BF2S Forums Petition for a "Rewind" button in Battlerecorder

As great as it would have been... you know it will never happen (unless some independent modder can find a way to do it...) I'm sure EA/Dice could care less by now

Hurricane wrote:

I'm sure DICE will get right on that.

Also, I'm not sure on it, but I heard that the reason that BR files can't be rewound is because they aren't real video files. They're these... special files... which basically script the game to move and spawn all this stuff. That's why BR files are so much smaller than video files. This is the same system used in Halo 3's replay theatre; though I'm not sure if Halo 3 has a rewind feature.

it does

Battlerecorder is practically useless without rewind.

it wont happen unless they redo the engine. if you wanted to rewind then players would have to catch grenades instead of throw them, and planes would have to afterburn backwards etc.

as of now, the BF2 engine cannot do this, so rewind will not happen unless they rewrite the engine.

Or do what they have/had in CSS which was a "tick system". It obviously starts at 0 and you can move to any certain "tick" that you wanted (think of them as seconds really). With the little menu up, you knew exactly what tick it was at. Simple.

That was about 2 years ago (before you could render first person weapons in SRCTV files...lol), so I dont know if theyve put a rewind feature into SRCTV since then.

Would there not be a way to create an outside of BF2 program that could run the BR files? At least then you could customise it and allow such things as turning off the nametags without editing the BF2 core files.

100% Irishpride wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcz_OV191js

Thats me...
I know plenty of good BF2 videos, your just not looking hard enough, want links?

wow, you can fly a jet............

and yes i have almost 13,000 kills in the F15, F18, Su-34, Su-30, Mig, and F35

NO J-10.........

I don't know if this is what you're saying, but if they can do fast forward they can do something like chapters. You should be able to fast forward at 10000% speed to particular markers in the file, maybe automatic markers every 5 minutes of game time. That would be almost as good as rewind.

In theory you could do that yourself with macros, just slower: set key combinations to fast forward the file from the beginning for specific lengths of time.

It's a little surprising that hackers have not hacked the battlerecorder interface to make it better. This is a perfect example of how open source would improve BF2.

I remember hearing in one of the interviews that they'd get on it as soon as all the bugs are fixed. Well, tbh, I can't ever see them fixing all the bugs, so why can't they just do it now?

-konfusion

k....

san4 wrote:

I don't know if this is what you're saying, but if they can do fast forward they can do something like chapters. You should be able to fast forward at 10000% speed to particular markers in the file, maybe automatic markers every 5 minutes of game time. That would be almost as good as rewind.

In theory you could do that yourself with macros, just slower: set key combinations to fast forward the file from the beginning for specific lengths of time.

It's a little surprising that hackers have not hacked the battlerecorder interface to make it better. This is a perfect example of how open source would improve BF2.

Sort of....  Your explanation here would require an update to bf2.
I'm suggesting a stand alone utility that would turn one demo file into several.
It would really be nice if they could add a marker system during playback,
but I seriously doubt we will see any more patches/upgrades for bf2.

The stand alone splitter would prompt for either number of fractions (i.e. split the file in half, thirds, fourths, etc)
or segment length (i.e. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, etc.)
Should be pretty easy, but would take an in-depth understanding of demo file content to make sure the
segments play back just as well as the original.

Tonight I wrote an AutoHotkey script that implements something like chapters in BattleRecorder files. Its functionality is severely limited by the limits of BattleRecorder itself, but it can make it easier to get to a particular event of interest in the BR file.

When the script is running, pressing a Num Pad key will fast forward the BR file at 300% for a certain amount of time. Then it will pause the file. The duration of the fast forward in *game time* is the digit you press times 5 minutes. For example, if you press the 3 key on the Num Pad, the BR file will fast forward 15 minutes *of game time* and then pause. This takes 5 minutes (because 5 minutes ff at 300% is 15 minutes of game time).

The way I would use this is to restart the BR file from the beginning and then press the appropriate Num Pad key to get to the event I want to focus on.

But how do you know how far into the BR file your target event is? You can use the Num Pad keys to find out. Find the event you're looking for in the BR file by starting at the beginning of the file and pressing the Num Pad 1 key to go forward 5 minutes. Do that over and over again until you see your event. If you keep track of how many times you've pressed the key, multiply it by 5 and that is roughly how many minutes into the file the event is. (It's actually up to five minutes too much, so don't count the last time you pressed the Num Pad 1 key.) Now you can get to the event from the beginning of the BR file by just pressing the Num Pad key that fast forwards the proper amount. E.g., if you had to press the Num Pad 1 key four times to see your target event happen in the BR file, next time just press the Num Pad 3 key from the start of the BR file.

The main advantage of this script is that it pauses when it reaches the target time. So you can press a key to start the fast forwarding and go take a piss or something. When you come back, the BR file will be paused at the target time. No need to stare at the computer to stop the fast forwarding at the right time. And no missing the target event and having to fast forward through the whole damn file again!

Caveat emptor: I have not tested this extensively. I just pressed the 1 and 2 keys and they worked. So if it doesn't work property or causes your computer to catch fire, I apologize but do not blame me. But please let me know so I can fix it.

Edit: To use this script, download ffwd.exe or ffwd_4minBeep from here: http://hosted.filefront.com/san4/
Double-click it to activate it and then run BF2 and play your BattleRecorder file. The fast-forward Num Pad keys should be available. The '4minBeep' script makes each Num Pad number fast forward for 4 minutes times the key value (e.g., the 8 key fast forwards 32 min of game time). It also beeps when it is done ffwding.

To use the script the hard way: download ffwd.ahk from filefront. Download AutoHotkey (http://www.autohotkey.com/) and install it.  Then double click on the file you saved as ffwd.ahk. Now run BF2 and play your BattleRecorder file and the Num Pad fast-forward keys will be available.

Last edited by san4 (2007-12-09 10:17:13)

tazz. wrote:

Awesome, but how do you use it?

Doh! Thanks for pointing that out. Instructions added.

Edit: Instructions edited to include link to executable. No cutting or pasting, just run it.

Last edited by san4 (2007-12-06 21:59:55)