Team Fortress Wiki:Weapon Demonstration

The Weapon Demonstration project's goal is to build a complete library of videos demonstrating the various aspects of all weapons in Team Fortress 2.

The idea: To have one consistent video style demonstrating how weapons work.
The objective: To demonstrate how weapons work: firing animation, reloading animation, projectile trajectory, speed, damage, and simply viewmodel.
The benefits: Consistent, one video per page (quiets those wanting to add their own video), looks good.

Reference video

Following the structure of the following video should give you a basic idea of what is expected.

See Winger for an embedding example.

Guidelines

Requirements

Being able to run TF2 at a resolution of either 1280x720 or 1920x1080 (16:9 ratio), at more than 30 frames per second, on medium settings or higher, with DirectX 9, and at least 2x antialiasing.
Fraps (full version only) or WeGame (for recording either in-game footage or the Backpack), or Source Recorder exclusively for in-game footage: tr_target_weaponref_hdr, weaponref.cfg, and HudDamageAccount.res.
Having the item you want to demonstrate in either Normal or Vintage quality (no name tag, no description tag, no craft number, no gifted weapons, and no Community weapons); If you have both a Vintage and a Unique variant of the weapon, use the Unique variant. Otherwise, use whichever one you have. If the weapon has multiple styles, use the default one (the one that is selected when the weapon drops). If the weapon can be sprayed on, don't spray anything on it.

Note If you edit your game files to demonstrate a weapon, there must not be any way to tell that you did so (identical item level, plausible quality, same attributes, non-photoshopped loadout screen).

Preparation

The video should be recorded on tr_target_weaponref_hdr. Download the map and put it in your maps folder.
The configuration file to use is available here. Save it as weaponref.cfg in your cfg folder.
Disable any custom HUD you may have; download this file and save it as HudDamageAccount.res in your resource/ui folder (create it if it doesn't already exist).
- Some demonstration videos may require a splitscreen. If yours does, download this file. Extract the resource and scripts folders from whichever HUD you need to your tf folder. Note: these HUDs contain the same HudDamageAccount.res as above.
No skins, no custom models, and no custom sounds.
Disable the Steam overlay or go offline; quiet all background applications that would interfere with the recording.
Open TF2, open the console, and then type: map tr_target_weaponref_hdr. Wait for the map to load.
Once the map has loaded, pick the class corresponding to the weapon you want to demonstrate.
Edit the loadout to remove all headgear and Misc. items. Pick all stock weapons (except the weapon to demonstrate, obviously); possible exceptions are weapons that are meant to be demonstrated together (for example, Jarate + Bushwacka).
Wait for the setup time to finish and verify that your new loadout has been equipped (by taunting).
Open the console (press `) and type exec weaponref. Four bots will spawn: A Pyro in front of you, a Soldier on the right side at mid-range, a Medic on the left side at long-range, and a Spy behind the crates on the left side (not visible by default). Re-executing the file will respawn all the bots at the correct location, in case you mess up. Pressing F makes the bots fire. Pressing N toggles "noclip".
Open your Backpack, click the weapon you want to demonstrate, and press "Keep" so that your avatar equips it in the loadout preview. Rotate the loadout preview to show off the weapon.
Move your mouse over the weapon slot and wait for the tooltip to appear.
Always have auto-reloading disabled; reload only when out of ammo; always let the reload animation finish completely, reloading everything. Take your time.

Recording

Start recording, but don't move your mouse until you have had the time to read all the attributes on the tooltip. The mouse cursor must be visible on the recording.
Without moving your mouse off of the item slot, press Esc to close the backpack.
- If the weapon's tooltip covers up part of or the entirety of the weapon slot (which is the case for weapons with large descriptions), move your mouse away from the slot to let the viewer see the weapon's icon for 2 seconds, and then press Esc.
Demonstrate the weapon. There are exceptions, but the process generally goes like this:
- Wait a few seconds doing nothing.
- Shoot once at the Pyro. Wait a bit.
- Finish off the Pyro.
- Kill the Soldier. If the weapon is a melee weapon, you can jump out of the initial zone.
- Kill the Medic.
- If you are demonstrating a non-melee weapon, try to shoot the cardboard target at the far back.
- If the weapon has a Kill taunt, use it on the Spy (he is hiding behind one of the crates). The Spy must not show up on the video until the time to tauntkill him has come.
- If the weapon has resistance/vulnerability to fire/explosive/bullets/etc., show a splitscreen with and without the items equipped. (See the Chargin' Targe video for an example.)
- Once done, reload completely, taunt, and then wait for the camera to move all the way back to the first-person perspective.
End the recording.

