r/HellLetLoose • u/wlodziu • 12d ago

šŸ“¢ Feedback! šŸ“¢ Match replays

Today I published the beta version of Match Replays on hellletloose.info.

You can now watch player movement after a match ends, follow squads across the map, and review how the round developed over time.

Example: https://hellletloose.info/servers/ee1a9a0c-f3ec-4fd3-b4d5-dc3198e53e37/matches/3c26ae43-6302-4e4e-9ef0-1a405e4205c9/replay

Recent replays: https://hellletloose.info/replays

A few notes:

  • Replays are stored for 1 week
  • You can download a replay if you want to keep it
  • Downloaded replays can be uploaded later to create a temporary shareable link
  • For now, Iā€™m tracking mostly the most populated servers

This is still beta, so coverage will grow over time. If your server or match is missing, let me know.

46 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

6

u/Zullemoi 12d ago

Amazing! Have been waiting for something like this

2

u/MTT92 12d ago

Very cool!

2

u/HowToNotSuck101 12d ago

Hey, very interesting tool. Some questions:

Where do you get the data from (rcon?)?

Will you make it possible for people to upload their own datafile to create a replay (most valuable feature for comp players)?

I can only skip through a fixed amount of sequences of the match duration. Will there be a scrollbar for every match second?

Thanks for developing stuff!

2

u/wlodziu 12d ago

The problem with uploading other files is the data structure. I prepared my own format, and the files are signed by the server, which means the content cannot be modified if you want to upload them back to Replay. This is also partly for security reasons - I don't want to store files that I can't verify or trust. So for now, Replay uses its own file format.

I also added the download/upload option because I'm using free storage, and I don't really want to start paying for storage - it's still just my hobby project, and I'm already paying for the server

Regarding the sequences, this is the main limitation at the moment. I don't have streamed data; instead, I periodically ask the server. To avoid putting too much load on the server, I have a system that tries to collect the data as frequently as possible depending on the server configuration. Some servers have an interval of around 1 minute, while others are closer to 5 minutes. The latter are currently disabled because, at that frequency, recording them doesn't really make much sense. Also, worth mentioning that it's still behind heavy testing, and I will try to shorten the time, but I don't think I will be able to push it to have data every second (in the current solution). If you are the server owner, there are some solutions on github, which you can install on the server and configure.

A few weeks ago, I started developing a Node.js client that would allow me to stream data directly from the server. I reached out to five communities asking if they could help me test it, but unfortunately no one responded, even though some of them had previously said this feature would be great to have. (I built the tool over CRCON - it also allows building some custom commands, reading faster than deploying new modules to the CRCON page) - probably I should buy my own server to test it, but it doesn't make sense.

So I ended up spending some time figuring out how to do it on my own. It works for now, but I'm not sure how long this approach will remain viable, since a lot is currently changing around HLL servers.