What happens if you watch an online recorded boom?

[Jaeger]

I have 2 premises:

1) The exact same boom gives a higher score offline than online

2) A recorded game is just a file containing all the actions taken by the player, and when you watch a recorded game that game is literarly replayed with those exact actions

From these, shouldn't it be true that if you record an online game and watch it offline, you will have different ammounts of resources? So for example maybe in the rec you age to imperial when you have 4500f 4500g instead of 4000f 4000g like you did in the live game?

Does this happen? If no, why not?

[musketeer925]

Interesting question. Hope someone can try testing this. Would like to see the results.

[Garja]

Why should the same boom give more score offline.

[BrookG]

It actually does give higher score offline. It's a CPU thing, game runs faster when offline

[Kaiserklein]

Pretty sure it's just about how smoothly your vils move. Obviously, if treaty players keep only 7-8 vils on mills/plants, it's because of pathing issues. The same pathing issues as those affecting hand cav and making them stay idle in lag. So even the slightest lag online (there will always be some) will affect the way your vils move around, and thus reduce the resources income.

I've played quite a few treaty games, and when it's a laggy 3v3, sometimes your vils don't actually work. They don't build stuff, they just stay idle next to the foundations instead. They just stand on the mills/plants too. Which is btw why asian civs are usually rather fine in lag (vils don't have to walk on rice paddies).

When booming offline, you don't have any internet lag, but also there is way less computer lag (only 1 computer). That's why you can reach way higher scores.
I remember queen told me she once played a super lagless game against someone german (don't remember who) and she could hit something like 3000 with germany at 40, instead of the regular 2600. So this shows again that lags just decreases your resources income.

I doubt it will change on the rec, it's not about "offline" vs "online", it's about "100% lagless" vs "laggy to some extent". Rec should still show accurately the resources gathered online.
EDIT: because yeah, a rec doesn't replay the actions. It's more like a video of the game played. Laggy stuff in game will also show as laggy in the rec.

[musketeer925]

Why should the same boom give more score offline.

Pretty well known fact of treaty. Lag of multiplayer makes score significantly worse.

[deleted_user0]

I have 2 premises:

1) The exact same boom gives a higher score offline than online

2) A recorded game is just a file containing all the actions taken by the player, and when you watch a recorded game that game is literarly replayed with those exact actions

From these, shouldn't it be true that if you record an online game and watch it offline, you will have different ammounts of resources? So for example maybe in the rec you age to imperial when you have 4500f 4500g instead of 4000f 4000g like you did in the live game?

Does this happen? If no, why not?

probably because premise 2 is wrong.

[Gendarme]

Nice signature, Umeu. All hail Zoi from Switzerland!

But yeah, 2 is probably wrong, as recorded games go full Papist if you watch them on wrong patch.

[Garja]

Why should the same boom give more score offline.

Pretty well known fact of treaty. Lag of multiplayer makes score significantly worse.

I think that pretty much only applies to mills and plants?

[Gendarme]

Or wait... maybe 2 is actually right because it only records actions.

[Garja]

It doesn't record actions only, it record the whole thing. So it also record vills being stuck more than usual due to lag.

[musketeer925]

It doesn't record actions only, it record the whole thing. So it also record vills being stuck more than usual due to lag.

What exactly do you mean by "the whole thing"? That's not exactly a straightforward concept.

For example, OOS can occur in a rec if played back in a game with different stats, due to a unit dying / etc before he should. So the stats of units are not recorded in the rec.

[Jaeger]

It doesn't record actions only, it record the whole thing. So it also record vills being stuck more than usual due to lag.

Oh really? I was basing my premise 2 on what I think @Rikkikipu said on a thread

And someone mentioned on the same thread that the same rec method is used for AoM (or some other age game) but that game is so buggy that sometimes different things happen in the rec than what happened live

[Jaeger]

I think that pretty much only applies to mills and plants?

Even if it's just mills and plants, it would be interesting to see if you have a different score at 40, and if you for example resign while still having 20k resources in the rec vs having 0 live

[Jaeger]

It doesn't record actions only, it record the whole thing. So it also record vills being stuck more than usual due to lag.

What exactly do you mean by "the whole thing"? That's not exactly a straightforward concept.

For example, OOS can occur in a rec if played back in a game with different stats, due to a unit dying / etc before he should. So the stats of units are not recorded in the rec.

Isn't that evidence to the contrary, that the unit dying is recorded? Of it was not recorded then it shouldn't OOS, the unit would just remain alive but never be ordered again by the player.

[Garja]

It doesn't record actions only, it record the whole thing. So it also record vills being stuck more than usual due to lag.

What exactly do you mean by "the whole thing"? That's not exactly a straightforward concept.

For example, OOS can occur in a rec if played back in a game with different stats, due to a unit dying / etc before he should. So the stats of units are not recorded in the rec.

Yes, but the stats are not different from online to offline, provided it's the same game version. Lag only causes vills to idle more, but the gather rate isn't affected.
Regardless of what actually makes the game lag online, I think the important thing here is that the rec simply capture what happened in the game. If you got less res there, for whatever reason, it is not possible that rec will play something different.