Post-processing

You may not modify the contrast, speed, size, etc. of the video.
Add one of the training_vid_*.mp3 files in team fortress 2 content.gcf -> tf -> sound -> misc. If necessary, adjust the relative volumes between music and in-game sounds to match the ratio of the reference video. The default volume should be okay though.
Convert your video to a web-friendly format: It is recommended that you use x264vfw, single-pass, quantizer-based with q being smaller than or equal to 20.

Melee weapons makeover guidelines

Starting June 16th 2012, all melee weapon demonstration videos are to be redone in order to demonstrate criticals on them (different animation, more damage).

The configuration file has been updated to include a new bind on ⇧ Shift which will make you crit as long as ⇧ Shift is held.

The new demonstrations are subject to the stricter guidelines described above, as well as a few melee-specific ones:

Must use tr_target_weaponref_hdr, not tr_target_weaponref.
Once the final version of the demonstration is accepted, .dem files must be provided for each clip in the demonstration (See Submission for how to upload those).
The procedure is slightly different: Pyro and Soldier are the same, but once they are dead, you must:
- Walk to the Medic
- Stop walking when you are close enough to be able to hit the Medic
- (Wait 1 second, staring at the Medic)
- Hold ⇧ Shift
- (Wait 2 seconds, still staring at the Medic but this time with your weapon glowing)
- Kill the medic, still holding ⇧ Shift
- (Wait for 1 second, looking at the Medic's dead body) (You may have to wait longer if your class decided to say a voice clip; in this case, wait until the voice clip is over)
- Release ⇧ Shift
- (Wait one more second)
- Taunt as usual
- If the weapon cannot crit randomly, but can crit under certain circumstances (Gunslinger), then you are free to do whatever you want as long as you make it crit at least once, whether that is during the first (main) clip or not.
- If the weapon can crit randomly and can also crit under certain circumstances (Sun on a Stick), then show both the crit on the Medic as described above, and the special-circumstances crit using any way you want.
- If the weapon cannot crit by itself in any way but needs an external source of crits (Kritzkrieg etc) (Southern Hospitality), then the demonstration should only be remade if the map used in the existing demonstration isn't tr_target_weaponref_hdr. In these rare cases, use the standard procedure for the Medic, no special considerations.
One class at a time: First, only Scout melee weapons will be up for being redone, then Soldier, then Pyro, etc., finishing by Spy melee weapons and then multi-class/all-class melee weapons.
Videos will only be published once all weapons of a class have been fully redone. They will be published as "Unlisted" and will stay that way until at least a week has been elapsed.
All non-melee weapon demonstrations must be given priority. The melee makeover is not as important as demonstrating new weapons.
All melee weapons released after June 16th 2012 must be given priority, even if they do not belong to the class currently having its melee weapon demonstrations redone. Other than that, those new melee weapons are subject to the new guidelines, not the old ones.
Demonstrations may still use whatever tool to record, and the minimum video quality has not changed (720p or more, 30fps or more, 16:9). However, use of Source Recorder to record at higher (90fps or more) framerates is encouraged, and such higher-quality versions will consistently be favored whenever there is a conflict between two versions.
Some melee weapon demonstrations made prior to June 16th 2012 already meet those criteria (Demoman melee weapons, for example). These will not need to be redone.

