Search bar in replay viewer

[Silken Healer]

Similar to how you can search for levels, you should also be able to search for replays.

[Flopsy]

Problem with replays is the filename is of the format

YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS-Username-Xp
(Date and time)-(Username)-(X=number of players)p

So I don't think it would be possible to search by map like you can in the single/multiplayer map directories.

I took the time to sort my replays into folders so it was easier to find all replays of a certain map with any number of players, it's time consuming depending on size of folder but it was worth it.

I think I remember Simon telling me in the IRC months back also that there is a way to sort the files using a command prompt of some sort but I just ended up doing it manually. I think he mentioned it to me when I said that I had to open each replay file and scroll down to look for the level name (it's halfway down the text file past the assignments part) and I said how time consuming it was!

[Silken Healer]

For the future, maybe you can search the contents of the replays themselves rather than the title in a file explorer, and then just copy, by searching "$ENGLISH Hammerhead Bridge (2p)" or something. I know there are programs that can do it graphically if Command Prompt is too technical for you, one of them is named Cubic Explorer.

[Simon]

What do you expect to do with a replay search? You'll find 10 to 100 matching replays. Should the search print dates, players, ...? For each hit, there is not that much room to preview that hit. What are your use cases?

In a networking game, the client doesn't know the map filename. The level selector sends the level file to the server as raw bytes without a filename, and the server distributes that. When the client saves the replay after the match, the client still doesn't know the selector's map filename and can't use it (unlike in singleplayer) to generate a replay filename.

I've resorted to the date. Do you want the level selection to transmit the filename instead?

It's also conceivable to let the receiving client guess a filename from the level title or from looking through his own level tree, but that's dubious design. Never does the current Lix 0.10.26 guess level filenames.

Yes, external search tools can help. How exactly do they help you? For what do you search? Only ever for a level title? Or do you search for particular replays in a more specific way?

-- Simon