Improving replay in future updates of CS?

[PawelM]

I play a lot of large scenarios (team games and 1v1). I also watch the replays. What I find frustrating is that the replay of invisible moves of my opponents (with FOW) are replayed in the background as well. So, I end up "watching" a lot of static screen. Tonight, my frustration with such replays was high after watching 20mins replay (this is already with animation speed set to maximum thanks to the latest patches-although I am not sure if it makes a difference with invisible moves in 2D view which are not animated anyway?), with not a single move being actually in LOS. So, 20mins to watch a static map followed by end of replay message..A bit disappointing...

I wondered (a purely speculative question to dev team), what is the scope of reducing replays to only visible bits? Is it possible, possible but difficult or completely impossible?

[Crossroads]

I play a lot of large scenarios (team games and 1v1). I also watch the replays. What I find frustrating is that the replay of invisible moves of my opponents (with FOW) are replayed in the background as well. So, I end up "watching" a lot of static screen. Tonight, my frustration with such replays was high after watching 20mins replay (this is already with animation speed set to maximum thanks to the latest patches-although I am not sure if it makes a difference with invisible moves in 2D view which are not animated anyway?), with not a single move being actually in LOS. So, 20mins to watch a static map followed by end of replay message..A bit disappointing...

I wondered (a purely speculative question to dev team), what is the scope of reducing replays to only visible bits? Is it possible, possible but difficult or completely impossible?

Hmm, I have no idea whether easy or not, the units have the spotted status as visible by the little binoculars icon in InfoBox. This would need to be an option as well, for with small(er) scenarios one often prefers to hear the sound enemy units make while still not visible. Tanks? Trucks? and so forth.

Which actually gives me a suggestion to make: have you tried this with Options -> Sound Effects ticked OFF? Each unit has its own movement sound that gets played, so if Sound Effects are OFF I wonder if replays are thus quicker given the sound files are omitted?

Wanna try and let me know?

[PawelM]

Thanks Petri. I will try it and let you know. I am anyway playing with speakers on mute, so if disabling the sound effects speeds the replay, then it will work for me.
 With small scenarios it is not an issue, but with large ones this could reduce the replay time a lot.

[PawelM]

Petri,

I did the test and it does not affect the replay as I hoped, i.e. invisible moves are still happening in the background and I am watching static screen.

I was hoping there was a way to cut out the invisble (i.e. out of LOS) moves from the replay somehow. It seems they would need changes to the game code. So, I wondered if that was a big task..

for now I will need to stare at static screen in a wait of replay chunks that are happening in LOS...can be boring at times with large scenes with lot of units moving out of friendly LOS

[Crossroads]

Bummer. With Sounds OFF and Fast Movement to MAX there's not much else to do then, at least I can't think of anything.

Something to look in code then. I'll add it to the Wish List.