For those of you who DO know how to send command lines to a program, here are the commands (mostly quoting a dev from way back in the beta days):
In game commands:
/demorecord <demoname>
/demostop
Saves your demo to cityofheroes/client_demos/<demoname.cohdemo>
Quitting the game or changing maps will force demostop to get run.
Playback commands:
These commands all run from the command line when you start the game. So you would (for instance) make a shortcut to cityofheroes.exe and add these to the target
-demoplay <demoname>
plays back the demo. Loops forever, writing performance data to cityofheroes/client_demos/results/demo_name. (It has min,max,avg and time for each frame)
-demopause <msecs>
This is for videocard performance debug. Runs until it gets the the frame given (in milliseconds) then redraws that frame forever.
-demodump
Dumps a .jpg file of each frame rendered to client_demos/screens/<demoname>/*.jpg
-demodumptga
Same as demodump but uses targa format
-demofps <frames per second>
Forces the player to simulate a fixed frame per second. This works well with demodump to get a smooth movie.
-fullscreen 1
Put game in fullscreen mode (overrides the registry key)
-fullscreen 0
Put game in windowed mode (overrides the registry key)
-screen <xsize> <ysize>
Set the screensize. Ex: -screen 1024 768
-disable2d
Don't display character names, damage numbers, or any other text. Makes the demo look just like screenshots with user interface disabled.
Note that, as of this writing, the -demodumptga has the same problem as saving a TGA screenshot. If the directory the file is supposed to go to does not exist, the screenshot file will not be saved! (My demo player makes the directory for you if you save to TGA. Plug Plug. 
)
Thanks again. Now It all makes sense. Well maybe not all, Yet it is possible. By George, I may be able to do it.
My Eternal Thanx to you Zloth, and also too Rommie and MasterMarbles and Kyrandia99.
Now lets hope I can pull this off
Figured I'd repost this here, so it won't die with the old thread.
Make a shortcut to the cohupdater program on your desktop, adding -demoplay after the executable name. Now you can just drag 'n drop .cohdemo files onto the shortcut and they'll start playing 
.
I.e., the properties for my desktop shortcut look like:
Target: "C:\Applications\Games\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -demoplay
Start in: "C:\Applications\Games\City of Heroes"
If you want to toy with adding other playback options to the shortcut, Zloth advised that the -demoplay option should probably be included last.
great info ... but how do you get a screen shot of the front of your character?
Kid, hold down the middle mouse button and move your mouse. You can swing the camera around. There is a button to reset your cam I think, I just roll the mouse wheel forward all the way in and then back out. That centers you again and is pretty quick.
For those that want the UI and don't want to use a photo/image program, there is a bind in the same control area for toggling your UI. Unfortunately, I don't see any visual confirmation that the mode has changed, but hitting a screen shot makes it pretty obvious what mode you are in. Without it toggled on, your UI disappears when you hit the key, but stays when it is toggled on.
Hope that helps someone.
You can also hold the Page Up key while moving the mouse and that will change the camera angle. Page Down returns to the default view.
Actually I was just thinking about your post today, StabbinPayne. It seems to me that you could make several shortcuts, each one with different options, then drag to the shortcut the mathes the options. Make a demodump one, a disable2D one, a normal one, one with the fps turned down so it plays fast.... {switching to Young Franenstein voice} It could work!!! {cue lightning crashes - which should be pretty easy around here ;}
Oh, I forgot something in the above. If you want to take a picture of your character in the character creation screen you can do so with the standard printscreen key. However, you'll only get the clipboard image - nothing will be saved. (You don't want those nasty screens anyway. Too low rez!)
Cant say it's easy to edit a demo when your driving a cab ( w/o a laptop). But when it gets slow and I can run in for a few, I try to putz around w/a demo, and do a lil here and there.
TY TY TY TY TY TY
You just made it ALOT easier and quicker for me to try them out.
Edit and Save, then Drag and Drop. Simple and Easy, Nice and Sweet.
TY TY TY TY TY TY
Still finding it a lil hard to play with the camera, Yet all in due time
You folks are my HEROES, Thank You
Happy to help!
Ok so i can get my demos to play - but where do you add the "-disable2d" line to turn off the UI?
