Bad demos, and fixing them?

I've had several cohdemos recently just refuse to load on me, for whatever reason. This is both in CoH as well as CoV. Any ideas on what might be causing them not to playback correctly? I can upload them if you guys want to take a look.

(Reeaally miffed that two of them are from the last mission of the Sara Moore TF. I want to see the fight with Ruladakk again! )

odd...

did you try any extranious text in the command line, or are you using an exterior program to run the command lines for you?

Oh.. I didn't even think that the demo launcher would be the very thing causing the problem, especially since one of the files I tried used to work fine with it a while ago. Lets see... Okay, this is strange. I made a shortcut that looks like this:

"F:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CityOfHeroes.exe" -screen 1680 1050 -demoplay
[edit: It works without the -screen option, so it's not my resolution.]

Then I dragged and dropped the cohdemos onto that shortcut and it runs fine, but fullscreened. I've been playing them back in windowed mode with the launcher.

*attempts to load the cohdemos in the launcher set to fullscreen*
*coh explodes*

That doesn't make much sense to me at all, but at least now I have another way to view the demos. Thanks.

if you can run it with command line, why even bother with the launcher?

The launcher might be conflicting with your settings in the game....? Do you play the game in windows mode, and are telling the launcher to run in fullscreen?

hmmm...

there is another guy that knows tons more than me on this.

the bandaid would be to use commandline until you hear from the guy who built the launcher, since it does sound like that is what the problem is.

More because of ease of use than anything. I'm lazy, and the old way was to edit the shortcut and add the filename everytime I wanted to run a demo. (The no filename, drag & drop thing is a new trick.)

I usually play fullscreened. However, are you ready for more oddness? When I run the demos from the commandline/shortcut, some costume options never load. Run the same demo in the launcher and they load. It's also only a select few demos that don't work, most are fine...

/boggle

/e headexplode

Several maps have broken in demos. Seems to mostly be unique and arena ones. There are a couple of topics in the Tech Help/Bugs forum where we mutter about it. (My poor Ruludak demos!! ) It started a few months ago, before issue 7.

[ QUOTE ]
When I run the demos from the commandline/shortcut, some costume options never load. Run the same demo in the launcher and they load.

[/ QUOTE ]
Errrrrrrrr.... ??? You're not just saying that to make everyone's head explode, are you?

OK, I got a theory here - maybe you've set the FPS to something in the demo launcher? That forces the demo to completely draw the screen. (Handy for Hamidon Raid recordings.) Maybe?

Broken demos? Bah. Still doesn't explain why the shortcut trick would work, but not the launcher. They're invoking CoX the same way I imagine...


And no, I'm not pulling your chain:
Demo run via DemoLauncher
Demo run via Shortcut

I don't think it's my settings either. These are the settings I used. After starting it, I uncheck the "Fullscreen", use the [ ... ] button to find the file I want, then launch to run it.


By the way, it's not loading lag either, as that is about a minute in, and my computer shouldn't be having any lag issues (3 gb of RAM, well 4, but windows only sees 3 of it). Makes no... freaking... sense!

But it.... but they..... command lines are... ah ha! Command lines are NOT quite the same. Leaving demo launcher with "my default" means the demolauncher doesn't stick a -Screen command in there at all.

That's it... that's GOT to be it!

[Zloth starts tying belts and chains around his head to keep it from exploding, just in case it isn't it]

Sorry Zloth, your assumption was wrong. Tried without the -screen and it still displayed funny...

However! *strikes a triumphant pose* I have the answer!
You see, I built this computer with portions of my old computer, as well as new. So I have a new hdd that runs windows, and then the old hdd with all the legacy files/crap from my old computer. So, what I forgot is what the shortcut was doing is... dun dun dun... pointing to the old CoH version on the old hdd! Since it hasn't been updated, it doesn't have the horn crown costume piece, hence, it wasn't showing up.

I swear, that character is sure as hell living up to his name! Hes the first character I've ever encountered a hole in the geometry with. A post about said hole got answered by a redname. Now, hes causing havok in the demo scene. Whats his name? Quantum Enigma. Freaky...

TWO City of Heroeses! Now you know, if you would get a newer version of the Demo Luancher you can actually get demos to run in that old version if you want. If you have an even older version (an old Test maybe?) it might be able to play demos on the bad maps.

Wait a second... after I "fixed" the shortcut to target the newer version of CoX, I haven't tried it, so I bet it'd still bomb out... The reason it was working via the shortcut before is because they were loading the old version of CoX. Wow...

I used to have a *really* old version of CoX on this old computer (5 years old), but I got rid of it. D'oh!