I like the idea.....but definitely something that CCP would have to hammer out later.

Man, I'd love something like this. So many possible uses!

There was a nice thread on the old forums about this collecting lots of good ideas.

Yes, we need a battle recorder for post-editing and probably a special render engine replacing details and effects for a never seen before look like what we know from several games cinematics. CCP is still using something like this.

Not everyone's got a PVR and a dual out graphics card Kellyl.

This way it's not only easier, it's more accessible.

do you have any idea how hard it would be implement it? even a simple version that wouldn't work between EVE versions would be rather challenging [sic]

To take this idea one step further, and actually make Incarna useful for something, I would like to propose the following to add to your Battle Recorder:

- Be able to playback recordings on the CQ display screens
- Create one more room (a Corp/Alliance War Room) and allow for playback on the display in there

This allows you and your corp/alliance to look at an event, and establish what went right/wrong with it, and learn from it. And if multiple people have recordings, play them on up to three display screens (as that is what the CQ offers), so you can see the event from a couple of different angles. [sic]

This looks awesome, mainly because it is exactly what Valve's demo record feature does, which is saving position and object data and re-rendering it later, making for lag-less video and low amounts of resource usage when recording.

anyone with a moderately modern card (i.e. can play eve) should have a dual-outputs...

the PVR, yeah, that may not be quite so common.

+1 to the OP's idea though ... didn't see if this was mentioned, but it NEEDS to be able to output in a format that we can put on the CQ TV

+support

This seems like and awesome idea, I would absolutly love to get it implemented.

It wouldn't be hard at all. Every entity on the 'grid' has x y z positional data, directional data, movement data and target data among other numbers. Most of this can be shortened from what it is now, and then 'interpolated', (aka guestimated) to keep the information small and manageable. This information can work across versions as it's already in place in a lot of games. All Source based games, Unreal based games, Havok based engines in general.

This is something that has been discussed internally numerous times and it is pretty awesome. I do believe it's even on some backlog or other, but I don't know when or if it will be attacked.

@Schnoo I STILL don't see how it's NOT possible. If the data exists, there must be a way to load it, manipulate the data that relates to the client camera's position over time, and then save it as a stream of instructions, then replay it.

Also regarding sic see here.

This is something that has been discussed internally numerous times and it is pretty awesome. I do believe it's even on some backlog or other, but I don't know when or if it will be attacked.

If you guys do this you will literally win the internets.

It's not one but several Super Computers if they ever implement that, and a single one dedicated for this single purpose I guess.
Can you imagine all the data daily stored even for small amounts of time? wooooo

Errrrr...... -¼_-¼ anywho it would mean an increase in required processing for each node and either an increased storage capacity or sufficient cache to fire it down to the requesting client.

Somewhat simpler then any HPC implementation let alone 3! Although I imagine CCP would love this hardware from what I can see the system is a multinode architecture with multiple instances pulling from central databases. HPC* will normally use a single instance across multiple nodes,



I have been involved in a few multinode system designs recently along with 10GbE interconnects, what is Eve actually running on? any DevBlogs on this?

*Ok I agree that a Super computer is generally a single instance but a HPC can include multi instance clusters.

Since ships are just vectors to the server, this sounds quite possibly easy to implement

It should be able to record every ship's vectors that are on grid, making for the 'Look at' command useless for recording, but used more in the editor

Here's a thought - wouldn't it be great to have museums of war in EVE? Places where you could see and marvel at past battles, as submitted by the users. Places like "The Fall and Butchering of GoonSwarm", "The Last Struggle against RED Alliance", "Joe's PVP Videos", and so on. Owners of such structures/station services (player/corp/alliance), could ask for a fee to view their exhibition. And it could be integrated with WIS, where you'd walk like you would normally in your today's museums, seeing parts of the videos shown on the displays.

Forgot to mention
I +1 this wholly

Its even in my sig!

@ Orisa Medeem - Thanks I've been dreaming about this for ages, so thought it out quite a bit, but I can't take all the credit, there've been many contributions and suggestions since Oct '07 that allowed it to evolve along the way.

Yea there's got to be some kind of authentication otherwise there'd be fake demo files all over the place knowing the Eve community and unscrupulous individuals in general, and yea MD key would work. Maybe server receives request to record the fight, a key is paired so the data is encrypted? Let me know if we're on the same page here :D

With regards metagaming I'm sure a scary amount of information could be retrieved from the files, ship fits, key targets in a fleet fight, maybe even identify spies, tactics, maneuvers, exact ship types, but to be honest, this info is available to anyone with enough patience & dedication anyway.