Reference videos for melee makeover

Submission

Please upload your video to YouTube as "Unlisted". Then provide the URL of the video to the Talk page. Keep the original video file as you will have to upload it to some file hosting service (preferably MediaFire) in order for it to be uploaded to Team Fortress Wiki's Official TF2 Wiki YouTube channel.

Once the final version of the demonstration is accepted, .dem files must be provided for each clip in the demonstration. Check out Help:Recording demos for help on how to do that, though the only commands you need are record somefilename and stop. The demos should be uploaded here. Please email WindPower to get a password.

Talk page reservations

On the talk page, anyone can reserve a weapon demonstration that is either needed or to be redone. A reservation is only meant to serve as an indication that someone is already working on a demonstration, in order to avoid conflicts and frustration later when multiple people have both worked on their own versions of the same demonstration, and only one version can be kept. As such, anyone is free to override reservations as long as they don't mind having to scrap their version if the person who reserved the demonstration posts their version reasonably soon.

Some conditions must be met in order to reserve a demonstration:

There must not be another valid reservation on the demonstration
The item must not have been released in the past week
The reservation is only valid for a week
One person may not hold more than 2 reservations at a time, unless all of their reservations apply to closely-related items for which the demonstrations would have a lot of overlap (for example, three reskins of the same item, or three Pyroland items)
For weapon demonstrations that need to be redone and that have been up for redo since less than a week, the creator of the previous version may override any reservation on that demonstration and have their reservation take priority. However, the creator must reserve the demonstration within 48 hours of the demonstration being available, and must not already have 2 other reservations active.

To reserve a weapon, please write {{Reservation|~~~~}} at the top of the weapon's section on the talk page. If the section does not exist, you may create it. Make sure your signature contains your Wiki username.

Useful information

Below is a list of console commands that might help when demonstrating more complex weapon behaviors. Most of these work only when sv_cheats has been set to 1.

General console commands

bind <key> <command> - Binds a key to a command. Use this to use one of the below commands without opening the console window (for final take) if you don't want to edit it out.
impulse 101 - Restores the player's health and ammo.
hurtme <number> - Deals the stated amount of damage to the player. Can be used with a negative number to heal or overheal yourself.
getpos - Displays the current position and rotation (aiming angle) of the player in x, y, and z coordinates.
setpos <x y z> - Teleports the player to a given position. Use the numbers acquired from getpos to place yourself into that same exact position.
setang <x y z> - Sets the view angle of the player, akin to setpos. Use with the numbers from getpos to make your crosshair point the exact same way. The <z> parameter should be left at 0, or else the camera will appear to be tilting onto its side.
ent_create <entity name> - Spawns a Health pack or Ammo box at the player's crosshair when used with entity names item_ammopack_small, item_ammopack_medium, item_ammopack_full, item_healthkit_small, item_healthkit_medium, or item_healthkit_full.

To make the process easier, you can use this script, which binds the spawning of Health packs and Ammo boxes to Numpad keys.

changelevel <map name> - Changes the current map without rebooting the server, as opposed to the map command. You can use it with the name of the current map to reload the map, cleaning it of bodies, excess blood, and bullet marks.

Example: changelevel tr_target_weaponref_hdr

r_cleardecals - Clears all decals (blood and bullet holes) from the map.
addcond 35 - Places the player under a permanent crit boost.
cl_jiggle_bone_framerate_cutoff - the minimum framerate at which the weapon's jigglebones still work. It's set to 45 fps by default, lower it to the desired value if you're rendering at low FPS.

Bot scripting commands

bot -team -class -name - Adds a puppet bot with the specified parameters. For the sake of consistency, the bots' names must correspond with their classes, with a prefix "Friendly" if it's on the BLU team, and have a single-digit postfix if there is more than one bot of the same class on the given team. This command is not to be confused with addbot, which adds an AI-controlled bot instead of a puppet bot.

Example:

bot -team blu -class medic -name "Friendly Medic"; bot -team red -class heavy -name "Heavy 1"; bot -team red -class heavy name "Heavy 2"

bot_command <bot name> <console command> - Makes the specified bot perform the specified command. Particularly useful for making engineer bots enter build mode.

