Broadcasting idea

#1 A better idea, and one that's already being done with Tribes, is to stream the packets from the game itself. That way you save on bandwidth and so you can get a lot more people viewing the game at the same time. Plus, the viewers will be able to see the game at a much higher quality than they would see in any streamed video, as all the rendering is being done on their own PCs. Of course, Dynamix may already be putting something like this into the Tribes 2 as we speak, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. ;)

#2 I've thought about this before, but never really done anything with it. It's impossible to do it in realtime, but if a few minutes (a guesstimate) of lag is acceptable, it can be done.

I can think of two methods:

Record the video output - ie, from the graphics card - of a PC running a special client, route back into another system (or the same system if it can handle it) through a video-in, and encode it to ASF, then stream it from a webserver. You may or may not be able to stream as you encode. This would be a natural carry-over to broadcasting on a closed-circuit television network.

It might also be possible to have this same special client instead flush consecutive buffers to disk and encode them. Then stream. This seems far inferior to the above option.

In any case, this "special client" would simply be an enhanced spectator, using some analytical routines to find out the best viewing position and orientation each frame.

#3 They are called streaming demo servers. As of today they are not fully functional in Tribes2 but are planned to be supported in a follow up patch. We will do our best to integrate that patch into the V12.

#4 Well, at first glance, the game server tossing around packets seems cool - but ultimately how his this any different than sending info a spectator? This is obviously very bandwidth sensitive for the gameserver, no?

If you have a single spectator system doing the monitoring, you could use your WLBS-enabled webfarm to toss the streaming media, and have plenty of viewers watching with no impact on gameserver network performance.

I was thinking about this in the context of live event coverage - imagine several thousand gamers watching the world championship Quake3: Arena tournament online with a professional announcer (okay, so that's uber-geek territory, but it could happen).

#5 Im thinking of this ...

Currently Online gaming is much like Football in the 1940s ... before TV broadcasting started. Games are played and watched and listenend to by the people who play them and enjoy them. Online games have the potential to be the greatest spectator sport ever ... it can be totally gorry ... and its just pixels ... nobody gets hurt, nobody blows out a knee, you just respawn and play again.

However, to make it this accessable we need to put it into a format for easy comsumption by the user. This means NO PROPRIETARY downloads. We need to provide this to the maximum number of users on the internet ... Either RealAudio or Windows Media player.

#6 Also ... the time delay of 10-60 seconds is preferred ... this way it limits the use of the broadcast by the teams to get an unfair advantage.

#7 well, to ease any burden on the game server itself, the "broadcast" would be sent to another machine, and then that machine could "broadcast" it to anyone who wanted to watch.

With the problems with media player and people not trusting real entworks, maybe some sort of plugin for a browser or a free custom client (maybe open source) should be developed, otherwise you are stuck with either a. limiting because peope will not use X client to watch it, or 2. you are converting a single format into many different formats.

#8 well if its streaming video you want...then that will exclude a large number of folks (like me) with slow net connections...to reach the "masses" some sort of download would be required...a "demo" only version of V-12, if you will...then the "broadcast" would only contain the normal game packet type info...as has been suggested earlyer...the problem with this isn't exactly due to the size of the "demo" V-12 download executeable (containing just the graphics and network portions...this can't be THAT large)...The problem with this is that all the textures, maps and meshes would be needed as well...(Mmm...maybe distribeting "some" of the needed data useing many of the various CD-Roms that come with game magazines would help)

Besides, what screen resolution would the "special client" transmit the video feed...if it is captureing the video card image, wouldn't it need to compress it down to something more reasonable in size (just the raw data needed for a 320 X 200 8-bit graphic is 64K...thus, wouldn't a 640X480 16-bit graphic would hog bandwidth)

#9 I don't know much exactly what a "streaming demo server" is, but I assumed it was just a dedicated server replaying a recorded demo. I'll dig up my Tribes CD and see if there's more to it. =)

In any case, the idea is to do this without regard to a specific game - that is most games based off of V12 will be supported (okay, not realistic, but it's doable if the game developers maintain the functionality).

Game media downloads are prohibitive, especially if they only wish to watch some action. In fact, they'd probably need to download all the game media - that's not going to make publishers happy. So your stuck with only broadcasting to people who own the game, and unless you're Q3A or Unreal Tournament, you're severely limiting your potential audience. Then again, something like this might not have a huge audience anyways, so it's a moot point... =)

I realize that if you don't have a reasonably high fidelity video stream, nobody will feel like watching - not really a problem for DSL users, but for modem users we have a fundamental problem. I don't know how to deal with that one yet, but I'll figure it out. =)

#10 The difference between football in the 40s and multiplayer gaming today is that not everyone can play football. Pro football takes a lot more skill than gaming. If someone is watching a game they'll just say hey I can do that and go play the game rather than watching...video games don't make good spectator sports.

CA01

#11 I disagree. I think the reason that people watch pro-sports is to see others with a high level of skill turn the sport into an art (that is, before the current era of money grabbing fools). Take basketball. I bet 90% of people have the physical ability to play basketball. Doesn't mean that they have any skills, or that years of practice would allow them to play at a high level.

And even though the physical necesities for playing a computer game are much less than "traditional" sports, it does not eliminate the skill gradient. There will be people with better reactions, better instincts, and better team skills.

Just because you can do something, and even do it proficiently, doesn't mean that you can't enjoy watching someone else do it.

Joel.