Relentless

Sounds like he's got to get to the playback part first...

Are you using the demo launcher, or the demo editor? The launcher is what you need to play those demos back, whereas the editor will throw a bunch of lines at you upon loading. Also note that the launcher should load up CoH when you click the "Launch Demo" button.

I don't know of a character limit, but there is a limit on how far an NPC can be from the "Player" before it disappears.

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Heh, looks something like my first attempt at creating my own ragdolls with a demo. It also looks a lot like my second, third, and fourth attempts...

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haven't had much luck in that area of demo editing, huh?

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Not really, though keep in mind it was a long time before they "cracked the code" and I was mostly just messing about .

Heh, looks something like my first attempt at creating my own ragdolls with a demo. It also looks a lot like my second, third, and fourth attempts...

Those things can show up just about anywhere you know . But I know what you mean. Whenever I start editing for a video I start getting a bit pickier, then before you know it 2 hours have passed and I've finished a 4 second shot.

In any case it was just an option to throw out there if nobody had anything. Of course the winter event probably isn't too far off either...

I have the same issue when naming my demos. There has been more than a few times where I'll hastily just type something in to get recording ASAP, only to go back later and wonder what that demo was.

Anyway, if nobody can find a suitable demo you can always go fight some DE monster to use as a body double .

I believe this is the model name you're looking for:

Abominable_Snowman_Giant

Unfortunately I can't look through my demos atm, but I'm sure there's someone who can dig a little something up for you .

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Okay, nevermind. I am stupid.

When it comes to getting rid of the names, how do I do it? Do I have to individually go through each one and delete or is there another easier way?

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If you're using Zloth's demo launcher, simply check the box that says "hide text". That is, if you don't mind getting rid of all of the other text too (chat bubbles, floating damage, etc.). If you still want chat bubbles and such to show up, then yeah, you'll have to go in and do it manually.

Any NPC you see in the game can be put into your demo. You can't really play dress-up with them in the same way you would a character you made, though.

For a whole list of NPC's and the demo codes needed to transplant them, see Scuzzbopper's City of Heroes Codex.

I'm not sure there is a specific pose like that, but I could be wrong. Since it's still images you're after you could always replay the animation while changing the camera angle.

In this case it may be more helpful to see the demo as a whole. As for where to go, there are plenty of places that offer free uploads/downloads. Filefront works pretty well, though you have to create an account in order to upload your stuff.

The first thing you'll want to do is familiarize yourself with demos. It's pretty simple really, just use /demorecord and /demostop in-game. There's a wonderful little guide here which explains the basic ins and outs of recording and playing them.

Once you've got a demo or two recorded, you'll want to have Zloth's demo launcher. It's really straightforward to use and makes things much easier than playing them manually.

Demos aren't videos, so you're going to need a way to record those files into a video format. FRAPS is pretty popular, but the free version only lets you record 30 seconds at a time and leaves a little watermark up at the top. Wegame is a reasonable alternative that you won't have to pay for. Note that you can also use one of these programs to record straight from the game rather than using a demo. I prefer using demos myself for various reasons, but YMMV here.

Other than that, you'll probably want something to compile these videos into a short film. There are of course plenty of options here, most of which will cost you some money, but you can still make a great video using windows movie maker.

The only other advice I have to offer right now is to get inspired! Watch some CoH/V videos, see what you like, don't like etc. and think about the type of video you'd like to make. The fan videos thread at the top of this forum presents many fine examples. And always feel free to ask questions here, if you run into a speed bump there's probably at least one of us that has tripped on it before.

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<------ one of the videographer geeks, and proud of it

And come on, Relentless... ONLY 100GB?!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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I was being modest actually . At an average of ~10MB/minute I'd actually be a bit scared to see how much space videos of all that demoing would take up.

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But...I really liked Relentless's video...just curious though, why so choppy with the graphics? Was it your video settings or is that Windows Movie Maker butchering the graphics like it does with FRAPS?

