One thing that I have been doing for a good while now is to record every fight I get in Eve. At the start I just started and ended OBS recordings as I saw fit, which meant I had to know when something would go down beforehand. Eventually I switched to a replay buffer which I could download after the fight and edit to the right length. That way as long as I remembered to save the replay buffer, and the fight was not to long I would capture even the start of it. I happened to only remember to save a bunch of times just after I shut down the PC, which was pretty hilarious. But as the brain of an engineer goes, eventually I figured there has to be a better solution to this.
Development
Eventually, I just wrote a simple script that would automatically start a recording when something was happening, and end it if nothing was happening as well, as a command line tool for me it worked decently well and I didn’t really need anything else
Some weeks ago I however decided that it would be cool if other people could use it as well, and from past experiments I know how good having command line tools, like for example my UI Copyscript works – you end up installing python on a finish computer (perkele) and trying to tell every user everything they need to know so it doesn’t break – which it inevitably does anyway.
Previously I had mitigated this issue in a variety of different ways google colab scripts and later discord bots, but in this case either wouldn’t work since it needs access to file logs and OBS WebSocket. So I decided to write a desktop application and make a user interface (something that I somehow despise). At this point I have tested the application for some weeks and it is up for download on github.
Setup
In order to use this program, you need to install OBS and setup a replay buffer, which should be running before you run Fight Recorder. Ideally you add a shortcut to your startup folder for obs and in its Target add the “–startreplaybuffer” flag, so on system startup it automatically gets everything ready.
Next, you will have to enable the OBSWebsocket Server to enable Fight Recorder to communicate with OBS. To do that, in the main OBS window go to Tools -> WebSocket Server Settings. Enable the Websocket server, and remember your port and password.
Now you can start Fight Recorder and configure it. Under OBS Settings you enter the port and password you just had to remember, and under Directory Settings you select your “Gamelogs” folder for Eve, as well as where you want output Videos to go. If all is good you should see a light green “Ready” status in the bottom left.
The Behaviour Settings gouvern how the program actually does it’s things. Most important of all, after nothing happens for the Timeout duration, the current recording will be ended, so adjust it for how much downtime you expect during your fights. If it is a frigate 1v1 you are probable good with 20 to 30 seconds, if you want to have warping off and comming back in one video, something like 60 to 90 seconds is more reasonable (It can happen that if the delay is slightly larger you get two overlapping recordings, which).
Then you can set what exact behaviour you want after that. You can set Fight Recorder up to automatically concatenate your replay buffer and recording, which sometimes is not perfect and will result in some stutter. If you do that, it can also delete the original files if you want. And finally it can also automatically run on startup (minimized if everything goes alright).
Conclusion
So if you are using OBS, this is one more way you could set up your game to record. I hope you all manage to make some dank eve videos with it!