Let's Play Angband video series

[pav]

but even an 80x24x2 ascii + color character adds up quickly

Not really, if you only save changes. Oh and gzip helps, too.

[Pete Mack]

Of course I ment saving ASCII respresentation of the screen, not a full graphics slideshow. Basically, I suggested stealing ToME's movie recorder for Vanilla.

Yeah, I understood that, but even an 80x24x2 ascii + color character adds up quickly. On the newsgroup, a recent poster noted that Crawl and Nethack servers already use ttyrec, which allows anyone to play the movie without having an install. It's a nice universal solution.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.angband/browse_frm/thread/8a0f15ad3e77ffea/ec0889bf5e26a35f#ec0889bf5e26a35f

[pav]

Of course I ment saving ASCII respresentation of the screen, not a full graphics slideshow. Basically, I suggested stealing ToME's movie recorder for Vanilla.

[PowerDiver]

and a possibly stupid question... if this is mostly just a input/keystroke logger, how do you insure identical dungeon creation?

The RNG seed is stored in the savefile, so everything is deterministic. There are too many dependencies on the savefile to store the start point any other way.

[buzzkill]

The side effects of redo logging are:[LIST][*]Vulnerability to save-file abuse. (You can recover a game to any point, not just to the most recent copied save.)

This could be useful (maybe evil, maybe just fun) for creating competition characters. You know, playing it through, having a peek into the future, knowing that something exciting is just around the corner, then dialing it back a little.

and a possibly stupid question... if this is mostly just a input/keystroke logger, how do you insure identical dungeon creation?

[Pete Mack]

Yes, that's a bit easier, but surely recording full screenshots gets expensive very quickly?

Logging the output (rather than the input) would work too, though compressing (or recording) the graphics stream is probably more work than recording the keystroke stream.

Recording the input stream really isn't much work, and it doesn't use a lot of disk space. Even with an inefficient log format, recording a complete game should take under a megabyte--right now it's logging 7 bytes per character, including run, rest, or dig.*


The side effects of redo logging are:

• Vulnerability to save-file abuse. (You can recover a game to any point, not just to the most recent copied save.)
• Version dependence--any UI or AI change will break the movie.
• Reproduction of intermittent bugs becomes a lot easier: just replay the log to the point where the game goes unstable, then start debugging.

* A log record is 2 bytes of for the delay in milliseconds, 4 bytes for the event type in case it's a non-keyboard UI event (very inefficient!), and 1 byte for the character. That's about 14 bytes for each move, as moves are recorded a command and a direction, like ';8' for step south.

[pav]

Pete, wouldnt it be way easier to just animate screengrabs? As Tome do? As in Videos tab here on oook?

[Pete Mack]

Never fear--I moved it to a separate thread.

And yes, it is sufficiently stupid (ie primitive) to play a whole game through.
If you are curious, examine the changes to util.c--that's the only thing that caused any sweat.

[Sirridan]

Will this amazing bit of code actually play a recorded game start to finish, same levels/drops/etc?

EDIT: Aaah, the post with the pre-alpha patch vanished!

[Pete Mack]

Damn. I was too quick. I realized I'm logging at to physical a level, which would be appropriate before ajps' changes. All I have to do is log "commands" --

    s16b command_cmd;       /* Gives identity of current command */
    s16b command_arg;       /* Gives argument of current command */
    s16b command_rep;       /* Gives repetition of current command */
    s16b command_dir;       /* Gives direction of current command */
    int  command_inv;       /* Gives item of current command */
    ui_event_data command_cmd_ex; /* Gives additional information of current command */

and the rest of the state should take care of itself.

[Pete Mack]

OK, I wasn't thinking. keymaps get pushed back on the queue, so they wree getting treated twice. I just watched a movie of a Half-Orc warrior
1. going to the store,
2 buying a stack of oil,
3 going down the stairs to kill Morgoth.

There's no features except crude playback and screen refreshes, but the end is in sight

[myshkin]

I can't tell you how many times I've wished this thread was real.

If you really and truly love it, it will become real.

[Pete Mack]

Damn. I thought that if I carefully recorded every keystroke (or other event) that actually returns to the game, and also carefully disable macros so that they don't get converted a second time*, the game would replay. But somehow, it doesn't.

I am trying to move down 3 steps. They get recorded, correctly, as:

;j2;j2;j2

On replay, the first move is translated correctly, as a step south.
But the second step is translated starting with '2', not ';' and then all hope is lost.

Oh well, off to work.


* re-enabling them when there's actually interactive input from the terminal.

[Marble Dice]

I can't tell you how many times I've wished this thread was real.

[Rizwan]

That said, I wouldn't mind watching a really serious dive (< 250K turn win). I have a very poor feel for strategy at that level; watching a single game might make a huge difference.

I would love to see this. I'd probably even pay someone for this. :b

Maybe we should have poll to see how many people would like to see such a movie and by whom?