Recording demos

What are demo recordings?

Demo recording or so-called "demorec" is a recording of a game from 1st person view; to put it simply — a video of a game from eyes of the recorder. A demo recording done by a player in Deus Ex could be seen by other player who has Deus Ex and all the mods that were used during the recording (e.g., if it's a DXSG server, the viewer should have DXSG files and maps).

A file with a demo recording (it has .dem extenstion and is located in DeusEx/System folder) contains only information about events that happened during the game, not the frames (pictures) themselves, and what a viewer sees is imitated by Deus Ex each time demo is played. Unlike video, you may enable a score board whenever you want, or type "ping" to see ping the recorder had, just like you would do in normal game. Demo recordings are usually hundred of times smaller than video files. An uncompressed video file in .avi format of 20 minutes of gameplay would take more than 2 GBs of diskspace, while a demorec would only need 6-9 MBs (depending on amount of players).

Demo recordings are perfect way to learn how do others play the game and significantly improve one's skills. They are also used during the clanwars for later examination of strategies or just keeping track of scores, which may suddenly nullify due to technical problems. There are no ways to edit demo recordings yet, thus they may be used as an alibi for pleading not guilty in cheating.

You will not be able to play or record demorecs if you didn't patch your Deus Ex beforehand. A patch is just a single file which you should place to your DeusEx/System folder (the patch is also called "Engine.dll fix") — you may download it here (0.5 MB).

Where to get them from

You may try downloading files from our File Archive or ask other players to send them to you. Many players do record their games from time to time, but rare ones share demos publicly (unlike  for example, [3]Messiah, who's posted over 150 MBs of demorecs, which you may find in our Archive in folder named "Messiah" or here). 

Viewing

You have to patch your Deus Ex with "Engine.dll fix" (see link and description above) beforehand.

1. Place a demo recording, e.g., myfirstdemorec.dem, to DeusEx/System directory.
2. Open Deus Ex. Press "T" and in the left bottom corner of your screen erase "Say".
3. Type (myfirstdemorec is an example — replace it with the name of your recording) demoplay myfirstdemorec
   
4. To stop watching, type stopdemo

Note:

• If demo runs too fast, add ?timebased to the demoplay command, i.e.:
  demoplay myfirstdemorec?timebased
• As mentioned above, you will need all the files that were used on the server, e.g. maps, textures, etc; otherwise Deus Ex will crash.
• Some demo recordings are "broken" and they don't work at all — Deus Ex always crashes.
• Sometimes Deus Ex crashes a few times when starting playing a demo, but eventually it will play it (just try several times).
• Sometimes Deus Ex crashes when demos are played one after another. To avoid this, after stopping watching demo, go to "Credits" and return back. This helps in most cases, but not in all.
• You will watch it with ugly black translucent user interface. Unfortunately, there is no solution. If you want to exit game type either stopdemo and then go to the menu, or just type exit.
• Your screen will shiver when the person, who records it, crouches. No solution to this either.
• If the crosshair shiver, it doesn't mean that the person whom you watch, was shivering. It's just another unfixed problem.
• Augmentations like vision may not work correctly. E.g. vision may be enabled, but the viewer of a recording won't see anything and it may seem that the player aims at invisible opponents.
  
• You will need to press "Esc" manually after a person was killed (to get rid of red message) and after hacking computers.

You may see a score board, use "ping", "stat net"  and other commands, just like in normal game. You will not see how the player types (just their messages) and you will not see

Recording

Recording is easier. While in game, type

demorec myfirstdemorec

where myfirstdemorec is the name of your recording. To stop demo recording type:

demostop

After recording you'll find a new file in your DeusEx/System folder.

Note:

• When sharing it:
• Don't forget to compress it into .zip or .rar archive.
• Don't forget to include (at least in a readme text file) what server it was played on and what mods/maps the recording requires.
• Don't forget that its boring to watch a recording with active chat from your party :-)

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