KaM Remake -> Multiplayer Matches (now Saturdays)

[Lewin]

I think you'll find that's just because FRAPS assigns a large amount of space and then slows fills it. Was it up to 2.4GB after 20 seconds? I think you'll find it won't be.
Also, recording in half-size might be a better option if you want to record 3 hours worth.

[Shadaoe]

Fraps is the best recording software, with the best quality, but yes it takes an incredible amount of disk space, but for me it was 120 gb for the previous match, and it was quite long :p

[GreatWhiteBear]

Is fog of war working?

And can we make FoW a toggle able feature in the options section?

[Lewin]

Is fog of war working?
And can we make FoW a toggle able feature in the options section?

No it's not. The code is partly written, it makes the map dark and hides enemy units, but it does not remember what was there when you last looked. For example, I would see your stonehills getting smaller as you mined them, and the ground being flattened as you built.
It won't be in the next demo, but maybe the one after. I agree that it's important for these matches to work fairly.

[GreatWhiteBear]

but will you be able to turn it on/off?

[Lewin]

but will you be able to turn it on/off?

Yes, we plan to make it an option in the lobby and single map screens so players can chose, as it's part of original KaM. We want to make it so you can play the Remake like original KaM if you want to.

[xzaz]

Hey guys, I'm planning on capturing tonight's game. So I tried FRAPS, but after only 10 seconds of footage, I ended up with a 1.2GB file :shock:

Does anyone know better software? It's not that I don't have enough diskspace left (almost 1TB), but I think 1.2GB per 10 seconds (30FPS) is a bit much..

Did you use the Xvid codec? Try Camstudio.. may be that is working to.

[Siegfried]

Hey guys, I'm planning on capturing tonight's game. So I tried FRAPS, but after only 10 seconds of footage, I ended up with a 1.2GB file :shock:

Does anyone know better software? It's not that I don't have enough diskspace left (almost 1TB), but I think 1.2GB per 10 seconds (30FPS) is a bit much..

Go down with the resolution to maybe and limit capture framerate to 24.

And most important: you absolutely have to use video compression. If you do not, even a TV resolution (720?576) of uncompressed video needs 25 Megabytes per second. 20 seonds give you 500 Megabytes.
1 hour of game would need 90 Gigabytes of disk space then with that resolution. You can compress it afterwards, if you need some tips on that, contact me again.

If you already have 2,5 GB after 20 seconds, I assume that you have used FullHD resolution

Also, very important for video capturing and compressing at the same time is, that you have at least a Dual Core CPU, so one can handle the compression (it will almost certainly be at 100% load) while the other one handles the game.

Alternatives to fraps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software

If you are an advanced user, then you'd certainly go with ffmpeg as it the allround genius concerning video and audio. But it is commandline only.
*edit: forget about WeGame, it's not free anymore *edit end.

At the moment, I don't have a solution how to record a whole game, but maybe I can think of anything until tonight.

The most elegant solution requires some work of Lewin&Krom: this would be to implement a function to save a replay file. The playback of this replay file should have the option to save a screenshot every 1/24 second. With VirtualDub you can make a video file out of this and compress it the same time with a high quality codec like h.264.

[Siegfried]

Fraps is the best recording software, with the best quality, but yes it takes an incredible amount of disk space, but for me it was 120 gb for the previous match, and it was quite long :p

It has very good quality, sure, because it uses a nearly-lossless codec. But this of course means very large file sizes.

It definately is not the best, but pretty sure the easiest way to record a game, because the software is so easy to work with.

Did you use the Xvid codec? Try Camstudio.. may be that is working to.

Camstudio seems to be free software, which makes it better by default.
BSR Screen Recorder would be a very good alternative, but it's not free as far as I know.

And don't be disappointed if the captured video will show every lag and have little stuttering - this cannot be avoided with screencapturing software.

[Lewin]

I was just playing around on the server when I noticed my ping wasn't changing. This is bad because ping measurements are used to predict lag. I checked the code and discovered a bug which will cause the server to stop measuring pings after a while (I forgot to make it loop the tick count, so it has reached the limit and thinks it last measured the ping -10 hours ago or something) I fixed it so this won't happen in the next demo. I'm really glad we left the server running long enough to discover that
So @xzaz: Could you please restart the server before today's match? We will get horrible lag if it can't predict it using pings. Let me know when you've done that so I can make sure it's fixed.

Go down with the resolution to maybe and limit capture framerate to 24.

KaM only animates at 10 FPS so even that would give a "normal" looking recording, except for scrolling and mouse movement which would be a little laggy.

The most elegant solution requires some work of Lewin&Krom: this would be to implement a function to save a replay file. The playback of this replay file should have the option to save a screenshot every 1/24 second. With VirtualDub you can make a video file out of this and compress it the same time with a high quality codec like h.264.

We already have a replay system, it's just not very user friendly. And also it sometimes has replay mismatch errors which we haven't been able to track down. We plan to create a "replay manager" at some point, but for now if you create a save of the game it will have a replay attached to it. The .rpl and .bas files are the replay. If you copy these to Saves\save99.bas/rpl then go to Single Player -> View Last Replay it will play the match to you. But you can only see it from player 1's perspective and if you load an autosave you need to distribute the .rpl file too. I normally ask people with slower computers to turn autosave off as it lags from the temporary debugging data in the replay which has now been removed. But I will keep mine running and I can post the replay file here afterwards, however it will probably get a replay mismatch error after 10-20 minutes.

[Shadaoe]

It has very good quality, sure, because it uses a nearly-lossless codec. But this of course means very large file sizes.

It definately is not the best, but pretty sure the easiest way to record a game, because the software is so easy to work with.

I really love it because you have a very good output quality, and you can do whatever you want and play with formats to make it looking good and take little space.
I didn't try many softwares, but it's definitely the best I ever tried :p
I had some problem with camstudio for example, the sound wasn't synchronised.But I still use this one too for some little videos.


About the match : I can't wait ! It looks like a lot of people will come and two matches might run at the same time, amazing !

[Litude]

It's great to see KaM multiplayer matches finally working correctly and even organized weekly! Shame I don't think I'll make it this week, but I'll see if I'll have a chance to join next week.

An important question: is it possible to make use of the roads built by other players?

Yes it is. You can use roads, fields and winefields of other players, whether they are friends or enemies.

I never quite understood why you weren't allowed to use enemy fields and wine fields in the original game. Was such an annoyance to plough new field when starting to build over an old enemy base even if there already was plenty available but it just happened to be unusable for some weird reason.

As for recording, I really think Fraps does it best. I usually take completely uncompressed footage (the slight compression it normally does distorts red colored stuff quite badly and I do the compression separately later so compressing it twice causes unnecessary quality loss) and then run it through VirtualDub and compress it using h264 which gives excellent quality at a relatively small size.

[Siegfried]

So @xzaz: Could you please restart the server before today's match? We will get horrible lag if it can't predict it using pings. Let me know when you've done that so I can make sure it's fixed.

Please do so. I recently joined the server and my ping was 0 permanently.

[xzaz]

Done guys

About the Ventrilo server, I emaild him a week ago but he didn't answer. I have send him another one.. so its waiting for his response. If I don't get a response I need to find a alternative.

@Below
Its done guys, server is ready for todays match!

[ZOLTAN]

Lewin said dont forget please:

@xzaz: Could you please restart the server before today's match? We will get horrible lag if it can't predict it using pings. Let me know when you've done that so I can make sure it's fixed.