What are Demos

[Hueman]

I saw Triad talking about demos or something, that is recorded when we play. He said something like we could re-watch them and record them with fraps for lag-less video. What is this all about? Does it have anything to do with the demo hud?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Fixious]

Click the big demo button on the main menu. If you have demos turned on, there should be a large list of numbered files. Click one, press Load Demo, hope that it works. It probably won't.

 

[Triad]

What you have to do is paste "demorecording::startrecording" into the console (press CTRL ~ to open the console) right after you hit "Join". This needs to be inserted before the "startmissiondownload()" function is called or the demo won't work. You'll see this function printed in the console window, so be sure to get the demo recording function typed in first.

 

[Jordahan]

In case you are curious what a Demo is, it's basically a recording of your game.

 

[Hueman]

Awesome, thanks. All my questions have been answered.

 

[Rougey]

For something more in-depth, demos are recording of the game within the game engine, either from one players perspective or the servers perspective - a server prescriptive demo can be viewed from any angle and you can relive the game as if you are spectating in real time, as opposed to a players perspective where you are restricted to what that player witnessed during the game.

Generally speaking, demos are much smaller in terms or recording size than video capture technology like FRAPS and doesn't impact on a players frames per second, essentially you can play the game recording a demo, then come back and make a recording of that demo with video capture technology. Basically this means that while recording you don't have to worry about a single 30 minuet game leaving a multiple gigabyte recording on your hard-drive taped at lower settings to increase performance - any good game has demo recording functionality.

 

[Hueman]

Awesome! That explains a lot more. I was able to re-watch some of the recordings, others did nothing and some said "failed to load." Is there any why to watch these recordings outside of legions? I did some searching and it seems the most popular program to run .rec files is VLC player, however mine doesn't work. Thanks again for the reply.

 

[Rougey]

The demos have to be viewed using the ingame engine, trying to run it using VLC is like trying to jam a Blu Ray disk into a cassette player.

The only way to watch a recording outside of Legions is if somebody records the demo with video capture technology and uploads it to something like youtube.

In terms of failing to load, they are probably just dodgy recordings, I have NFI if different version of Legions translate for demo recording playback - TBH the last time I played Legions religiously we where still shackled to IA.

 

[Fixious]

Buggy demos are known. In order to ensure each game gets recorded, see Triad's post above. For better control over the speed of demos, see this thread.