Alternative to ingame join: Transmit Map Thumbnail

[ultrasonicsite]

For example, we have the !status command, what about having it so the minimap can be transmitted (With just the radar blips) so you can more or less see a simplified state of the game.

[Google_Frog]

Might the people playing the game be able to look at what the other team is doing? I know any rejoin system can have this problem but the thumbnail system makes it incredibly easy.

[ultrasonicsite]

That's true, you could try to limit who gets access to what information. Also it wouldn't work if you're ingame.

[Pressure Line]

2nd computer logged in with another nickname?

[ultrasonicsite]

Well in that case what's to stop someone from just using both a player account and a spec account in one game and have 2 instances of Spring.exe running? The first thing you could do is disallow anyone who wasn't originally in the game from getting such detailed status updates, in which case it would be useful when a player crashed but was still interested in seeing how things were progressing while waiting for the next game.

You could also add a lag delay, or even small update intervals (Once every 5 minutes perhaps)

[Jazcash]

View the IP address of the person trying to look at the thumbnail picture or whatever and if that IP address matches one of the players in that game then block the player from viewing the image?

[ultrasonicsite]

View the IP address of the person trying to look at the thumbnail picture or whatever and if that IP address matches one of the players in that game then block the player from viewing the image?

It would only work when no instance of spring is running, but your info is still on the server running the game as having been ingame previously, and thus you'd be allowed to view the current image of the map, probably updating at set intervals as well as having a lag in when the snapshot itself took place so as to not be useful in the case of cheating.

Also, as far as cheating is concerned, anyone can just ask a friend on mumble to spec the game and tell them what's going on in the enemy team. Most people wouldn't try to cheat however, and it would be futile to cheat when you're not even ingame and get worse strategic information then someone who would just be speccing, dots can only tell you so much...

[oksnoop2]

I personally think this idea is snazzy. Many a time i'll join a room and have no idea when the game will end.

[Forboding Angel]

Perhaps it could be delayed by 5 minutes or so and only show dots?

There isn't that much you can glean from just a bunch of random colored dots and such.

[oksnoop2]

I think you would be able to tell if the same was soon to end, say if one color dominated a map while the other was very small. Unless you were talking about using it to cheat.

[Gota]

I think you would be able to tell if the same was soon to end, say if one color dominated a map while the other was very small. Unless you were talking about using it to cheat.

In that case why bother at all?let a script look at domination of dots of one team over a % of the map and same with the other team and estimate who is winning and how long till game ends.
You enter a room and that estimation is thrown at you,gg.
It wont be accurate but wont be much worse than you just watching dots on the map it ca neven gather stat info and slowly generate better estimations.

[Jazcash]

I usually find that ingame players or specs are usually quite willing to reply anyway...

"We only just started! Go away!"

[PicassoCT]

How about a auto-referee, who looks through replays, finding out suspicious behaviour, like people suddenly hovering with there views over fog-of-war-areas, were enemys line up for an attack?

[KDR_11k]

View positions and such aren't stored in the replay.

In THIS you could broadcast the gravidar data but with other mods I'm not sure (except Fibre). Maybe allow the game to flag units as being fair game for showing on the broadcast map (e.g. because all teams can see them or because the game doesn't use LOS)?

OR just display unit counts for all teams. Maybe with some fudge factor to prevent gaining real intel from there.

[knorke]

In that case why bother at all?let a script look at domination of dots of one team over a % of the map and same with the other team and estimate who is winning and how long till game ends.
You enter a room and that estimation is thrown at you,gg.
It wont be accurate but wont be much worse than you just watching dots on the map it ca neven gather stat info and slowly generate better estimations.

for somebody bored, it might be possible to do something like this very easy:
-make a bot spec the game
-if a new player joins battleroom, run a lua script that dumps all unit locations into a file
-make unit locations into a picture
-show picture in lobby
-???
-profit