Will demo playback still work?
By
Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2012-10-11 11:30 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
By all accounts, yes. The "no sound" bug that showed up at some point is a big disappointment though.
Sound bug i can live with, i just gotta figure out how to extra data from the xml and convert it to a demo playable character, then i would be damn happy already.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
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I'm thinking that in the future, someone will find a way to fix that sound glitch.
Hopefully 
Since i have a few global locked characters (i dont think u can unlock them anymore, i got no globals left anymore), i cant use Sentinel+ on, but i want to keep those 
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
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You can unlock those on Beta. I thought my 2 Time characters(a 50 and a 39) were lost forever. Then I discovered Beta server.
As a test, I ran demo playbacks while my internet service was down. It is not an issue.
TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE: Apart from the sound bug, the ONLY thing you cannot do via demo playback is show time passing (the sun/moon moving across the sky). If you need a shot like the sun rising or setting, you must get in-game and actually FRAPS it. David confirmed this one for me a while back (the official CoH videographer at Paragon), so unless this has changed recently, that's a no-go.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
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378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
To be absolutely certain, I tested demo playback on a computer with no network connection. Works fine.
There's an incredibly weird way to partially fix the sound bug. You could play your demo back on an old copy of the game. The older copies still have working sound, but the animations will likely be all messed up because those have changed more radically over time.
Record your demo once with the old client, once with the latest client, and then take the sound from one and the video from the other. It might work, to some degree.
Since there are older copies of the game client floating around that have working demo sound, I'm guessing eventually someone's going to figure out how to patch the latest client to play sound in demos. But its not a project I'm personally working on.
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Knowning demo playback will work, i'm already happy with that 
its most probably just to create a screenshot for my characters, not really the sound.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
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Quote:
Maybe, but often sounds are even better at triggering memories than images.
|
Originally Posted by SinergyX_EU
Knowning demo playback will work, i'm already happy with that
its most probably just to create a screenshot for my characters, not really the sound. |
There's also another option.
The Titan site hosts most of the files in .OGG format.
If you're editing the vids and not doing raw dumps of video, you can create audio tracks and sub in the sound files. Granted, doing anything beyond neighborhood music would get unwieldy but...
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Quote:
That's basically what we ended up doing when we did video capture using demorecord.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
There's also another option.
The Titan site hosts most of the files in .OGG format. If you're editing the vids and not doing raw dumps of video, you can create audio tracks and sub in the sound files. Granted, doing anything beyond neighborhood music would get unwieldy but... |
It was okay, but definitely not the ideal process.
-Hosun "Black Pebble" Lee
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Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
There's also another option.
The Titan site hosts most of the files in .OGG format. If you're editing the vids and not doing raw dumps of video, you can create audio tracks and sub in the sound files. Granted, doing anything beyond neighborhood music would get unwieldy but... |
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Black Pebble
That's basically what we ended up doing when we did video capture using demorecord.
It was okay, but definitely not the ideal process. |
However... you COULD (while the servers are up) turn on FRAPS, go into the game, and while you're demorecording, use FRAPS to capture the sound. (Just be sure to turn the music all the way down.)
Said possibility ALSO blows whales, but hey, what can you do?
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
Quote:
HUGE pain to manually synching all the sounds to the video.
|
Originally Posted by Black Pebble
That's basically what we ended up doing when we did video capture using demorecord.
It was okay, but definitely not the ideal process. |
Quote:
That's why we eventually stopped using it for videos. It let us pull off cool stuff, but the audio syncing was a time drain on the dev side that we couldn't afford.
|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
HUGE pain to manually synching all the sounds to the video.
|
-Hosun "Black Pebble" Lee
Help me beat Dr. Aeon! Follow me on Twitter.
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Quote:
I suppose the observation that fixing the sound and not breaking it anymore would have been the most efficient process overall is somewhat moot.
|
Originally Posted by Black Pebble
That's why we eventually stopped using it for videos. It let us pull off cool stuff, but the audio syncing was a time drain on the dev side that we couldn't afford.
|
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Quote:
Nobody ever told me it was a bug. Everyone told me it was WAI. I doubt there was anyone on the dev team who'd remember otherwise. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I suppose the observation that fixing the sound and not breaking it anymore would have been the most efficient process overall is somewhat moot.
|
Don't forget that I was the one who ended up teaching folks how to use demorecord eventually. I suppose that was ignorance feeding ignorance.
Hmmmm....hey maybe Matt is wrong. History CAN totally be rewritten in 20 years.
-Hosun "Black Pebble" Lee
Help me beat Dr. Aeon! Follow me on Twitter.
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Quote:
I think my Issue 11 client still plays sound correctly. Did you notice Television and the other programmers tattooing source code notes to their arms and keeping polaroids of the producers with felt-pen markings?
|
Originally Posted by Black Pebble
Nobody ever told me it was a bug. Everyone told me it was WAI. I doubt there was anyone on the dev team who'd remember otherwise.
Don't forget that I was the one who ended up teaching folks how to use demorecord eventually. I suppose that was ignorance feeding ignorance. Hmmmm....hey maybe Matt is wrong. History CAN totally be rewritten in 20 years. |
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In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
Quote:
Why didn't you just ask David Lewis? I know he was still involved with demorecording and whatnot for COH through at least I-17, because I was helping him troubleshoot demorecord/Ultra Mode issues during the beta. (That was where we discovered that under certain circumstances, Cohbeta's graphics settings were causing overwrites or corruptions of the main game's registry settings. Fun, fun, fun.)|
Originally Posted by Black Pebble
Nobody ever told me it was a bug. Everyone told me it was WAI. I doubt there was anyone on the dev team who'd remember otherwise.
Don't forget that I was the one who ended up teaching folks how to use demorecord eventually. I suppose that was ignorance feeding ignorance. Hmmmm....hey maybe Matt is wrong. History CAN totally be rewritten in 20 years. |
He was always my go-to guy for demoediting and whatnot...
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
Quote:
Dave was the guy who taught me how to use demorecord. We worked hand in hand on every asset.|
Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
Why didn't you just ask David Lewis?
|
Idk, maybe he forgot. Or it's equally likely he tried to get it fixed, but there were good reasons for leaving it as is.
-Hosun "Black Pebble" Lee
Help me beat Dr. Aeon! Follow me on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/hosunl
Yeah, David was a good guy. VERY patient with explaining a bunch of demorecord tricks to me back when I was first starting out.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
Related question: I'm worried about losing my hd and my install in the future, can I reinstall the exe to play back demos without the launcher?
Quote:
You can copy the entire City of Heroes directory under Program Files (or Program Files (x86) if you are on a 32-bit OS) to another computer and it will work. Your graphics settings and things like that will be hosed because they are stored in the registry but those are not that difficult to restore. The game will fill in any missing regkey with defaults, and those can then be edited.
|
Originally Posted by _Klaw_
Related question: I'm worried about losing my hd and my install in the future, can I reinstall the exe to play back demos without the launcher?
|
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
Excellent. Good to know thankyou Arcanavillearcanaville.
As i'm putting my final characters to xml with the Sentinel tool, i was just wondering,
What if i made demo's now, will i be able to play them back when the servers go black? Afaik the client doenst load any data from the server during playing, would i be able to immortalise all my characters in a demoshot?
Not that i got any clue how demo editing still work, but at least i could recreate some motions with my characters (like all of them waving goodbye or something).
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!