:

Spectator’s ping: 28
Player’s ping: 192

//youtu.be/UFgYqW0XHTc

Spectator’s ping: 28
Player’s ping: 56

//youtu.be/j6TctxkKxLE

Spectator’s ping: 28
Player’s ping: 36

//youtu.be/SGbZsG_IZI8

It’s not even worth going on, this is so blatant it’s not even funny!

(montheponies) #20

I’d like to see the picture in picture idea, set so you can choose to show a top down view of the map, whilst watching first person or on free cam. Have it on toggle so you can switch between the showing the map or the cam in the main window. Would help spectators understand how the team are moving - not a perfect analogy, but think how difficult it would be too follow a footy match if you only got the camera view from one player at a time :slight_smile: