Spectator Gaming, Multicast Style 74
Woil writes: "This interview at stomped.com is a discussion with project manager Erik Johnson about Valve's new multicast spectator technology. It'll be used first in Counter-Strike, then used in other games. The goal being to allow thousands of people to view top level matches from a separate proxy server." I'd like an aisle seat in the mezzanine, please.
Re:Cheating (Score:3)
The main reason for this was "spectator" cheating. All top clans these days use voice communications (RogerWilco, Battlecom, etc) so it's a MUST to run with a delay.
From the sound of the article Valve is just taking the gTv concept a bit further providing Multicasting, instead of the connection based method that gTv uses.
Re:QuakeTV (Score:1)
lol
:P
Exciting to see a useful multicast app. (Score:1)
Now, now, don't get all worked up on me, here. For years I've been using the MBone tools, and I figure the pain involved in that experience earns me the right to be a little cranky. IP multicast just instinctively seems like such a good idea that it is always upsetting to discover that, in practice, it has been just about useless.
Part of this, I think, is because of the applications chosen. Many to many videoconferences are a bad demo app because the truth is that most people don't need many-to-many -- they need some-to-some, or more likely one-to-many, both of which can be done adequately (read: better, also known as "more predictably") with unicast technologies.
There was also a culture that grew up around the MBone [columbia.edu] that discouraged innovation, both in terms of the tools and the community using them (which, let's face it, was basically, "only those of us that were NANOG [nanog.org] regulars. No one wanted to build or to use new tools, because we've got these free TCL tools that suck! And did we mention that they're free? Yep, vic, vat, and sdr -- that's all you need! Never mind that they were "technology demos" that were never actually supposed to be permanent parts of the infrastructure. Why take any effort to make better ones? Worse is better
And of course, unless you were part of NANOG or the nsfnet clique generally, just try to multicast something on the MBone that actually served another community. I remember getting a van-o-gram because I was multicasting WRCT [wrct.org] on the MBone. Van didn't like that I was taking bandwidth away from his friends. The MBone crowd would rather stop people from using the network than, say, admit publically that pruning didn't work and that maybe they should stop recommending multicast as a solution to any problem, anywhere, until this was fixed (which I believe, thank god, it finally has been).
But this -- now this is a cool use for multicast. Watching Counterstrike games is amazingly cool, but there is such a penalty for the players of a game to allow unlimited spectating, since each additional unicast client would slow down the server and clog the network further. Kudos to these guys for going the extra mile (and coming up with an application compelling enough to convince a community with a natural urge to monkey with the network to get involved in multicast).
My only concern is: is multicast really deployed end-to-end? This is a trick question, because really I'm saying "No fucking way is multicast deployed end to end!" In fact, I'd be amazed if more than about half of the big national providers did multicast even in their backbone. Or am I being pessimistic? I'd be curious to know if anyone has real statistics on this issue.
Re:Exciting to see a useful multicast app. (Score:1)
Of course, that assumes it is correctly configured. Which it usually isn't.
There are some problems that are totally intractable -- particularly with respect to security. If you have a multicast group that is sharing a key, you basically are forced to regenerate and redistribute keys every time someone leaves the group. Which is very impracticable. So no one does it. So it is almost never secure.
COOL! (Score:2)
JoeLinux
Re:Cheating (Score:4)
For me it would be all too easy to set up something like you describe - I have a DSL line and a cable modem. If I have two machines that aren't even on the same network, how is it going to stop that?
Damnit... (Score:1)
I had an idea like this that I was busy implementing into a Quake server, before my time had to be redirected to other projects. Not only was this going to be done, but you could also bridge to an IRC client and get constant updates on the game from IRC, without having to be in-game.
I had this idea many years ago. I should have finished it... grrrrrrrrr.
Not new... by any means (Score:1)
The current iteration is GTV ( http://www.gamerstv.net/ ) and it's used nearly everyday to watch q3a matches of various sorts.
cheers,
ecc
Re:Been there, done that. (Score:1)
Re:Been there, done that. (Score:1)
Sorry
Re:What about varying camera angles? (Score:1)
Dear God no! (Score:4)
"Well, Jim, he has to get to that rocket launcher or he'll be out of the game"
"Thats for sure Bill. This just in, an update on the Asheron's Call battle royale, over 600 players have respawned battling a fierce new enemy"
"And now, a word from our sponsor; Don't forget to make Schwartz weiners part of YOUR online gaming experiance..."
*shudder*
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Re:excuse me but... (Score:1)
Good point! Nobody watches games that they aren't playing!
(baseball, basketball, football... chess, archery, powerlifting...)
Tribes2 supports 255 (Score:2)
I've been in Tribes 2 games with about 75-100 players, but I've seen some servers listed with a capacity of 255.
To see the current high, go to http://gamespy.com/stats/ [gamespy.com] and look at the Current Most Popular Game Server near the bottom of the page. This number fluxuates quite a bit throughout the day, so it will be much higher during prime-time.
Re:Dear God no! (Score:2)
Re:Been there, done that. (Score:2)
Been there, done that. (Score:3)
The clever boys over at the Tribes Shoutcast Network [tribalwar.com] (I think it was actually TheRedDread of Team 5150 [team5150.com], but that may have been a different spectator viewing app) have been running an amazing little app called TribesTV [tribalwar.com], which let you connect to a video stream from the point of view of an ingame observer, realtime.
The major Tribes 1 matches were incredibly popular, and I can't wait for something similar for Tribes 2. The most impressive part (to me, anyways) was that this was all done without any help from the games developers.
Note: it would appear that the URLs don't work right now - Tribalwar [tribalwar.com] has just moved servers and it looks like they missed some DNS entries.
Re:Cheating (Score:1)
If they are serious enough to have a proxy server, they probably are running more than simplistic games.
First, in lightly competetive games with no prizes it probably wouldn't matter unless someone complained (and you certainly could see if someone knew a little too much and wasn't careful)
Second, in more heavily competetive matches, you're going to need to worry about things like ping time anyway, so you have to centralize the players. Problem solved.
Re:*Broadcasting* a better way to promote the "spo (Score:1)
Golf should be considered an equivelant sport. Simultaneous action on 18 holes. How to they set up? Multiple commentators, color commentary, switching to action in one room, following a lead player, various camera views, the possibilities are endless.
Scenarios could be designed for action in key rooms. While there would be action in other places, there would be unobstructed views where action could be watched in between "instant replays" and following around the leaders.
Highlights to download defenitely has its advantage, however. Think of this: Have a large multiple-processor computer doing elaborate frames for it. You could get closer to bugs life-esque pictures.
I'd be more interested in seeing the best duke it out than playing myself.
Re:Current limit? (Score:1)
-Steeltoe (where did that space go?)
One question about multicast (Score:2)
Re:Current limit? (Score:1)
Well, I can't imagine wanting to watch an FPS, but I'd be really interested in watching real time strategy. Especially if I had control of my own perspective and could examine various points in the playspace. Turn based strategy would probably get fewer viewers, but I think it would really appeal to the same kind of person who would watch a chess match because you can deeply analyze the moves and strategy. I also think you might find a solid viewer base for sports games.
Re:new multicast spectator technology...... (Score:2)
You must not have lived in my apartment with my roommates back when I was in college, did you?
And you forgot about the smell of bongwater.
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Re:Multicasting? Don't think so.. (Score:2)
Multicast is pretty cool stuff (I use it every day at work) but it's not really going to make an impact until the home user can reap its benefits.
Re:That's not how Multicast works... (Score:1)
Take that protocol and feed it into a 'proxy', for lack of a better term. The proxy then just transmits multicast UDP on a given multicast address/port and anyone on the mbone can tune in to watch. I'd assume that either the special user that the proxy uses to connect to the game has all line-of-sight filtering disabled (no pvs checking) or there is only 1 or 2 viewpoints running around for the spectators which are rebroadcast from the multicast proxy.
