[Dragonai]

This is very reminiscent of two things for me:

- the introduction of replays in Halo 3 (which worked the same way - by saving the data of the entire session, one could freely move the camera around the entire map and observe any part of the game at any point in time)

- Super Meat Boy's level-end combined replays (which replayed all of the user's attempts simultaneously, creating a pretty amusing sort of "heatmap" effect)

I think this will eventually become standard for games where replays would be valuable or fun to watch. But I'm not sure about actually rendering live games server-side until we're at a point where input latency is unnoticeable.

[spartanatreyu]

Server side rendering for live games is a really bad idea. If there's a single hickup with a packet, the whole game will stutter on the client's side and they won't be able to do anything, not move, not look, not pause, whatever.

Server side rendering for replayed games on the other hand is totally fine, not everyone has capture cards. They actually had this service on Halo 3 where you could pay bungie for the number of minutes you wanted footage rendered out at.

[simoncion]

nod nod Replays used to be a standard feature of big-budget multiplayer PC video games. I spent many fond hours dissecting exactly how new-to-Descent2 or new-to-Starcraft me got his ass handed to him this time around.

It's a damn shame that more video dev houses don't spend time to create -at a minimum- single-POV client-side replays for their multiplayer games.

[scoggs]

Awesome anecdotes. Reminds me of map making and frag videos in Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc. Super Meat Boy's replay feature was a blast through and through. You have good taste!