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EarthQuake

Are TAS demos for source ports possible?

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I didn't find anything in the forums discussing this, so I thought I would bring it up. I have an upcoming wad in development, and the demand for recording demos on it are quite high. What I would like to know, is if it would be possible to create a tool-assisted demo for the source port it uses. The port in question is ZDaemon, but are there any tools that would allow me to modify or patch together demos written by ZDaemon?

Sorry, I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to demo recording in Doom, so I dunno if there is anything already available (especially something that would work with ZDaemon). I remain doubtful though, but if anyone has ideas how I could construct a demo, I would appreciate it.

Thanks. :)

By the way, slowing down the gameplay would probably not be a suitable method for this particular wad.

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ZDaemon uses a completely different demo format from Doom. If I am not mistaken it uses something more similar to Quake's demos, storing more data than just the player's movements.

The TAS tools used for Doom and Doom-based demos won't work with ZDaemon demos. I don't know if any of the TAS stuff for Quake can be adapted, though, as I'm not sure how close to DEMs ZDOs are in structure. I doubt it would be easy, if possible.

"Slow motion" is a method where the whole game is slowed down, so it's easier to act while recording. During playback a "slomo" demo is like normal play.

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Well, I figured such. Never hurt anyone to ask. :)

So, the only thing left to do is get ahold of the ZDaemon demo specs and write a program that can read, copy, cut, paste, patch together, and save a demo. I might be up to the challenge of doing such a thing, but ZDoom-based demos are pretty sizable do to all of the data stored, so I'm not sure how feasible it would be to write such a program.

Generally speaking, how do demos store instructions? I take it that only the players' keystrokes are stored and the game itself will responsible for triggering sector movements and processing enemy AI? Also, how does the demo store data on a basis of elapsed time? Like, does each instruction have a duration in tics, and what if two events occur on the same tic?

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. The demo specification would probably answer most of that kind of stuff, but I want to know what I'm getting myself into before I actually get myself into anything. :P

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Well, the demo specifications for DOOM wouldn't be of help, although the format may be similar to other demo specs. You should ask one of the ZDaemon devs (maybe Kilgore) for more info on the specs, and if they are indeed similar to the ones for another game (such as Quake), then your task would be easier.

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