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Match Replays?

DarkFr0g

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 10, 2006
Messages
100
Location
Chicago, Illinois
I think seeing your own matches or others' replays on your Wii would be awesome!

Especially if you could save them for later, or even send it out to other people! We wouldn't have to worry about the poor quality of YouTube movies or downloading huge movie files, instead people could post/download the actual sequence instead!

It could be better, or even replace Camera Mode! Perfectly controlling the camera while another person plays the game for a movie you're making is pretty hard. Why not first make the sequence being able to see clearly and everything, THEN do all the close-ups and different camera angles afterwards?

Making the movies go slow-mo or pausing them at will, while being able to actually MOVE the camera around would be WAY better than watching a video recording of a match on your computer, IMO.

Think of saving tournament matches! :chuckle:

EDIT: I don't think there would be any memory problems, since it's just recording the buttons pressed and random events. I assume it'd take up at least 1000 times less space than an AVI file of the same thing.
 

Mr.Victory07

Smash Lord
Joined
May 19, 2006
Messages
1,294
Location
Mid-State NY
Saving replays on a SD card would be freaking super sweet.

A replay analyzer for the PC would also be awesome. Like demos for Quake 3 or CS.

That would be awesome and handy. I think they should give you the option of taking a photo when you press start
 

bijoukaiba

Smash Journeyman
Joined
May 16, 2006
Messages
306
Location
Gainesville, FL
You know what's ironic? My brother mentioned the exact same thing to me today. This idea would rock SO much! It'd also be handy because the camera tends to shift while you're fighting so it'd be nice to just focus on the characters after the fight to see what you could improve upon in your strategy. Kinda like football coaches after watching a winning/losing match.
 

Ironclad

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Aug 11, 2006
Messages
111
Location
Olympia, WA
Wow, now that you brought this up, this has to be in brawl. Just the thought of being able to download vids directly on your Wii, and control the camera and speed yourself, so you can see exactly what's going on, instead of having to go to Youtube and strain your eyes watching a super blurry vid . . . It sounds like paradise. Also, of course, being able to review your own matches even if you don't have a camera, would really help alot of us in finding our weaknesses. A feature like this could really bring the competition to unprecedented levels of awesome.



You know what's ironic? My brother mentioned the exact same thing to me today.
I'm not entirely sure you know what irony is.
 

TheAceOfSmash

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 21, 2006
Messages
157
Location
The Netherlands
Yeah, a lot of people had this idea in mind. Being able to save and replay matches, but sending them to other people is something I never thought of.
 

PudgeSX

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
Messages
51
Location
Miramar/Gainesville FL
this would be a great idea, if it were possible to upload these videos online then the passage of ideas from one person to another would be much easier. not only that but it will help you see what your actualy doing in a match, rather than just play. thumbs up on this idea.
 

Blazer

Smash Ace
Joined
Jul 6, 2004
Messages
710
Location
Kentucky
Great idea except for one thing, (we all know some one who would do this) There is SOMEBODY that would leave their game on overnight and then send the video of it to EVERYONE he/she knows.
 

Drunken_Dragon

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Apr 21, 2004
Messages
209
Location
Raleigh, NC
infinite time matches are unsaveable, and wouldent even record. (ala tekken 4)


god i miss replay saves in tekken. they should be in all fighting games. its nothing but recorded inputs.
 

FireBomb

Smash Lord
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Messages
1,278
Location
Ending your game.
I'm so tired of doing something cool in match and them never being able to do it a second time. With replays I can finally show people what we can do at our best, what we can improve on, help eachother and others, etc.
 

TheAceOfSmash

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 21, 2006
Messages
157
Location
The Netherlands
I'm so tired of doing something cool in match and them never being able to do it a second time. With replays I can finally show people what we can do at our best, what we can improve on, help eachother and others, etc.
True. Words don't do them justice. Well, kinda. but it's still would be fun to show. All the weird moves i've seen I still remember. Each and every one of them.
 

