What if we there was a Day Z battle recorder/theatre mode?

[fearz0r 128]

I was talking to a mate the other night while cooking some meat on our camp fire in the woods. An idea arose when I mentioned how funny it would be if we were being watched, or if there were a group of other players literally over the other side of the hill. While this mainly served to create paranoia for the two of us it also got the old cogs turn in my noggin'. After some thought I asked Sean "Wouldn't it be cool to have a way of floating around the game world watching other players and what they're up to?", after a brief moment of silence, he exclaimed "OH MY GOD YES!".

*Now I'm not talking about no-clip mode or some strange spectator mode, because frankly they'd be a bit boring and too much like 'cheating'. My thoughts behind it were more like being able to play a server captured video of say the last hour or two of gameplay. Imagine a Battlefield 2 Battle Recorder or Halo 3 Theatre mode but for Day Z!

We continued talking about it, coming up with funny scenarios like watching a fresh spawner being chased along the the coast by a mob of infested, or watching a bandit sniper in a tree line camping, completely unaware of the small group of heavily armed bandit hunters walking through the woods 100 feet behind him. Or, in our case, watching us sitting at our camp fire unaware that 200 feet over the hill were a group of 6 bandits in their camp cooking their meat and wiping the blood off of their recent looted items..

I realise that in many cases this would probably result in 30 or so players on a server all being a good few miles apart from each other and as a result no "real" action might occur, but personally I'd find it quite enjoyable just to be able to watch what other players get up to, and how they play the game. And on the flip side, there could be days where you're in the most epic fire fight or foiled ambush attempt that you can get to see how it all happened, from beginning to the end via a Day Z theatre.

There are obviously flaws in this functionality that need to be considered, for example player camps. If unrestricted, it would allow anyone to float around the map searching for camps. This wouldn't be a good player experience (for the camp owner), although this does already happen in Day Z by way of chopper surveillance. A counter to this could be that players in the theatre mode aren't clearly marked or identified, meaning that you'd have to literally spot them from the floating camera position. There could also be server side settings that allow or disallow the theatre viewer to snap-on to another player in 3rd person. If disallowed, the theatre mode would only allow the viewer to view the game world from a floating camera, say 20-30 meters in the air. This would potentially allow clever players to hide their camps in woodland areas and prevent theatre viewers from finding them (easily). Another exploit prevention mechanic could be to limit the speed that the viewer's camera can move to the speed of a sprinting character, but would allow the theatre viewer to enter map grid locations to travel to other areas of the map so they could at least check out hot spots throughout Day Z (NW airfield, Cherno etc).

Before you all criticise this post/idea, I want to state that this is all pie in the sky. It's just a thought. I wanted to share it with you guys to see if there was any real interest. And if there was, how best could it be developed so that the game wasn't detrimentally compromised in any way. Obviously this isn't something I think we need at this point in development, but down the line this mode would be excellent. Imagine the stories + video you'd see on the forums!

What do you guys think?

Battlerecorder demo:

Halo Theatre demo:

[OrLoK 16191]

Hello all

Regardless of whether its a good idea or not, just to let you know there are several A2 mods that do just this, from After Action Reports to Spectator Cams to Action Cams.

So, once the kinks had been worked out it is possible, and the means to do it exists now.

Rgds

LoK

Edited July 19, 2012 by orlok

[fearz0r 128]

Hello all

Regardless of whether its a good idea or not, just to let you know there are several A2 mods that do just this, from After Action Reports to Spectator Cams to Action Cams.

So, once the kinks had been worked out it is possible, and the means to do it exists now.

Rgds

LoK

Thanks for the info Lok.

Burro

(Btw, "Regardless of whether its a good idea or not" not sure why you put this at the start of you post, wasn't really necessary in my opinion)