DemoEdit

DemoEdit is a native Half-Life 1 tool that allows several special effects that can be applied to recorded demos. Probably the most interesting one among those is the CAMPATH event that allows waypointed camera movement.

This is very differnt from the way it is done in CS 1.6 / Half-Life. There is a tutorial for Source users at the Valve Developers Wiki: HL2/CS: S Demo recording Tools Also there is a good German video tutorial.

Generally you can use DemoEdit in all Half-Life 1 Mods, but sadly the most important features (CAMPATHs, ...) only work in some of the mods:

CAMPATHs are instantly available in

• Counter-Strike 1.6
• Counter-Strike Condition Zero

Mods that need special tools to activate CAMPATHs

• Team Fortress Classic (see CAMPATHs in Team Fortress Classic, MDT Update + good news for TFC)

If your Mod is not listed above there are still several ways how to do recaming and other effects (see MIRV Demo Tool).

Mod that seem to have no DemoEdit CAMPATH support:

• Day Of Defeat
• Natural Selection

This is covered in the CAMPATH tutorial. Short description: Add -demoedit to the launchoptions of your mod.

This is covered in the CAMPATH tutorial. Note: to avoid stuttering / lagging CAMPATHs put cl_fixtimerate 0 into your userconfig.cfg (or your moviemaking.cfg)

Most problems regarding the CAMPATH events are covered in the comments of the tutorial page and most of them in the video itself already.

Here is a small checklist:

1. make sure you have autodirector enabled (use GUI or the spec_autodirector console command toggle)
2. make sure you are in FreeLook mode (use the GUI or the spec_mode 3 console command)
3. do not jump directly on the first CAMPATH event, instead jump some events or seconds before it and resume into the game before the first campath event is played
4. make sure that no other events are in between the CAMPATH events of a CAMPATH series
5. your campath might be too long (you can have up to 15 points in one path): you will have to split it into two or more campaths this is covered in the tutorial and in the tutorial page comments in post #8
6. some Half-Life mods i.e. Team Fortress Classic seem to have used an outdated Half-Life SDK Version and therefore need special tools or have no support for the CAMPATH events yet, see Requiptments above.

Type cl_fixtimerate 0 into your console (better: in your userconfig.cfg / MovieMaking.cfg), this seems to fix the problem.

You might want to have a look using the -demoedit launchoption and the viewdemo command at the cbble.dem that is included in the rar file (it contains all the changes that I have made to do the scences in the movie (you can save back the changes to the Demo you have made by simply using the Save button)).

Let Half-Life complete the loading of the HLTV demo then the FPS will get better and there will be a message in the console telling the loadign has completed: “Demo file completely loaded. Disconnected. Automatic connection retry” This might take one to two minutes or so.

The scene I’ll be talking about is located shortly after 23:30, so use the slider to jump to it. Make sure you have Autodirector and Freelookmode enabled: Schreenshot

there you will see a series of CAMPATHs: Screenshot: Schreenshot

You will notice that all CAMPATH have set their flags to 0 except the two that have set it to 1, since the whole scene has been splited into two campath series. Also notice that there are no other events between the CAMPATH events (I have removed them).

Now lets take a look at the split (selecting the camevents and using the modify button): Schreenshot

You will notice, that the time and camera position and angle (nearly) are the same. I have done this by jumping to the Campath (click on the event and use the GOTO button) where I needed to cut (since the scene would have to many waypoints otherwise (if this happens there is a console message)). Then I clicked add and selectect Campath event and clicked GetView and Gettime. This produced two Campath events that were the same but both had flags zero. So i selected the lower one of the two and made it‘s flag to 1 to tell Half-Life this would be a new campath. You can see all this on the 3rd screenshot.

This still results in one (but only one) wrong frame for me. (If you are quick you can notice that at the begining in the movie. when the scene is shown the second time I have cuten this single frame out of the movie).

It is also possible to track grenades, players, and other spawned objects with a static fixed camera using the CAMERA event.

The value to enter in the target field can be determined using the entities console command that lists all currently spawned entites. The most left number is the number to enter in the target field, so if you want to i.e. track a HE Greande then jump to a position in the demo where it is already and still spwaned, type entities in console and search a line that has s.th. like he_grenade.mdl in it. Players can be tracjed similar, you will sometimes need to do some experiments to find the correct number.

When the CAMERA event is placed, make sure that the entity (i.E. grenade) you want to track has been already spawned, otherwise it will not work.

Tracking entites (objects or players) is also supported by the MIRV Demo Tool.

Always let viewdemo complete the loading of the demo, before editing anything (there will be a notice in the console).

It is reported that DemoEdit is also included in some non-Steam versions of Counter-Strike. Depending on the version you might have to type “dem_edit” into the console to bring up a GUI. However we do not support using non-Steam versions.

You should always only use a copy of the original demo. When saving back the changes using the “SAVE” button it may occur, that the models of the players are mixed up. Currently only the following workarounds are known:

Either a) type cl_minmodels 1 into your console. This will cause that each team only has one player model (Ts Leet-Crew, CTs GIGN). However the models seem to be assigned correctly then.

or b) switch the models manually by extracting them from the GCFs (using i.e. GCFScape) and renaming them. It is not known how well this method works, but it could allow the usage of all the models in a demo

To get CAMPATH working like it does in CS 1.6 just follow these steps:

1. Download the MIRV Demo Tool v0.43, extract it, start the “Mirv Demo Tool.exe” (and do not join any (VAC) servers heh)
2. Start TFC from Steam (with -demoedit in the launchoptions). If everything went well then you should see a message from MIRV in the game‘s console.
3. Type mirv_demoedit_fix tfc into your console (and press ENTER or Submit). This will tell MIRV to adjust everything needed in order to get Valve‘s DemoEdit CAMPATH working for TFC.
4. always make sure that you have AutoDirector enabled (spec_autodirector 1) and that you are in FreeLook mode (spec_mode 3). That was already important for CS but it is very important for TFC now.

In case you are not familiar with DemoEdit / CAMPATH you can watch the tutorial video, because it will work in the same way now for TFC.

You might also want to check the FAQ and tricks at the specific events.

The Field Of View can be set using the FOV field present i.e. in the CAMEVENT and CAMERA events.

Here is a quick chart by showing the usable(?) FOV values within the hl engine (OpenGL mode): FOV chart by mole2k

This one is very easy: Just change the third value of a campaths‘s or camera‘s “View Angle” field (which is 0.0 by defualt and measured in degrees) like it is shown in this screenshot.

If there are quesitions left or you want to discuss anything then chek out this fourm thread, which has several interesting details.