Delayed Stream Feedback

[Boudica]

I've been playing around with the graphics settings, so I got to test how the delayed observer stream works. I've got two tips to share. It's quite possible that these are obvious and that this whole topic is thus useless, but we'll see:

• When the game is paused (which is quite often) and my replay stream is delayed, it would seem cool to let the simulation continue for me, so that I can catch up with the players.
• When the host is closed, I don't get to see the game end when delayed, because it just ends there for me too.

Not sure how easy it would be to improve there. Anyway, the feature is cool. Today it saved like 30 minutes in total from just one game and my lag others didn't have to wait for.

[Boudica]

• Actually, building onto that first idea, if the game can now get delayed, it might also be cool to be able to pause the replay just for yourself when spectating.
• And when there is now a multiplayer game reload, couldn't the game just make an auto-save every minute (or less) and then let you rewind to those points?
• And then perhaps there could also be the feature to skip your delay a reload to the most recent state. So a lot like a YouTube live-stream.

If these features aren't planned, they sound to me like something fun to vibe code into a mod. What do you think?

[ffm2]

On 25/07/2025 at 1:56 AM, Boudica said:

When the game is paused (which is quite often) and my replay stream is delayed, it would seem cool to let the simulation continue for me, so that I can catch up with the players.

I noticed this too checking the commands per second for the auto clicker on the oddity mod. Would be better.

Another thing is resignation at pause. Sometimes players get frustrated e.g. on a long pause to wait for one player of a game that is decided already and resign during pause and leave. The others then wait maybe even more for both to join and if they eventually continue only then find out one actually resigned.

 

On 25/07/2025 at 8:58 AM, Boudica said:

And when there is now a multiplayer game reload, couldn't the game just make an auto-save every minute (or less) and then let you rewind to those points?

Currently saved&loaded, rejoined or late joined games are not stored consistently (maybe to save bandwith at the start). Would be better to have the complete game, e.g. load it if the connection is over a certain quality check or at pause. But it's a huge improvement that specs rarely cause lag.

[Boudica]

Good point for the game resign at pause. That really happens quite a lot. It must be so disappointing for the player who rage resigned not to see other people's reaction before he leaves.

17 hours ago, ffm2 said:

Currently saved&loaded, rejoined or late joined games are not stored consistently (maybe to save bandwith at the start). Would be better to have the complete game, e.g. load it if the connection is over a certain quality check or at pause. But it's a huge improvement that specs rarely cause lag.

I know we don't re-download the full replay on rejoins, but I only mentioned the game reload because it would be required to have that feature to allow rewinding the game in the cases when you do have the full replay. I was only talking about allowing you to replay what you have already watched while spectating.