Lobby: Enhanced Finding Replays

[Puschkin]

I watch a lot of replays but I have a very hard time finding what I want. The problems:

1) There are corrupt files, files that start with an error, files that don't load properly etc.
2) It lists games against the AI which aren't interesting at all and there is no way to filter those
3) It lists aborted games - sometimes you see 4 games on the same map and same players, the first three being only few minutes long, so there probably were lag issues and they rehosted 3 times.
4) All of this clogs up the list with the search results and the list just ends at 50* or so entries. So, sometimes you end up with 45 invalid results (especially when the server fucked up and saved replayes of 16 hours of length for a while) and don't get to the working ones. Also, if you are searching for an older game you might have no chance finding it even if you know the map and players because some players have more than 50 games per map.
5) Sometimes the filters just don't work, especially the map one. One source for errors is that some maps might be displayed with dashes between words but actually have underscores, then the filter won't work ("Desert Island" vs "Desert_Island"). Also, wildcards often don't work and it seems to be case sensitive and so on. It's especially hard to find a specific version of a map that has crazy version numbering.

So, my suggestions to combat these:
A) If possible, remove corrupt files from the Vault. Maybe also remove replays that run under 4 minutes and above 3 hours.

B) Add another filter where I can set a minimum and/or maximum time. This will allow me to get rid of aborted and some of the buggy replays. It also other uses, for example I can set a minimum time of 30 minutes for a map like Setons (because a Setons game that is over in 20 minutes was most likely a badly balanced game and just boring)

C) Add another filter option that, when enabled, eliminates all replays from the search results that has AIs in it (if it has an uneven number of players per team, it usually is)

D) Check the code for map filter for bugs, remove case sensitivity and, if possible, make it ignore dashes and underscores (or let them treat those as equals)

E) Add more pages to the search results so that I can see more than 50 results.



*I haven't counted them, maybe it's actually 100, but 'll be referencing to 50 for now.

[madformuse]

You're absolutely right Puschkin but unfortunately you're not the first to bring it up. There are only a few developers working on the FAF client and they have quite large to-do lists, it's even near the top of my list

The most helpful thing to do is find a way to contribute, maybe you could even work on some of your ideas? The development of the client centres around this repository if you want to get involved / create issues. https://github.com/FAForever/client

If I was able to just jump in and fix the issues I would but it's going to take some time to get up to speed.

Hope to see you around

[Purelukk]

(especially when the server fucked up and saved replayes of 16 hours of length for a while)

Correct if I am wrong but I believe that these replays with very large legths listed are games that are currently in progress/not finished yet.

[madformuse]

I've noticed myself that live games sometimes appear in the main list when they shouldn't but I'm afraid I'm not the man to give you a definitive answer on the subject.

[Gorton]

Purelukk is correct.
It happens when you search for replays (actually click the search button).

It is known and has been known for a long time.

[Puschkin]

Madformuse:
I have zero programming skills, I don't know what I could be any use of.

All:
Okay, if all of these issues are known, then count this thread as a +1 moving these issues up the priority list. It's the one thing bugging me the most.