EVE Technology Lab

Hello all.

This may turn into a wall of text that will go off on tangents. You have been warned.


So after watching the Alliance Tournament and seeing the WebGL system that Fozzie was playing with (and I saw it on Null-sec.com), It got me thinking that this could be the thing that a lot of video makers have been looking for. From what I could see. CREST does log all the data needed to make replays of a system (or just a system grid) of a set amount of time. So I was thinking that it now seem possible that we are haft way there to making this a reality.

So I feel this would be a good time to make a post about it to list the things that we as video move makers wish as well as a list the things that players should know about with regards to spying/meta game.

1 - Need CREST to be deployed to TQ (when its ready that is)

2 - A DEV Team to build in a CREST Replay logging system to save all data of a system over a time frame of 1 day (or one Down time cycle)

3 - A DEV team (or the same one as above) to incorporate a Battle Rendering system that reads CREST logs for displaying what you wish to see/record. Must have some sort of way directing a camera way point follow and track system.

4 - A setting in the EvE Client that states if a player/pilot wish to hide there CREST logs from the public. This is to curb the idea of tracking somebody movements by just downloading a CREST log of a system that you know has a Titan that has logged of at say a safe spot.

5 - This last one is only an idea that is not necessary but would be like adding a cherry topping. Add a Render to file format of your choice Exporting option. Say like a .MOV or .MP4 file format for latter video editing in something like Adobe Premair Pro or Windows Movie maker (lol)


Ok, that is my list for now. I Do hope some DEV's see this and say. Yes. We have a look at this and see what we can come up with.

Thanks for reading.


PS: Shoud CREST make it to TQ: You will never see the "LOGS SHOW NOTHING" ever again (joke)

Oddsdoz

CREST is already on TQ its how TQ and Dust talk, its just not public yet.

As Steve said check out the relevant thread.

Also I have to say I dislike your idea for game design reasons. Why should you be able to get intel about things happening on some grid if you weren't there? That would pretty much be an intel paradigm shift (in a time when quite a few players ask for removing some intel e.g. local).

IMO the way to go regarding battle recorders from a game design perspective will be client-side. Your client already got all the intel if you are on grid, so recording it wouldn't be much of a difference in principle. If those on grid decide to publish it later (maybe on some player-run website like BC) would be their own business.

Incidentally as the thread linked above mentioned that will probably also be the only feasible way from a technical perspective cause CCP probably couldn't handle creating and storing AT style data on a TQ level.

Seems you miss the part where I state that a setting in the game client wound need to be added just for this. And as a side note. I should have said that it must be on by default. IE: All my data of what I have been doing for the last 23:30 hours will be logged by CREST (as I assume that is what it will do) but no public access to it from players. Only CCP could access it.

Ok let me run down how I wish to see it work.

CREST is up and running full swing. And one day I have a feeling I wish to make some sort of video. So I log on and tell all my friends to log on also. I tell them to get rookie ships and go bash a PoCo. But before we undock, I ask them to go into the settings of their EvE client and tick the box "Make Pubic my CREST Data for X Hours". We then all undock and go smash a PoCo. Now at this point. CREST will add a marker in its system that says "Pilot Oddsodz (and his mates that ticked the same box) wishes his data to become pubic for X hours. Cool I will do that for him".

Right so we are undocked and start flying about like cool kids that we are. Game plays just as it does now. No change at all. The Eve client is not doing anything new that what already does. Game server is just same also. Only thing different is CREST knows for the next few hours. This data will be made public in it's "Daily Snap shot".

Still with me? Good. Now as we fly to a PoCo owned by "Silly PoCo Corp" we are Cyno Hot Dropped by Pandemic Legion with 500 Titans. And they smart bomb us to death. We all die and go back to station.

I Then tell all my friends to go back to the settings page of the EvE client and turn OFF "Make my CREST Data Public." Now we are all safe in the knowledge that only CCP has access to our CREST data again.

Now. At this point. Say at the next down time cycle the next day. A CREST Data dump will be made to say a new web page at CCP website or something that lists every star system in EvE. All 5000 (plus wormholes) of them and you can go and look up the star system you was in the day before and download a 23:30 hour Snap shot file that logged all public CREST data of what happen in that system for that day. Now in that Daily Snap shot. You will find almost nothing as most pilots have not made their CREST data public for any amount of time. It will be no good for intel/spying as nobody in their right mind will wish to give that data out in general. This also includes the data from Pandemic Legion Titan gank fleet that kills all my rookie ships. They did not make their CREST data public so I can't get a snapshot with their CREST data in it (this will be funny as when it comes to rendering time, the only footage I can get will be my rookie ship flying about and go poof like magic for no reason. No Titans will be visible/viewable as PL did not make the CREST data public).

Still with me?

Ok. So with my little scenario above logged by CREST. I Can now get to the 2nd stage of the process. This would mean that a new part of the game client would need to be built or a new tool made available from CCP (or a 3th party)

The next day after down time. I Go too the new website that lists all the systems of EVE and download the "Daily Snap shot" of Rancer for that day. As Rancer is where my rookie fleet of doom was. I then load up my new "EvE Render™" tool from CCP and ask it to import the CREST Log file I have downloaded (I saved it to my desktop like most folks do lol). Now in the "EvE Render™" tool. I can fast forward to a any EvE time stamp for the 23 and a haft hours of that day. So lets say my fleet made their CREST data public at 17:00 Eve Time. So I will skip along just like you would with a DVD remote control to 16:58 EvE time. Then, in the tool. You can can set where the camera is and what it is looking at. I move it to a nice spot looking at the station. I want to get a nice shot of my fleet of rookie ships of doom undocking. They look so pretty. So now just like most tool of this nature. I can set the camera and also set how the camera will move about and what objects it till track and so on. Once I have a nice panning shot with the camera tracking my rookie ship but also moving from left to right. I am happy with that 7 seconds of tape. I click a button and the "EvE Render™" tool stick's it to one side for latter rendering. I Continue to do this sort of thing for the next few hours. Working on my Steven Spielberg skill for camera direction. And I work up about 7 minutes worth of Michael Bay worthy footage. I Then click a button in the "EvE Render™" and it goes and renders all my footage at what ever resolution I set (most likey 1080p at 60 frames a second) into a .MOV video file format. This will take some time.
This is a wall of text.

Anyway.

Now that I have my super cool footage of my rookie ships in .MOV video format.. I go and load up the Adobe Premiere Pro video editing software and start doing all sorts of silly things like add text and put in pictures of CCP LogiBro jumping about on a space hopper. You get the idea. I Then finish that off and upload it to Youtube and wait for it to go super viral.

So that is how I envisage using some of the power of CREST. I have no illusions of how long this will take to come about. It's needs a lot of DEV time. But the pay off will be many Many happy Youtubers (or Vemo) who will see the glory art of EvE space ships.


PS, The reason I made a new thread is due to the other one mentioned by Steve Ronuken was about CREST and ATxi as a whole. Where as this is about a video making process.

Thanks for reading

Oddsodz

I didn't miss it, but I guess my answer was a bit over the top because your wording kinda implied that publishing the data would be the default.

You lost me there. Why would you arbitrarily remove intel the "broadcaster" already had, i.e. why would the titan be invisible when it is visible on grid on the broadcaster's client, when it is visible on the broadcaster's combat log and when it is visible on the broadcaster's killmail? That would be like if kil2 had to put black bars over enemy ships when he fought them on stream.

There might be some tricky bits regarding the details of what data might be available to a client on grid that isn't actually shown to the client's player under certain circumstances. Like e.g. it could theoretically be possible that the hitpoints of a ship on grid are known to another client but not shown to the player unless it's locked. Or I guess cloaking could have similar issues. But can't we agree that at least all data which the broadcasting player could see on grid should be part of the recording?

As for your centralized vision of implementing this, I simply believe it might be technically impossible and it's certainly much harder to accomplish than a distributed approach:

• Creating and storing the data would be the major concern. I believe if your idea was implemented like that CCP would have to ask the MiB corp if they are renting out one of their newly upgraded systems in the Utah constellation because this would be going towards Big Data real quick. On the other hand distributed clients would probably be able to handle generating and storing appropriate data just for their own grid relatively easy.
• Creating a battle player. I saw you kinda retracted that point on your last post, but do you really think it would be a wise investment of resources for CCP to do this themselves? Just to put this in perspective, in 10 years of Eve they didn't bother to implement a proper ingame skill planner or fitting tool (and I'm not even sure if I want them to cause the 3rd party solutions work pretty fine), so I really think the battle player should be left to the community.
• Providing the raw data. This is a minor thing of course, but just for completeness' sake, does it really matter if you download the data from a CCP site or from BattlerecorderClinic.com™ where players uploaded it?

So we both agree CCP should implement a battle recorder cause that would totally rock, IMO they don't need to implement a battle player or anything else really. And while I can see the appeal of a grand centralized solution in a perfect world with unlimited resources I believe the distributed approach is much more likely to happen while we live to see it. And the result for you as a video producer wouldn't really be much different for either approach.

I see that we're looking at this from different perspectives, it seems you're looking at this mainly from the point of view of a video producer for machinimas and similar stuff whereas my interest is mostly in replaying and analyzing battles. And for the latter of course it's rather useless if half the info is missing and if it is implemented on SiSi instead of TQ.

Yes, they are logging something. However, as the dev responses in the other thread indicate, that something is probably very different from the kind of data provided for the AT CREST which made these battle renders possible. Specifically, they're probably not saving x/y/z positional data but rather rather send (and probably log) player commands and let Destiny (the simulation engine) figure out the rest. With only this data available the battle render would need to be based on Destiny too, which isn't really something you want, firstly because it means only CCP could make one and it would be way more complex and secondly because it wouldn't allow for easy adjustment of input data (e.g. you really wish that ship would take a left turn instead of right in your machinima).

Because one of the most basic things to analyze in a battle would be the positions and types of all ships on grid. So I would consider it pretty useless if all the enemy ships were invisible. And I don't really see the need for that, if you (or the person that allowed/published the recording as a proxy) were on grid then that's available info.

Of course you could build on top of that and add additional info only from persons who explicitly allowed it, like location while they were cloaked, hitpoints/capacitor/heat/etc i.e. stuff that isn't freely available to everyone on grid.

No, I just wouldn't want less info than from FRAPS, i.e. ship type, position and all other info that everyone on grid can see.

I agree, and I thought that was exactly what I wrote.

But to be honest, we're now discussing details of a non-existent system.

CCP, get CREST out for us already! Would be a major boost to third party developers...