I've done a lot of work on adapting gaming to multicast protocols. I even have a quake1 multicast proxy client/broadcast server and broadcast client/proxy server pair (which I'd originally written as an aimbot and expanded), from a year or so back, which I have used to test this successfully. This is about the most rediculously simple use of multicast I've yet seen.
The problem is of course th fact that in order to view the stream you have to be connected to the mbone, or they may use the protocol only at conventions/large gaming events to allow spectators at the event to watch from within the game, without disturbing the contestants and without sending the games out over the general Mbone.
Re:in case you are sceptical (Score:1)
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
Sad. (Score:2)
Very, very sad.
Hardly New Technology (Score:3)
It worked extremely well, one guy from overseas sent us a screenshot which had two quake3 windows open, with the opponets POV's in each, and our event coverage shoutcast mp3 stream in winamp. I don't think any Australian LAN has had similiar coverage since....
It's hardly "Valve's New Technology", try "Valve's Implementation of Old Technology".
Challenging.. but cool (Score:2)
This technology has been around a LONG time.. But, has never gotten over the hump for implementation/acceptance. The problems have included protocol issues, cooperation among ISP's to accept each other's multicast routing/pruning, and lack of compelling applications.
Hopefully, a cool application like this can help push acceptance along. With this technology, low cost streaming of audio content is very easy, and video is realistic with a bit more effort.
On the down side... As others have stated, I would expect very few people to be able to actually use this when it becomes available. But, if you have problems, complain loudly to your ISP, let them know the demand is out there.
Re:Cheating (Score:1)
What about varying camera angles? (Score:2)
This is one step closer to what I've dreamed of ever since I first experienced the thrill of deathmatch.
A few points of interest:
- As I understand it, this is essentially one player watching the game, and the "multicast" is people connecting to that player and seeing the same thing. Makes sense. Now.. what exactly does this player see? Is it limited to receiving events only within a certain distance, as with normal players? Does it receive all info about everything that's happening at once?
- Following from that, how hard would it be to pull off varying camera angles? It seems as though everyone would be limited to the same view.
- Seems they can address cheating with their buffer. Buffering up 1-3 minutes of gameplay before casting it out would hopefully prevent most forms of eye-in-the-sky cheating. The instant replay idea is neat too.
Deathmatch could work very well as a spectator sport. This comes close. It lacks commentary, and it lacks varying camera angles. Ideally one could choose to wander around on their own and follow individual players, or rely on a group of cameramen with commentators in control of what view gets shown when. Wide-angle shots zooming into tight behind-the-shoulder shots, etc., would keep pace and make things interesting.
Good step in the right direction
Re:That's not how Multicast works... (Score:1)
That's not how Multicast works... (Score:2)
Now I've written a multicast video transmitter, and tested it with viewers between Boston and Japan. First off, it broadcasts on some addy that's 22?.x.x.x/5-digit-portnumber. These addy's don't correspond to any machines, it's just a way of telling the routers what to do. So my transmitter tells the local routers that it's going to subscribe to the mcast addy and can then send/recv. Then, when people want to view this video, they tune their receiver app to that channel; they're telling their local router that they'd like to receive this traffic, and then the router pipes it to them. Contrary to peterb, this scales very well for one-to-many better than unicast; my transmitter only puts out one stream, and NEVER needs to accept a connection from anyone else. So that whole thing of a proxy server off the game server that people connect to? Bogus. That's not how multicast works. Now, I believe it if that's their transmitter box..
But the real downside is this: how many people have access to multicast? very few. Hardly any ISP which anyone is connected through subscribes to it, much less has the equipment to route multicast traffic to individual users. DSL, for example: multiple end-users are connected to a single box in their local CO, and that box doesn't know what to do with multicast. Even if multicast were given to it, it means that all end-users would receive it, not just the subscribers. Now, I get multicast traffic at work, but my workplace has a beeg pipe and peers with abeleine in order to pioneer those group-to-group multicast apps. The other thing is that it co$t$ to get mcast from backbones, so most ISP's aren't gonna spring for it, especially because then they still need to upgrade and configure their routers right.
