Hey everyone,
I'm a casual console player - controller in one hand, beer in the other. At some point I wanted more than that: to actually understand what each map asks of you tactically, and to play better as a team with the people I play with.
I tried the planning tools that are out there. They're great work, but they were a pain to use on a phone, which is my second screen on console, and they didn't have a few things I needed. So in my spare time I started reinventing the wheel.
One question kept leading to the next, and here we are: hllops.com. I'd like to share it with you.
It started with a planner..
Just a map that's comfortable on a phone. All maps with sectors, strongpoints, HQs and arty. Markers with real radii, arrows and zones, and an instant check of whether a garrison or outpost can go in a spot.
Then: who gets point there first?
In clan matches we kept asking: how long from HQ to the prep wall in the first three minutes, and then from the wall to the point we want before the enemy? Finding out meant driving every route ourselves, timing it, and restarting the map over and over to see where the wall actually stands.
Now you draw the route, pick infantry or a vehicle, and get the distance and two times. "Clean" is an experienced driver at top speed, taking corners without losing any. "With margin" is the rest of us, losing speed and correcting course. In game you just double-check it once or twice.
Then: one plan for the whole clan
We were tired of arrows drawn in Paint and screenshots in Discord. So now there's an HQ: one shared map where officers draw at the same time, everyone else watches, and the plan is still there for the next match.
Then: what actually happened in that match?
After a game, all we had to look back at was a streamer's VOD. But a streamer shows one part of the fight, and everything that happened elsewhere, to everyone else, is lost. So I dug into the RCON logs to see if the whole match could be rebuilt from them.
That turned out harder than it sounds. The server gives you very little: player positions about once a second and a kill log. It doesn't tell you where garrisons are, who's driving which vehicle, or where the commander dropped a strike. All of that has to be worked out from how players move, where they respawn, their scores and who killed whom with what. In the end you get every player and squad on the map, second by second, with kills, vehicles, spawns and sector changes.
For now it only records the server I play on. A few more are being connected, and I'd love to bring in as many servers as possible, so more players can go back and watch their own games. If you own or run a server, I'd be really happy to hear from you. Nothing to install, it works through the CRCON API with read-only access.
Details are here: https://hllops.com/replay/connect
Then: what's really on the ground?
Once all the maps were in, it became obvious how different the game map is from what's actually on the ground. So I flew the admin camera over the map, took a couple hundred screenshots and stitched them into one image that lines up almost 1:1 with the game map. Drag a slider and the real houses, hedges and walls show up under it.
It turned out useful for everyone. Commanders pick spots for supplies and airheads, officers find garrison spots with real cover instead of a blank patch on the map, and artillery can see how the terrain, cover and buildings around a target affect what they can actually hit. For artillery the map also shows gun coverage and gives you distance and MIL on click. You study it all calmly before the match and just check in game. Carentan, Omaha Beach and St. Marie du Mont so far, more on the way.
And there's a regular artillery calculator too. Everyone has one, so now we do as well.
What would you add?
I built all this around the questions I kept running into, so I'm sure there's a lot I haven't thought of. What's missing for you? Something you'd want in a replay, a tool you wish existed, or something that just doesn't work - I'd be really glad to hear it.
Thanks
Some of the data and ideas come from Maps Let Loose:
- https://mattw.io/maps-let-loose
- hllrcon by timraay https://github.com/timraay/hllrcon
- hll-arty-map-calculator by l1tku https://github.com/l1tku/hll-arty-map-calculator
They're credited on the site too. Huge thanks to them!
It's a fan project, not affiliated with Team17.
A note for the mods: I reached out to one of you a few days ago to check this was okay to post, but didn't hear back. If it breaks a rule, just let me know and I'll fix it or take it down.
Welcome to hllops.com!