I love to download, watch and colect demos from Challenge-TV.com, but there's usually a problem that ruins a big part of the fun! I'm referring to episodes when you download a best of 3 match pack and there's only 2 demos or a best of 5 and there's 3 or 4 demos.

There's been recently a discussion about this problem at CH-TV and a solution Vloody implemented. The problem with his solution, is that it creates false hopes, will eventually make useless (in some cases) the search system of CH-TV, will confound people not used to it's method, and will increase unnecessarily the size of demo's pack (when using fake demos with convincing sizes) or will be ineffective (when using demos with lower byte sizes).

Then I have the idea of a client side feature that would reduce the effects of this problem. It's very simple (I hope) and with easy implementation!

When client opens a ziped demo pack, if it finds a autorun file inside, it'll do:

- Does not show the demo's files;
- Autoplay de demos according to what is established in the file

Exemple for the file: CHTV_ParadokS-Denmark_cge-Sweden_MVD_dm6_x_2_QW_1v1.zip


Of course it'll not souve all the problems! But helps a lot, when you're not instantly downloand and watching a pack with a knew content! For cases when you download a lot of demos or when you download the pack and watch it a few days later, it'll be just perfect.



btw.: this topic is not a feature request, if players and developers believe it will be a good feature, I'll open a ticket

Yeah I understand your thoughts behind this. But there quite ok solution for this.
Presume you've downloaded a .zip with the demos and you don't want to know how many demos it gives in it.

1) load ezQuake, open Demos menu
2) locate the .zip file, move the marker on it
3) press Ctrl+Enter
4) now close your eyes (hehe) and press [Right Arrow] and then [Enter]

What this does is that it adds all the demos from the archive into the playlist, pressing right and enter enters the playlist and launches the first item from it.

Question is if the demos will be added and played in correct order. Well I think in most cases they should.

Uh, left/right confusion fixed

Why not an in-game feature utility similar to dummy file maker (http://www.mynikko.com/dummy/) which has a demo browser capability so you can select the demo folder with the authentic demos to get the demo count, file names and size.

So say you type "dummydemo bo3" the feature would count the number of demo files in the directory when the directory is targeted with the browser. If there was 2 the feature would create a 3rd "dummy" demo with the same name/date and evaluate the most recent demo created and add to the index + 1. "dummydemo bo5" would also count the number of demo fies but if only 3 authentic demos it would create 2 dummy demos in the same fashion as bo3 but the 2nd demo would be indexed and evaluated as index number + 2.

The size would be random but the seed and starting number could be based off one of the authentic demos to remain consistent.

When players try launching the demo a console message appears that says "dummy demo" and then deletes the demo and lastly outputs to the console "dummy demo deleted."

It possible that such a feature is overkill but I see this as being the easiest to use and cleanest way to implement since it would be handled by the client.

Or an even better approach is to cut out the bo3/bo5 and whatever dir is targeted will spawn a new dummy demo in the index + 1 fashion every time dummydemo is typed in the console. This would work since evaluation would include dummy demos. A further simplification is instead of making a new demo browser for this purpose just use the existing demo browser. Whatever demo dir the browser is looking at will be the folder that's targeted for creating dummy demos.

I hate the demo code enough, no way I'm going to make it even more of a mess by adding something ridicilous like this. Doing like Johnny_cz said it an easy enough solution... Maybe simplifying that a bit that doesn't involve "closing your eyes" would be an option... But dummy demos? WTF!? no way

haha, depending on how bored you guys are it's not a bad solution. Overkill, yes, ridiculous, I don't think so as it would solve all problems related to bo3/bo5 outcomes in a simplified manner. Depending on how you approach it would determine how much work would be involved :p Possibly it could just duplicate one of the demos and add some bytes to it and change the index number.

The only problem this doesn't solve is adding overhead to hosting, dl bandwidth and disk space usage. Although to me an extra mb or so with the large gig hd's on the market and high-speed of internet it's not much of a problem. Also in my high-level implementation example, disk space usage can be resolved when the client attempts to run the demo by removing it.

I must agree with Cokeman. This sounds like a crazy idea.

Okay, okay I'm just a lead programmer at a game company. What do I know :p

Although I will state again, I proposed this as a way of solving all problems related to bo3/bo5 outcomes. There is always a better way and this was off the top of my head and I would agree this to be overkill.

all of this shit is overkill for demo watchers with balls. i get enjoyment from watching quake wether i know the result or not. during competition this is sort of like "not caring about the result loss/win, but caring about the process of loss/win". and for spectators imho the process should be even more important. personally, i actually find out who won/lost, and then i go and watch it to see HOW they won/lost. but thats just me

anyway

at the least, any of these features should be optional, and i shouldnt have to waste my time download fake demos and having a broken search on chtv just to satisfy noobs who cant watch the game live or otherwise soil their panties when they know the result.

<3

wow, I agree with phil

OMG, Please no crazy solutions! :p

Ok, if the autorun script thing sounds complicated, just add something like a "cl_zipeddemoautoplay". And when it's set to 1, the ziped demos will be played automatically without showing it's content. And when it's set to 0, normal behavior!

No complication, a simple feature to solve a simple problem!

GG!

Yes vegetous. That sounds like a much better solution.

Yeah I guess that would work but accumulate enough of those zips and file size is gonna be a dead giveaway and I personally hate running from zip because it's sooo slow. As !phil points out so tastefully ;p none of these solutions address how we are going to post maps played for ch-tv.

And why the fuck am I getting the feeling I'm the only one getting laid on a day-to-day basis in this thread?

Watch and learn :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLJ5a6aJOb8

Thread closed, sorry to everybody, especially all the lead "leet" programmers here.
Submit a feature request if you are really interested in one of the proposed solutions.

Why do I get the feeling that noone actually cares?

Oh, I do. For your heroic efforts I grant you a warning for trying to flame on this forum.