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I'm not sure where you're seeing anything especially choppy... I remember the end of "Smooth Criminal" is a bit messified, and yes that was due to windows movie maker. If you're talking about image quality, well that's youtube for ya.

While I won't have time to look at the demo until sometime tomorrow, I suspect it's an issue with someone wearing (or changing into/out of) one of the halloween costumes you get for trick or treating. That seemed to have caused some issues for demos last year.

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Allow me to make this quick and painless.

You are going to hate your demo record. Allow me to show you an example of Demo Record

FRAPS is what I use. Allow me to show you an example of FRAPS.

If interested, FRAPS can be Downloaded From This Page.

If you absolutely must use Demo Record, I believe you have to take the file and unzip it first. Can't remember actually, because once I seen the quality of Demorecord, I gave up on trying to figure out how to make it work.

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Hm, I'm afraid you've been a bit misinformed. First, that first video is actually something done with screen capture software like FRAPS. With demos you don't get all of the UI stuff. All 4 of the videos in my signature have been done with demo recordings, if you want a good example.

There's nothing terribly fancy involved in getting a demo to play. Doing it manually through shortcuts can be a bit tedious, but with programs like Zloth's demo launcher it's easy as pie.

Demos can be better than recording in-game videos in a lot of ways. I use them not only because (with a bit of work) I can do things that aren't generally doable in the game, but mainly with regards to drive space. Since a demo is essentially just a text file, it uses a relatively small amount of space compared to say an .AVI file. If I took video of every demo I've recorded, I'd probably have well over 100gb (of course I record just about everything). Also, you can use pretty much any graphics settings you can in-game, and even use things like FRAPS to record those demos into video formats.

That isn't to say that demos don't have their issues, like timing being totally off, animations not playing, or our case here with it just not playing at all. But these things don't happen every day and, all in all, I do find demos better for making videos.

Just take out the entire first line with POS and the numbers and it works just fine. That version 2 bit just has to be the first thing it sees. I don't know how stuff gets in there before it sometimes, but it happens. Also, make sure your file gets saved in .cohdemo format when you do save it, some text programs like to add their own extensions.

Could just be someone that decided to be a butt-nugget. Pretty much anyone can make a claim if they want, even if they're not the copyright holder.

Your first worry should be that CoH doesn't do widescreen format (at least last I checked). It will fit your screen, sure, but the image gets all stretched out. This is pretty noticeable to some, not so much to others.

As for uploading a widescreenie video someplace, I'm not entirely sure what settings are best to ensure it doesn't get squished back to squaresville.

This thread goes into the commands for the self-destruct animation/FX. I'm afraid I don't know that anyone's specifically pointed out the lines for auras, though .

I don't have the pack either, otherwise I'd look it up real quick-like for you.

The Kings' row-ish outdoor map with the cemetery on the end is the least run-down one I can think of. Don't know the map name offhand though.

As for the tombstones, I haven't tried anything like that but I suppose it'd be easy enough to photoshop a still image. If you want the camera to move from one to the next it would be a bit more cumbersome though.

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My wife and I have the demoplayer export frames and then use Quicktime Pro's "Open Image Sequence..." option to convert the exported frames to a movie. There are other tools that can do that conversion, and we tried the ones we found but quicktime was the best and fastest at it.

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I use a similar method myself. Just keep in mind that this option can quickly use up quite a bit of disk space.

Wegame has a free recorder, though a couple people here have had trouble getting it to work properly. Still worth a try though.

The various arenas have the "reflective" floor too, and it's a lot more plain than that of city hall. So with some fancy demo edits and camerawork, you may be able to get a decent shot by turning the world on its side in there, too.

Hmm, I might tweak Mutant_Mike's idea a bit and just do all of that in-game. Rather than going back and forth into the client, you could just sit in one spot in the game and take a screenshot at intervals of 10 seconds or whatever. As long as it's not a shot that requires a demoedit then it should work.

Of course there's downsides to this, like if you happen to bump into the wrong key and move the camera... but hey, I never said it was a perfect solution .

I'm pretty sure it just loops the same demo, regardless of what you change.