MonkeyMan

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Apr 9, 2005
Messages
259
Location
Arlington, VA
yes yes yes omg yes! i've been thinking about this for a long as time! and its a great idea, and would make things alot easier. plus, if you have mikes it could kinda be like recording things froma smahsfest or whatever. but yeah totaly want this like you all wouldn't beilieve! of course there'd have to be a variety of formats, like editable formats, read onlys, with and with out voice content. It'd make video editing and music video's for smash so much easier. plus getting this stuff online would be a sinch and you wouldn't have to download anything and probably could just view it on the Wii. but haveing a downloadable content is key as well. Also as said above you wouldn't have to worry about recording the matches you could just see it at the end. If pulled off right this could be one of the best ideas i've heard in awhile.
 

Infil

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 28, 2004
Messages
357
Location
Calgary
I think this should have been sent in to the development team back when they were taking suggestions. Although, frankly, I think they've already thought about it, especially with all the WiiConnect24 things that are going around, and sending things back and forth to your friend. It would be nice to have a save replay system in, but I don't think it will be as robust as some of you are wishing (that is, pausing at any time, changing the camera angle, etc).

From a programming standpoint (coming from a programmer), it's more difficult to do than you might thing. Indeed, it is simply recording inputs, but it is very time dependent, which would require some sort of FFT (think MP3 encoding). And if the game's engine is even slightly stochastic, that's more data required at each interval.

I think replay files would be larger than some of you would think. Still nowhere near as large as a video file, but this is not a trivial problem.

Either way, I think we'll see it in some shape or form in Brawl. That really would be an amazing way to spread the skill of the game around.

Oh, and also: there's no reason infinite time matches couldn't be saved. It's the same problem either way; knowing the time limit ahead of time is not going to simplify the problem. And we won't be seeing people recording a huge file and sending it to everyone they know. When people connect to the Wii, *they* decide what they want to download. They won't have downloads forced upon them... that's Nintendo's main online philosophy.
 

Ironclad

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Aug 11, 2006
Messages
111
Location
Olympia, WA
Well, there's a lot of other games that already offer functionality like this. I'll use Warhammer 40,00: Dawn of War for an example since I play that and I've probably gone through hundreds of replays.

For those not familiar, Dawn of War is a real time strategy game (RTS). This is an RTS, with hundreds of units being created per player in each game. Each unit has numerous stats to keep track of, like hit points, armor type, damage, accuracy(affected by terrain), armor penetration, and the vast majority of units are capable of both ranged and melee combat, with melee combat incorporating special synchronized animations (like one unit picking another up and tossing it), therefore there is a hell of a lot going on that the game has to calculate.

While watching a replay, the viewer can move the camera as they see fit, pause/play, set the game to different speeds, and change to either player's perspective. All this, and a typical 1v1 match, which would usually last 6-15 minutes, generally only takes up 200-350 kilobytes on your hard drive.

So yeah, I'm pretty certain that the replay files wouldn't need to be very big for SSBB.
 

bluebomber22

Smash Champion
Joined
Sep 23, 2006
Messages
2,715
Location
Riverside, CA
pretty good idea, i'd love to be able to some of my old matches again....i can see people watching other players matches to kind of 'scout' them out before a tourney or something.
 

TheBuzzSaw

Young Link Extraordinaire
Moderator
BRoomer
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
10,479
I was about to make a thread about this. 73H BUZZ S4W |Z 73H 1337 534RCHZ0RZ.

Anyway, yeah, replay files would not be big at all. As several of you already explained, the file would store nothing more than match details and button presses. The game engine would be used to re-render the fight. Anyone remember when Blizzard suddenly added a replay function to Starcraft? That was awesome, and it stands to reason that Nintendo could create a similar function. This would be a big revolution for the tournament community! Rather than stressing over setting up VCRs and computers and whatnot at a tournament, the director could just copy replay files off each Wii before they leave. These tiny files could be uploaded to a site where people could download them onto SD cards for viewing on the Wii. Only the finals or otherwise notable matches would be digitized for YouTube or whatever.

