A demo is Call of Duty video - Recording a CoD demo

_{Written by jockyitch}

This is a quickie primer for those who have never before recorded a "demo" in CoD:WW. For the CoD2 and CoD4 players... I know this is old hat stuff... so move along, nothing new to see.

What is a demo?

A demo is Call of Duty video; however, instead of being recorded by some type of frame capture software like Fraps, the game itself saves the gamestate to a file and then plays it back to you through the game itself. The result is a massive saving in file size.

A 2 Mb demo file could translate into Gigabytes if it was saved as a .avi for example.

Why record a demo?

Demos come in handy if you are playing competitively. Many tournaments force players to hand in demos for scrutiny. For example, cheats like wall-hacks can sometimes be detected using demos.

Why watch a demo?

Watching yourself play - especially if you can *SLOW* the action down is a great way to spot mistakes in your game. Watching demos by better players is a great way to *LEARN* the game.

Recording a demo

Bring up the console (~) in game.

Type /record followed by the name of the filename you want to record the demo to:

e.g.

/record xyz1

For XP users your demo will be found here:

C:Documents and Settings<computername>Local SettingsApplication Data
ActivisionCoDWaWplayersdemosxyz1.dm_6

Type /stoprecord if you want to stop the demo.

You can then /record another demo - or overwrite the file you just stopped.

Tool for easy playing demos of game Call of Duty: World at War

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Playing back a demo

Typing /demo will give you a list of demos you have just recorded.

/demo xyz1 will play back the xyz1 demo.

Making movies

Making frag movies is a time-honored tradition in FPS gaming and you can now expect many of them to come out with the arrival of /record.

Now, you might say, hey..wait up, I've recorded vids for the past 3 months without /record, so why should I use it?

Well /record makes nearly no difference to your gameplay (FPS stays rock solid on most machines). Try that when running screen capture software. Most will be lucky to get 30 fps when doing so - trying making a frag vid with 30 fps!

Once you have done your pwning, you can - at your leisure - play back the demo file and run a screen capture program. For us gamers, the best such program currently on the market is Fraps (for the money). Making a vid with fraps is as easy as hitting a Function key while your demo is playing.

It has a tendency to go out of sync with the sound sometimes (I've found that especially with my quad core), but it's a dynamite program.

Binds

Back in CoD4, I used to use Cybopat's CoD4 Player - a great little program that allowed you to watch demos and modify the speed of playback - which can really be valuable if you want to study your play. In CoD:WW you do not need third party programs (you really didn't need them in CoD4 either - in fact, some nefarious ones even came with keyloggers!). Just bind a few commands together and demo playback is sooooo much cooler.

I) Many of these binds require that you get into "developer mode".

a) Open up CoD:WW and launch /devmap. You can do the latter as follows:

/devmap mp_castle

the map name is unimportant, it just gets you into /devmap mode.

b) Escape and "End Game". This now quits the game you just launched.

c) Now play the demo you want to watch; for example: /demo xyz1

II) You can either type these into the console or bind them into your player configuration file (config_mp.cfg).

NOTE: though you can speed up or slow down the action, you cannot reverse it. There is no way to reverse the demo. So you will have to be somewhat careful when you decide to start recording your vid.

Simple binds can clean up your screen

bind F5 "toggle cg_chattime 0 12000" <----- removes chat

bind F6 "toggle hud_enable 0 1" <----- removes hud display

These keypad binds are perfect for directing the speed of the action:

bind KP_HOME "toggle cg_thirdpersonangle 350 340 330 320 310 300 290
280 270 260 250 240 230 220 210 200 190 180 170 160 150 140 130 120
110 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0"

This will cycle CCW around the player in third person mode

bind KP_UPARROW "timescale 5.0"

This is fast forward mode (five times speed)

bind KP_LEFTARROW "timescale 0.5"

Slow (Half speed)

bind KP_5 "timescale 1"

Normal speed

bind KP_RIGHTARROW "timescale 2.0"

Fast mode (double speed)

bind KP_END "toggle cg_thirdpersonangle 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 230 240 250 260 270 280
290 300 310 320 330 340 350"