Example: bot_command "Friendly Engineer" build <number from 0 to 3> (0 for the Dispenser, 1 for the Teleporter Entrance, 2 for the Sentry, and 3 for the Teleport Exit)

bot_mimic <0 or 1> - Makes all the bots mimic the player's actions.

Example: In order to make a Spy disguise, you need to perform the keystrokes for disguising while playing as a Spy and having the mimic option enabled. Similarly, the only way to make Engineer bots rotate buildings is to press Mouse2 with the mimic option on. Note that Engineer bots will not mimic you creating buildings as an Engineer, you must use bot_command <bot name> build <number> instead.

bot_mimic_yaw_offset <angle from 0 to 360> - Makes the bots face in a direction this angle from the player while mimicking his actions. By default it's set to 180 so bots face the player.
bot_dontmove <0 or 1> - Allows or prevents all bots from moving. Takes priority over bot_mimic.
bot_refill - Restores ammo and health for all bots.
bot_teleport <name> <x y z x1 y1 z1> - Teleports the specified bot to the given coordinates. X, y and z define the position and x1, y1 and z1 define where the bot aims its weapon. The needed numbers can be acquired by placing yourself on the bot's desired future position and using the getpos command.
cc_bot_selectweapon <name> <slot> - Forces a bot to switch to a specified weapon slot.

Example: cc_bot_selectweapon heavy 2 will make a bot named "Heavy" switch to his Fists.

bot_forcefireweapon <weapon name> - Makes all the bots fire the specified weapon if they possess it. This can be used to make only one bot fire his weapon, instead of all the bots when using the bot_forceattack command. If the weapon name is invalid, all bots will stop firing. Scout and Engineer pistols are regarded as different weapons, and so are Soldier, Pyro, Heavy, and Engineer shotguns. See this page for a full list of valid weapon names.

Example:

alias "+rocket" "bot_forcefireweapon tf_weapon_rocketlauncher";

alias "-rocket" "bot_forcefireweapon randomword";

alias "+flame" "bot_forcefireweapon tf_weapon_flamethrower";

alias "-flame" "bot_forcefireweapon herpderp";

bind f +flame;

bind t +rocket

Note Bots cannot equip non-stock weapons or items. If you need an enemy character to use an unlockable weapon, you'll need a second human player to play as that character. Feel free to ask for cooperation on the discussion page.

bot_forceattack <0 or 1> - Make all bots perform their primary attack (+attack)
bot_forceattack2 <0 or 1> - Make all bots perform their secondary attack (+attack2)

Whilst the above two commands may not seem as immediately useful as bot_forecefireweapon, they are best suited to making a bot perform their secondary fire for a weapon. For example, using the following code, you can make Sniper bots scope-in or Spy bots engage their cloak:

alias +cloak "bot_forceattack 1; bot_forceattack2 1"

alias -cloak "bot_forceattack 0; bot_forceattack2 0"

bind key +cloak

Note You cannot alias or bind a bot action to a key if the bot's name has spaces in it. This can be avoided by creating a config file containing the desired commands and binding the execution of said file to a key.

Example:

bind p "bot_teleport Friendly Spy x y z x1 y1 z1" - Wrong.

bind p "exec action.cfg" while the file action.cfg contains bot_teleport Friendly Spy x y z x1 y1 z1 - Correct.

Making items_game.txt actually work

TF2 tries on startup to synchronize its schema (in tf/scripts/items/items_game.txt) with the following URL:

http://media.steampowered.com/apps/440/scripts/items/items_game.some_hash.txt

If you want to use a customized item schema, you need to block it from doing that. This can be done with your firewall or by adding the following lines to your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 media.steampowered.com
::1       media.steampowered.com

Don't forget to remove those lines once you are done.

Weapons

Key

T (Talk): Link to talk page section
D (thumbnail Download): Direct link to the thumbnail image. Shows "[ D]" when there is no thumbnail uploaded.
U (thumbnail Upload): Link to thumbnail upload page. The file name and description are automatically populated; only the image file needs to be selected from the user's computer.