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11 <H1>Basic tutorial</H1>
12 <P>The following images shows the main window:</P>
13 <img src="images/main_window.gif" />
14 <P>You will notice that the main window is separated into
17 <LI><P>The menu bar (File, Help)</P>
18 <LI><P>The "Templates" area which has a table
19 and 4 buttons on the right</P>
20 <LI><P>The "Jobs" area which also has a table
21 and 4 buttons on the right</P>
22 <LI><P>The Start/stop processing buttons</P>
25 <P>Minimize this demo recorder application for a moment
26 and figure out which demo(s) you actually want to record. Once you
27 know the names of the demo files, you have to figure out the start
28 time and end time (when you want the recording process to start and
29 end). You have to be aware that the Nexuiz demo recorder needs a
30 value in seconds. The problem is that there are 2 different kinds of
34 <LI><P>The first one is the one you see in your HUD in
35 the top right corner. This value is not useful for the Nexuiz demo
36 recorder, because the time is shown in the <minutes:seconds>
37 format. Also this value will be changed/reset to 0 in case the
38 ready-restart feature was using in the game, which resets the time.</P>
39 <LI><P>On the other hand there is the <B>absolute time
40 value</B>. It represents the amount of time that passed on the
41 server since the map was loaded. This value will always increase
42 each second, and won't be reset to 0 after a ready-restart call
43 either. This is the value you need for this tool. You can obtain it
44 the following ways</P>
46 <LI><P>1: There is a sub-folder "tools" in
47 this package which contains a .patch file that allows you to patch
48 the source-code of the Nexuiz 2.5.2 engine. What this patch does is
49 to add a new variable "showgametime". Once you patched
50 your source-code and compiled the engine, you can set this variable
51 to 1, and then in the lower right corner you will see the current
52 game time. Please note that I cannot help you with patching the
53 sources and compiling the engine. For Microsoft Windows users I put
54 the Nexuiz binary (darkplaces.exe) into the package as well, so you
55 can use this one (copy it into your Nexuiz directory)</P>
56 <LI><P>2: If the demo was recorded with Nexuiz 2.5 or
57 newer you can obtain the time values by opening the console and
58 entering this: prvm_global client time</P>
59 <LI><P>3: If the demo was recorded with a Nexuiz version
60 older than 2.5, just pause the demo at the desired moment, open the
61 scoreboard (by default: hold tabulator key). The scoreboard will
62 show you the current time in <minutes>:<seconds>.
63 Calculate the time using a calculator (time = minutes * 60 +
67 <P>Make sure that you know the demo file name, start and
68 end time, then open the Nexuiz demo recorder tool again</P>
70 <P><a name="jobs_create">In the "Jobs" panel</a>, click on the +Create
71 button. A new dialog will open which asks you for all different kinds
73 <img src="images/create_job.gif" />
75 <LI><P><b>Engine:</b> click on the ... button and specify the
76 Nexuiz engine that should be used for recording</P>
77 <LI><P><b>Engine parameters:</b> Only fill this out if you already know what it
78 means. Examples include to execute a particular config (+exec
79 someConfig.cfg), or set a special directory (-userdir option) so
80 that your Engine will use a different set of configs</P>
81 <LI><P><b>DPVideo directory:</b> here you have to specify the
82 path where your Nexuiz usually creates new .avi or .ogv files. This
83 is one of the items where you will see that it is required that you
84 already have recorded demos previously. Usually the path will be
85 Nexuiz/data/video (on Windows) or ~/.nexuiz/data/video</P>
86 <LI><P><b>Relative demo path:</b> This is the path that is being
87 used within the virtual file-system of Nexuiz in order to find your
88 demo. Normally, when starting a demo by hand, you would enter
89 something like "playdemo demos/stormkeep_demo.dem",
90 because usually demos are stored in the directory "demos".
91 In case you changed that (e.g. If the demo is in a sub-directory of
92 the demos directory), make sure to put this into the field. But
93 usually you <B>won't</B> have to change the value (demos) to
94 anything else. Just leave it as it is.</P>
95 <LI><P><b>Job name:</b> Here you can specify a name for this job. If
96 you don't specify any name, a name will be automatically chosen, using
97 the format "Job x", where <b>x</b> is a index number.</P>
98 <LI><P><b>Demo file:</b> obviously you have to specify the demo
100 <LI><P><b>Start second</b> and <b>end second</b> are self-explanatory</P>
101 <LI><P><b>Exec before capture:</b> Here you have the chance to
102 enter console commands (that is, commands that you could otherwise
103 also enter into the console of the game). One example could be to
104 execute a config here that will make sure that the HUD is hidden. Or
105 you might want to change the FPS for the rendered video by setting
106 cl_capturevideo_fps to another value. If you want to put several
107 commands in here you can either separate them by a new-line, or by ;
109 <LI><P><b>Exec after capture:</b> works like the "exec
110 before capture" field. Can be used for anything, e.g. Restoring
111 settings that you altered in the exec before field.</P>
112 <LI><P><b>Video destination:</b> Here you have to specify where
113 you want the recorded video file to be moved once the recording
114 process is done. Please note that you have to enter a name for the
115 file, however you should not enter the extension (.avi or .ogv). You
116 don't have to, because the Nexuiz demo recorder will automatically
117 figure out whether the Nexuiz engine generated an avi or ogv file,
118 and will keep its ending when moving the file to its destination.</P>
120 <P>Once you filled out all fields, click on create. In
121 case you did something wrong with one of the fields, you will
122 hopefully get an error message immediately, which allows you to
123 correct the mistake. If nothing was filled out incorrectly the dialog
124 should close and you should now see a "Job 1" in the job
126 <P>In order to edit a job, either double-click on it, or
127 right-click it and click on Edit</P>
129 <P>Now that you have setup your first job, click on the
130 <B>Start processing</B> button. After a short moment you should see
131 Nexuiz opening. Don't be surprised if the "Loading" image
132 appears for a long time. What you don't see is that Nexuiz is
133 fast-forwarding your demo to the start time you specified, which can
134 take some time. After that, once Nexuiz started and finished
135 recording the stuff you wanted it to record, it should close
136 automatically. The demo recorder should show you a new message dialog
137 that it finished recording all jobs. The "Status" column of
138 your first job should now be showing "done".</P>
139 <H2>Trouble-shooting:</H2>
140 <P>In case something went wrong, the status column of your job will
141 show "error" (in the jobs table). In order to find out what the problem was,
142 right-click on the job and click on "Show error message".
143 The message dialog that pops up will hopefully help you to figure out
144 what went wrong. If it is something that you think you can fix, do so
145 (by editing the job settings), then right-click the job again and click on
146 "Reset job status to waiting". This will set the status of the job to
147 "waiting" again.</P>
148 <H2>Job queue processing</H2>
149 <P>You need to be aware that once you click on the <b>Start
150 processing</b> button only the jobs with status "waiting" will be
151 put into a queue and will be executed one after another. All other jobs
152 (with status "error" or "done" will not be started.
153 If an error occurs while processing one of the jobs this job will set its state to
154 "error" and the next job in queue will be executed. That is, the behavior
155 of the Nexuiz demo recorder is to continue working even if one or more individual
157 <P>In case you already have a job list with several
158 jobs but you want to just record one particular job (even though all
159 other jobs also have the state "waiting"), just right-click
160 on the particular job and click on "Start job". Note that this only
161 works if the Nexuiz demo recorder is currently not working on any other jobs.</P>
162 <H2>Further reading</H2>
163 <P>Congratulations, you managed your
164 first steps using this program. You should read the other help
165 chapters as well in order to be able to fully utilize the
166 functionality of the program.</P>