Demo tutorial, Infected cup demos and more.

Hello hello, first time blogger here on l4driot so please be nice to me. +1 if you like candy.

First thing is first.  If you are looking for a highlight video you are in the wrong place.  I know a few others are working on one but I don't have an eta on it.  What I do have is a link to a few demos that have been posted by players from the infected cup.  These demos can be found here.
You will have to register to download them.  Also some of the file names have spaces in them.  You will need to rename them and remove the spaces/parenthesis in order to view them.
 
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Now that that's out of the way, I thought I would take some time to help those who are less acquainted with the source demo system.

In order to view any of the demos you will first need to extract them.  They are usually packaged as .rar so you may need something to extract them.  If you do I would recommend winrar.  When extracting it is best to place them in your left 4 dead directory.( CProgram Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead )

Now that your demo is extracted you are ready to check them out.  Load up L4D and open the console.  To view a demo just type " playdemo x " where x is the name of the demo (or the path).  For example "playdemo infectedcup1".  That will start your demo from the beginning and play to the end.  However most of these matches have a long at the beginning while teams get ready and it would sure be nice if we could skip this... but wait we can.  The easiest way to do this is by using the demoui.  Simply type demoui or demoui2  this will bring up either of the demo uis.



You can pick which one you like.  I like demoUI2 though.  Now you can now zoom through the !ready part at the beginning of each level at 300% speed or just skip ahead by using goto or clicking the tick bar.  Just a warning, the tick bar can sometimes be futzy, and I don't think it allows you to go backwards in the demo.   Notice you can also load from the demoui.  This is nice when viewing multiple replays back to back.

It is worth mentioning that if you would like to do a free look you can load up demoui and click drive.  Now all you need to do is hold down left click and you can use w,a,s,d and the mouse to control your camera.  This isnt a free look, you are not simply moving the camera, you are moving the character.  All the actions that would happen in fps mode still happen, so you still see gun shots, weapon switches.  It can be confusing to see what exactly the person you are spectating is doing.  The option is still there though.

For more info on demos and recording check out the valve demo wiki.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Demo_Recording_Tools


Thanks for reading.
Remember, even zombies have feelings.


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