Could RetroArch have a database of "button presses" saves?

RetroArch
#1

Here’s the idea. An option where you play a game and it saves your button presses. Kinda like a TAS but it doesn’t have to be a speed-run. It could be simply a longplay or walkthrough. Once you finish the game you upload that file in the database and every other RetroArch user can download it and, if they have the same rom, can watch the whole game play itself, following the button presses in real time.

So what would be the use of this? Sometimes you just want to watch a game instead of playing it. It’s what i do with games that i don’t plan to play but i find them interesting regardless. Sometimes it can be a nice background noise in your game room. Not all games have attract modes and even those that do, only have short ones that loop.

Now, these button press saves would only weight a few KBs. That’s much more efficient than keeping a huge video file of a longplay in your drive, or spending the bandwidth to watch the thing on Youtube. Plus, the quality would be much better than any video since it’s the source. In addition, since it’s real time, you could jump in the game at any time. You could also use shaders and other things for authenticity.

I think this is an interesting idea and a database like this would be easy to maintain and include thousands of games to watch.

1 Like
#2

The BSV recordings are very similar to this. They also include a savestate, though, so they’re not reliable across different cores, for example.

1 Like
#3

Could you elaborate on this a bit?

Is there a database where we can download them?

#4

There’s nowhere to download them, no, but you can make them and share them if you like. I don’t think the recording options are exposed in the menu currently, as they’re not very popular, but they’ve been around since the very beginning (that is, >10 yrs).

#5

Hmmm, seems like this feature isn’t going to become any more popular i guess.

So my last hope for something like this would be a gamer AI that can use different scripts per game so it can play them properly. AI projects gain more popularity so i’ll wait :stuck_out_tongue:

#6

I mean… you could start making and sharing them yourself. It’s a pretty cool thing because rewinding rolls back the log, too, so it can be sort of like a poor man’s quick-and-dirty TAS.

#7

Sure, i could make 1 or 2 games if i get the time. But i was hoping a decent databases would exist already by now.