But maybe I'm missing something?

This is something that has been discussed internally numerous times and it is pretty awesome. I do believe it's even on some backlog or other, but I don't know when or if it will be attacked.

I do hope this idea will be implemented in the future. The benefits would just add to EVE greatly.

I do hope this idea will be implemented in the future. The benefits would just add to EVE greatly.

Id like to add a +support
Id also like to address CCP Atlas directly and ask if hes willing to step in and promote the idea further 'due to forum and CSM' demand. I can only see the addition being a plus... the sooner the better.

What id like is a data renderable version from any viewpoint, recordable to AVI - users can deal with it from there

Video re-creating tools dont need to know anything about fits.
It just needs to record every enitys place and action frequently enough to recreate its movement/doings so it can be drawn.
let this entity be ship or missile etc...
with action i mean stuff like shoot, warp, explosion, etc...

... what does it do to fix the lack of ability that the people making the videos have?

...
Yea, we can only pray for Darwinism tbh

If so many of us believe in evolution then why are we making such an effort to keep the dim and feeble alive and breeding?

+ >9000

Might I suggest that the people wondering how much data your client gets use your logserver, iirc thats gonna tell your pretty much everything your client knows.

Additionally, to those who worry about the recordings getting edited... who cares? Do you trust the youtube vids to be 100% accurate and unedited?

Get the recorder, then, if it somehow becomes a problem, worry about getting some form of verification system put in place.

If all the recorder knows is what my client knows, it still knows where everything on grid is, how fast its moving, when it shoots, and when it explodes. You need nothing else to make videos, when you combine that info with the look at feature. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate, as long as every knows its not 100%. It doesn't have to be untamperable(I just made a word!), as long as it doesn't know more than my client knows.

With that set of expectations in mind, you get an awesome tool for making videos, thats useless for gathering real intel beyond figuring out what went wrong, better than fraps with minimal system load.

Talk of pulling data from the servers and some kind of verification queue will keep this from happening almost as quick as the entire community saying its useless, as it would expose the servers to hack attempts in the first case, and cause a major workload on them in the second.

Get something that records clientside only, be aware that the data could be edited(just like a video can be), and be happy if we get that much. Improvements can be worked out later(iteration!)

Yup, that's probably the part that have CCP scratching their heads about.

Since it's not working, I will double my efforts! Also Jen, that's one hell of a list of ideas submissions. Kudos!

I made this =D

Nuladen got there before all us. And my first post was before yours either way. And there's another guy who I can't find who posted it before me too, sometime in '06.

So at the very least you're #4 to propose the idea and there's probably more, but the purpose of this thread isn't kudos or epeen-comparisons or feeding trolls, it's about the Battle-Recorder.

And anyway, they clearly don't want it more than we do

Thanks for the bump though <3

@Amaroq Dricaldari Absolutely agreed! But first lets convince CCP to add it

@Sirigana Negik I can't take all the credit, but I'm not gonna rest 'til we have it. It was an idea I came up with myself, but these threads have only shown me that there's a lot of people that have wanted this same idea (in one form or another) since 2004. So we've actually been waiting for this kind of tech for almost 8 years...

Just want to say, it was iD Software that came up with the recording functionality in game first :)
Lag free also :)

Never heard of Quake ? :)

Is a good idea especially for those like myself that do YouTube recordings.

For CCP it would be excellent boost to marketing as it would allow more players who couldn't in the past, to upload video's and show functionality of the game to more potential customers

For storage of the data and videos, they should be stored locally but maybe the Eve launcher could have some sort of Video manager that would allow users to directly upload to Facebook / YouTube

Does it count that i didnt know? =D

Anywho, idea is splendid - lets get it happeningggg =D

Just want to say, it was iD Software that came up with the recording functionality in game first :)
Lag free also :)

Never heard of Quake ? :)

For storage of the data and videos, they should be stored locally but maybe the Eve launcher could have some sort of Video manager that would allow users to directly upload to Facebook / YouTube

Don't want to use CCP's server space
Video Data is stored on the Servers but the actual video is saved to your PC

@Clansworth Personally I wouldn't agree with the log-edit options, but only because I'm sometimes a stick in the mud, but I can see it's usefulness in not only creating parody fights/parody videos but also demonstrative videos, tactical videos, learning videos, funny or action-orientated videos, more like Machinima than anything else.

There's a lot of potential in allowing the battle logs to be configurable or even down-right created from scratch. I'd love to see what CCP would do here.

anyone with a moderately modern card (i.e. can play eve) should have a dual-outputs...

the PVR, yeah, that may not be quite so common.

