Generating a timelapse

This site uses the Neptune's Pride API to record games and generate mp4 timelapses showing empires' growth over time. It's a very simple process for the user, but rendering videos is a hardware-intensive process so keep that in mind when waiting for the render to complete.

Step 1: Register a game

To create a timelapse the site first needs a recorded game. Unfortunately NP's API doesn't give historical info so the timelapse will start with the game state from when it was first registered.

To register a game you need two pieces of information: a game's number and an API key. Game number can be found in the game's address. Each NP game address has the form
np.ironhelmet.com/game/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
This 16-digit number at the end is your game number. Your API key is 6 characters can be generated in the last section of game settings. Each time you generate an API key the previous one is invalidated, so make sure to save it if you want to use it somewhere else. You can enter these two values on the home page to register your game.

WARNING! Using your game number and API key it is possible to extract tactical data like carrier positions. Be careful when sharing them. NPTimelapse promises to never share your API key or any non-public information about your game, with exception of dark games that are registered on the player's discretion.

Step 2: Request a timelapse

After the site has recorded enough data to create timelapse find it on the list and click on the card (tip: games are sorted by game name and number). You will see a couple of timelapse options (explained in the next section) and a "Request timelapse" button. Pressing this button will send you to the page associated with the exact timelapse you requested.

If the button says "Wait" it means that the server is currently generating a timelapse, either yours or someone else's. Due to high resource cost of timelapse generation the server can only generate one timelapse at a time so come back in a minute or two to see if the generation has completed.

If the "Progress" value reached its goal it means the server has generated all frames of a timelapse and has started rendering the video. It may take an additional minute or two until the timelapse is complete, indicated by a blue button saying "Download timelapse".

If the button says "Download timelapse" your timelapse is ready and you can just download it by clicking the button. This exact version of the timelapse will be kept on the server until midnight GMT so you can safely leave this page and return, and the timelapse will still be ready for download.

If the "Progress" value reached its goal and reset with a different goal it means that another timelapse was being generated when you first requested yours. To check if the progress is for your timelapse compare the goal with the number of saved ticks for your game. Unfortunately there is nothing I can currently do about it.

Timelapse options

There are a couple options avaliable to customize your timelapse:

Supported games

Currently almost any type of game of Neptune's Pride can be recorded by NPTimelapse. Here are restrictions that I know of:

API

You can get all data (except the API key) recorded for a game by performing a GET request on address /nptimelapse/api/game/1234567890123456 with your game number.

Feedback, issues and credits

If you have any feedback or find any issues with the site PM me on NP Discord or IronHelmet forum, I'm @olus2000.
Website by Aleksander "olus2000" Sabak. Source code and license avaliable on github.