<shrug> same as the rest. I don't think order matters but my program does it as the last flag before the final -demoplay command. So something like:
C:\Wherever\CityOfHeroes.exe -fullscreen 0 -disable2d -demoplay WayCool.cohdemo
Demos are not recording quite right currently. They play back fine but your character doesn't look quite right. (Your height and width aren't being recorded correctly.)
Zloth, I was wondering if you or anyone else has had problems with demos recorded under "taxing" conditions--namely, 100+ heroes pounding the tar out of a blob who shall remain nameless. A week or two ago, I tried shooting a few demos of the heroic horde taking on this grim task, but the results were less than stellar. My first few attempts ended in empty files as my machine locked up (which is normal under the circumstances). Now I was a bit gunshy, so as the mass of heroes moved into the blob and the whole server seemed ready to seize up, I was starting and stopping recording every few minutes so I wouldn't come away empty-handed. These were borked, too. One had a good chunk of the header missing, while the other had the header about 100 lines into the demo. At least those could be repaired. Out of 6 or more attempts, only one ran just as it was recorded. Anyone else have this happen before?
The closest I've had to that was the end-of-beta event in Founder's Falls. We had a ton of people in the hospital parking lot, giving it to whichever dev that was dressed up in a Rikti suit. The only problem I had was a 'over 100 effects on a target' message, and that was just a warning.
I do know the first thing the demo does is record where every object is, where every hero is, every hero's costume, where every NPC is, and the status effects on all heroes and NPCs. It doesn't pick up everything in the zone but it takes in a pretty large chunk around you. Then it has to play catch up and record everything that went on while it was gathering all that info. In normal situations, even outside with lots of people hanging around, that's not a problem. If you're outdoors with a lot of people and a LOT of bad guys all being very active, I could see how the startup process for the demo could get overloaded. Especially since that process isn't alone - you also have the game still playing at the time!
To record a Hammy raid, I think the best thing to do would be to jump right into Mr. Blobbo right at the start. You'll die fast but that's OK, you've got more important things to think about anyway. Like camera work! Get the demo started BEFORE the hero horde comes rushing in and start getting your dramatic shots.
This will be one big BIG demo, though! Might even be a good idea to de-frag your hard drive before going in to this.
Ha, dying is for chumps! Real cameramen take Invis and Phase Shift!
To make things run smoothly, some hammy raid organizers have asked players to wear less demanding outfits (no capes/auras), not run toggles like defenses that are useless anyway, and color code their costumes to make different ATs recognizable. I know some players might not want to lose the recognition factor, which is why I think it would be great for raids like that to designate "videographers"--people to not only catch the action for the "demo-challenged", but also to record people's usual uniforms and edit them into the finished recording.
Yeah, staying alive would be nice so you can get different camera angles. Just as long as you don't start worrying about the trivial things, like living and keeping others alive. <g>
Putting correct costumes in would be a handy thing!
If you just want to play back a demo, you don't need to mess around with command line options at all. Just make a shortcut to Cityofheroes.exe and drop your demo onto that shortcut.
If you make a demo in a Hammidon raid, I think you'll find that you can see a lot more of what happened on playback than you could when you were actually there! Just set the playback to use a fixed framerate.
I've updated the Demo Launcher with a demo fixer. Since Issue 3, players have not been saving correctly. This little extra will pull in your demo, fix the bad players, and save it back to another file (the demo name plus " Fixed").
Link in my signature
[ QUOTE ]
I've updated the Demo Launcher with a demo fixer. Since Issue 3, players have not been saving correctly. This little extra will pull in your demo, fix the bad players, and save it back to another file (the demo name plus " Fixed").
Link in my signature
[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks, Zloth. What do you mean "not saving correctly"? I want to make sure I am not messing up on my end
It concerns the recently discovered bug in the demorecord function. Zloth covers the details in this post in his Demo FAQ.
While the post covers the upcoming I4 changes; altering demofiles with I3 versions to correctly list the players' costume variables also works if you are working with I3 demofiles.
Tested. Confirmed.
2 questions:
1. How do I get rid of the hourglass for my cursor, which is smack dab in the middle of the playback screen?
2. How do you convert this to a file that others can download on the internet? I saw 2 videos of Arena fights that another poster submitted on the boards.