But if nothing else, it *is* the right idea for 'net broadcasting. But it'll be some time before it's more widespread, and even more before home-users get it.
-cryptomancer
Re:Spectator Golf (Score:1)
Josh Sisk
neat. (Score:1)
Re:So.. (Score:1)
I don't see why allowing people to see from any view would suck bandwidth from the game server - it would only be the proxy server that could be affected, and in any case, if the spectators own the game, then all they'll be getting, via multicast is state information
Re:So.. (Score:2)
This proxy server is then responsible for distributing the spectator feed across the world
Re:excuse me but... (Score:2)
Why would anyone want to go to a baseball game. I mean, why drive for miles and sit in a outdoor stadium for three (+) hours watching some guys throw and hit a ball around a field, then run around and around a dirt path? And pay for it! Why don't they just pick up a bat and a ball and play it themselves!
For me, I pay for to watch sporting events because I am a total geek and cannot play sports to save my soul, but I do enjoy watching them. While not all slashdot readers may be sports fans and not all slashdot readers may be first-person shooter (FPS) fans, there are people who are willing to pay real money to watch other people; whether it be baseball or basketball . . . or counter-strike (fortunately counter-strike is free).
CounterStrike is boring enough... (Score:1)
I'd rather watch cspan...
Current limit? (Score:2)
Spectating in UT seems to be handled pretty efficiently. You're just getting the display data. Nothing is really traveling back, so you can swoop your camera around, follow players, etc. (It's fun to put a camera on the lead player when you have a large projection screen at a LAN party).
I don't know if there would actually be the draw to have 1000's of people watch a Quake/UT game though. I mean, tournaments are fun, but are there even that many fans who'd want to watch?
Re:So.. (Score:4)
Then, all this info (not much though) is sent to you (from the proxy server) and your own game renders frames for you, according to what is relevant to your current view. (where you are looking as a spectator)
Say you're looking straight into a wall. That means your game knows no players are in the view, and the basic map is shown to you.
It all makes sense, and sounds really useful :)
What I'd do.. (Score:1)
:)
Cheating (Score:5)
Screensaver? (Score:2)
Re:QuakeTV (Score:1)
What is the audience for this like? Are people looking to watch top gamers to get their strategies and learn some new chops...or for the flying body parts?
Does that mean that out of 14 available connections, only 13 guys can because one connection is needed for the camera? How much extra bandwidth does this take since the game actually has to pass the info for all 13 guys...or do the connections for all the players normally do that?
Re:QuakeTV (Score:1)
The gtv works as a proxy. The spectators connect to the gtv server, and view from its perspective. Think of 50 people looking over the shoulder of a person who is spectating the match. It doesnt use up any bandwidth on the server where the match is being played (other than the bandwidth being used by GTV, which isnt any more than a "regular" player).
During some high profile matches you will have upwards of 150 people tuning into to watch. Multiple GTV's can connect thus providing "mirrors" of the match around the country/world, and making it scalable.
The interesting thing is that this technology is almost a requirement for "pro" gaming. Without it, the game loses all spectator interest, other than those who download the match demos later.
With CS being used at the recent CPL event, it was essential that they had some kind of spectator friendly technology. So there must have been a push to develop this. However, the Quake community has enjoyed this for some time now.
The Half-life utility resembles a Q3test app called Argus. Which also gave you the overhead view. Looks like the people at Valve used Argus as inspiration.
Re:*Broadcasting* a better way to promote the "spo (Score:1)
I'm not sure how you disagree since your suggestions mesh very well with what I had envisioned...
