can prboom save/load during demo recording?

I'm sorry if this is an obvious question, but I can't find the thread where i remember reading a post that's said you can save and load during a demo recording in prboom. Is this true? What version did this feature start in, and do you need to run it in a specific complevel to permit it?

I'm using an older version of prboom because I'm running into the same problems with my windows XP computer that emailking described in this post that doesn't appear to have a descriptive solution.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1111384

anyway I was just curious if I could do a long play of an entire megawad by saving and loading to erase all of my mistakes, and perhaps record over the course of a few days with breaks in between or something. Is that doable?

I'm trying to do a better job of keeping a backlog of my playing history, but its tricky considering a lot of the wads I like to play kill me a lot, and I don't wanna watch myself replaying the same map over and over again until I win.

Thanks!

It's definitely possible, I have a demo of gg.wad e3m1 on my other computer where I load a save a few times. I'm not exactly sure how it got recorded though. I think maybe I started recording a demo and used the save function at some point. Then quit the game, started it again without recording, loaded that save a few times and somehow it all got recorded or something... Not sure, I'll have to experiment with this.

Sounds cool. Are your demos extra vulnerable to desyncing by loading and saving a lot? And does it record the entire game play session? Like say you save right at the beginning of a level then get really far into it, then load the game. When the demo plays back, would it show the player playing up to that point, then the screen just wipes where he chose to load and the players at the beginning again? Or is that whole first part discarded and overwritten by the last loaded savegame?

Try recording a demo with default complevel (complevel -1).

I also could've sworn I watched demos that had saves/loads in them. But afaik you can't get ot the load menu while recording, says something about blah blah blah can't load while recording, or something.

As per archi's post maybe it's a complevel thing?

I encounter the same problem when I try to record playthrough of megawad. But i found a solution , you can record the playthrough of the first map, when you're done with the first map and spawn on the second map. Save your game and exit out. Next time if you want to continue recording your gameplay on the second map, use this command line parameter "-record demoname -loadgame n". demoname is self explanatory, n is the slot number of your save, keep in mind that the slot number start from 0, so if you save your game on the first slot it would be "-loadgame 0". Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

C:\Games\Doom\prboom-plus-2.5.1.3\prboom-plus.exe -iwad doom2 -file 99WAYS -record 99WAYS

This mean that I'll record a demo under the name of "99WAYS". When I'm done with map 01 and spawn on map 02, I saved the game on the first slot, exited out.

When I come back and want to continue recording on map 02 from my savegame, I used this:
C:\Games\Doom\prboom-plus-2.5.1.3\prboom-plus.exe -iwad doom2 -file 99WAYS -record 99WAYSM2 -loadgame 0

This mean that PrBoom will load up the savegame in slot 0 and start recording a demo of map 02 under the name of "99WAYSM2".
I used this method and it works well for me. I hope I answer your question, if i don't sorry!
And I think when you load a savegame during demo recording, the demo will only record up to the point when you load the savegame, which mean it won't record anything after you load the savegame. At least that's what happen on my laptop anyway.

Forgot to mention, this may work only in PrBoom+ (not original PrBoom).
Also, tried this by myself, works ok, but for loading you must select load game in menu, quickload button is not working.

In PrBoom+ using complevel 9, if you disable "overwrite demos" in the options, then trying to record a demo to a filename that exists already and has a save will start from the latest save. If there's no save, you get an error message. The save/reload is recorded in the demo, so it's not seamless. I don't know if any other complevels work but I don't think 2/3/4 do.

There's also the -recordfromto command-line option but I don't really know how it works.

-recordfromto is something I use exclusively once I figured it out. Basically you watch a demo from a point of your choice, press "join" key, and from this moment the demo is being recorded.

Say you play av, map14 and die after 3 minutes = 180 seconds.

prboom-plus -file av -complevel 2 -warp 14 -record demoname1

You think you did well and don't want to play from scratch, but a bit before you die

prboom-plus -file av -recordfromto demoname1 demoname2 -skipsec 170

The program starts playing back the demo starting from second 170. Once you press "join" key, it is responding to your forward/strafe/fire keys and once you finish, you have a demoname2.lmp file, which is a "cheated" demo of you having played 170 seconds plus a few seconds before pressing the "join" key, and then another segment once you joined the game.

Joining is much better than loading IMO, as it keeps all the data such as revenant missile targets.

You don't specify -complevel as the -complevel from the first segment is always used.

vdgg said:

-recordfromto.

whoooa!!! That sounds awesome! Finally I don't have to spend hours and hours just to add a demo of me completing a hard map to my archive. I hope it works on the version in using. I'll have to test it when I get home. If not I guess I'm going to have to figure out what's the deal with my PC.

so I have to ask, is this what people have been doing to record their incredible UV-Maxs? As in those demos on youtube I've been watching where people complete an entire 45-minute long high difficulty map from start to finish without dying? Those players that I'd been unsuspectingly envious of their skill, precision, consistency, and situational awareness are possibly wooing me with their possibly cheated/edited demos?

I was personally looking to do this for my own entertainment but now I'm beginning to think that some of my favorite players aren't quite as good as I thought as much as they may just be patient and persistent due to this newly discovered (to me) prboom feature. Something like this ought to be detectable and frowned upon right?

It falls under "TAS" and most people will mention that if they use the feature. Definitely frowned upon when they don't. No way to detect it that I'm aware of, it's all word of honor. For what it's worth, without being a top tier player myself I still feel experienced enough to be able to tell most non-TAS demos out there are indeed realistically doable without tools.

Using that feature makes it a TAS demo, which the recorder must label somewhere in the txt file. If there's no mention of that, then it's assumed it's a single segment. Any attempt to pass off a TAS demo as a non-TAS demo will result in public shaming.

I'm pretty sure that there are currently no cheaters who post TAS demos but claim that they are "real". I believe in everyone. :)

Yeah, the "joining" method pretty much rendered savegames obsolete as a TAS method. It essentially means you have a "save" at every tic of a demo.

40oz said:

so I have to ask, is this what people have been doing to record their incredible UV-Maxs? As in those demos on youtube ...

For Youtube demos posted only as videos, who knows? They could be anything. They could feature -turbo or god-knows-what hacks. If there is no lmp file referenced, there's no way of knowing. Sometimes people make videos of other people's TAS demos and forget to mention that they are TAS, or don't even understand that there is a difference.

But for lmps posted here, at Compet-N or DSDA (or videos generated from them), you can be pretty confident that they are legitimate.

You should always check the accompanying info, and understand the difference between demos that are recorded normally, ones recorded with TAS, and built demos. All three types are very welcome in this forum, provided they are clearly labelled.

Rest assured: the players you have been impressed by, really are that good. If a bad player makes surreptitious use of TAS features, then he may get a fast time, but the demo will still be ugly.

Phml said:

No way to detect it that I'm aware of, it's all word of honor.

There tend to be some tell-tale signs in the form of oddities in the lmp file, or in terms of PRNG manipulation.