Great - my description was deleted when attaching a screenshot, so updated the post.
GAME INFORMATION
These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.
GAME BUILD #: 101.101.46295.0 6421374
GAME PLATFORM: Steam
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10 Pro
ISSUE EXPERIENCED
DESCRIBE THE ISSUE IN DETAIL (below). LIMIT TO ONE BUG PER THREAD.
When playing any recorded game from before Update 46295, I get an out of sync error:
“Out of sync replaying game. This is usually caused by incompatible game version or data being used. Replaying stopped.
world time: 122945”
(World time number is different from game to game, but always the same for each individual game, i.e. when you replay the same game, the time will be the same)
FREQUENCY OF ISSUE
How often does the issue occur? CHOSE ONE; DELETE THE REST!
100% of the time / matches I play (ALWAYS)
REPRODUCTION STEPS
List CLEAR and DETAILED STEPS we can take to reproduce the issue ourselves… Be descriptive!
Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:
Launch the game
Click “Single Player”
Click “Load game”
Click on “Replays” tab
double a recorded game that was recorded before Update 46295
Let it play (changing replay speed won’t matter) until you get error message (I have tried 10> games and they all go out of sync with ~20 seconds to 3 minutes)
EXPECTED RESULT
What was SUPPOSED to happen if the bug you encountered were not present?
Replay playing until the end.
IMAGE
ALWAYS attach a PICTURE (.jpg, .png, .gif) or VIDEO (.mp4, YouTube link) that highlights the problem.
Attach a SAVE GAME (.aoe2spgame) or GAME RECORDING (.aoe2record) of the match where you encountered the issue. Link it below if using an external file service.
I cannot upload - I get the error message: “Sorry, new users cannot upload attachments”.
The problem here migth be the way recordings work. Iirc it is a series of actions done by a player, saved with the time the player did that action. When replaying the game it is basically playing the whole game again, just do action x at time y and calculate what would result out of it (thats also the reason you cannot go backwards in recs). Now with any change they do to the game the result migth be different. (Imagine buff to archer with +1 attack, prebuff a skirm figthing with the archer would have x HP left, but after the buff only x-y (y>=0) HP left, so your recording wouldnt make sense in another version of the game).
The world time, I am not sure about, but as I claimed the actions of every player are stored with their respective time. Would make sense if the game actually runs on ticks (yes, just like minecraft and basically almost any videogame) and the world time would be the amount of ticks in that game, so makes sense the same recording says the same number and a different rec says another number (lasted longer/shorter).
This also means there is a theoretical limit of different games that can be played that are shorter than x hours (for example we could find an upper bound of possible different games that take less than 10 hours, dont know why anyone would like to know that number, but it is there 11), because the number of actions is limited by the amount of ticks and at each tick only a finite number of actions is possible.
Long story short: no bug here, all fine, but sad that we can not have easy access to an earlier version (would be cool to be able to go back ingame, via diff from latest version, but migth not come ever)
I don’t really care about the technical details, to me this is simply broken functionality. The game contains a feature to record games, and of course I expect this feature to be working, no matter if I’m loading a game that is 1 hour, 1 day or 1 year old. This is simply the a result of either poor testing or poor application design. So, I hope that the developers will find a way to make sure that we watch recorded games no matter what changes are introduced.
You know… I will not call it a bug, because it is not. It is by design, all the Devs know about it. I do not say its good the way it is, but it is intended. And there is a reason for it:
Every other way to do such a recording has its own drawbacks as well, if you have a good idea how to save such a record without any flaws: tell me, I am highly interested.
Option 1: You could save the record as a video like file. Fully rendered and everything.
Good: Let video play backwards would be easier possible than now, independent of version
Problems: Saving the record while playing will cause way more lag than the current way of doing (you have more data you need to write on disc while playing), files would not be like now below 1MB and up to maybe 14MB (was the biggest replay I found for me), but would scratch the GB area… I do not want AOE2 to completely fill my disc with records…
Option 2: Having all the versions of the game installed simultaniously and the record saves which version it was generated with, so when watching the rec again the rigth version of the game is loaded
Problem: obvious: storage, game would take a lot more space on disc, sure graphics can be reused, no need to save them 30 times…
Option 2.2: Saving base version (release of DE) and then save the difference to the previous version for each version. This way, by applying all the changes that have been done since the start of DE you can get any Version of the game with acceptable useage of storage. Problem: it is complicated like hell to do this in real. On paper easy, but this would generate so many bugs… and still: the growing size would still be there, but it would grow slowly enough that it would be ok for some time
I’m not really interested in semantics in this context (although that’s indeed also a quite interesting topic). I’m more interested in a solution for functionality that is not working.
Yes, they should know about it, since it’s been a problem for a long time. But that definitely does not make it any better. On the contrary! If you know there is a problem an intentionally not fixing it, either shows lack of competence, or reluctance to prioritize.
You know back in the day, at least I had the option of reverting to an older version by replacing the .exe file (even though this was also a sign of broken functionality, at least there was a chance to get to work). Anyway, it’s shocking that a solution has not been found for so long.
I am not a designer, architect or developer, so I’ll leave the implementation up those guys.
However, from the solutions you’re outlining, I’d definitely go for Solution 1, since it would give me added functionality (e.g. being able to go also go back in the recording). The drawback of added file size can easily be handled by implementing ways to reduce the amount of recordings (e.g. the user could only keep X number of recordings based on count, date, used space etc., and giving the possibility to archive recordings that the user wants to keep).
I remember back in the day there was a whole community around recorded games, and this has more or less changed to YouTube recordings instead. I’d like the recordings to be independent from any streaming platform, so I can enjoy this content without being forced into a different platform.
Yes, because it is not posiible to fix it. At least it is not possible to make it better without making another aspect way worse.
Yes, that one you made clear enough. Implementation is not the problem here… the problem is the way of how you would do this without filling everyones disc with stupidly big replay files
You know there would be a lot of guys like you complaining that the disc is full…
Well, at least we agree there is a problem with the functionality.
How can you say that implementation is not the problem when clearly it does not work?
Or are you saying that it is not possible to implement the recorded games functionality without it being broken?
I think it’s reasonable to expect that implemented functionality actually works. Not partially. Or some of time. Or in X situation. If that is not possible, then you should offer the functionality, and the users could find other ways to record games.
Oh, so you actually have a crystal ball as well?
You don’t know me, so stop being condescending and assuming stuff about me.
Like I said there are ways to mitigate the users’ harddrive from filling up.
No we dont. I like this better than any other thinkable alternative
I guess you do not know what I mean with implementation… its the best reasonable way it is implemented now. There is no idea, that is clearly better than the current implementation, the implementation itself should not be the problem
Thats just your phrase about not being interested in the technical details, but there lies the issue, why a recording feature as you would wish is not possible. So I wont waste any more time on this, since it seems like it does not interest you at all and your strong opinion without any interest on the topic itself cannot be changed. Have a nice day stranger
GAME INFORMATION
These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.