Zloth

Is the level range just for the person actually getting the trial's mission? Or is there something that limits all characters that go in? Can you sidekick a person that is, say, 36th level?

You are most certainly welcome!

The Demo Edit is pretty much in the state it's going to be in for awhile. It should work just fine with current demos. There's a LOT that could be done, to be sure, but the ones I would like to do are things that aren't so easily done. Plus the more you put in the more you have to maintain.

Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but there is an outdoor Carnival map that has some serious teleport problems. Any pets that try to go into the central tent area get teleported off to the side, as do several of the enemies. (We even had one enemy somehow bounce OUTSIDE the blue barrier!)

You can spot this map because one of the tents has a SUPER-HUGE banner. I think it's about 10 times larger than it should be and is far larger than the tent itself. If you see it, be ready for your pets to get shoved out to the side streets.

I just tried a pretty new demo from a DOS command line with -demodump on the end and it worked fine. All the launcher does is change the current directory to the exe's directory then launches the exe with the command line.

I presume you have enough drive space?

Hmmm, that command line isn't right. Demos MUST reside in the client_demos directory (or a directory below that) to get it to work.

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Ordinarily I would just use the launcher, but I want to also use the -disable2d switch (which isn't in the launcher) to get rid of text.

Thanks!

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Oh my gosh! I didn't know about the -disable2D option! Well, it's in the demo launcher now. Sure is a lot better than having to rip out all that text with an editting tool! Big thanks right back at ya, Elle_M! I put in support for dumping to TGA files, too.

[You can download the source code for the launcher now, too.]

To answer your question, I always put the demodump option first. Something like the following:

"C:\Games\CoH\CityOfHeroes.exe" -demodump -demofps 9 -demoplay swarm.cohdemo

But I don't think it really matters.

Alien - but that's another topic.

Ummm, folks? I'm thinking these skills are not going to be easy - especially the science one. Do you have any idea how many times I've had to rescue students from Paragon U field trips??? I've got some pretty strong evidence that several teachers are actually part of the Circle of Thorns. Please do not leave your costume at home and, for pity's sake, do NOT sign any release forms!

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Zloth2:
Have you ever considered making the demo player and demo editor open source?

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Heck, the source for the Demo Launcher is so small I can just about post it as a message here! I want to add the -demodumptga thing in there, though. I'll put that code out when that's done.

I've dumped the code for the edit program into a zip. There's a link to it now on the demo edit page. If anyone wants to use the code for their own programs, go for it. (If you use it in a for-profit program without even mentioning my name, though, I do reserve the right to call you a mean person!!) Or download it just so you can giggle at the n00b .NET programmer trying to teach himself inheritance.

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To actually be able to kill more than 2 blues and a white... all by myself

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You already can do that! Singularities, however, let you do so in a finite time.

Demos are NOT a supported feature. If they work, great. If not, oh well. You won't find any advertising on the web site or anywhere else trying to get you to buy the game because of this feature. It's just something the code can do and we have fun with so some of the devs (possibly even just one of them?) have been keeping it alive. Given that the feature is unsupported, Support isn't likely to know a lot about it.

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Found it!

use -demodumptga instead of -demodump

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Well, it doesn't tell me this is a bad command line parameter but it doesn't work for me, either. It just runs through the demo without saving any screenshots. Has anyone actually gotten TGA's out of this?

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Don't pull the boss. It'll bring the whole group. Peel off minions.

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Unless you are pulling with Wormhole. (Which can also be pretty nice with those proximity bombs.)

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D'oh - well, you ... uhhh.... use the special test version of my demo launcher which I made for myself and never uploaded. <blush>

A little radio button to have it load from your Test directory is on my to-do list.

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Added and uploaded. You can now switch between using the Test version of CoH and the standard version. If you don't have the Test version then you won't even see the options. If you had the Test version then removed it without removing the registry entries then it will try to force you over ot the standard version.

If you are doing it by hand, just remove the names from the NEW command that creates the characters. If you are using my DemoEdit program, there's a checkbox near the Save button that lets you save the demo sans names.