As cool as a computer-based replay file interpreter is concerned, it'd be highly unlikely considering the graphics rendering that goes into Smash. However, a program that interprets hits and generates a list of combos/streaks would be incredibly useful. It could be used for statistics purposes and to help find combos that otherwise went unnoticed when viewed.
 

TastelessRamen

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Mar 16, 2006
Messages
81
Awesome, awesome idea, and if the replays were saved by location memory and keystrokes like Warcraft III replays are, you could expect the replay files themselves to be extremely small, as in, under 500kb if the encoding was good.
 

Xsyven

And how!
BRoomer
Joined
Oct 14, 2002
Messages
14,071
Location
Las Vegas
Best idea in months.

That's all I wanted to say.

Edit: And then I noticed that Buzz totally bumped it. ... Still a god idea.
 

Master Peach

Smash Ace
Joined
May 25, 2006
Messages
734
Location
Washington D.C
Best Idea of all time!!! I want this in brawl so bad!! Every time I do something awsome no one's around to see it. But with replays all that will change.
 

Red Exodus

Smash Master
Joined
Dec 7, 2006
Messages
4,494
Location
Hell
Bungie is doing this exact thing with Halo 3, I bet if Bungie can do it so can Hal Labs or whoever.
 

Tera253

Smash Ace
Joined
Jun 5, 2006
Messages
866
Location
Spamland
Tera had had this Idead for a while, but that's beside the point. that would be an awesome idea, and as far as anoying 99 minute long movies, you could just erase them like you can snapshots.maybe there should be a record setting under custom rules.
~Tera253~
 

TheBuzzSaw

Young Link Extraordinaire
Moderator
BRoomer
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
10,479
Also, it'd bring the community closer together in terms of video reviews and whatnot. Rather than everyone bending over backward trying to obtain video digitization equipment, they just buy a SD-to-USB converter device. Oh please, Nintendo, please...
 

killbeast301

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 13, 2006
Messages
1,889
Location
as far away from you as possible
Great idea!!! I think everyone has thought of updating the camera mode to video mode before, which is a great idea, but it's sill nice to make a thread about a great idea, even if it was bumped.

Did I mention it's a great idea?
 

Excel_Zero

Smash Lord
Joined
Mar 24, 2006
Messages
1,201
Location
Puerto Rico
I'd love this to become true. I hope that you could transfer them to PC, or save them in the Wii or the SD Card or something. I thought of this idea but never posted it. =\
 

TheBuzzSaw

Young Link Extraordinaire
Moderator
BRoomer
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
10,479
If I were to send one idea to Nintendo, it'd be this one! Granted, they claim that they are not allowed to take ideas from fans, but this is not a protected/patented idea. Starcraft implemented it (Blizzard didn't patent it, did they?). It's just something that would make the game amazing. Everyone would progress so fast! :D
 

Infil

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 28, 2004
Messages
357
Location
Calgary
I posted earlier, but that was months ago. Heh.

I still think the idea is good, and I think it has crossed Nintendo's mind. I'm not banking on seeing it in the game, though. The size of the replays would be larger than you think (I'd say 300 kb for a 4 minute match would be just about right), and considering the Wii has roughly 500 MB of internal memory, that's a hefty ratio. Fortunately, there are SD card slots, but Nintendo doesn't seem too keen on making use of them. For this reason, I don't think we'll see them.

Granted, I'd personally love to see the option and it would make everything a lot easier for us. At the end of each match, you would have the option of saving it to a video before going back to the character select screen (maybe pressing L, R, and A together). Each video replay would be saved to Wii's internal memory initially, and transferable separately to SD cards (each replay would be one "block" on the memory management screen, like Super Monkey Ball 2 did). The problem is not trivial, but certainly manageable by good programmers.

It's a good idea, but I just wouldn't expect it. Then you can be happy if it makes it in.
 

TheBuzzSaw

Young Link Extraordinaire
Moderator
BRoomer
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
10,479
That's the sad truth of it all. "Don't expect it. Be excited when it happens."
 
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