[musketeer925]

Isn't that evidence to the contrary, that the unit dying is recorded? Of it was not recorded then it shouldn't OOS, the unit would just remain alive but never be ordered again by the player.

Well, if the stats themselves were recorded, it wouldn't have to OOS, it would have known the right HP to begin with. It's possible player orders and some other events such as unit deaths are recorded and that the game would recognize that out-of-sync.

I'm not 100% sure of the validity of the example I provided. Here's a (theoretical, have not tried this with an actual rec to prove behavior) example in more detail that wouldn't require recording unit deaths:

- HP of a musketeer on the patch on which the game was recorded was *higher* than the HP of a musketeer on the patch on which the game is being played back.
- Musketeer dies in playback, due to being attacked while at lower HP than in the actual game.
- Playback encounters an order sending that musketeer somewhere, resulting in an OOS because that unit is dead.

My real theory as to how the recs work is that they periodically save some "game state" (unit locations, resource banks, etc) and use playback of unit actions to interpolate, and anything too far off of correct causes an OOS. I have no evidence for this nor have I done much testing with it, though.

[Garja]

What I find more interesting is: does the actual game clock runs faster offline than online? Does it also run faster online with different graphic settings? What about players sharing same FPS rate vs different FPS rate? Is it possible that in order to sync two different FPS rate the game slows down the clock online?

[Jaeger]

Isn't that evidence to the contrary, that the unit dying is recorded? Of it was not recorded then it shouldn't OOS, the unit would just remain alive but never be ordered again by the player.

Well, if the stats themselves were recorded, it wouldn't have to OOS, it would have known the right HP to begin with. It's possible player orders and some other events such as unit deaths are recorded and that the game would recognize that out-of-sync.

I'm not 100% sure of the validity of the example I provided. Here's a (theoretical, have not tried this with an actual rec to prove behavior) example in more detail that wouldn't require recording unit deaths:

- HP of a musketeer on the patch on which the game was recorded was *higher* than the HP of a musketeer on the patch on which the game is being played back.
- Musketeer dies in playback, due to being attacked while at lower HP than in the actual game.
- Playback encounters an order sending that musketeer somewhere, resulting in an OOS because that unit is dead.

My real theory as to how the recs work is that they periodically save some "game state" (unit locations, resource banks, etc) and use playback of unit actions to interpolate, and anything too far off of correct causes an OOS. I have no evidence for this nor have I done much testing with it, though.

Interesting example; but if it only recorded the player's clicks (which I thought was interchangable with actions but we have to make a distinction) then when it comes time for the rec to give an order to the dead musketeer then it would just click on the empty ground, and nothing would happen. So if it would record only the the clicks I see no reason why it shoul ever OOS, it might just result in a nonsensical game. But writing about it, it does seem more likely that it doesn't record the actual clicks, it records the "actions" somehow, and like you said it perhaps records snapshots of the game somehow.

[Jaeger]

What I find more interesting is: does the actual game clock runs faster offline than online? Does it also run faster online with different graphic settings? What about players sharing same FPS rate vs different FPS rate? Is it possible that in order to sync two different FPS rate the game slows down the clock online?

To me it definitely feels like the game runs slower in lag, but I don't have proof

[musketeer925]

Yeah I definitely don't think it records player clicks. "Actions" (being "musketeer w/ ID=100 told to move to 0x=100,y=100) would be much simpler.

[bwinner]

If you watch the rec of the 2v2 w-e tour final offline you will see that hazza and king win

[supahons]

Correct me if i'm wrong - layman explanation

question:
normal in game time 40 min (real time 40 min) - resources gathered 100 k
laggy in game time 40 min (real time 100 min) - resources gathered ? k

you and i send data to a server - we both recieve data - the response time changes (ping), a too high response time causes lag. The bad network latency causes the score difference.
offline: only the pc performance, real time = in game time with the default settings, you probably can manipulate the files to change this

There is no magical data loss (otherwise oos-error), you both should have the same recordings when the game ends. (upload them to have a proof )
What happens when you watch a movie with 1 fps - the content is the same but the experience changes.

[Jaeger]

Correct me if i'm wrong - layman explanation

question:
normal in game time 40 min (real time 40 min) - resources gathered 100 k
laggy in game time 40 min (real time 100 min) - resources gathered ? k

you and i send data to a server - we both recieve data - the response time changes (ping), a too high response time causes lag. The bad network latency causes the score difference.
offline: only the pc performance, real time = in game time with the default settings, you probably can manipulate the files to change this

There is no magical data loss (otherwise oos-error), you both should have the same recordings when the game ends. (upload them to have a proof )
What happens when you watch a movie with 1 fps - the content is the same but the experience changes.

There is for sure a difference between the resources at the same game time online and offline, mamy players have reported for example 2600 score at 40 minutes in game online and 3000 at 40 minutes in game offline.

[supahons]

There is for sure a difference between the resources at the same game time online and offline, mamy players have reported for example 2600 score at 40 minutes in game online and 3000 at 40 minutes in game offline.

everybody has a different pc configuration, internet provider, timezone, distance between the servers. what do you expect?

maybe make 2 lists: offline and online max. scores
it's possible to achieve x -points on ...map with ...civ

hint: game experience may change during online play ---> read this before you log in next time