Improve Demo Player

[Centurion]

Give it:

* Progress bar: Playing time/Total time. etc...
* When you change the speed and you have selected free cam then you can't move the camera faster than the playing speed. It means that you cannot follow the shots.
* Possibility to increase playing speed/ free camera/ no text/ extract ingame.

Hmm... Maybe I forgot something... Idk

[L[0ne]R]

Yeah. Would be nice to have an ability to crop demos too.
I use autodemo, and sometimes I have to watch the demo for 5 minutes just to see the funny part at the very end of it. Sure you can fast-forward, but still, would be nice to have some basic crop feature.
Or at least an ability to jump to a certain point of the demo by clicking on the progress bar.

[homerofgods]

Better player = better videos. We have greate need for a better player.

[jrgp]

Especially a progress bar, if not a textual counter saying how far in to the demo you're in and how much is left. Like 30.5/50 secs. 

[homerofgods]

Who made the current demo player and who can make a new one?

[Dusty]

The current player (Soldat) was made by MM.

[homerofgods]

Esdee player WITH sorce, someone work on this? http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=9569.0

[Dusty]

No. Esdee just runs Soldat with specific parameters, which you can find from the demo directory. It has nothing to do with playing the demos.

[jrgp]

No. Esdee just runs Soldat with specific parameters, which you can find from the demo directory. It has nothing to do with playing the demos.

All of the "demo" players are just frontend's to Soldat's CLI params. The only program that can actually play the demos is Soldat since all the .sdm files are is a log of the netcode.

[scarface09]

Well, that should be another thing added to the "Official Suggestions Sticky". Although I doubt it will be ever fixed/made better. Also, I was watching some of my old demos and alot of them either lag, "demo stops", which it stops altogether and the players just run into walls or either get a redirect error in the middle of the demo. It's ultra annoying and I very much think it's a bug so I shall point out.

[Centurion]

When it comes to making a movie then you can get so angry. I was planning to make a movie but I failed because it was so difficult to get those right moments from the demo. Finally I gave up and deleted everything I managed to produce.

[jrgp]

When it comes to making a movie then you can get so angry. I was planning to make a movie but I failed because it was so difficult to get those right moments from the demo. Finally I gave up and deleted everything I managed to produce.

yeah, instead you need to use traps, or something similar to record the game while you're actually playing, which may slow you down / piss off BE / and potentially waste disk space. And even if you manage to record yor demo, the only way to convert the sdm file to video is to have soldat extract individual frame to a BMP image which takes forever and uses a f**kton of disk space and leaves you with no audio.

IMHO: the demo functionality is the only major part of soldat that needs to be completely reworked.

[homerofgods]

I have the current Diamond Demo Player v1.1 in mind when I point out the following issues:

- Integrate demo player
[so you won't have to open/close soldat to watch a demo]

- Demos from previous versions are incompatible with the new one.
[from the changelog of 1.4.1]

- Hard to maintain a steady picture in freecam.
[the screen is affected by explotions and gunshots]

- Hard to keep track of Demos.
[add more demo file information(date and time, size, length, and what version it's from)

- Deleting and selecting demos.
[can't select multipler demos in player]
[doubleclick a demo in player should open it]
[pressing delete key on keyboard should delete selected demo]
[display a warning when deleting demos]

- Text and kill messages.
[chat text shoud not be shown over gosteks when 'no text' is on]
[add option to turn on/off kill messages, wich are not shown in demos(you killed.., doubblekill, Blue Flag returned etc..)]

- Not able to zoom.
[zooming would be a cool feature]

- No Invisible players in realistic demos.
[option, or an in-demo toggle]
[ http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=29043.0 ]

- No o File association with .sdm files.
[doubleclicking a demo should open it]
[see Mr.'s SDM Player as an example:
http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=30135.0]

- Limited adjustable speed ingame.
[only able to change to 300% speed ingame (F8]
[be able to play demos in reverse speed(backwards)]

- Progress bar
[progress bar with playing time/Total time]
[so you can jump to any point in the demo]

Temp
-the date the demo was taken could also be it's name
- Choosable skin by VirtualTT
- Optional close when soldat opens.
- Demo player has to be in your soldat folder to read the demos.
- Optionally record directly to mpg/wma/mkv.
- A site/place to upload (share) Demos
- restore points in case you have lost demos
- intros can't be deleted

PLEASE COMMENT

[jrgp]

You've gotta realize that the features the diamond demo player lacks is because soldat does not support them at all, not because bja didn't feel like implementing them.

[homerofgods]

You've gotta realize that the features the diamond demo player lacks is because soldat does not support them at all, not because bja didn't feel like implementing them.

I wouldn't know what can and can't be done, so you tell me.

[Dusty]

Common sense!

[homerofgods]

Common sense!

Thanks for contributing.
Since I don't know anything about programming, why don't you tell me what of those features would be doable?

[Dusty]

I don't know a thing about coding either, but somehow I managed to think about it myself.

[homerofgods]

I don't know a thing about coding either, but somehow I managed to think about it myself.

care to share it?

[Dusty]

I mean I managed to realize that "demo players" have nothing to do with the actual demos.

The things you mentioned are doable, but not in Soldat.