Does anyone, such as Codewalker, Leandro or Evangel who have done work with tooling for CoH, have a guide listing all known .cohdemo commands and their purpose?
I imagine when CoH devs put together that capabilty, they exposed a small subset of the overall game client driver interface via the scripted file commands. Given its purpose as a simple recorder, I am sure they didn't expose much more than simple model definition, placement and movement scripting but just in case they have more exposed I thought I'd ask (after all, if everything were publicly exposed including command streaming instead of just static file read-in you could make the client look like a running game with enough knowledge of the available commands).
Since demorecord by design only reads its input up front once then drives the scene, it tends to include only commands that are declaratively useful by their nature. Not commands which would be more useful in a stream of updates like the real client issues. So I doubt they exposed the commands to, say, set model stances and move them around at-will (like making your character model fly under your WASD control, or camera viewport and pitch controls).
I can look at any of my .cohdemo files and glean what they each have in them, but I was more interested in a A to Z glossary of what can be in them, to fabricate fancier demos on my own.
Either a dev-supplied list, or one figured out from in-game text-matching strings perhaps.
Not sure if you've seen this already: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Demo_Recording (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Demo_Recording)
Glad I looked at that again.
The demo recording page is great for usability, but doesn't have the command vocabulary for what can be in the file.
Then I noticed the Demo Editing link at the bottom of that page which I didn't notice before, just what I wanted. Thanks!
I found what I needed for now.
Zloth's current CoH Codex (http://home.roadrunner.com/~scuzzbopper) last updated in late 2009 has a lot of great demo file format details, model/map/power/FX/MOV names, model visuals and links to other useful guides and tidbits.
These old Zloth's Demo Editor (including source code) (http://web.archive.org/web/20080704113251/http://home.kc.rr.com/dasloth/CoH/Demos/DemoEdit.htm) and Demo Launcher (http://web.archive.org/web/20080827182245/http://home.kc.rr.com/dasloth/CoH/Demos/DemoLaunch.htm) downloads still function, although they may be out-of-date operationally but may be useful to look at (unless there is a more recent update to them?).
The only info I haven't pinned down yet is around EntRagdoll use.
Quote from: redgian on November 27, 2012, 08:26:11 AM
Btw, does anyone have an archive of known FX commands which used to be on the City of Heroes Codex (http://home.twcny.rr.com/scuzzbopper/coh/fx.html), or of the EntRagdoll details like this old official forum post that is gone (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=11686609). Understanding the details behind these two commands would go a long way to more refined demos, such as the string names of all the powers in all the powersets.
The FXs and MOVs can be derived from the client files. I have some ways of doing this, but have some other high priority things going on at the moment. I did recently add a list of all MOVs that the player model is capable of using (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Demo_Editing/List_of_MOVs#Valid_MOVs_for_the_player_skeleton) to the wiki. Mapping powers to FX is doable as well; it's just a matter of looking up the power. The good news is that it's quite possible to get them even post-shutdown.
It's been a loooong time since I've looked at Ragdoll. Hopefully one of the people who was involved in that discussion remembers the details, or finds themselves with lots of free time to look at it again.
QuoteAs I guessed, apart from the provided ways to declare what simple time-based processing a command may need (like FX or DYNARRAY), there is no public way to stream commands to the client.
I think the DYNGROUPS command manipulates group visibility, and it's the only occurrence of DYNARRAY that I see. I don't know if anyone has looked in depth at it. At first glance it looks like the list might correspond to geometry groups in the map file that have a certain property set, either Health or WarWall look like contenders. Probably Health since IIRC the same thing is used to control visibility of the ski slopes in pocket D, and nothing there has a WarWall property.
QuoteUnless someone knows how to make a model fly or superjump along a set of coordinates, preferably coordinates you don't have to know all of up front; or how to affect camera viewport on-the-fly.
That would be something more along the lines of what Leandro's scripts can do. There's no demo commands to do that simply; all the coordinates have to be stated explicitly. However with some math, moves between a start and end position can be interpolated to make a smooth movement.
Thank you for this thread. I am very interested in this as well, and was going to post something like it if I hadn't found this one.
As we ran up on the end of days, I wanted to achieve in-game goals and get playtime in. My grand plan was to use the demo editing capabilities we have to make custom scenes for my characters once the game had shut down.
Now its that time, and I need to dive into making those demos, so now I need moar knowledge!@#
(I know the basics of demo recording, now I'm looking for things like libraries of maps, emotes, etc. The wiki pages above are great.)
Quote from: UberGuy on December 02, 2012, 07:49:46 PM
Thank you for this thread. I am very interested in this as well, and was going to post something like it if I hadn't found this one.
As we ran up on the end of days, I wanted to achieve in-game goals and get playtime in. My grand plan was to use the demo editing capabilities we have to make custom scenes for my characters once the game had shut down.
Now its that time, and I need to dive into making those demos, so now I need moar knowledge!@#
(I know the basics of demo recording, now I'm looking for things like libraries of maps, emotes, etc. The wiki pages above are great.)
You have a few options. http://home.roadrunner.com/~scuzzbopper/
The above site for instance, though outdated, is very useful.
Disregarding scuzzbopper, you can either get lists from the wiki, posts here, or dive through the .pigg archives yourself to find internal map names, etc.
Hmm ... Maybe Titan Network could open up a new sub-site dedicated to demo recording and machinma? Offering a place to download client demos, either real recorded ones or machinma, or watch videos of them on-site?
Like take the information scuzzbopper has, and update it so that it includes all of the content we've had since then, both live and in the Issue That Never Was on the beta server.
Quote from: Little David on December 02, 2012, 08:12:32 PM
Hmm ... Maybe Titan Network could open up a new sub-site dedicated to demo recording and machinma? Offering a place to download client demos, either real recorded ones or machinma, or watch videos of them on-site?
Like take the information scuzzbopper has, and update it so that it includes all of the content we've had since then, both live and in the Issue That Never Was on the beta server.
How's this for a start?
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s11.postimage.org%2Fhwqqbz9g1%2FGR_Model_Names.png)
A thousand times yes.
I'm game for contributing to that.
One of the tricky bits is going to be getting a good list of reference coordinates. Should be fun. :)
Quote from: Arachnion on December 02, 2012, 08:17:48 PM
How's this for a start?
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s11.postimage.org%2Fhwqqbz9g1%2FGR_Model_Names.png)
I recorded quick demos of all the zones I could get to in the recent past, just so I could sift through them for NPCs, map names, and so on. I also grabbed a couple of interesting missions, like the "space" map and the "press conference" setup at the end of SSA1.7.
Who wants it?
Quote from: mkhall on December 03, 2012, 04:23:54 AM
I recorded quick demos of all the zones I could get to in the recent past, just so I could sift through them for NPCs, map names, and so on. I also grabbed a couple of interesting missions, like the "space" map and the "press conference" setup at the end of SSA1.7.
Who wants it?
Sure, why not.
Post em friend.
There's a space map listed here in this thread http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7238.msg88685.html#msg88685
EDIT: Thought I had the press conference, but it was a black map. Will keep looking.... eh. I found it in the files, but the same map name... maps/Missions/Unique/SignatureStoryArcs/OneWillDie_Story_1/Issue7/Vanguard_Base_Press_Conference.txt
:D