battle recorder speeds - fast forward possible?

Pocus · #1 October 28th, 2003, 08:50 AM

ok guys, we have lost the 10 speeds settings of the battle recorder.

Personally thats a very painful loss. Even with a fast enough computer, many time you want to browse rapidly a battle, or jump at a given point then pause and watch at normal speed.

I'm not sure why it has been suppressed, but I suppose there is a very good reason. If the issue is with the speed of animations and graphic rendering, here is my proposal :

Have a slider at the bottom of the screen which represent the round you are currently viewing, with the rightmost position being the end of battle. Upon changing the slider position, the rendering stop, and the program calculate at maximum CPU speed the battle status for the round asked. Upon having done that, the rendering restart (and synchronize with the new status).

In any case, if a dev can drop us a hint on why the various speeds are not there, it would be appreciated

Johan K · #2 October 28th, 2003, 10:58 AM

A fast forward was actually present previously in Dominions II. But unfortunatelly it introduced some serious bugs and that's why it was removed.

Pocus · #3 October 28th, 2003, 11:26 AM

and do you think it will return a day, or it is a feature which is secondary of importance for you?

apoger · #4 October 28th, 2003, 03:15 PM

This is a major issue. I beg you to do whatever is possible to put the speed control back in.

I am already skipping battles. I only go back and watch when I take heavier losses than expected. This after 1 day with the demo.

The ability to adjust battle play speed should be a top priority.

st.patrik · #5 October 28th, 2003, 05:17 PM

I think a slider would be really great. Ideally I would like battles to have quicktime-like controls. Failing that, more speeds would be really nice.

LordArioch · #6 October 29th, 2003, 01:02 AM

I'd agree...this is my greatest request and the one thing I find lacking in Dominions 2.

TomWChick · #7 October 29th, 2003, 11:22 AM

Hear, hear! I really miss this as well.

As I said elsewhere, I understand the new graphics tech must have been a lot of work (it shows! bravo!) and it obviously wasn't easy to work in a variable speed. But ultimately, I'm afraid the replays are of extremely limited value if you have to watch the entire thing at one speed.

-Tom

Pocus · #8 October 29th, 2003, 11:58 AM

Has someone tried to put his FPS to the maximum supported by his hardware -fps 999, and then disabling the background in the tac battle (key w). Perhaps the game will run at a fast enough speed. Then when you are at the situation you want to check, restore the background (w key).

Though I wonder what can be the technical issue they encounter. Ideally the data engine & renderer have only a unidirectional link data>renderer, so shutting down the rendering should pose no problem (you should be able to have a text Version of the tac replay for example, without too much hassle). Calculate the rounds as fast as possible (limited my CPU power only), then reconnecting the renderer so that the display his restored and synchronized.
???

LordArioch · #9 October 30th, 2003, 08:09 AM

Thats a really good idea actually...since I sputter along at 15fps normally i can use w as a speedup anyway...but maybe 100-200 fps would be a really good speed modifier. It'll work unless better improvements are made.

Pocus · #10 October 30th, 2003, 08:14 AM

as of now I'm unable to use the -fps switch. Either it dont work, or the game dont launch (i dont even see a window drawing for a second), or it activate the test config switch.

so, who was able to launch the game with this switch? What is the exact syntax. Does -fps and --fps is different?