I’m trying to make a short video of the mod I made for ET:QW that featured a bicycle, but the problem is, whenever you record anything with fraps or something that causes frame drops, it causes the controls to explode, messing up the vehicle completely.
Is there any way to record a demo without lag offline, or to do it in such a way that the actual vehicle can be demonstrated?
You could try using rendernetdemo instead. The game will convert the demo to images that you can use to create a video with something like virtualdub. There are a couple of downsides to this though, it’s time consuming and space consuming. I don’t want to get into an argument about what is better, it’s just an alternative you could try.
Dr. Funkenstein
No, I mean something that records demos in the same way you can record demos online, then play them back and extract the images, similar to how Q3A did it. renderNetDemo and similar commands would cause massive framerate decreases. : [
Luddens
RenderNetDemo can archieve any frame rate in any computer that run ETQW, because its do not work like Fraps. It can take, for example, 3 minutes to render the 30 frames of one second of demoplay. You got it?
The slower the computer is, the more time RenderNetDemo take to conclude.
I use Fraps on my videos, i like it very much. But since you if searching for a offline render, you can use RenderNetDemo. Remember it does not record game sounds.
but…to run rendernetdemo you need to have recorded a demo.
How do I record a demo while offline? If I use RecordRenderDemo it cuts my framerate in half, and I can’t really get that great an FPS, which screws up scripted vehicle physics.
RenderNetDemo <demoname>
[QUOTE=Luddens Desir;391044]but…to run rendernetdemo you need to have recorded a demo.
How do I record a demo while offline?[/QUOTE]
F12 still records the demo to a .ndm file while playing by yourself offline doesn’t it?
Luddens:
How to record a demo file: Default key is F12. If you want you can just open the console and type RecordNetDemo <demo name> the demo name is optional, if you leavi it out, the game will name it for you. Now the game is recording a demo. This should not affect your FPS in any way and it works wheter you are playing online or offline. You can stop recording by pressing the F12 again or typing StopNetDemo on your console. After stopping the demo the console will say something like stopped recording demo <demo name>
Playing back the demo: You can find the recorded demos from main menu on the lower right corner or you can type PlayNetDemo “demo_name” to your console. After you have recorded a demo you have to remember the demo name or you can figure it out from the timestamps the demos have. Like: “Hmm I cant remember what the demo was but I recorded it yesterday around 13 and the map was Island” and then you can go and find a map that has a timestamp around 13 yesterday. If there are many at that time you can check what map it starts to load.
Once you know the name of the demo you can do the rendering. Rendering a Demo on etqw is basicly pretty simple but really buggy and quite slow. So now you open your console and type RenderNetDemo <demo name> <fps> <start time in ms> <end time in ms>.
3.1: demo name: this you have to know/remember
3.2: fps: etqw demos work at most 30fps so it is limited to this. 30 works best but I you propably can put a lower value also. Higher is nono.
3.3: start time and end time: You can specify a time when the demo starts and ends the rendering. So if you want to record a specific time between lets say 23-25 seconds its 2300 and 25000. If you leave these blank the command will render the whole demo.
The RenderNetDemo will create screenshots (30 screenshots per 1 second) in to your demo folder. There will be many screenshots and the folder is going to be big. You also might want to get the screenshots in 1280x720 or 1980x1080. There is a command variable (cvar) for it but I cant recollect what it was. Maybe someone else here can or you can google for it.
After you have rendered the demos into screenshots you have to record the sounds from the demo aswell. You can just grab some mp3 recorder from internet and record them with that. Play the demo at 30fps and record. Don’t worry if there are silent bits in the beginning and the end. You have to sync it to the video later anyway so you can edit it easily at that phase.
Now you have a folder filled with screenshots and you have to combine them to a create a video with some program. I used virtualdubmod to do this. There are lot of tutorials how to do it and it is quite simple. You combine the sound to the video and mux them them together with some lossless codec. Now you have top notch quality raw video that you can edit! (This step is very vaguely explained but its off topic anyways)
Thats how it ideally goes. You are heading to a rocky road with RenderNetDemo and propably would get away with less trouble with fraps if your PC is good enough.
//youtu.be/cz3uCr8VpLg
Good luck to your efforts 
Are you starting offline games with the map command? Don’t do that, use spawnServer
When rendering a demo turn off framerate unlocking (com_unlockFPS 0) to stop the first person weapon model going crazy and remember to set the output resolution and antialiasing samples (com_aviDemoWidth, com_aviDemoHeight, com_aviDemoSamples).
Hell yes. Thank you. You saved me! : O
Edit:// Ugh, I have to /devmap first, and spawn vehicles I want to use, or else the server will crash. How obnoxious. On the other hand, this makes me wonder if you can test scripts over a network, which sounds friggin hilarious. //
A few more questions:
1: Has anyone ever played the game with 120hz? I jumped from the 30fps cap to 60, and it looks much better. Does it improve at 120, like basically every idtech3 game? I’ve had/played this game since release, and still don’t fully understand what the total implications of the 30fps cap were. Hahah.
2: What do you mean by the first person model going crazy? I remember, years ago I was playing back tons of demos and chopping them up, only to have some of the demos play back completely choppy without the camera taking in the mouse input at all.
That’s cutNetDemo making demos that playNetDemo doesn’t seem to like. renderNetDemo works fine on them though which seems odd. Anyway no this is where the weapon moves too much when the player moves, see video.
[QUOTE=Luddens Desir;391171]A few more questions:
1: Has anyone ever played the game with 120hz? I jumped from the 30fps cap to 60, and it looks much better. Does it improve at 120, like basically every idtech3 game? I’ve had/played this game since release, and still don’t fully understand what the total implications of the 30fps cap were. Hahah.[/Quote]
I always play @ 120Hz. So what’s the matter?
Why do you lock it 60 fps if you can unlock them? Is your PC that bad?
120Hz is not only better in QW but also in every other game. It runs way more smooth.
I also don’t get the 30fps cap.
Thanks Timestart, you’re the best!
[QUOTE=Rex;391207]I always play @ 120Hz. So what’s the matter?
Why do you lock it 60 fps if you can unlock them? Is your PC that bad?
120Hz is not only better in QW but also in every other game. It runs way more smooth.
I also don’t get the 30fps cap.[/QUOTE]
I mentioned hz cause I was talking about monitors!
I never uploaded an appropriate version of this actually working anywhere. Hahah!
[video=vimeo;35441347]http://vimeo.com/35441347[/video]
Thanks for the help everyone, jopjop and TS especially. 
AWESOME STUFF!! 