Battlerecorder

[sc1ence]

Battlerecorder is now enabled on Both the Conquest and the Titan/NS server at quality 3. If either server seems to be having problems please pm an admin with details.

Each game that is played on our server is saved as a demo file. The demo library is under Battlerecorder in the Community Tab. You can watch the playback of the round as it happened with a good deal of control over viewing angles and playback speed. You can have a free camera view or follow any player from a distance of your choice.

Watching demo files is a great tactical resource that is also fairly entertaining. You can watch entire battles unfold to better help you understand the critical choke points in a map and locations of safe cover when defending a location.

You can use it to study your play or the play of someone else. Want to know how someone goes 43 kills and no deaths with 30 teamwork points in a round? Go back and watch the BR while focusing in on them and their squad. Want to know why a particular squad had 300+ teamwork points? Watch the demo.

Go back and watch a few rounds of your play and look for how many enemies you missed, how much information were you unaware of at the time. Watch your habits. Do you tend to crouch and aim too little? do you typically burst fire for too long or too little? Watch your every death and think what you should have done to avoid it. Eventually you will see patterns that will make you a better player. Evaluating your play while you are playing is too difficult. A good way to get better is to watch a demo file of yourself and pick out some area to improve. Perhaps you choose to focus in improving situational awareness or reviving skill. You can use battlerecorder to measure your progress in both areas.

For leaders in IHS watching a demo of your squad in action is a tool of great value for identifying squad habits that need to be improved. You start to get a feel for your guys by watching them from the battlerecorder file. Watching BR files over teamspeak can be a great way to unwind after a particularly intense match.


Combined with tools like video editing software and Fraps you can make very cool movies that can showcase your squad for an AAR. You can make a whole movie by outputting BR footage into video file with no need for fraps.

Click here for a thread on how to use BR to make movies.

I hope this gets used quite a bit. Thanks for your patience in waiting for this to work flawlessly.

Below are the controls that can be used while playing back a Battlerecorder file.

As well as using the 'Q' and 'T' keys to control the playback of a recording, you can also use a set of keyboard shortcuts:

- Keys 1 - 9
Change the playback speed.

- Toggle Free Camera / Player Camera
Alt Fire Key. By default this is the Right Mouse Button.


While in free camera mode:

- W, A, S, D
Move forwards, backwards, strafe left and right.

- Double Tap W
Move camera quickly. Alternatively you can hold the Sprint key.

- Crouch / Prone
Move camera up and down.

- Mouse
Rotate camera.


While in the player follow camera mode:

- Space bar
Next / previous player.

- W and A or the mouse scroll wheel
Zoom camera in and out.

- Crouch / Prone
Tilt the camera up and down.

- Mouse
Rotate camera around the player.

[Anospa]

Sweet, thanks guys.

[Exploding_Silver]

level 3 is a really good level of detail too ... enjoy

[impatience]

Does this mean that things like otus drones will appear on the playback? As I've noticed that on other demos they don't appear.

[Concr3te]

Well, they are supposed to I think...

[Exploding_Silver]

Originally Posted by impatience

Does this mean that things like otus drones will appear on the playback? As I've noticed that on other demos they don't appear.

otus does not appear at level 3, I think it needs to be level 5 (ie top)

[Lyramion]

Top Level is 10 but as rule of thumb Dice said quality 6 to 10 are advised for movie makers only.

I dont think the Otus apears anywhere on BR - same as the UAV. It just explodes as its spawning in.

[impatience]

Oh right I imagine level 10 would probably cause a lot of lag on the server. The other really crummy thing about BR is the fact that it has no rewind function I really don't understand why they didn't include it.

[WaffleHousChef]

Originally Posted by impatience

The other really crummy thing about BR is the fact that it has no rewind function I really don't understand why they didn't include it.

The way that BR works is that it records every single message/server instruction to the server for each directed aciton. Then when you "playback" the file it starts up the game engine and recreates the game in its entirity from start to finish using the same set of instructions that were made while the original game was going on. Now, it's not an exact match tick for tick, but this is where the lack of reverse comes in. A BR file is not like a DVD where each frame is a recorded picture.

Imagine having a set of driving instructions where you had direction an distance only, and as you can only remember one instruction at a time. You couldn't go backward more then one step, and could cretainly couldn't predict where you should start from where you are at any given point. Which is one component of it.

Now think, when you're playing and, say, a rocket explodes at the end of trail against a building. There is no complementary server code that says "at this point, when in reverse, generate a rocket to fly backward at a reverse trajectory." Then apply that to every bullet fired, item dropped, etc.

It is techinically possible to do it, but forward all those instructions are maintained by the server becuase it's called "playing the game." But backward it would have to be generated simply to allow people to play BR backward, and the overhead just isn't worth it.

[impatience]

Oh right ok presumably enabling backward BR would also increase lag?

[sc1ence]

Originally Posted by impatience

Oh right ok presumably enabling backward BR would also increase lag?

There is no option to enable. Rewind is not going to happen. I find myself watching most important demos at full speed first, then at half speed, slowing it down even further for critical moments.

[WaffleHousChef]

Originally Posted by impatience

Oh right ok presumably enabling backward BR would also increase lag?

Ahhh, sorry. When I said it is "techincally possible" I mean it is techincally possible to write it into the game when they make the game (which they did not do.) Not that there is an option to allow it.

[DeimosManifest]

If I'm looking for a specific moment in a game, I'll watch it through at 300% to find the moment just before it, then go into to 100 (or lower) and fraps a big swatch of time of the part I want. Then I can rewind/fast forward the video in premiere to fine tune it.