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Hi all

To all you master demorecorders. How can I make a demorecord containing all of my main account characters, aka the rally video that Leandro made?

What raw data is needed for this?

Thanks
Team Tios

Hi there,

The raw data is a demorecord file created for each character. Login as the character, type:
/demorecord <filename>
Then cycle through your costumes. Then type:
/demostop
Then quit to another toon and repeat, using a different <filename> each time (use the same and you'll overwrite your work!). Then at least you have all the raw data you need for any of those costumes in any future demo editing.

Now, to assemble the toons: Similar. Use
/demorecord <anotherfilename>
To record a bunch of people in a group. They could be NPCs for all you care. Then using a text editor, change the existing character's data to your costume file. There's a few guides on how to do this on the web. The one I learned from was Scuzz's. There's also a Wiki page that is more comprehensive. - the part in bold will take the most time, but will teach you the most too!

Zloth's Demoedit program might be useful for editing, I haven't figured it out. But that link also leads to his demo launcher, which I do find extremely easy to use. There's some instruction there too.

If you've not done programming the learning curve can be pretty steep, just keep asking questions. There's other recent threads on this too. And then there's the people who REALLY know what they're doing (not me) who can correct me and offer even better advice

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You sure can. Just be sure to copy in the costume lines (COSTUME, PARTSNAME), plus the location (POS), orientation(PYR), health (HP, HPMAX) and emote (MOV) of the toon you're adding. You can actually do this without needing a group at all, using an existing group was (for me) just a quicker way to learn.

Now, the location and orientation may be completely different (off-camera) when copying from another .cohdemo (demo record) file. So simply copy-paste the location of one of the existing toons instead, and move it (say) 3 meters. That is, add or subtract 3 from the first or third parameter of the "POS" (example below):


0 132 NEW Airhead
0 132 COSTUME 0 00575757 -5.967551 -0.074101 0 -0.537006 0.128799 -0.380599 -0.537006 0.000835 0 0.44 0.96 0.97 -0.03 0.96 0.97 -0.25 -0.61 0.97 -0.38 0.19 -0.71 -1 0.12 -1 -1 -1 -1 0.97 -1 -0.71
0 132 PARTSNAME V_MALE_Pants.GEO/GEO_Hips_Monstrous_01 !X_Hips_V_Animal_01_Mask !Hips_Blend 00575757 001f0b00
...
[some info removed, there's about 29 lines of PARTSNAME to a toon]
...
0 132 PARTSNAME none none none 00000000 00000000
0 132 PARTSNAME none none none 007eeef1 00ffffff 00000000 00000000 Costumes/AnimatedTails/AnimatedTail_Wolf02_Male.fx
0 132 MOV READY 0
0 132 POS 54.463161 -768 -636
0 132 PYR 0 1.406125 0
0 132 HP 1427.40
0 132 HPMAX 1427.40

The middle parameter is the height, changing that might put your toon in the floor Also make sure the object number ("132" above) is the same for all lines of a single character, and is unique to that character. This is better explained in the guides I linked. After some experimenting you'll find the best place to put the toon. Holler if you have any trouble playing back your demo.

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You might want to look at this thread, where I posted the exact tools I used for the latest version of the video. I didn't edit a single line from the final demo by hand, or messed with any numbers; I just "drew" an area in which the characters would be in game, tweaked it in a graphics editor, and a script sprinkle the characters all over the place.

It doesn't work so well if you want precise control of where your characters are, because it drops them randomly in the area, but it gives you a good starting point without having to worry about entity IDs or position numbers.