In the last Source 101 I went over starting CS:Source and building an autoexec. In this installment I will cover recording and playback of demos. By watching demos of yourself and other players, you can learn from mistakes and recognize what worked in order to play better the next time.
There are two types of demos in Source – Point of View and SourceTV. POV demos are recording by you and show exactly what you did while playing. SrcTV demos are recording on the server and show everything that happened. You can view all the players and choose from first person, third person, or free look to view the demo.
Recording your demo
To start recording your demo, open your console and type record demoname. On the next line you should see Recording to demoname.dem…. Once you see that, it will record everything you see until you stop the demo. If the next line reads Cannot record demos while a smoke grenade is active. you must wait until there are no smoke grenades before recording.
While you are recording your demo, you may notice the gameplay is choppier than before. There are a few steps you can take to reduce this. The first is to reduce the settings you play at. Reducing your resolution and/or graphic settings will smooth the game out. Another way is to add a number after record demoname. record [incremental] This will tell the engine to record at that number of ticks per second. Instead of recording at the tickrate of the server (for example the sR servers run at 66 tic) it will record at the tic you enter. In the past there have been some problems reported with using this method and the demos have been corrupted. I have not heard of any problems recently, but be aware your demo might be damaged. Common values to use for this are 10 and 33.
When you want to stop recording your demo, open your console and type stop. The next line should read Completed demo, recording time xxxx.x, game frames xxxxx. This tells you how long the demo was as well as the number of frames in the demo. If you are recording and the map changes, the demo will automatically be stopped and a new demo named demoname_2.dem will be recorded when you rejoin the server. Demos are also stopped when you disconnect or quit the game. All the demos you have recorded can be found in C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/username/counter-strike source/cstrike.
Watching your demo
After you are done playing and want to watch your demos, disconnect from the server and go to the main menu. A demo is just a recording of what happened while playing and needs the game engine to be viewed. There is no stand alone player to watch your demos. There are two ways of loading your demos. You can either type playdemo demoname in console which will start the demo, or use the Demo UI. This can be accessed by typing demoui in console or by pressing Shift + F2.
Once the Demo UI is up, press the Load button to find the demo you wish to playback. Once the demo loads you can pause, stop, increase or decrease playback speed, or skip to a certain frame using the Demo UI. You can also access the Edit and Smoother tools.
When I playback my demos, I like to watch the entire thing, only pausing to write down certain times or frames to go back to later to get a better look. Once I finished running through it the first time, I go back to review the parts I noted earlier. This time I watch it at 100% speed a couple times, then slow it down to get a better picture of what happened. Sometimes I will pause the demo and use the Drive button to move around. When the Drive button is enabled, hold down left click and you can navigate using your movement keys and the mouse to look. This lets you see different angles to get a better view of what happened. It is also a great tool to use when you want to see how a nade bounced off a wall into a certain area.
I do this for every part of the demo I want to review, then go back and watch again at 100% speed to see if there was anything I missed. For me, reviewing demos has been a great tool to improve my game, as well as my teams strats. It has made me a smarter player by noticing where I get the most frags, how to throw a nade off walls and around corners to do the most damage, and many other things.
Where to find demos
There are many places you can find demos of other players, including the Downloads Section here. We do not have many demos up right now, but when the next season rolls around we will upload our demos for you to check out.
One of the best places to find great demos is at GotFrag. You can find demos from most of the CAL-Invite and CEVO-Professional league matches, as well as many Main and Open demos as well.
As always, if you would like to see something in the next Source 101 let me know and I will get it done.