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First of all let me introduce myself.. My name is Geva Kipper and I’m a young Israeli programmer.

A couple of months ago I reached the conclusion that demo saving in TF2 just isn’t comfortable enough.
Many times good frags and crazy air-shots are missed because the player simply didn’t write “record”, and even if you caught something on tape it was hard to work with the demo because it’s very long.

Being an amateur programmer (I’m very young but I’ve been programming for 4 years), I decided to make an act, and build a program that makes the life of demo recorders and movie makers much easier.

After being tested for a month now, I’m releasing the program in an open-beta version.

I can assure you this doesn’t include any virus, nor will it harm your computer in any way.

So what does the program actually do?
The program takes care of demo recording, as it makes sure demos are ALWAYS recorded.
Recording is auto-started by the program when you respawn, and stopped when you die.
Obviously not all demos are saved permanently – Unless you tell the program to save a round’s demo permanently (see next sentence), the demo will be deleted.
If you killed an entire team, just press ‘P’ during that round, and the program will save the entire round’s demo as soon as you die.
If you hit a crazy mid-air just before you died, you can press ‘P’ up to 5 seconds after re-spawning (and obviously while you’re dead) to save the last round’s demo.
The program also has some extra useful features to make demo saving and managing simple and convenient.

This way, the program makes sure you’ll never miss a good play and you won’t have to go through long minutes of useless footage – instead you’ll have short (one round) demos.
I’m sure you’ll find it very useful and convenient, and you’ll suddenly realize how many good demos you can record in a short period of time.

Features
1. When you press ‘P’, the demo will be saved and numbered (demo0.dem, demo1.dem, etc) in the game folder (Team Fortress 2 > tf. where all demos are saved).
You’ll hear a “success” sound when the program saves the demo successfully, a “saved” sound when the program marks itself to save the current round’s demo, and an “error” sound in case of an error.
2. After pressing ‘P’ to save a demo, you can open the console and type:
rename-newName
To rename the last saved demo to “newName.dem”.
For instance, If I had a crazy soldier double-kill, I can press ‘P’ to save, open the console, write “rename-soldierDblKill” (without quotes) and press enter the program will then change the name of the demo so that I know what it contains.
In this case you’ll also hear a “success” sound if renaming succeeded, or an “error” sound if there’s already an existing file with the requested name (renaming failed).
3. Press ‘O’ when playing the game to pause the program.
Press ‘O’ again to resume it.
You’ll hear a “pause” or “resume” sound respectively.
4. When you exit the game, you’ll see the program now lists all the names of the demos you recorded using it, and also states for each demo what class you played and how many kills (actually kills+destructions) you had in the demo.
5. The mentioned above list renews itself every time you open the program, but the information is permanently saved in a file called “demos.txt”, located inside the program’s directory (where you chose to install it).

How to use the program
After downloading and installing the program, run it (through the shortcut on your desktop) just before you start the game.
Afterwards you can start the game and use all of the program’s functions.
After closing the game, it’s important that you close the program as well.

I hope that by the time you’re reading this line, You’re anxious to try out the program..
So here’s how to download:

Download And Install

1. Download JAVA Runtime Environment from this link:
http://www.java.com/getjava (press “Free Download Java”)

2. Download this ZIP file:
http://rapidshare.com/files/257946425/AutoDemo_v0.92.rar
–OR–
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LECZCH4U
This is a ZIP file containing all of the program’s files. Extract it to the folder where you wish to install, and then open the folder.
a. Only If this is your first time installing AutoDemo:
Run ConfigReplacer.jar (located in the extracted folder) once. this edits your configs, adding some required commands.

b. Create a shortcut to AutoDemo.jar (this is the file that runs the program) on your desktop, so that you can access it easily.
I supplied an ICO file that you can use as an icon.

3. Run the program (through the shortcut on your desktop), and make sure that the directory written after “User Directory:” (colored orange) is the correct SteamApps*UserName* directory.

NOTE: The ConfigReplacer file will edit your existing configs (adding some lines to them), so make sure not to run it twice (that will just create double, unnecessary lines in your configs). For upcoming updates I’ll release a “patch” setup that won’t edit configs.

Known issues / bugs
1. The program has only been thoroughly tested under Windows XP, although it is compatible with other system. Please share any experience you’ve had using other operating systems.
2. You’ll see that the game gets stuck for a tiny bit every round start. There’s nothing to do about this, it’s just the way it is when you start recording.
I’m sure you’ll get used to it quickly.
3. Once in a while the game will keep walking until you press ‘W’. I’m looking into several possible solutions to this problem.
4. Right now the program only works with TF2, and it can’t work with the engineer class. I don’t see any solution to the engineer issues in the horizon.
The program will auto-pause itself when you become an engineer.
5. Since this is only a beta version there are still some bugs. Let me know if you run into a problem and I’ll address it as fast as I can.

What’s in store for the next versions
1. Improve and test Windows Vista and Windows 7 support.
2. Full Counter-Strike: Source support.
3. Bug fixes and other tweaks.
4. Add an option to permanently save all of the demos, for easy saving of entire matches.
5. Better auto-naming of the demos (maybe ClassName-Date-Time).
6. Any ideas you’ll propose will be considered and maybe added.

FAQ

Can I be VAC banned for using the program?
Can the program be picked up as some sort of hack?

You CANNOT and WILL NOT get banned for using AutoDemo.
The program DOESN’T inject itself into the game, nor does it edit any game files. I used mechanisms included in the game (such as binds and console logging) to make my program work without being considered a hack in any way.

Will the program affect my FPS?
Will it hurt the game’s performance?

No, the program won’t affect your FPS. it works very quietly and efficiently in the background and your computer won’t even budge :)

Will HAVE to try this after, this looks to be an amazingly handy little program

Much love for making it :> <3

Thanks man! I’m happy you liked the idea.
Tell me if you run into issues, you can be sure I’ll solve any problem you’re having.
Also if something is unclear, ask me and I’ll explain.

Enjoy the program,
Geva.

Why don’t you put this up code.google.com (or github.com or just about anywhere really…) so other programmers can help work on it (ie, me :D)

I’d be cautious about this with VAC, it could be picked up as some sort of hack.

That’s what I was thinking, can anyone refute this at all?

I’d be cautious about this with VAC, it could be picked up as some sort of hack.

That’s what I was thinking, can anyone refute this at all?

Ohh, u think it can be detected as cheat? :/

as one of the beta testers I can promise you there’s no caution for any VAC issues since the program doesnt change any game files or does somthing else that may alert VAC.

You know what would be amazing, if you could make it so that everytime both teams ready up on mp_tournament 1 it starts recording a demo and it stops when the time / score limit etc runs out.

Probably impossible but :X

@ eoN^
Impossible is nothing! haha
Let me make sure I understood the idea..
You want the program to know when a “tournament” game starts, and then save all of the player’s demos permanently, separated to rounds?
(respawn -> death = 1 demo)?
or do you want it to save the entire match as one demo?
I’m not sure if auto-detecting a match start is worth the effort (although possible), but I’m planning a feature that will let you press a key (say F3) to tell the program to permanently save all of the demos until the key is pressed again. This feature will help you save an entire match (separated to rounds) easily, by pressing the key when the match starts.
Is that what you wanted?

Alot of us comp players would love a feature like this, that records one big demo from when the mp_tournament starts (both teams ready up) til when it finishes. In this league you have to record a POV demo whenever you play a game so recording loads of small ones would be rather useless unless there was a way to stick them back together (effort tbh :X)

But yeah my idea is to have it so it records from when the first round starts til when the last round ends.