+1 to the OP's idea though ... didn't see if this was mentioned, but it NEEDS to be able to output in a format that we can put on the CQ TV

fraps only uses a little amount of resources, you only need to have enough free HD space. If you can't run fraps at the same time as EVE you need to buy a new PC.

No. Stop trolling.

This was a serious response. fraps takes up like 150Mb and a couple % of your cpu, unless you play eve on a pentium 3.
Also use Gamebooster (google it) when you run fraps, that more then compensates for the extra usage from fraps.

What the hell is a PVR?

Also, I think it would be nice of there was a CQ Screen in the ship hangar. A big one, yes, but still a screen. It could also double as a billboard.

fraps only uses a little amount of resources, you only need to have enough free HD space. If you can't run fraps at the same time as EVE you need to buy a new PC.

Bump
this needs to be kept at the top of the list for maximum exposure.

Read 1.5 pages and decided this needs to happen.

Also, as I was considering the various positions, it occured to me that a large fleet battle taking place under max TiDi could be recorded and later played back at full speed.

TiDi is a server response to an overload of events. The battle recorder has no such restrictions. It will simply compile the events and record the output stream to a file which can be played back at normal speed with no delays or loss of quality.

+10000 awesome idea

+1

I also really love idea and I think strongly supports CCPs desire to have the community help promote the game. This capability would go a long way towards empowering folks to create some great videos to put on YouTube. The thought of being able to render at much higher resolutions and command the camera in a more cinematic way gives me wood!

This is not a shameless bump for a great idea.

I like this idea a LOT. As an avid fan of the earlier BF Titles (BF2 and BF2142), BattleRecorder was a huge boon to various gaming related functions from competitive vid capture and analysis, to machinima, catching hackers and just generating highlight reel footage....

This would be great if implemented. I'd love to see it.

Caveat: As long as it didn't detract from the renewed focus and vigor towards FIS.

I agee! (without bias obvs )

Yea, making vids with sick fast pans and zooms with some motion blur would be erotic to Eve Online's videophiles. YouTube will be swamped with stunning Eve Online videos to rival the Call Of Duty spam. Just IMAGINE the amount of people that will come play Eve Online if there were hundreds and hundreds of videos on YouTube or Vimeo. More fodder for the wars and 0.4 space. WANT just doesn't quite cut how much I NEED this to be added. DESPERATE is probably a better word.


There's no shame on the forums anyway


I play BF2142 to relieve myself of needs to play DUST514. It's only half working. Kind of like digital methadone. Recording on the client is one of the most faultless ways of catching people botting and misbehaving in most games. Why not Eve Online? Every game that got a record feature ended up generating a scary huge community of die-hard directors. Why not Eve Online? We already have some of the most stunning videos without this software, imagine how much time would be saved for those who already make amazing vids? They'd become epic video creating machines. You'd run out of fights before you ran out of footage.

Seeing as we all learn from seeing it either being done, and then doing it, I can't think of a reason to NOT implement it. From catching cheaters, botters, 'sploiters, spammers, to spreading intel, teaching fleet tactics, demonstrating chaos in action first-hand, Eve Online needs it's own in-game record feature.

CCP? GIVE NAO.

Honestly, the recorder prolly already exists (I refuse to believe they record some of that from in game, with a client). It probably just needs some polish.

Come on CCP, you know you wanna...

Also, who I gotta sleep with for a sticky?

+1

I would love to see this.

Maybe the tool should record your own UI, so you can analyze your fights like: forgott to turn of the MWD / flown out of optimal range etc., which you did't saw while fighting.
and afterwards an option in the battle-player for show/don't show UI

Battlefield 2got something like this as far as I remember. You could replay a whole match that was "reconstructed" with recorded data. It was awesome.

+1

I would love to see this.

Maybe the tool should record your own UI, so you can analyze your fights like: forgott to turn of the MWD / flown out of optimal range etc., which you did't saw while fighting.
and afterwards an option in the battle-player for show/don't show UI

Actually: No. If you want to record ur own UI, Fraps is your way.

We need a record that can "re-construct" engagements etc. w/ timeline and provides the ability to switch views etc. (aka Battlerecorder).

This would work out well and it could be the sort of player version of Jessica, Which I doubt we will ever be allowed to play with. But it would be very much superior to fraps or similar because there is far less load simply recordingt he data already known.


BTW merging of datasets should be allowed, This way if one person recording warps off in a fleet battle you can merge sets with someone else that was still on the battlefield allowing you to keep a constant feed on things.