However, I don't think Golf is not the closest analogy to deathmatch that I can think of... Paintball is. And I've seen paintball televised. And it can be done even better when the action takes place virtually. I'll explain again why:
You're absolutely right about the need for multiple camera placements and angles. That's what I was calling for. By creating the input log and recording all relevant info, you can run that info through the game engine and recreate the game in its totality. Then you can re-play this as much as you want, putting a free-roaming ghost in the map who can film a sequence from the game from one angle, then "rewind" the action and put the camera in another location and film the same action from a different angle... or simultaneous events on a different area of the map.
In fact, if you wanted, you could run this script on a computer with the graphics and sound configurations set to the highest possible quality, which woudl have resulted in too much lag during the actual playing. Render it on a super-computer, taking your time with the animation to achieve super-realistic quality.
Then you put your color commentary voice-over in, and you've got a polished, finished product ready for mass consumption and advertising and endorsement dollars.
*Broadcasting* a better way to promote the "sport" (Score:5)
As someone who enjoys FPS-type games and who is dismayed at the bad rap they get from "concerned" parents types, I think it would be great if FPS tournaments could receive the same kind of promotional attention that other sports get. This could help get gamers some well-deserved legitimacy in the eyes of the mainstream public.
As an example, skateboarding has done well for itself as a pastime by marketing itself as an "X-treme" sport. Skateboarders had suffered under an undeserved reputation as being vandals, delinquents, etc. Amateur skaters had nowhere to go to practice their skills and ended up in places where they weren't wanted, like parking lots, where they were persecuted and harassed. But once skateboarding started to get itself organized and began to televise professional events, things slowly started to change. Now, many cities have skate parks where kids can go practice, and they aren't automatically looked at as criminals.
I see this possibility emerging for FPS enthusiasts as well. But I don't think that FPS lends itself well to a live multicast. Without having some kind of announcer/moderator giving a play-by-play to explain what's going on, who's in the lead, and what's happening, a multicast is bound to be hard to follow.
One of the biggest problems facing the creation of a cohesive documentation of a multiplayer tourney is the need for ubiquitous "cameras".
Ideally, what I think should happen should be this: The multiplayer game takes place, and each players' moves are logged and saved, along with their health status and weapons inventories, etc.
This log can then be used to re-create the events in the actual game, with the added benefit that any part of the map can be rendered from any angle at any time.
Once the game is over, have a video animation guy go through the replay over and over, generating video clips from various angles and carefully editing them into a cohesive video narrative.
Then, have some announcers do a voice-over to put it all together.
Save the result as an MPEG and put it on a server, or better yet, put it on television and promote the new sport of multiplayer deathmatching to the general public. Have interviews with start players and turn them into money-grubbing celebrities.
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Spectator Golf (Score:1)
I completely don't understand Golf as a spectator sport, it's something you do not something you watch. Same thing with bowling, really.
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see the spectator mode in action (Score:3)
very cool.
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Re:Cheating (Score:2)
Counter-Strike is one of the few FPS games I've played which almost makes it a necessity to carefully plan your attacks and defense. Players who run around blasting at everything they see are the first to get fragged.
Especially in the Hostage scenarios, where a terrorist hidden where no one can find him can win the game. So yeah, knowing where the enemies are can be a game-destroying cheat.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
QuakeTV (Score:1)
Tis great watching the CPL Quake3 turnaments live, but you do rely on a good camerman/spectator to give you the best views.
Re:Dear God no! (Score:1)
"Now Jim, we'll be stopping them mid frag for a few moments while we show our viewers a flash animation of new Jolt flavoured Lucky Charms"
"Whatever you do, don't change urls!"
This is pretty cool (Score:1)
new multicast spectator technology...... (Score:3)
All of this you won't have to worry about the smelly fat guy sitting in the seat right next to you or your feet sticking to the floor.
So.. (Score:1)
One question about multicast (Score:1)
Re:UDP (Score:1)
Just because UDP doesn't check for dropped frames, doesn't mean much. Higher and lower layers do duplicate error checking. And if that is not sufficient, you could impliment even more error checking in the application.
