Demos?

[darkflamewolf]

Question: Are demos not made with d2x-xl not compatible? Because I made a demo in another Descent variant and tried running it in XL to see how it would look with graphical effects, but it just wouldn't open it at all, even when I had the proper level in the missions folder on which the demo was based on.

EDIT: IT'd be more of a: 'yeah I know this was recorded in another Descent variant, but look how much more awesome it is when viewed in d2x-xl! Come download it now!' type of advertisement.

[Aus-RED-5]

Last time I checked it won't work because XL checks for specific code in the demo playback.
So if it wasn't recorded with XL features on.... it won't display them.

[darkflamewolf]

shame, I was going to do an awesome comparison demo video:
Like this is how it is prior to D2X-XL: and this is how it is WITH D2X-XL. SHBAM!
Would have been an awesome advertisement video. Oh well, I'll upload what I have then. Thanks anyway.

[karx11erx]

Where is the problem of recording (e.g. with fraps) one demo being played back with one Descent variant and another demo with another Descent variant, and then making one video clip out of it?

[darkflamewolf]

apparently there is a problem. Don't get mad, I 'did' record the demo with F5 in Rebirth. (waits for screaming to subside) But I was 'hoping' I could just open up d2x-xl, open up the demo and voila, it'd be able to be played in there with all graphical enhancements intact. Would make for a GREAT video and a surprise to everyone that played! But as Red said, it seems recording a demo in one Descent variant does not give the demo the necessary coding to be able to be recognized by XL. :-/ Oh well, its' being uploaded as we speak AS IS.

EDIT: And the problem of recording a demo from one variant and another demo from another variant and combining into one video: You can't recreate an 8 player game the same way twice. And I only recorded one during that night. :-/

[Hawkins]

Well I would be fooled by the same basis. XL does not only has new gameplay features, but it codes existent ones differently in general to other "variants". If for a demo recorded wirh XL, it's obsolete to playback in Rebirth, it's the same argument the otherway around. None of the two projects is lesser than the other, both go out to improve the code, no matter the end result. In short, I wouldn't expect that to work in the first place...

[Sirius]

Double recording works for something expressly made for the purpose of comparison, but yeah, bit tougher to recreate something after the fact and have it look the same.

[darkflamewolf]

well...it was a cool thought anyway!

[karx11erx]

Afaik Rebirth demo's don't use the old standard demo format any more. XL will (should) be able to play back demos made with standard Descent, but not Rebirth demos.

[darkflamewolf]

yeah... if I had known that, I would have played with the DOSBOX version of Descent...oh well. I was thinking of you anyway Diedel with this!

[Sirius]

That would have been... um... challenging. You'd need everyone else to use DOSBox too.

[Hawkins]

What's more interesting is that the DOS version of the game also uses IPX...

[Sirius]

Right, that's kind of the problem actually - it has IPX and that's as sophisticated as it gets for network play (the others were probably modem and serial cable or something like that - 2-player only). As I recall, DOSBox has an IPX emulation layer that allows this to travel over IP, but it's not compatible with Kali or the UDP/IP-based netplay D2X-XL and Rebirth have.

In fact, as far as I recall none of the four methods mentioned above interoperate with any of the other four - with the possible exception that D2X-XL may still work over Kali - it did for a long time but I think that was dropped too, because it made the netcode more complicated and nobody was using it for interop anyway.

[Alter-Fox]

I've been able to run demos recorded with the DOS version of D2 in D2X-XL with no problems and all doohickeys.
I never tried one recorded in Rebirth though.

[Hawkins]

Even minor fixes or optimizations in the demo format can probably render it incompatible, primarily to the original game, as well as independent ports. However I am thinking that on the grounds of such small changes, a conversion method can be devised, to attempt to convert a demo from one port to another. This of course will have to name demos per port, i.e.: it will say "I convert a demo from Rebirth to D2X-XL" or "from D2X-XL to original Descent". There are a few "back-conversions" that might appear problematic like the last one mentioned where XL's extra gameplay features must be handled. Probably such conversions are not possible, while in the other direction, if file format changes are the only thing in the way, conversion can be straightforward code-wise I guess; namely the annotated Rebirth-to-XL conversion. :P