Timeline playback/video

[unmerged(100030)]

Okay everyone is going crazy over all the little morsels of info and generating crazy new-fangled ideas for the game. But I'm a simple guy an am pleased easily. And on top of that, I have a suggestion for the game. Something that'll make AARs like 100 times awesomerer.

Timeline playback. Thats right. Almost all RTS games have them now a days. Heck even Age of Empires II: Age of Kings way back in the day had this feature. It's in Civilization IV (and I think III too).
Basically I think it would be cool if while you played a game of HoI3 there could also be a video file of a zoomed out image of the world (in political map mode) recording that you could play back in real time (or with fastforward options) after the game was done and share (and maybe even put on youtube) and basically watch the borders of the world change throughout the game, and then on the side or underneath somewhere, a text area that showed 'major events' in game, the day/year.

Thats it. Thanks for reading. Keep up the good work.

 

[Dadaan]

Yeah, that'd be nice.

 

[comagoosie]

That would be very nice, and I wonder if it would be easy to implement.

It would also be a very nice AAR feature.

 

[wilcoxchar]

That would be nice, and if the saves are set up like EU3 saves are, it certainly shouldn't be hard to implement.

 

[humancalculator]

That would be cool.

 

[henryjai]

dont' forget HOI3 is a more complex game and your playback would probably..... be too big.

 

[humancalculator]

dont' forget HOI3 is a more complex game and your playback would probably..... be too big.

Just show MAJOR events, not the tiny ones, like U.K. bombed Dresden for such and such damage. Maybe also have the map region wise and not 10,000 province wise.

 

[JoeGiavani]

I remember completing a game on Hearts of Iron and playing back the whole war in fast motion. It was VERY cool, particularly watching the eastern front flow back and forth as General Winter allowed.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

All you'd really need are province transfers, just record the political mode map changes, and perhaps have ledger graphs accessible at the end (when I may actually look at them...) It would bump up save game sizes, but not but by a lot, it should toggleable. Considering that HoI2 actually has a decent sized Multi player community as well, it may be a good idea (HoI is probably the best title for multiplayer)

 

[unmerged(100030)]

Like I said, I'm a simple guy an am easy to please. I'd be happy with a small, zoomed out map that shows the whole world at once (the video isn't, and really shouldn't be at the same view you'd play the game.) in political map mode so you could watch the color blobs move across as the war progresses. As for the events, all I would want is something like:

(Date/Time stamp): Austria joins the Axis.
(Date/Time stamp): Axis powers declare war on Poland.
(Date/Time stamp): Poland joins Allies. Allies declare war on Axis powers.
(Date/Time stamp): Battle of Warsaw begins.
(Date/Time stamp): Battle of Warsaw ends. Warsaw falls to German forces.
(Date/Time stamp): Poland annexed by Germany.


And if we really wanted to get crazy, have a little star/dot/symbol on the map appear to coincede with some events. So using that Battle of Warsaw for example, the map would have a little white star or something over where Warsaw would be. I'm not looking for anything super detailed like (Date/Time stamp): Winston Churchill eats a fishstick and enjoys a pint with some mates at the pub, yeah.

 

[Lazy_Boy]

Yeah that would be great. At the least a kind of timeline graph with division/aircraft/ship numbers and IC similar to AoE2 and Civilization has. Overall game as a video wouldn't work but they could come up with a decent playback through stored data system.
Storing the data of everything that has happened really isn't that complicated or big because only the results of everything are needed, not the calculation that goes into combat to begin with.

 

[henryjai]

Yeah that would be great. At the least a kind of timeline graph with division/aircraft/ship numbers and IC similar to AoE2 and Civilization has. Overall game as a video wouldn't work but they could come up with a decent playback through stored data system.
Storing the data of everything that has happened really isn't that complicated or big because only the results of everything are needed, not the calculation that goes into combat to begin with.

recording isn't that difficult but you really need the harddisk drive and RAM for it

 

[ComradeOm]

recording isn't that difficult but you really need the harddisk drive and RAM for it

Then forget the events and settle for a simple 2D map showing province transfers a la Alpha Centarui. That should not be difficult or demanding

 

[wilcoxchar]

People seem to be forgetting that in EU3 (and I think Rome too, but can't remember), important events such as province transfers and ruler deaths are already stored in the save games. All you would need to do is make a program to access and display this information.

 

[Burning]

this would be cool. while we do have a history log in the save game file, i would love to be able to replay a separately saved recording of the game within the game itself.