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 to demonstrate how weapons work.
• The objective: To demonstrate how weapons work (duh); 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 Syringe Gun for an embedding example.

Guidelines

Requirements

• Being able to run TF2 at a resolution of at least 1280x720, at more than 30 frames per second, on medium settings, with DirectX 9.
• Having unlocked the weapon you want to demonstrate.
• Fraps, tr_target_weaponref, and File:Weapon demonstration config.txt

Preparation

• The video should be recorded on tr_target_weaponref. Download the map and put it in your maps folder.
• The configuration file to use is available File:Weapon demonstration config.txt. Save it as weaponref.cfg in your cfg folder.
• Remove all customizations (skips, custom models, custom sounds, alternative HUDs, etc.)
• Disable the Steam overlay or go offline; quiet all background applications that would interfere with the recording.
• Open TF2, open the console, and type: map tr_target_weaponref. 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 when weapons are meant to be demonstrated together (for example, Jarate + Bushwacka)
• Wait for the setup time to finish, verify that your new loadout has been equipped (by taunting)
• Open the console (press the ` key) and type exec weaponref. Three bots will spawn: A Pyro in front of you, a Soldier on the right at mid-range, and a Medic on the left at long-range.
• 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, 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.
• Press close to close your backpack.
• 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.
  • Eventually, try to hit the target at the far back (it is not destructible, but a small "HIT!" effect will show)
  • If the weapon has a tauntkill, tauntkill the Spy (he is hiding behind one of the crates)
  • Once done, taunt, and (if you want to) explode at the end of the taunt.
• End the recording.

Post-processing

• You may not modify contrast, speed, size etc. of the video.
• You may leave your video without any music, but if you do want music, please pick one of the training_vid_*.mp3 files in team fortress 2 content.cfg -> sound\misc.
• Convert your video to a web-friendly format: It is recommended to use x264vfw, single-pass, quantizer-based, with q smaller than or equal to 20.
• It is recommended to record using Fraps or Source Recorder. With the latter, whoever, you cannot record the first step of the process (backpack view). You can add it in using a video editor, however.
• The video should not be longer than a minute.

Submission

Please upload your video to Youtube, as "Unlisted". Then provide the URL to this video on the talk page. Keep the original video file, as you will have to upload it to some file hosting service in order for it to be uploaded to the Official TF2 Wiki's Youtube Channel.

Exceptions

• Todo