Example of a player using scaffold playing back using the Replay System.​

What is the Replay System?

What will it be used for?

What can it do right now?

Some current technical hurdles:

It needs to run in the background of minigames, without affecting their performance.

It needs to minimize the network traffic to reduce the impact on other, more important traffic.

The stored replays should be as small as possible, so we can store more.

It needs to be highly flexible in terms of what we want to record in a game and how we store it.

It needs to be easy to implement new features or new ways of recording a game.

It needs to be able to play older replays, even the old replays are incompatible with recent code changes.

It should be able to take into account map changes, so the replay takes place in the same version of the map as the original game.

It needs to be efficient enough to handle very long games, games with large worlds and many players.

It needs manual work to implement specific features of individual games.

What's next?

Staff can view the actions of a player that has been reported for hacks, instead of following them or waiting for them to come online.

Staff do not need to do any first-person recording evidence, as the replay will be linked to the player's punishments as evidence.

Staff training sessions can take place in the ReplayLobby.

Hello all, today we bring excellent news!As we are just getting started in 2020, we have decided to take a more aggressive approach to combat cheaters and we are doing massive investments towards anti-cheat, tools, and moderation.In fact, we already opened three full-time anti-cheat developer positions , go check it out if you are interested!There are a lot of things worked on behind the scenes that we can't go into detail about, however, there is one project we're especially excited to talk about: the Replay System.For the first time in Hypixel history, we will be able to go back in time and catch cheaters at any moment without the help of videos.At first, the tool will be used by the staff as a moderation tool, but eventually, we want to have the Replay System in the hands of players as well, for their own enjoyment and it’s also a great way to make YouTube highlights! No modded client needed, all of this is server-side and supported by us.Please read the whole thread for more information!We are sharing our plans and the current state of development as we believe this is a big milestone for the Hypixel server.The Replay System runs in the background of games and records relevant information to be able to recreate and view the game at a later time. For example: where players move, what items they drop, block changes in the world and much more. We are then able to recreate the game and what happened during it. Similar to a video player, we're able to pause it, jump in time and change the speed.Our first priority and therefore the first step is to make it a moderation tool. When a player is suspected of cheating, moderators will be able to view their previous games. Rather than following them from game to game, waiting to collect proof for the cheats, the moderator can watch recent replays of their games. If any evidence is found in those replays the player is punished and the replay is linked to the punishment as evidence. This also allows a single staff member to punish multiple cheaters in the same game more easily.In the future, we plan to support as many games as possible. Though, some games offer challenges that need to be tackled in order to achieve Replay System support.Our long term goal is to also bring this feature to MVP++ players and allow them to watch their recent games on the server for their enjoyment. This will allow us to fund our development costs for more anti-cheat related improvements to the server and add more exciting features like the Replay System.So far, we have been working to start supporting several games as well as having this tool being used for tournament moderation. The system supports enough features (such as player movements, dropped items, block changes, etc.) to be used as evidence for blacklisted modifications. We also have a system that allows the team to view these replays back via a "ReplayLobby" with various controls/features.We have set up an infrastructure that allows storing recordings easily. Extensive metrics help us to make better design decisions early in the development.The Replay System is a very complex system, because of its requirements.This is only an excerpt of technical requirements for the system. We want to highlight that the development of the Replay System is not a simple process, but we are very excited about the possibilities of it.The next steps, aside from general development, is to have the staff and admin teams test it thoroughly, to validate it's accurate and can be used as evidence for some punishments. We will also be doing our first major testing with the Quake tournament this weekend and recording all games to assist with moderation and further development.Our priority after the tournament is to start fully supporting a handful of games. Our staff can then make full use of the Replay System in those games for punishments. This will affect the moderation of the server in many ways, for example:... and much more that we cannot go into detail about.We hope this excites everyone as much as it does with us, today marks a new era for the Hypixel server and we are grateful for the support we have received in the past few months.