CURL demos?

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Cobalt
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CURL demos?

Post by Cobalt »

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but would it be possible to use the CURL library that is for example, getting pk3 files etc in Darkplaces, to play a demo ? Capability exists to record AVI, OGV, etc, but in some cases recording a demo for a mod or a feature can be extensive resulting in very large files, uploading to youtube can be quite long sometimes. So lets say I have a mod [ quake/mymod ]
and all the mod files are in this directory, either pak files, pk3 files or seperate file folders etc. I make a demo, and its dropped to that folder too, and I upload the folder to mysite.com/folder1 include the mod files, and any demo files that are in it, etc. Now, as opposed to someone bringing up the link in a browser, downloading to their folder etc, we use curl to connect to that folder via a new demo command like curldemo mysite.com/folder1 , and it downloads all the files, and the dem file, and starts playing the demo? To me seems simpler then dropping files all over the planet, zipped or whatever. This way you have a way to demo mods that you may be interested in playihg, or for developers, a faster more organized way of showing bugs or new features in a total quake environment.......
Electro
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Re: CURL demos?

Post by Electro »

The best way to handle that kind of feature is to just have the game embedded in the browser. FTE is able to, through a plugin, load in firefox. I believe Spike was just recently working on IE support, not sure if Chrome works.

The great thing about that is... you could just have a website with it all right there, and click to play the demos, there would be the initial download of questionably legal files required to play the demos (or a feature to point it to your Quake dir to get around this I suppose)... and off you go.

It's pretty cool to see Quake running in a browser, it's very much like QuakeLive but without the whole stats/friend/matchmaking database system.
Benjamin Darling
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Cobalt
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Re: CURL demos?

Post by Cobalt »

Hmm, yea browser interface is neat idea....you say Spike is already working on somehting?

Also, what about a ded server recording .dem files of actual games....sorta like the condebug does by itself? Yea, lots of disk space needed....and I suppose the .dem protocal would need to be changed because I guess the dem system assumes you are the one doing the recording....but if the server itself initiates the recording, maybe a demo = spawn() type entity could be created to more or less be the camera entity riding a ramdom player? If so, could you merely change the camera view from one player to another via impulse during the demo?
Spike
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Re: CURL demos?

Post by Spike »

most modern qw servers (fte included) have the capability of recording 'mvd' files, which are basically as you say, demos with which you can switch the view on the fly.
Cobalt
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Re: CURL demos?

Post by Cobalt »

Hi Spike - Looks like Darkplaces does not offer that....at least in the places I checked. The qrack client has options for browsing demos locally...would be kinda neat if it was also game server related where you could browse through some demos that a server you are connected to has to offer, and watch some of them. Maybe csqc would offer a good interface ? Could it allow a demo to be loaded via curl through a seperate url, then played while maybe the player stays connected via a keepalive?
Spike wrote:most modern qw servers (fte included) have the capability of recording 'mvd' files, which are basically as you say, demos with which you can switch the view on the fly.
Spike
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Re: CURL demos?

Post by Spike »

staying connected to the server while playing a demo basically requires two entirely separate connections at once. Client maintainers (like me) are really really unlikely to provide anything like that.
Remember that csqc is flushed on map changes, so you might as well store the info locally (frik_file or something, you have to if you want that info available while playing the demo anyway) and reconnect to the original server once the demo has ended. While less kind to csqc coders that want to do that, total work would likely be lower.
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