Adding comments to replays

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Inky
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Adding comments to replays

Post by Inky »

As someone who frequently posts and views other people's replays, one feature I would love to see is the ability to annotate (add comments to certain turns) replay files. Most players who post replays on the forum also post some kind of summary, which ends up being completely forgotten by the time whoever downloaded it actually views the replay. This could also be used to comment other people's replays like Velensk does in the multiplayer replay analysis thread.

Even the ability to add a small comment to the entire file (such as "this replay is corrupt after turn X") would be very helpful in my opinion. I don't know how much work this would be; just thought I'd put the idea out there in case anyone with the skill to implement it finds it interesting.
brendan_scott
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Re: Adding comments to replays

Post by brendan_scott »

+1
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ForestDragon
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Re: Adding comments to replays

Post by ForestDragon »

amazing idea! i can't believe such thing didn't exist already
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Samonella
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Re: Adding comments to replays

Post by Samonella »

It is possible to add comments in the form of in-game messages, like I did in the attached replay of the tutorial. Of course, this isn't a reliable method at all, for various reasons:

1) The commenter has to know WML. And even though I know it fairly well, editing the save file was trickier than I thought. If doing this was a common thing, I'd have to read up on Savefile WML.
2) If you usually have your saves compressed, you have to go into preferences to change this before and after saving the replay.
3) In-game messages could be easy to miss, if whoever is watching just clicks though the normal dialogue to see game play.
4) :? Apparently, you're not allowed to upload files with no extension name, so I had to falsely label mine as a .gz... to watch it, you'd have to delete the fake file extension.

So basically, commenting replays is technically possible, but in every way impractical.
Attachments
Wesnoth_Tutorial_Part_I_replay.gz
(102.99 KiB) Downloaded 489 times
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taptap
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Re: Adding comments to replays

Post by taptap »

Yes. It would open a path for a quite a few Wesnoth community activities.
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singalen
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Re: Adding comments to replays

Post by singalen »

I just had the same idea when I was reading a top player's comments on a replay.

I feel that this can be done in a number of ways:
* When you watch a replay, and then save a replay, the labels and chat messages you did when watching it, will be written to the saved copy;
* We might add a tool (maybe a console command) to add a narrator message/a label/a timed label (that is added at a beginning of a specific turn and ends at the end of it, or spans several turns). Maybe even an addon could add a console command?
IIRC, I have seen a feature in the code for a label not to be tied to a map location, but to be shown on top of the map. It's almost the same thing as chat message.

Maybe I will find the time to see how this can be implemented.
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sean121
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Re: Adding comments to replays

Post by sean121 »

Inky wrote: April 25th, 2016, 10:05 pm Even the ability to add a small comment to the entire file (such as "this replay is corrupt after turn X") would be very helpful in my opinion. I don't know how much work this would be; just thought I'd put the idea out there in case anyone with the skill to implement it finds it interesting.
This sounds good to me and this could be so convenient. But I think this would require a lot of hard work to pull this off.
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