Recording demos

[wesleyjohnson]

I am having some trouble with the recorded demos in the wad.
I having been working on demo-sync on DoomLegacy, and I know perfectly well that I will never get it to sync all the way through. There is no point on giving me grief on that. I do not even expect to keep sync through half-way. I would like to get half-way.

After having seen these demos ump-teem times, I feel the need to speak out for some improvement, on general principles, for all ports.

These demos are going to be played on a wide variety of ports, and there are some tactics that COULD be used to make them more robust.
These are my thoughts on how to get more robust demos:

1. Do not stop just within range of doing something, make it a sure thing.
2. High speed turns are iffy, and are a sure cause of sync failure as they exercise every possible failure mode at once.
3. If you are going to pickup a weapon, run it over completely so it is a sure thing that the playback will have that weapon.
4. If you are going to open a door, bump into the door first.
This will resync the demo.
5. Avoid getting touched by monsters. Erratic results afterwards.
6. Spinning about and firing will loose sync. It also looks like player panic. There is nothing that can be done to restore angle sync afterwards.
7. The demo exists to advertise the game, and for the new player to demonstrate how it is played,. If it is jerky, it is hard to watch and difficult to see how to play anything.
8. You can take deliberate actions to restore sync, such as walking into a corner, or other position restricting location.
9. Turn off auto-run, or hold down the key that restores normal run.
It makes it less jerky.
10. Use as few monsters as possible, because they will not sync either. They are not in position to be shot, and then they get in the way.

[Catoptromancy]

Record up some demos however you want. The ones that play automatically in the wad. You need prboom-plus with -complevel 9 or boom202. I like to keep map04 first so player can see how to grab red key. Remember for each official release you need to record a new set.

They will be committed, I just churned out the latest ones at the last second.

EDIT> I actually used -complevel 2, so it breaks a little compatibility. Only noticeable on last demo of ultimate freedoom where it desyncs terrible. -complevel 9 or boom202 is a must.

[wesleyjohnson]

Would not need a new demo for a level that did not change, if there was a sure way to track that. A demo that was submitted with a level update would be one way.

My attempts to use prboom (no plus) don't look that good.
Auto-run is jerky, and I cannot find a better way to disable it than
holding down the shift key.

The map04 trouble spots have been covered elsewhere. I noticed the shooting at the button, 3 or 4 times extra to make sure the viewer noticed the puffs. Then you ran out of ammo and had to throw your player at the imps... ^ ^ ^

I might record one, probably map09 or map13 of course.
But it would be deliberately done not to show any of the secrets or
give a way to solve the level.