News: Online xOTM Replay Utility - Beta

[Mad Professor]

Oh - veeerrrrry very nice AlanH.

 

[TheMostWanted]

Can I open ''Online xOTM Replay Utility'' with Mozilla Firefox?

 

[AlanH]

You should be able to. Have you tried and failed?

You should be able to use any modern browser except Internet Explorer.

Performance is dependent on the browser's Javascript engine, so if you want to see the replay animations really whizz through on the fastest speed setting, use Safari, Chrome, Firefox or Opera in that order. And make sure you have the latest version.

 

[patkingpin]

I love this!!! For people like me still learning the game this is a great tool! Thank you so much.
My only complaint if I had one, and let me tell you how minor this is, but is there any way to move the play/stop/forward buttons lower? I would like to be able to see the whole log and still be able to use the stop/play buttons.
You did such a great job with this I feel ungrateful for even asking if this could be done, lol.
Again, awesome job!

 

[whb]

Ummm! I tried to make it easy to understand, but I guess no one reads the detail. Please look for TWO explicit references - in Bold text - to Internet Explorer in my first post.

IE is the least standards compliant browser on the planet. I strongly recommend getting a decent one - almost anything else, basically.

Um, you're making heavy use of a tag that isn't in the HTML spec (but only in the drafts for HTML5 which isn't intended to be finalised for a few years yet) and you're complaining about standards compliance because IE8 doesn't support it yet?

 

[whb]

Yes, I had thought about that. I'm not sure how it would cope with all the mods and variants out there, though. Also, I would need to work out how to use transient uploaded data as opposed to files we have permanently stored on the server. Not impossible, but it's a significant task that would need to be prioritised. And surely, you have the replay facility in Civ4 to provide most of the information about your own games?

Re. a downloadable .exe, that's sooooo yesterday. We're in the Google/Azure Clouds now It would be much more work to create, maintain and enhance a .exe than implementing your first proposal. Also, I'm a Mac user, so I don't have the tools and expertise needed to create a Windows .exe even if I wanted to.

I may be forgetting something obvious (it's late) but can't you just bundle up the HTML, CSS, and Javascript into a zip that people can download, if browser security is preventing you from letting the user open an XML replay from their own disk in the web version? (IIRC, if the original page URL is file:// then there's no problem opening files in Javascript, as you just do a load on a relative url and it inherits the file:// from the page)

 

[AlanH]

I love this!!! For people like me still learning the game this is a great tool! Thank you so much.
My only complaint if I had one, and let me tell you how minor this is, but is there any way to move the play/stop/forward buttons lower? I would like to be able to see the whole log and still be able to use the stop/play buttons.
You did such a great job with this I feel ungrateful for even asking if this could be done, lol.
Again, awesome job!

Umm. Have you tried moving the event log higher? You can drag the yellow title bars to move the panels around, as I was 100% certain that my layout would not appeal to everyone else.

 

[AlanH]

Um, you're making heavy use of a tag that isn't in the HTML spec (but only in the drafts for HTML5 which isn't intended to be finalised for a few years yet) and you're complaining about standards compliance because IE8 doesn't support it yet?

I complain about IE standard non-compliance because it's a fact. Regardless of <canvas>. Check out the bake-offs between IE and the other browsers, which show its poor compliance with W3C standards.

When I first started writing the Replay utility about two years ago, <canvas> was supported by all modern browsers but one. I may have been able to use SVG (I didn't try), but that isn't supported by IE either. Silverlight came along later, but that and Flash are proprietary technologies that I prefer to avoid. So MS have had plenty of time to add support for what had already become a de facto standard, but they prefer to push Silverlight and fight a battle with Adobe instead.

Even back then, there had been valiant attempts by independent developers to emulate <canvas> on top of VML. I tried to take advantage of that to support IE, but there was no support for erasing selective areas of the canvas, making animation very clunky. I ended up rendering the animation frames on the server in PHP instead on in the browser. You can still see the vestiges of that support if you try to run Replay in IE.

Since Replay-compatible browsers are free, and only people stuck in corporate straitjackets are unable to install them, I don't see that my non-support for IE is a major issue. IE is the only major browser I can't run in Mac OS X, apart from Chrome which is new and getting there. They don't support me - why should I support them?

 

[AlanH]

I may be forgetting something obvious (it's late) but can't you just bundle up the HTML, CSS, and Javascript into a zip that people can download, if browser security is preventing you from letting the user open an XML replay from their own disk in the web version? (IIRC, if the original page URL is file:// then there's no problem opening files in Javascript, as you just do a load on a relative url and it inherits the file:// from the page)

If it were just HTML, CSS and Javascript, then you could just download it all now, as those files are all sent to your browser anyway. Use the development tools in your browser to see all that, but don't examine my crabby code too closely.

I shall not be offering a tool you can download and run locally. It is based on the compiled C saved game file parser we use for GOTM competition management and security, plus a number of PHP scripts. That stuff stays on our server.

Also, as I have said elsewhere, a web service is infinitely easier to maintain than a downloadable package, as I can fix a problem or enhance the system, and everyone automatically gets the new version next time they use it. It also runs on any platform with a compliant browser.

There's no technical problem that's stopping me from producing a web service that will allow you to upload your own saves to the server and deliver the replay display. I just have to re-factor the system for that purpose, and I'm working on it. But since I also have a life, this work will not happen instantly.

 

[Obormot]

There appears to be a bug with the tech discovery messages in the log. For example for team CFR log in the last SGOTM there is a "you have discovered pottery" message on turn 18, but no messages for agriculture & wheel which we learnt before pottery.

 

[AlanH]

The replay event log just includes everything from the file, so I imagine they didn't show up in the save file's log. I'll investigate.

[UPDATE] I did find a script error that was "losing" some events. However, I am not seeing your Pottery discovery at turn 18. It is definitely in the save file log - you can even see it if you click the Replay link in the results table. So I still need to track that one down, but the other techs are now listed.

 

[TheMostWanted]

Ok, thanks Alan. Now, I wait to use this program with Mozilla, Internet Explorer comes with many errors.

 

[patkingpin]

Umm. Have you tried moving the event log higher? You can drag the yellow title bars to move the panels around, as I was 100% certain that my layout would not appeal to everyone else.

NO I didn't
I was too much in awe of the greatness of the page. I didn't mean any negativity towards the page and I certainly hope you didn't take it that way.

 

[AlanH]

NO I didn't
I was too much in awe of the greatness of the page. I didn't mean any negativity towards the page and I certainly hope you didn't take it that way.

I certainly didn't take it that way. I appreciated your comments, and should have said so, but I was focused on helping you with the problem you had.

 

[dr_s]

This looks like a great tool, thanks Alan.

I'm seeing some drawing glitches in Safari 4.0.2. I've attached a screenshot.

 

[AlanH]

Thx, that's interesting, Safari 4.0.2 is my primary browser. I guess I need to look harder at how it deals with varying text size settings.

 

[dr_s]

I thought it was kind of ironic .

Investigating, I see that this results from my use of the "Never use font sizes smaller than 12" option in the advanced preferences. Without that checked, the problem goes away. So that's an easy way to reproduce the problem.

 

[TheMostWanted]

Cool, I can use in Opera 9.64 (web browser).

 

[SteelHorse]

AlanH,
Very well done Especially like the side by side to see how others approached and progressed on the same map.

 

[RFHolloway]

is it possible to use this on HOF games as well?