Demo recording in Quake 4

[Mogul]

At this point, I suppose only rgoer could answer this question. I was talking to a guy from id about this, and last time I spoke with him (I suppose about four months ago) he said that he wasn't sure what system Raven had settled on.

Anyway, is Quake 4's demo recording improved over DOOM 3's? That is to say --

Do the demos have sound? (DOOM finally got that in 1.3, over half a year after release )

Are the files too ridiculously huge for esports websites like sk-gaming, fnatic.com, esreality, cached, cyberfight, etc, to host? DOOM 3's duels are about 2 gigs.

Do the guis actually make it into the demos?

Do the demos playback at the correct speed? (they're constantly fluctuating in DOOM 3, but mainly stay around the -33% speed mark most of the time)

If demos are not fixed as of 1.0 (or whatever) of Quake 4, is it being looked into for future updates?

[Oeloe]

Wow, i didn't know it was _that_ bad in D3. I knew only about the file size. This is interesting though. Such an important thing should be fixed in Q4.

[o'dium]

Demo's are good, but TBH, a thing of the past. With a game such as Doom 3/Quake 4, its hard enough for some people to play the game at a steady FPS. Why force somebody to watch a demo is horrible quality just to see it?

I've gotten used to avidemo's. They work a treat, look perfect, and ANYBODY can watch them, with or without the game.

Sure they take up more size than your standard demo, but they just work better.

Plus lets not forget id will always be lazy and will never add UT style demo settings.

[brisk]

Uh, demos are absolutely not old news. For competitive gaming, they are an absolute necessity.

[o'dium]

Uh, demos are absolutely not old news. For competitive gaming, they are an absolute necessity.

For competive gaming they are nice. But I like to record a demo, then avidemo it up so naybody can watch it, on any rig.

[^misantropia^]

For competive gaming they are nice. But I like to record a demo, then avidemo it up so naybody can watch it, on any rig.

Perhaps, but that doesn't make the demo a thing of the past. Just because you don't see the need, doesn't mean there isn't one.

[^misantropia^]

Wow, i didn't know it was _that_ bad in D3. I knew only about the file size. This is interesting though. Such an important thing should be fixed in Q4.

That was what arQon was ranting about in his D3 bash thread.

[o'dium]

For competive gaming they are nice. But I like to record a demo, then avidemo it up so naybody can watch it, on any rig.

Perhaps, but that doesn't make the demo a thing of the past. Just because you don't see the need, doesn't mean there isn't one.

Quite true. But I'm looking at it from Doom 3's demo. What would you rather have, a 60meg video that anybody can watch, or a 2gig demo that you can only watch on a high end PC that has doom 3?

If the dmeo's are back down to a few meg then fantastic. But if not...

[Foo]

Quite true. But I'm looking at it from Doom 3's demo. What would you rather have, a 60meg video that anybody can watch, or a 2gig demo that you can only watch on a high end PC that has doom 3?

If the dmeo's are back down to a few meg then fantastic. But if not...

Chances are good (with the improvements in netcode, hitboxes, and other improvements to facilitate online play) that the demo system will have been massively overhauled.

[o'dium]

Yeah, but they refuse to give offical word on it, still.

Same with coop, they haven't just come out and said "NO" yet either. They haven't said anything.

Although coop is miles harder to do in this than Doom 3, due to a few things that happen in the game (like when you get captured and turned into a strogg, you cant do that in coop).

But then again... They DID say Doom 3 was just to impossible for coop play... So maybe they just reworked the levels as extra missions for coop play, like xbox doom 3.

[Foo]

If I had to guess, I'd say the reason everyone is so tight lipped about the game is because of the collaboration between Raven and id. Posting info to the public becomes a lot more complicated when there are 2 companies IP involved.

Just a guess. The lack of information at this late stage is both frustrating and worrying.

[rgoer]

A lot of work went into demo recording in Quake 4. A new set of demo commands were added, recordNetDemo and stopNetDemo, and demos recorded via the netDemo system are much, much smaller than Doom 3 demos were. I can't remember the exact filesize:time ratio, but I feel pretty good saying it's something like 1MB:10mins or so. Doom 3's render-demo technology is also still there, if for some reason you prefer a ratio closer to 3GB:10mins or whatever it was.

Edit: those figures are off the top of my head, I'll update this with more accurate size info sometime later.

[o'dium]

1meg = 10mins?

Thats superb.

Care to go into why things are so much smaller now? Or is that still hush hush for the moment?

[Mogul]

That's good news. And there's sound/proper playback speed, etc?

[dzjepp]

Sounds pretty good. Without proper demo support, I don't think a game can survive on the competitive level. You can forget about sites like esreality reporting on the latest maches and stuff. If people can't watch demos, people won't discuss matches and that would just suck.