Enthusiastically supported.

Video would be a good start, but the fights take place in 3 dimensions. Imagine a bunch of corpmates sitting in a room around a holographic table, reviewing a fight to see what went right or wrong, with full zoom and playback controls. It could be a great tactical tool, and a great training tool. It would not be easy, but it would be incredibly cool.

You could even bring up other fights that your opponents have been in and do in-depth analysis of their styles and approaches, the way sports teams do now.

+1

would love to see this. then i could show all my glories battles to my friends.

I too support this tool idea.

Ive wanted to record some cool stuff but have been stymied by the awful task of sorting out the software and issues and resolutions and stuff. make it simple for us simple cro-magnon/minmitar space people

I like this idea.

I also like the idea of being able to enter into the Captin's Quarters and being able to upload the movies recorded so the we watch them in game.

If so then I suggest adding the function out of game so that when the player clicks their icon on the forums they could access their battle highlights. There should also be a function where other members can watch the capsuleers battle highlights if the capsuleer allows public viewing of the movies.

This is something that has been discussed internally numerous times and it is pretty awesome. I do believe it's even on some backlog or other, but I don't know when or if it will be attacked.

...No more info needs to be sent to the client because the client knows where people are, when they fire, and when they blow up. The specifics(such as how much damage was done, etc) don't need to be there because they are irrelevant.

We aren't asking for a full on simulator, we are asking for a playback feature that shows you what you could see before, thats all.

Great idea! (bump)

Wow, thanks for the bumps and support! It's great that so many people feel the same way I do about it!

I'm not gonna quit until it finds its way in to the game!

And I'm not just spamming the forums either ;)

Would be cool. If it rendered directly to a video file without the need to capture it in real time, you could basically get the same quality EVE trailers have.

Bump and Support.

Maybe one of the most needed features.

To take this idea one step further, and actually make Incarna useful for something, I would like to propose the following to add to your Battle Recorder:

- Be able to playback recordings on the CQ display screens
- Create one more room (a Corp/Alliance War Room) and allow for playback on the display in there

This allows you and your corp/alliance to look at an event, and establish what went right/wrong with it, and learn from it. And if multiple people have recordings, play them on up to three display screens (as that is what the CQ offers), so you can see the event from a couple of different angles.

I've not gone through every post so I'm not sure if it has been suggested.

The data recordings (the simple data showing ship positions, weapons/offensive module notifications) could maybe be downloaded allowing us to load it in to a "lite client". When loaded, it would allow us to play the "video" as if we were playing the game. It would not include things like shield/armour amounts of ships on field, damage notifications, local chat, people not on grid etc. It would just allow us to see the battle and control the camera thus allowing us to see from any perspective on grid.

This could be nice for watching recorded fleet battles or Aliance Tourney battles. One of the most annoying things I find about watching an AT match is the fact that you are forced to watch what the person making the vid is watching and they are often zoomed right in to a ship basically missing all of the action. Obviously you wouldn't be able to use this to watch the AT live, it would need to be recorded and then loaded up to be DL'ed and watched later.

We could also set up a database of these videos in a sub-forum. Instead of uploading a vid to youtube, you upload the data and people can watch it on their client instead. If theres a fight on the gate between a very good PVP'er and a small gate camp, you could set the camera over the gate and watch from above as the pirates blink out of existence one by one.

This is something that has been discussed internally numerous times and it is pretty awesome. I do believe it's even on some backlog or other, but I don't know when or if it will be attacked.

Supported. Would be awesome. Only reason I have never recorded EVE videos is simple because of the fact that I'm not willing to risk loss due to performance lag on my system. So yeah, big +1 from me.

This is something that has been discussed internally numerous times and it is pretty awesome. I do believe it's even on some backlog or other, but I don't know when or if it will be attacked.

An awesome idea!

On a side note, i admire your patience and persistence

I haven't read the whole thread. I just jumped in halfway, but saw that a problem would be the fact that your client is not given any information not relevant to you (other ship fits, targets, rate of fire, etc....)



Would it be possible to make a system that takes the feeds from multiple, or even ALL ships in the fight, and accurately allows replays of the entire fight from each viewpoint?
And, if not all participants can provide data, is it possible to alt least see what your client could see? I don't care if the enemy ships shoot at weird times or explode at perhaps unnatural times

Using Fraps is suboptimal at best, it reduces your FPS so much that it actually reducing your chances of winning a fight and some fights I don't turn it on for this reason, essentially making my best fights never get caught on video.