Replays don’t “”“render”“” anything. Don’t use the term render. Render suggests that you mean churning out graphical frames, but in this context I assume (And hope) you don’t mean that.
In regards to player-made structures, yes, it has to analyze the entire map, but in reality it doesn’t /have/ to. Once someone places something the replay knows its there and has no reason to do anything to it. Unless someone destroys something is when a new change (or calculation) must be done to the replay. Therefore you could build a gigantic mansion and it wouldn’t do much on CPU calculations or other nonsense
In regards to players, all the replay must do is record X,Y,Z (coordinates of player) and Yaw,Pitch,Roll (where player is facing) and then what item they’re holding. XYZ and YPR is done every tick or frame, while other things that don’t need to be recorded every second (like holding out a weapon) are not. The only updates to the replay or extra calculations done per tick is when a player does an extra movement, like pulling out a gun, aiming, firing, a combination of the two, etc.
So essentially we’re saving the following information per player at each tick -
Rain
X: 512.54
Y: 224.01
Z: 40.89
Yaw: 180*
Pitch: 45*
Roll: 0*
Meanwhile, it is the same for structures, except this doesn’t need to be calculated every tick, only each time a structure is updated (placed, shot at, or destroyed). Player stuff technically also needs no changing unless theres an update
ID-101
X: 512.54
Y: 224.01
Z: 40.89
Yaw: 180*
Pitch: 45*
Roll: 0*
Calculation (CPU resources) is minuscule because the server already gets this information to run the server, the only challenge with replays is it can’t just send all these tiny files to the hard drive over and over, so first it needs to pack them all up into a block in the RAM, then it can be comfortably flushed to the hard drive. So it takes a little RAM storage.
Your internet does the literal exact same shit. It can’t just willy-nilly aimlessly send bytes of information out, so it packs them up into “packets” before sending, so it can be comfortably flushed out to it’s destination.
Besides that, it just needs a small amount of disk space. I’m sure most server machines run on HDD’s over SSD’s, and even then, these files are still incredibly small - and despite BEING incredibly small, you could compress them further as these files are most likely fully uncompressed and raw. Just how PNG files are way small than TIFF.
Just because a server needs to keep track of all players doesn’t mean it will destroy your CPU, if anything, it takes a little bit of the RAM. This could also scale extraordinarily easy, so larger servers will be affected in a linear fashion, not an exponential one. I’m sure servers won’t get any bigger than ~100 players, so it would be no problem. Speaking of 100 players, Fortnite does the same thing with Replays for manual moderation and they have millions of matches a month. It just goes to show how easy it is to create replays, and how small they are.
How did Observatory software know when the suspect was fighting?
Map size would have zero affect on the calculation or RAM required for replays.
Of course they’re difficult to detect sometimes. Sometimes it will be that way.
Refer to my stuff above. Fortnite is a very fast paced game, and the tick-rate for replays are pretty high - so a lot more information is being taken in per second. Also, those replays (as discussed earlier) are completely raw and uncompressed. 7z could easily demolish file sizes. I could spout out other ways to shorten the file, or how short the file could get, but you get it.
Maybe because CS:GO is such a popular, over-hyped, extremely competitive game?
What needs to be so loyal and mature of a staff member to review a replay? Are you referring to local staff teams, not observatory?
If then, are you referring to them abusing knowledge from a replay to better themselves in-game? I doubt it would happen, and theres plenty of other, easier ways to go about abusing staff privileges to gain knowledge.
If referring to Observatory I don’t think I saw a single case where an entire jury of ~10 people all decided to be abusive shits and all vote one completely anonymous guy as guiltily.