whoa, hella cool

by the end of the year we're just gonna have scripts running the camera aren't we? this is awesome, the sniper v sniper stuff we saw at esea could be even better now that it isnt 'switch to the dual cam and hope one of them kills the other'

Not a suggestion so much as it is a concern.

So I love the not-miss-a-thing camera stuff that Europe/Non-ESEA stuff has, but I'm not a huge fan of the auto-camera thing. I think there's a much more personal touch that a manned-camera operation has, especially with things pertaining to casted games.

No bot will be able to frame the gameplay into a story that matches a caster's calls. That's something that you have to watch out for with this sort of thing. I learned first-hand at GXL that "capture everything on the killfeed best I can" isn't always the best approach. It leads to some jagged transitions (for example, spectating BLU's flank getting picks then switching over to watch RED's pocket hit an airshot).

That combined with the eventual predictability of it are why I'm not the biggest fan. This is shown more in HL than anything else. "Oh the camera switched to him, what will he do... oh nice (backstab/headshot/airshot)"

Production has come a long way in the past year, and the cheat feed is absolutely amazing for capturing the biggest of plays. But I honestly like watching camerawork that's unassisted by the cheat feed more, it's much more unpredictable. I'm watching a tf2 game, not a frag video.

Who knows, I may be completely wrong and this will be absolutely amazing. And maybe you're targeting it as something not to replace the human camerawork but to supplement it. Regardless, best of luck in the project. I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do.

edit: just saw the "multiple perspectives" thing that i somehow missed first time over. i am now even more hypee

this is insanely cool.

One problem I felt watching the cheat feed was dragging on a player's pov because the cheat feed picked up a nice frag thanks to the STV delay, and the camera would sit on a random soldier/demoman for ages and then finally the airshot happens. If we have something that shows medic and soldier in split-screen mode, everyone's going to immediately expect an airshot, and that can be a good and bad thing.

A benefit is having those shots recorded for a replay/playback like we saw during i52,

but I'd get tired of the screen changing to split-screen every few minutes and having me expect an airshot.

AutoCamera isn't supposed to be a replacement for casting, I wrote it so as to make better use of split screens.

While the primary camera will always be directed by a human being, autocamera will sit on the _second_ computer, listening for big plays. So it would only come in use if someone makes a big play, so that both perspectives of the play can be seen on split screen.

The motive isn't to show the spy's view when he gets a backstab, but what the medic will be seeing when he gets dropped (together with the spy's view, of course).

I can automate split-screens if you want, and the time before the screen changes to split-changes can be shortened, so the element of surprise isn't lost.

Sounds really cool, any video of it in action?

Its not quite complete, though I would love to see it in action on a stream.

The motivation came when there was a popular suggestion during the i52 coverage about multiple perspectives. Though yes, split cams might be confusing (is making the split cam relatively smaller in size compared to the primary cam a valid suggestion?)

I don't know, I feel like split screen isn't very enriching for knowing how a medic got airshot. I find it better to see the frag from the fragger's perspective.

One thing about the cheat feed that's nice is having an option on who's perspective to flip to for that moment, whether the fragger or the person getting fragged (i.e. bombing soldier), but generally it's nicer to see it from a fragging perspective rather than a getting fragged perspective.

While I agree with the above I personally would love a little more variety in that regard, watching surfing medics get airshot or scouts jump into rockets is pretty cool too. As it is now, with the cheat feed, you start to expect the person who the camera is on to go on some huge run or hit some crazy shots. If instead of that the person you're spectating gets styled on that would still mean you caught the cool shot and it might add some spice. Personally, halfway through i52 I would almost know who was going to win the fight based on who the camera was on, and I agree with kevin that is does feel a little weird and takes a bit of the hype away at times. I think watching the fragged person like one out of every five/ten big airshots (does cheat feed show if it's a double?) could be a potential solution.

Split-screen isn't that great to begin with.

In most scenarios, pretty much all the information a viewer would gain from a split-screen perspective would also be evident from the fragger's perspective, like who got to mid first, or where the Snipers are positioned, etc. Every time you go to split-screen, it takes the viewer out of a viewing experience into an analytic experience, while also making most of the HUD elements illegible.

I liked watching the first couple stickies from both Demos in a split-screen perspective to see who had the better start, but that's about it.

The AutoCamera functionality sounds like a good idea, but I think a cameraman manually using the cheat feed would be the better option, since human judgement usually picks out the best plays better than whatever algorithm a computer runs. I think is often the case with automated "replays," which sometimes don't make very much sense.

Edit: from your posts it seems the only use you intend for AutoCamera is as a secondary camera for split-screens, so I don't really see the point.

To reiterate, handling the primary camera is not AutoCamera's job (AutoCamera sits only on the secondary camera). The primary cameraperson is free not to follow the cheat feed (as Kevin and Dashner say, since it takes the hype away). However, if they choose to follow what the Cheat Feed says, AutoCamera simply supplements what the viewers will see. To quote Kevin:

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea too.

There's a json endpoint for the cheat feed that you could parse yourself in the python code, here's a sample of its ugly output: https://gist.github.com/Arie/d264b39052919571f82f

Thanks! That eases up a lot of the work.

Unfortunately, I have little idea of how the feed works. Is it exposed through a JSON-RPC interface? If so, which port and protocol would I need to use?

Holy shit, that is a lot of info, I pretty printed it for better visibility: https://gist.github.com/vibhavp/2afdba7b8a0ddd21bf7a

It's just a HTTP GET with basic auth to http://live.fakkelbrigade.eu/pages/streamer_stats.json?match_id=some-number-here

Since split-screens aren't really viable (as evidenced by recent discussion), I've updated the script to automatically record demos of every big play for your frag video/instant replay. By default, airshots, backstabs and headshots are recorded, and there are options to enable Medic drops and ubersaw kills.

Just run the script, and give it your match id, username, and password to the cheat feed interface, and it should start recording plays automatically.

If someone plans to use this in the future, do tell me, because I would love to see it in action.