League of Legends game states can now be saved with new ‘Chronobreak’ tool
On Sunday, Riot Games unveiled a new piece of tech to save a League of Legends game from being remade: the Deterministic Disaster Recovery Tool, aka “Chronobreak.”
Effectively a way to go back to a specific game state, Chronobreak records every player input for the entirety of a game, allowing Riot to return to a moment in time if a bug is detected. Previously, game-breaking bugs would force Riot to completely remake the match.
The new tool was used to roll back the clock on a bugged interaction in Game 3 of the much-hyped LCS matchup between FlyQuest and Cloud9, in which the damage from Johnny “Altec” Ru’s Miss Fortune Bullet Time was blocked by a single caster minion. FlyQuest paused the game, pointed out the error, and were granted a rollback to a point before the bug occurred.
This is the first time that Chronobreak has been used in public. The ability to save game states has been a longtime request from pro players, analysts, and fans alike since the beginning of League of Legends esports. Due to the game’s somewhat shaky code base, bugs are fairly prevalent in pro matches, and full game remakes have never been an ideal solution to the issue.
Now, however, Riot has a tool to make sure that never happens again.
Follow Taylor Cocke on Twitter @taylorcocke.
