Got a question about recordings....

Mr_Secial_Name

Do you need the Tribes engine to play the recordings that were recorded during gameplay?

My freind wants to know how someone plays the recordings without using the game...............in case this explains the question better.


We asked b/c there is a Modern Warfare 2 video on youtube (as well as T2) and he doesnt understand how the ".rec" is played back.

He says the the ".rec" file contains no video information...........i thought it did.

The | Policeman

ya i want to know that same thing! haha.. anyone know if you can??

AnarchyAo

www.fraps.com

You record your gameplay by using a program like Fraps. You won't be able to do it if you're on a low end PC because recording takes a lot of resources. Also, people usually like to watch videos when the graphics are maxxed (no one wants to see shitty graphics) so this is another reason why it's good to have a higher end PC when fraps'ing

After you fraps it can get complicated but basically you have to encode the video so that it's of a manageable size (fraps videos are typically 2.5gb in size per 2mins and 30sec). Once you encode it, then it's ready to be published on the web. YouTube degrades the quality on videos to save file space, though. So the video won't look as good on YouTube as it does on your PC.

Kryand

To answer your question, no a REC file does not contain any video information. I'm not sure exactly what it contains, but from my understanding it is basically a recording of all data sent to you from the server you were playing on when it was recorded. So, Tribes 2's engine is required to read and play back a REC file.

However, you can always do what AnarchyAo said, and record actual video of the REC file by running a separate program while Tribes 2 plays it back.

hurrr

Mr_Special_Name November 2009

He says the the ".rec" file contains no video information...........i thought it did.

It doesn't. .Rec and various other game "demo" formats just contain your game input + data sent by the game server (aka the input of every other player).

Eg stuff like "player A at location 250 30 80 now jetpacking in direction 357 50 100" "player B at location 150 30 80 firing disc in direction 256 100 30". These recorded instructions are then simply played back/executed by the game engine the same way they would be executed as if you were playing a game normally, thus reproducing the exact same events on-screen in the same way as they appeared when you were actually playing the game.

kamishizuka

Demo files are typically records of game input, like Kryand and hurrr said. I recall that the format used by Risen3D (one of the various Doom ports) actually stores the keystrokes with timing information instead of other game states, so if anything changes in timing (like graphics holdups), or if you change any of the key bindings, the demo gets screwed up. True story.

Fraps, of course, solves the problem of needing the game engine to replay a demo, as does any other screen recorder out there.

Dark Dragon DX

Shizuka November 2009

Demo files are typically records of game input, like Kryand and hurrr said. I recall that the format used by Risen3D (one of the various Doom ports) actually stores the keystrokes with timing information instead of other game states, so if anything changes in timing (like graphics holdups), or if you change any of the key bindings, the demo gets screwed up. True story.

Fraps, of course, solves the problem of needing the game engine to replay a demo, as does any other screen recorder out there.

Yes, Fraps and other programs alike record the onscreen changes in pixels. AVI, MP4, and other file types do not contain game data what so ever, just the movement of pixels (and audio).