READ THIS BEFORE POSTING PLEASE - Forum Rules and Playback Instructions Inside

[Moe]

Welcome to the new and improved "Battle Archives" forum.
To make it easier for people to see what it is they are downloading, please adhere to these naming conventions:

Thread title:
Should contain the most basic info in the form of tags, the rest of the title is up to you.

• Number of players, e.g. [1v1], [2v2v2], [FFA]
• Races, e.g. [ORK] vs [ELDAR]
• Version, e.g. [1.2]

If it's a 1v1, you can show who won in the thread title by using > and < signs:
[ORK>ELDAR] means the Eldar player just got his ass kicked, whereas [ORK<ELDAR] indicates that someone was just bombed into oblivion by a bunch of fire prisms.


First post:

• Either attach your replay to the first post, or post a link to an off-site hosting location where one can find the replay.
• Your first post should at least contain a single-sentence summary of the game which tells us who won the match. You are free to include a full-blown battle report if you wish.
• If you have a specific question, put it in the first post as well - such as "Where did I go wrong?" or "How could I have countered the rush at the beginning?".

On a final note: This forum is not to be used to humiliate or rally against other players. Posting replays with the sole intention of getting back at someone will earn you a deleted thread at the very least, and you will also move up a few places on my shitlist.

As always, some form of coherent grammar is required, posts along the lines of "OMG y00 totally pwned him liek that wtflolz!!!!!111" will get nuked.



Below is a sample thread to illustrate this:
-----------------------------
Sample thread:

Title: [1v1] [SM>CHAOS][1.2]Dreadnought deep strike helped me win!

First post:
This was a 1v1 game on Biffy's Peril. I managed to stop the first rush with my FC and a squad of marines, then things went quiet for a bit while both players were teching. A few minor skirmishes around LPs later I assaulted the base with a bunch of ASMs and then used deepstriking to drop in three dreadnoughts, which demolished the base.

What can I do to defend against the early rush though? It was pure luck that I survived this one, as you can see.

<replay attached here>

[Moe]

How do I post a replay?

Very easy. First, you have to compress the replay into .zip format. There are tons of free programs that do this, any one of them will do.

Next, go to the battle archives and make a new thread by clicking on "new thread".

Scroll down a bit below the text box:

.

Click on "manage attachments". A new window will pop up:

.

Click on "choose" and navigate to the file you want to upload. Click on "open".
When you have selected all your replay files you wish to upload, select "upload".
After this operation has completed, you can close the pop-up window. Finish your thread as you usually would.

How do I actually watch a replay?

This seems to be a common question. So here we go.

Download the replay, unzip it to your \Playback directory (ie. C:\Program Files\Dawn Of War\Playback or for DC c:\Program Files\THQ\Dark Crusade\Playback\ )

Now, start up the game.

• Click on Skirmish
• Select "Load Game"
• Select "Recorded Games", in the new dialog.
• Select the recorded game you want to view
• Click "Load Game"

And Voila! All should work.




FAQ

Q: I select a game to recorded game to load, click the "Load Game" button, but nothing happens. What's wrong?

A: The filename of the recorded game is too long. Rename the file to something shorter. Try to keep it under 52 characters if possible.


Q: I just played a game and I forgot to save the replay. What can I do?

A: The last game you played is always saved in file in your /Playback called temp.rec. Simply rename this file to something else (otherwise it'll get overwritten the next time you play a game). [Thanks to MusedMark for the tip]


Q: I keep getting a "sync error" message, what's up with that?

A: See the post below.


Q: Is there a way to manage my replays somehow? The sheer number of them creates a mess on my hard drive!

A: Shiver has developed a neat little tool to manage your replays. It can read various bits of information from the replay file such as player names. See his thread here for more info.

[Moe]

Replays can only be viewed with the same DoW version they were recorded with. Replays created with Patch 1.2 can only be watched with that patch. This means that older, pre-patch replays can't be watched with an up to date version of DoW.
Tranj from THQ said:

It's not something we did lightly. It was needed for some of the fixes, and we hope to keep the replay integrity for future patches if we can. We felt the fixes made outweighed the loss of the replays.

There is a workaround for the last issue however. If you have enough free disk space, you can simply install DoW a second time to a different folder (e.g. DoW_OLD or something like that), and not patch that one to the latest version. That way, you can play online with the regular patched version and still watch your old replays. Complicated, I know, but it's all we've got so far.