Re:in case you are sceptical (Score:1)
However, there shouldn't really be anything stopping you from viewing the game live whilst listening to an independent Roger Wilco broadcasted commentary by a pro gamer, who just wants to talk...
-Kraft
-Kraft
in case you are sceptical (Score:5)
You can actually download high profile matches, and run them under CS, just to view what went on. Demo Player and matches here [xsreality.com].
But this is just the beginninge.... think: watching the Quake finals at home with your friends... or Game Bars broadcasting the European CS finals! With pro sports commentators! And beer!
-Kraft
-Kraft
coming soon... (Score:3)
The Ultimate Outcome of This. (Score:1)
This is nothing new. NASCAR Heat has this feature. (Score:1)
err... (Score:1)
excuse me but... (Score:2)
What fun is a game if you can't watch it?
I wonder if they'll attempt to market this, and have something like an IMAX theatre for watching video games...
What someone needs to do is create something like a Starbucks based cafe globally with PC's set up in all of them for daily tournaments of your fav games, Quake, Halflife, etc., that shit'd own!
Think about it, it'd be a nice decked out shoppe with techno playing in the background, redundant OC3 connectivity, strippers serving you coffee... Can't beat that now can you?
pimped Blackbox Themes [antioffline.com]
Re:Spectator Golf (Score:2)
I'm no prophet but if we take a look at two of the recent Slashdot gaming stories we see that technology is increasing the scale of digital games. We have an example of some good research to create a large VR environment as well as a new method of allowing a multitude of spectators to watch a 'live' game. It may be that in the future many of us will connect to the nightly Quake tournaments much the same way we watch a football game today. (Which reminds me quite a bit of The Running Man
All of this may be good, or it may be bad. I think the Internet's advantage over television is primarly that it actually involves the end user rather than just piping information his way. There is a bit of thinking involved, or there can be. It would be sad to see it become more passive. More like television.
Re:Current limit? (Score:1)
Is this true? I'd get spectators to send location information then only send updates on what I knew they could see. But then I'm living in the past [netrek.org].
Re:So.. (Score:1)
wow, this is new technology? (Score:3)
Use for cheating? (Score:1)
point of view (Score:1)
it all depends on the angle you're watching from.... It would be boring to just watch from behind the shoulders of one of the characters the whole time. Even a top-down view would only provide a limited view of the action. If there was some sort of cam-bot which would always swoop down to where the action was and provide the best view that would be cool. Also, to make things more interesting for viewers, all the models should be the raunchiest variant of the nude crackho model and the weapons should be Roger Ramrod type weapons
CounterStrike first? (Score:2)
Take Another Look at Quake3 CTF (Score:1)
If you want to talk about an interesting online game to watch, try watching a league match of q3ctf. For most announced matches that have GTV, there is usually always at least 15-20 spectators watching, and even clan to clan scrims will usually garner 5-6 spectators. This is all for good reason: q3ctf is exciting to watch.
Whereas Camper-Strike is slow and battles are fought in brief spurts, and team dm is confusing and uninteresting to watch, CTF is all about the big plays, the teamwork, and yes, the luck. But hey, thats what makes it so exciting. Last night our clan played an intense matchup that was decided in the last 10 secods of the game. Down 1-0 and at a flag standoff with 10 seconds left in the match (each team has the other's flag so neither can cap), one of my teammates surprised the enemy flag carrier with haste and plasma gun, drilling him dead and returning our flag with 2 seconds left in the match. I had the enemy flag and was sitting on our flag platform waiting, and with 1 second left the score was tied and the game immediately went into overtime. The other team was shocked (they had thought it was over
Its stuff like this that makes CTF so damn fun. Check it out.
-Louis
PS. visit clan orifice @ www.orifice.org [orifice.org]
Re:Cheating (Score:2)
Generally speaking, 20 seconds if enough to prevent useful spectator cheating in Quake3, but I dunno in Counter-Strike. Do people camp in one place for more then 20seconds?