Would it be possible to get access to the video replays? I would love to be able to give the users of my app a recap email where it has replays of them getting headshots with sniper, multi kills, winning 4 on 1 in breakout etc etc.
Does anyone else think this would be interesting?
Videos don’t really exist. When Halo records a replay, it records the actions of everything that happens during a match. It then recreates the original environment and replays those actions again in order for you to watch it. This is an in-game function.
This is how you can move the camera around and not be fixed to one perspective.
There are a number of reasons why a video would be difficult, someone would have to render that video (a service Bungie used to charge for). This isn’t a trivial request.
So I’m not sure how the dedicated servers store saved films, but assuming all games are saved somewhere in the service, maybe provide a fileshare link (when the fileshare becomes available) to the saved film. For example, in Halo 3, all screenshots were accessible if you had the link to them. They never went away even if they were taken out of a user’s fileshare or past the last 25 recent screenshots. Maybe something like that exists for the saved film files on the Halo 5 Dedicated Server clusters.
One way they could be stored is by capturing all client/server packets for a player. Then replaying these packets in order would effectively replay the game.