Forum

I’m going to make a new post about how to use your demos after updates. According to worried comments about upcoming scout update not too many have seen my post on “Forum Guidelines & Tutorials”. You can still find this same tutorial (stickyed) here. It’s important to do those first two steps now before the scout update is released!

Ok, here is a little tutorial how you can continue working with your demofiles when they get broken by the latest updates. It takes a little work and time to backup files but it’s definitely worth it. What are we doing here is taking backups from certain files so after the update we can go “back in time” and still use our demos. I usually burn these backup files to DVD so they wont take too much space from my hard drives.

After every update test a few demos that worked before the update. If it still works then we don’t have to worry.

What to do if the demo doesn’t work?
Then I’ll have to do these following things.

a) create new backup folder and name it after the update date.

b) start copying these files to that new backup folder.

“team fortress 2 client content.gcf”, “team fortress 2 content.gcf”, “team fortress 2 materials.gcf” and “source 2007 binaries.gcf” files from my SteamApps (C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps) folder

whole “bin”-folder from C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/nick/team fortress 2/
whole “bin”-folder from C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/nick/team fortress 2/tf

* In a backup folder I create a sub folder called “tf” where the second “bin”-folder is placed. That’s because you can’t have 2 “bin”-folders in a same directory.

Now my backup folder looks like this:
[ bin ] folder
[ tf ] folder, where is a bin sub folder
team fortress 2 client content.gcf
team fortress 2 content.gcf
team fortress 2 materials.gcf
source 2007 binaries.gcf

Usually at this point I’ll move all my demos that were working before the update to backup folder that I made after the previous update. This way all the right demos will be in correct folder with the files that helps me watch them. So I add a folder [demos] to my back up directory.

What to do when I want to watch these demos that worked before the last update?

I’ll just go to a backup folder that I made after the previous update and use those older files to replace the new ones that broke my demos.

a) close TF2

b) copy those old “team fortress 2 client content.gcf”, “team fortress 2 content.gcf”, “team fortress 2 materials.gcf” and “source 2007 binaries.gcf” files from backup folder and paste them to SteamApps (C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/) folder. Yes, you want to replace them all.

In the backup direcotry copy all the files from “bin”-folder to C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/nick/team fortress 2/bin
In the backup directory copy all the files from “tf/bin”-folder to C:/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/nick/team fortress 2/tf/bin

Again you want to replace all these files.

c) now I usually take my net cable off. I really want to be offline so the steam wont start to download new updates again.

d) open tf2 and start working your demos.

e) when you are done, close tf2 and copy/paste those newest backup files to your SeamApps folder and don’t forget the files in bin-folders. Now you can plug your net cable back on and continue playing with your updated tf2.

So this is how I have been using my older demo files. Hopefully I managed to explain it clear enough. Please let me know if there is some problems or you have some questions. I’m not saying that this is 100% sure method but it sure have saved me a lot of work. After a few updates you’ll have a good archive of demos and everything you need to use them later on. Hopefully you wont miss a single frag anymore that was going to be on your fragvid :)

Cheers,
nautti

v.useful

2 much effort, i’d rather just boot up tf2 and do another 6man takedown

Used to do the same thing in CSS ;)

Nice guide.

if you happen to be a friend of loading 2-3GB of files every now and then… ye, should work :)

anyone tried this with the new stealth update?

I can’t load up a demo I recorded yesterday, so I guess it has buggered it up.

I agree to much effort, i am to lazy to make a movie anyway..
but i also agree that valve could have done this much better…