SithLord
1. Just move your mouse - that's your real live mouse pointer, not anything saved in the demo.
2. This is getting asked a lot, I think I'm going to have to add it to the guide. There's an easy way and a hard way.
A) The easy way is to go get FRAPS. Start it running then play your demo back and have it record. The free version is pretty limited but it works.
B) The hard way is to do a demodump at a fixed fps and convert your demo file into a TON of screenshots. You can then use VirtualDub (or Microsoft's Movie Maker) to pull them in to a video of whatever resolution you like. Sound is lost completely but that doesn't matter if you put in your own music anyway.
Thank you!
HOW TO MAKE A SCREENSHOT
In the upper right area of your keyboard there should be a key called "Print Screen" (or PrntScreen or some such). When you press that, you should get not one, but two screenshots.
The first shot made has exactly what you see on the screen, including your chat window. This screenshot is not really saved, though, it is just put in your copy & paste (aka Clipboard) buffer. To see it, you need to open a compatible program (IrfanView works extremely well and is free, though Microsoft Paint should also work fine) and paste it in, probably with control-V.
The second shot is saved for you in .JPG format. It does not have the user interface (nav window, chat window, chat bubbles, and so on) on them. Unless I'm taking a shot of a bug, that's the one I normally use. The files are saved in your City of Heroes directory under Screenshots.
The second screenshot is taken a split second after the first so they will not quite look the same even if you ignore the user interface. It does take a second to save the JPG file so you'll know you made a screenshot when you do one.
Note for users of the newer Microsoft keyboards: If you are using function keys and the little light under "F" is turned on, you can not take a screenshot. You will have to hit the F-Lock button, then hit the PrtScreen. Or change the keybinding.
If you dont like using the printscreen key for some reason, you can go into your Options menu in game and change the key there. Youll also notice an option to use the TGA (targa) format to save your picture. Those of you who are really into screenshots will probably want to use the TGA format because these pictures are not compressed at all. Windows cant view these files but the free IrfanView program (found at http://www.irfanview.com/) can view them just fine.
Bug Alert: when you take a JPG screenshot, the screenshot directory is created for you. However, the TGA screenshots will NOT create this directory. No biggy, right? Just dont delete the directory. Well, theres another issue if the screenshot directory is empty, the Updater program will delete it! So, if you are taking TGA screenshots, do NOT delete all the files out of the directory!
If you like to record the user interface but dont want to mess with the clipboard, you can use the /screenshotui 1 command. This will cause all following screenshots to record the interface as well as the graphics. (The clipboard screenshot always records the interface.) /Screenshotui 0 will revert back to the normal mode. If you do this a lot, there is an option to bind a key to toggle saving the UI on and off in the options menu.
HOW TO MAKE A DEMO
A demo is a recording of your game session. These are not MPG's or AVI's or any of those, these are simply text files that the game engine reads to repeat what happened in the game while you recorded. The feature is not supported and there are glitches but, I'll tell ya, they leave screenshots in the dust. They are small, too - a recording of a good battle typically takes about one megabyte. Far smaller than a real movie file would be!
Recording one is really simple - just enter the command:
/demorecord Whatever
where 'Whatever' is the file name you want to use. Then play the game just like normal. When you want to stop recording, use the /demostop command. Recording will automatically stop if you zone to another area or quit the game.
Watching them is not so simple. You do it by creating a shortcut to the CityOfHeroes.Exe and pass in a command parameter like "-demoplay YourDemoName.cohdemo" to play the demo. Honestly, it's a lot easier to use a program like my demo player (see my signature). The demo must be in your City of Heroes client_demos directory or a subdirectory in that directory to play it back. The game automatically creates demos in that folder when you record them.
When the demo is playing back, you can hit the escape key to exit. (Otherwise it will just keep looping through the demo.)
A particularly handy thing with demos is the Demo Dump feature. This lets you save the whole demo as a series of screenshots. LOTS of screenshots! If you've got the drive space, you can pick out some really great screenshots by doing a demodump! Those of you interested in making movies might be able to use these shots to build a movie file, too.
That about wraps it up. You are now ready to make your own scrapbook and home movies! Share and enjoy.