[Mogul]

Look at Painkiller. Great example of this. And of course, if DOOM 3 were played competitively, it'd be perhaps in an even worse situation.

[^misantropia^]

rgoer, is there a chance we're going to see MVDs or server demos in Q4?

[Eraser]

Quite true. But I'm looking at it from Doom 3's demo. What would you rather have, a 60meg video that anybody can watch, or a 2gig demo that you can only watch on a high end PC that has doom 3?

If the dmeo's are back down to a few meg then fantastic. But if not...

Sorry to say so, but that's a rather dumb statement IMO.
Ofcourse D3's demos are obsolete if you can avi demo it, but that doesn't mean it makes demos in general obsolete. When demos are implemented the way they should, like Q3, they're a dream. They're small and with a decent rig run at incredible framerates (and if one plays the game itself with a PC, it will be no problem watching demos with that same PC either. High FPS is even less important when watching a demo) and look as sharp as they could be (no low res video, compression artifacts, lower gfx settings because this "pro" player avi-demoed it at picmip 15, etc, etc).

Throw in things like multiple view demoes, or a step further, uFreeze's demo implementation (where you can start a recorded demo, connect to it as if it were a server, and actually float around the action in spectator mode, and does so at an extremely reasonable file size) and you have the ultimate way to spread recorded games. Sure, you require the game to view it, but unless your target audience really requires it to be in a easily accessible format, avi demos are inferior.

[MKJ]

q3's demo support was superb. the only thing it lacked was a free roaming mode like in serious sam.
hopefully Q4 will feature this

[Foo]

My demo wishlist for any FPS game nowadays has to be:
1. Reasonable file sizes
2. Uninterrupted gameplay when recording (remember, Q3 did not have this until OSP)
3. All inclusive demo capture (I.E. Server-Side demo capture) for free roaming playback
4. Demo to video capture capabilities within the game (UT2004 did it, so did the last trackmania game. It wasn't great but it worked).
5. Automatic naming of demos.
6. Default to recording every single match instead of on-demand.

[Eraser]

A tool like Keygrip for a modern day engine game would be awesome.

edit:
oh and while I think some project to do this for Q3 was going on some time ago, it would be really cool if demos could be generated in some non-proprietary format, like XML. Dunno what that would do with filesize and everything, but you could still stick to delta compression I think.

[^misantropia^]

In reply to Foo's wishlist:

7: A nice GUI to play, fast-forward and rewind demos.

[o'dium]

Quite true. But I'm looking at it from Doom 3's demo. What would you rather have, a 60meg video that anybody can watch, or a 2gig demo that you can only watch on a high end PC that has doom 3?

If the dmeo's are back down to a few meg then fantastic. But if not...

Sorry to say so, but that's a rather dumb statement IMO.
Ofcourse D3's demos are obsolete if you can avi demo it, but that doesn't mean it makes demos in general obsolete. When demos are implemented the way they should, like Q3, they're a dream. They're small and with a decent rig run at incredible framerates (and if one plays the game itself with a PC, it will be no problem watching demos with that same PC either. High FPS is even less important when watching a demo) and look as sharp as they could be (no low res video, compression artifacts, lower gfx settings because this "pro" player avi-demoed it at picmip 15, etc, etc).

Throw in things like multiple view demoes, or a step further, uFreeze's demo implementation (where you can start a recorded demo, connect to it as if it were a server, and actually float around the action in spectator mode, and does so at an extremely reasonable file size) and you have the ultimate way to spread recorded games. Sure, you require the game to view it, but unless your target audience really requires it to be in a easily accessible format, avi demos are inferior.

And what you said is VERY dumb. How many id games have bothered to put in good demo commands? Pause, rewind, skip, find player, view from X player etc etc... The truth is, id just dont have a clue what the community wants.

[Eraser]

And what you said is VERY dumb. How many id games have bothered to put in good demo commands? Pause, rewind, skip, find player, view from X player etc etc... The truth is, id just dont have a clue what the community wants.

That has nothing to do with the idea of demos in general. I bet it wouldn't be hard to create a Q3 mod which implements all of those ideas (assuming it supports MVD as well). That there's no interface doesn't mean there's something inherently wrong with the idea of in-game demos.

Additionally, the example of the Keygrip program shows the flexibility of demo recording. It's simply impossible to make a recam with static footage.

[o'dium]

Once again, your missing the point... Who the fuck should force somebody to go online and downloada MOD for something thats retardedly obvious in the first place?

Like all these people that say "dont worry, play OSP". WHY? If X is supposed to be that way, why cant id software see if and make it that way themselves?

Honestly? Instead they seem to be going backwards and putting in LESS things people want.

Epic really are becoming the new id software. EVERYTHING they do is added and then looked at by gamers and reviewers and all sorts and if it doesn't work, its gone. Doesn't matter if "they" like it, its gone. Because its the gamers, the public, that play it. Give them what they want.