Overview
Demo recording is a game feature which allows the player to record in-game footage into lightweight .dem files.This feature is widely used by many players as it does not stress the game at all and the created files don’t take a lot of HDD space, so they’re very easy to share afterwards.
Recording
For capturing the demo into a video file, use this guide instead.
To record a demo file:
- Load up any level (or join the server, and open up the console
- Write a command record <demoname>. The demo will begin recording.
- Go back In-Game, and do anything you want to get recorded.
- After that, open up console again and write stop. The demo recording will stop. You’ll be able to see the length of your demo in seconds.
- That’s it! You can find your demo in your game’s directory, for example
commonHalf-Lifevalve.
Playback
There are several ways to playback your recorded demo. If you want to turn your demo into a movie file, you’ll have to use this feature. Here’s how you do it:
- Open up console
- Write a command playdemo <nameofyourdemo>
- The demo will start playing back.
- Alternatively you can use viewdemo for more playback options like slow-motion, rewinding, pausing etc. However, viewdemo will NOT work with demos recorded on older (or different) versions of the game.
Recording with HLTV
HLTV is a tool designed to record better Half-Life demos. It works like an additional client and it can record every players’ POV in the server.
You can download HLTV from Steam’s Tool library by getting Half-Life Dedicated Server.
Once that is done downloading, head to it’s directory and launch hltv.exe
You’ll now have to connect HLTV to a server (like you’d connect to a server yourself using a console). There you can start recording the HLTV demo. Use stoprecording to stop the recording.