Demo Recording Bugs (and how to work around them)

[Jahandar]

Hello. I was recording a demo for CTG and came across several bugs. Since this isn't a commonly used feature, I can see why these would be easily overlooked. I think this information would be of interest to normal players as well as the Dev team, as they may wish to record demos with the current version.

Anyway, I was able to get the demo to record, but not without several attempts and some work-arounds. My demo was recorded on "Spiders" in single player mode, so there may be additional problems which arise under different conditions.

•Presently, in order for a demo to be recorded properly, one has to begin recording immediately after joining the game (before choosing a team or loadout). Otherwise when the demo is played back, the GUI for choosing teams will remain on the screen. Even after doing this, the "Thieves" and "Guards" buttons remained on the screen during playback sometimes, but not always. The biggest problem with this is that it means you cannot record demos "on the fly." They must be done before you begin playing, and that is a major inconvenience.

•Regardless of what it is while you're recording, when the demo is played your name will be changed to "Player." To get around this, I changed my name to something else (anything other than your name will work), then I immediately changed my name to "Jahandar" after I began recording (before moving on to choose a team and loudout).

•For some reason everything said (chat messages) is printed twice.

• (ADDED: 12.02.2002) This is another common bug, and most of you probably already know about it (see note below). Anyway, if you are recording a demo when the game ends, UT will crash to the desktop and you will have to restart your computer before you'll be able to launch the game again. I'd suggest binding a key to quickly stop recording when the game ends, and hopefully you can catch it in time.

I hope this can help you on the Dev team to resolve these problems. In the mean time, it should help anyone who is trying to record demos with the current version of TUT, despite the bugs.


- Jahandar


Edit (12.02.2002):
Since this thread has been included among the resources in the TUT Game FAQ thread, I decided to make an effort to keep it somewhat current.

[MachDelta]

Just like to note, that none of those bugs are Thievery specific. All of them are present to some degree in other mods, for example, Tactical Ops.
The first one isn't a big issue in TO though, because you can just pick any team to get the menu to dissapear.
The second one happens when you play a demo back (your name changes to "Player")
The third one happens too, but i've only noticed it when playing my demos. Maybe changing your name before playback would work? I'd have to check or somethin.... too lazy though. :P

Anywho. The first one should be looked into... the other two aren't critical tho.

[mOdEtWo]

Great investigation, Jahandar!

Yeah, the dev's have to do something about this. We really need to record demo's to catch cheaters/exploiters, and to make guides/walkthroughs.

[Jahandar]

Originally posted by MachDelta
Just like to note, that none of those bugs are Thievery specific. All of them are present to some degree in other mods, for example, Tactical Ops.

These bugs may very well be present in other mods, but I don't think they are present in plain UT (without a mod). Thus, they are mod-specific, so it is something the developers can work on.

The fact that other mods have similar problems just shows that these types of bugs are common. This doesn't mean they are unimportant or that they should be considered natural.

[MachDelta]

Oh no no, I didn't mean to say "who cares, everyone else has them" . I meant it more like "Maybe you can ask other mod teams about these bugs" That, and "if they're so common, are they even fixable via uscript?"

We can hope

[Jahandar]

Aaah, I see. In that case, I'll agree.

[BiG_D]

I think the bug where your name is changed to player is also present in UT. It does that so two people in the round aren't named the same thing.

[Jahandar]

This is while watching a demo, though. Even if there were no other way for UT to avoid this, and assuming that the reason is indeed to prevent multiple occurances of the same name, it still wouldn't make any sense for the names of the "actors" in the demo to be changed. If any name should be changed, it should be that of the spectator watching the demo. The names of the people being watched in the demo are more important than the name of the watcher.

[Omega]

Any alternative recorders that you can recommend?

[dha_thief]

OK first question how do you record ?

[LaughingRat]

Originally posted by dha_thief
OK first question how do you record ?

Three commands must ye know:

"demorec [filename]"
"demostop"
"demoplay [filename]"

These are all typed into the console, and [filename] is the name of the demo to be recorded/replayed. Any demo being replayed must be in the unrealtournament/system folder, which is also where any demo being recorded will be found.

[Jahandar]

Originally posted by Omega
Any alternative recorders that you can recommend?

Not really. Any other program that *might* work would probably be shareware, would likely slow down your computer, and may not record sound.

You're welcome to look though. Search on google for such things as "Screen capture" and/or "screen recorders" and things like that.

[Buho]

I'd like to remind everyone that demo recording is naturally buggy, as the devs have noted on the Thievery website. They state that it is impossible to fine-tune demo recording during development because any change to the game itself will have to be reflected in the coding for the demo recorder, also, and that's too much redundant work. It's my impression that they do plan on ironing out the demo recorder once they release a final for Thievery.

[DaBeowulf]

go here: http://www.usaar33.com
for the ultimate UT demo recording tool.
Although for use with TUT the TUT dev team would have to give us the "Mod" tab
in the main menu back!
Hush, hush tell them to do so!

[Jahandar]

Since this thread has been included among the resources in the TUT Game FAQ thread, I've decided to make an effort to keep it somewhat current. Feel free to post here, or preferably email or PM me about any updates or additions.

[Salvage]

Instead of using <font color="teal">demoplay [filename]</font> use <font color="teal">demoplay [filename]?3rdperson</font> instead. There is no space between the filename and ?3rdperson.

What this does is starts the demo in 3rd person view as your own camera, not on any player.

What it also does(at least for me) is start up the demo with the vanilla UT HUD, meaning that the choose team overlay is gone. To cycle through all the players and bots you left click instead of right click.


Any kudos go to LeatherMan, as he posted this earlier.