I just updated my DemoEdit so it can handle all those auras and capes. If the character is defined with the issue 2 costume extensions then they will be saved with them. If not, then not. I haven't tested this real extensively yet but it's up on my web site so you can try it out. Just follow the link at the bottom of the Demo Launcher page.

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How Do I remove the names of the places from the demo, like "Perez Park" or "Bettis Hill" etc.?

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I don't think you can. They aren't actually in the demo file, it's just something the demo playback does when it starts.

What you can do is change one of the early instructions (one of the ones after all the 0-time setup instructions) to last about 5 seconds so the action doesn't start happening until the zone title is gone.

To do this, open the demo in Notepad and scroll down a bit, past all those lines that start with a 0. Go to the second or third one without a 0 and change the 0 to 5000. Save the demo (probably to a new name unless you want to risk your original) and try it out. I'm guessing on that 5000 so you may need to adjust it up or down.

Pausing the demo isn't so hard. Just go to the point where you want it to pause and make the time value much larger. Slo-mo would not work, though. You could do just a series of pauses but there is no way to change the animation speed.

Walking is a pain but could be done. You'll have to do the pre-walk animation, the walk animation, then a bunch of position updates. Get yourself in an empty mission and record a demo of you walking to see exactly how it's done. You might even be able to cut and paste that into your target demo if you record it at the place you want this to happen.

Gak! The level range is really that small?? Or was your group just within that range?

Great guide Top, and great screenshots as well!

A bit of an update here. As of Issue #2, images will save as .JPG files by default so you don't need to mess with third party programs to view them. If you liked the non-compressed TGA format, though, you can go into options in the game and set them up. Also you can now bind a /screenshotui toggle to a key, though it doesn't give any feedback about whether you are turning it on or off.

Brightness level isn't controlled by the demo file. Somebody else who had this problem said they were able to get it to work right by running the game itself then running a demo at the same time.... or something like that. I'm afraid I can't remember the details.

Fiddling with camera position/angle is a pain. A fixed camera position isn't too bad, you just have to experiment until you find the right one. Each unit in the position is about 1ft, I think. The angle (PYR) is pitch, yaw, and roll done in Radians. So a value of 1.5 will just about turn you 180 degrees and 3.14 will turn you very nearly 360 degrees. Once you get the camera where you want it, delete all the following camera statements for as long as you want the camera to stay still.

If you want a moving camera, though, you'll have to put in a LOT of camera position/angle statements. I've never even tried to do this.

It's back all right! An old demo I made back in beta still shows it just fine. That's got to be one of the most fun missions in the whole game!

Errr, not really what this thread is about. This is for discussing the format and commands of the text within those demo files.

All COHED (or any other demo launcher) does is pass a command line to City of Heroes so CoH can play the demo back. You might try asking in the Technical Discussions area.

D'oh - well, you ... uhhh.... use the special test version of my demo launcher which I made for myself and never uploaded. <blush>

A little radio button to have it load from your Test directory is on my to-do list.

Hmm, I don't THINK the FAQ area lets threads expire? Not sure how that works.

You can get rid of player names easily. Just go in to their NEW commands and erase the name. (My demo edit will do it for you, too.) Unfortunately, I don't know how to get rid of the zone name.

By the way - demos made on the Test server right now add four new lines to character models. Three for capes and one for auras. I'll update the demo edit to handle those once it's released (and I have the time to fix it).

[Demos are also doubling chat lines a lot. Bugged it in game.]

For lists of all things you can put in, I go to City of Villians (even though it's made it forever impossible for me to remember how to spell 'villains' without looking at his web site )

As for putting a character name over an NPC, I don't think it can currently be done. The best you could do is change the character's costume/model so he looks a lot like the NPC you are trying to get.

Huh? .cohdemo files ARE text files.

It isn't finding the demos. Your demo file MUST be in the client_demos directory.

For the viewer, the DLL error probably means you didn't get the NetFX thing installed. You'll need to get it from Microsoft and install it.