how do I filter songs that not everyone has?

[grivad]

Nobody here, not you and not me, know what code goes into the display of songs. Or the hiding of songs. Having a song be grayed out when playing online does not involve the same code as completely removing the song. Again, nobody here knows how the code is written and nobody here can say "Oh, this is easy, so they're just lazy for not implementing it."

Well, no s', sherlock I think we know that. What has been said it is seems as if the information is there, so everyone's curious why it hasn't been added. We do know a) system has the ability to immediately detect what songs are or are not available on every player's machine (basically do a diff of song cache?), and b) system has the ability to hide songs in playlist based on certain criteria. So the question is, why can't these two conditions be combined?

My guess is that the filters that are available now are based on metadata that's actually written locally to the files themselves or the local song DB, if you look at the filters that are available now. The availability of the songs online in group play is determined on the fly and is not written to a local DB, and likely remains part of session data. We also don't know if this session data persists or not, or if it is determined upon reentry to the lobby/song selection. It could also be that song caches are shared and compared between users upon session initiation. That being said, however, it still seems that if a) and b) above are true and known, then the system, again, seems like it should have the ability to say "hide" instead of "show but make gray and unselectable" when a song is encountered that is not mutually available.

I think the fact that it does exist for the pro-guitar/bass tracks just reinforces the fact that it's not a simple "if/then/else" statement.

I don't follow this logic. The fact that it does exist for pro-guitar/bass shows that it is as simple as an if/then. If condition is met, show, else, hide, or vice-versa. However, to my point above, this information (pro-guitar/bass or not) is stored locally and part of the song metadata itself, so it does make sense why this filter would be available if what I said above was true.

[Blasteroids]

Having a song be grayed out when playing online does not involve the same code as completely removing the song.

You are right, but not for the reason you think. Having a song greyed out instead of removed is actually a lot more code if you cache and pre-analyse the data.

What they may have done in RB is to compare as required, thus saving on memory overhead and having to write to disc. This way the game asks all players "Have you got song ID 0001" and if it gets one reply saying "no" then it greys it before moving onto the next song when required. The initial hit is only small because its only does it for what is displayed, so about 10-15 songs max? (The initial wait you see when it says "Waiting for leader") Then it only needs to ask for each new song that appears on the screen. Once the 'Shade' data is given to the text display interface, it no longer needs to remember this data anywhere else. The only song list kept in the console memory is your own. The network traffic is minimal to do this.

The availability of the songs online in group play is determined on the fly and is not written to a local DB, and likely remains part of session data. We also don't know if this session data persists or not, or if it is determined upon reentry to the lobby/song selection.

Lol, I was typing my reply whilst you were and came to the same conclusions. But I take a long time to type and I am hopeless at documentation

[grivad]

Lol, I was typing my reply whilst you were and came to the same conclusions. But I take a long time to type and I am hopeless at documentation

*high five!*

I think we figured it out. The more I think about it, the more this makes sense, and jives everything that's been said in this thread about it. Why player A with lots of extra stuff sees all the extra stuff albeit greyed out, whereas player B without said stuff doesn't see what player A has, for example. You're displayed your song cache and availability is determined on the fly, not an aggregate list of all users songs, and availability may not be determined for all songs at once.

I wonder if it does as you say, though, and determines availability on the fly while scrolling (hence the bit of lag when scrolling through long lists of songs). If it is, this explains why it might be difficult to filter the list on the fly as you scroll, and easy to just say "nope" and not let you pick it unless it gets all yeses from all users for the given song. When a user leaves, the availability basically refreshes immediately, but you're right in that this would be quick if it was only for the visible songs.

If this is true, I wonder how much of a hit it would be to do one big comparison instead and determine what's available or not when first entering song selection. That'd allow the filtering. Hmmm.

I want a job at Harmonix.

EDIT: Or, as players join before starting, cache is shared and server (or client perhaps?) maintains a master list of what songs are available to all players. Caches are shared and list compiled while players wait for other players to join. Once leader starts and all players are entering song selection, master list is distributed to all players and used to determine what's selectable or not. Seems like this might be less traffic then constantly asking all players "do you have this one?" song by song.

[Blasteroids]

If this is true, I wonder how much of a hit it would be to do one big comparison instead and determine what's available or not when first entering song selection. That'd allow the filtering. Hmmm. (snip)

EDIT: Or, as players join before starting, cache is shared and server (or client perhaps?) maintains a master list of what songs are available to all players. Once leader starts and all players are entering song selection, master list is distributed to all players and used to determine what's selectable or not. Seems like this might be less traffic then constantly asking all players "do you have this one?" song by song.

But you have to look at the reason for using network traffic. I suspect this is all done to keep memory usage down. Network data is cheap.

Thinking on those network lines, I am now starting to wonder that the reason all players drop when the leader leaves is because each players lag is only cross-referenced against the leader who essentially becomes the host (server). So "passing the baton" could create undesirable lag effects between the users that are left in, since the new ping to host could essentially be double what it was.

[BathTub]

What does the option exactly say? (I haven't played in a long time but never noticed when I did).

It's not a menu option, it's simply part of filtering by Pro Guitar. When you Filter by 'Pro Guitar' you will only see 'Pro Guitar all players have in common'. I get nosey and use it all the time to see what people have, and it makes me laugh when I see Pro Guitarists not using it as they scroll past songs they can't play.

[grivad]

It's not a menu option, it's simply part of filtering by Pro Guitar. When you Filter by 'Pro Guitar' you will only see 'Pro Guitar all players have in common'. I get nosey and use it all the time to see what people have, and it makes me laugh when I see Pro Guitarists not using it as they scroll past songs they can't play.

@Blasteroids: So given this, and the recent discussion, I'm back to wondering why what we're requesting is not possible regardless of how it is they're determining what's available or not (whether it's on the fly as its displayed or compared all at once, or etc.). The fact that the Pro Guitar filter is filtering on only Pro Guitar songs, but is also filtering on what the other player has as well (songs in common), again makes me question why we can't apply this type of filter to all songs instead of just Pro Guitar. Damnit!

[Blasteroids]

Well it is not really filtering on a huge amount, there is just less to check. The 84 on-disc will automatically be a 'yes', so this then leaves how many extra? Then compare that figure to the 3k DLC limit.