Ghost races/recordings

[DanDaMan]

Racing games often have the ability to have "ghost races" (Racing an offline friend or even yourself from a previous playthrough)

Would love to see something similar in PF... a "record" of the positions, rotation, health and maybe the energy levels of your friends armada which you could then visually "blend in" while playing the exact same mission. It wouldn't need to be super exact (no need for "enemy ghost particles" etc)

Just an idea I would really love to finally see implemented in a strategy game.

[cooltv27]

as someone who would probably never use this I think its a great idea

[DanDaMan]

Just want to clarify that is not necessarily for "racing" but rather a tactic recording to compare yourself with.

- "I'm 20min into the game and already lost half of my ships and did not really manage to expand anywhere ... the other guy already conquered 3/4 of the map by this time without loosing a single ship" With the recording you could see how he actually did it.

Beating highscores could become a sort of offline multiplayer.

[Cavemaniac]

You'd probably run into trouble trying to do something like this.

An example is some players use split second timing for resource management etc, and while the ghost would show where the first player was, and when, your game would be grounded in reality - with units unfinished because of insufficient energy, units destroyed because they'd taken one hit more than the ghost, particles in different places because they're interacting with your units, not the ghosts etc.

Would make for an interesting tutorial/how-to video walk through option though...

[GoodMorning]

As someone who might use it occasionally but has thought about how to implement it, it doesn't seem practical.

A tactical recording sounds good, but is a pain to recreate at the other end, and it seems like a progressive save game.

[DanDaMan]

In 10 minutes pure game time a "ghost" player may have accomplished way more than me because he micro managed his fleet while pausing the game. Thats ok in my opinion.
10min of his pure game time is still exactly the same as my 10min game time.

No need to record and render ghost VFX (missiles, lasers) and ghost particles (enemy "balls"/ships) because they cannot be applied in my reality anyway.
I simply want to see his tactical progress compared to mine in my "real-time" when playing the same mission.

The details on *why* a "ghost" ship gets suddenly smaller and maybe ultimativly explodes can be neglected since you can assume that it got hit too much in its reality.

[J]

A similar thing has been suggested called replays. This essentially requires the same data to be recorded while playing. Since gameplay is the same across all computers, enemies will be at the exact same place if the replay is played. Ghost recording just play it while the player plays its own game at the same time (of the non-player actions only ship damage needs to be recorded). It has been discussed for CW3 as well and it hasn't made it into the game, so I guess the chances for game 4 are low.