Team Fortress Wiki:Weapon Demonstration

Weapon Demonstration Project

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

The idea: To have one consistent video style demonstrating how weapons, game mechanics, tools and taunts work.
The objective: To demonstrate how everything works: viewmodels, animations, special abilities, etc.
The benefits: Consistent, one video per page, looks good.

Anyone who meets the requirements can make a demonstration video that is needed for an item and submit the video for review, if the video meets the standard and is approved by Wiki administrators, your video will be uploaded to the Official TF2 Wiki Channel on YouTube and Bilibili. Check the section below for detailed requirements and a guide on how to make a demonstration video. You may also find the demonstration video that is needed or needs to be redone on this page. Feel free to ask any questions before starting making the demonstration on the talk page.

Project reviewers: Ashe, GrampaSwood. A video only needs approval from one Project reviewer for publication. While anyone can provide feedback on anyone else's video, only the Project reviewers may give the final stamp of approval for video publication.

Making a demonstration video

Requirements

Being able to run TF2 at a resolution of 1920x1080 or higher (must be 16:9 ratio), at more than 60 frames per second, on high settings, with DirectX 9, HDR enabled, and at least 2x multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA), and recording with any screen recording programs at the same time.
- Preferably, you should use mastercomfig with at least the "High" preset with the following changes: Shadows: High, Lighting: Ultra, Model quality: Ultra, Texture quality: Ultra, Player Model: Disabled, Contracts: Disabled, Match HUD: Disabled, HUD Achievements: Disabled, Snapshot Buffer: Anim, no modifying anything in the Weapons tab.
- In TF2's launch options, use -dxlevel 95 and -no_texture_stream (disables texture streaming).
Having the item you want to demonstrate. No name tag, no description tag, no craft number, no gifted item, and no Community quality. Item quality preference will be Normal > Unique > Vintage or Genuine > Other quality. Exceptions can be made for items that cannot exist in any of these qualities. If an item is more abundant or more easily obtainable in a different quality than these (e.g. Haunted quality for Halloween items), that alternate quality is also acceptable. If the item can have a decal applied, don't use a decal on it.

Note: If you edit your game's files there must not be any way for viewers to tell that you did so (identical item level, plausible quality, same attributes, non-visibly-edited loadout screen). This guide will not provide any help on doing that.

Some knowledge about TF2, console commands, how to use any screen recording software, and video editing software.

Preparation

Reserve the item demonstration first on the talk page! Check Talk page reservations section for how and why. If you don't have a TF Wiki account yet, you would probably want register one now at the top right corner of the page.
Download necessary custom files: weaponref.zip . This can be extracted using 7zip, WinRAR, or with Windows built-in file explorer. The content of the folder go into <your team fortress 2 folder>/tf/custom.
Set your game to appropriate graphic settings.
Disable any custom files you may have, such as custom HUDs, custom configs, sounds, models; the included demonstration_hud folder will override custom HUDs. The only exception are mastercomfig's files (the VPK and the CFG files)
Make a backup of your tf/cfg folder! Several cvars will be changed when executing the required config files (for example, the value of cl_hud_playerclass_use_playermodel, the 3D character in the HUD, will be overwritten to use the 2D character), and you may want to keep your preferences. Once you are done with recording the clips, you can delete your cfg folder and replace it with the backup.
Disable the Steam overlay or go offline; quiet or quit all background applications that may interfere with the recording, specially ones that have overlays (such as Discord, Mumble or TeamSpeak) or notification sounds (such as Discord or WhatsApp).
The video should be recorded on tr_karma_wiki (preferred), tr_karma_event_wiki (for Halloween-related items only), or tr_target_weaponref_hdr (legacy, still acceptable if reusing .dem replays recorded on it. Legacy link with the map: weaponref.7z). All maps are included in the download. Open the console and type: map tr_karma_wiki, map tr_karma_event_wiki, or map tr_target_weaponref_hdr.
Once the map has loaded, pick the class corresponding to the item you want to demonstrate.
Before doing the demonstration, use the A loadout. Make sure the only thing equipped is the item that you want to demonstrate (possible exceptions are items that are meant to be demonstrated together, for example, Jarate + Bushwacka). Leave all other item slots with the default item that comes in these slots or empty. If you are demonstrating a taunt, equip it in the first slot and leave all others spaces empty. If you are demonstrating an item set, only equip the pertinent items.
Wait for the setup time to finish and verify that your new loadout has been equipped (by taunting).
Open the console (default key: `) and type exec demonstration_basic. The config file will change some of your settings to meet recording standard, such as FOV, HUD settings, etc., and some server cvars.
If you execute the tr_karma_4bots config file, four bots should 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.
Open your Loadout, click the item you want to demonstrate, and equip it again so that your avatar equips it in the loadout preview. Rotate it to show off the item.
Move your mouse over the item slot and wait for the tooltip to appear.

Things to consider:

Always have auto-reloading disabled (cl_autoreload 0).
Some demonstration videos may require a split-screen. Try running the game in a window at a half-width (-w 960 -h 1080 -windowed -noborder, for 1920x1080 screens) or third-width resolution (-w 640 -h 1080 -windowed -noborder). If you use Source Recorder, you can record a demo at normal full resolution, then relaunch the game at half-width resolution and render the demo from it.
- Some HUD elements may break with third-width resolution. If so, ask for help in the Talk page.
If the item you will demonstrate has a holiday restriction (e.g. Halloween / Full Moon), set tf_forced_holiday to the proper value in order to use that item. See below for a list of values. Specifically, use tf_forced_holiday 8 (Full Moon) for Halloween-restricted items.

Recording

Start recording in your screen recording software. Don't move your mouse until you have had the time to read all the attributes. 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 item's tooltip covers up part of or the entirety of the item slot (which is the case for items with large descriptions), move your mouse away from the slot to let the viewer see the item's icon for 2 seconds, and then press ESC.
- Optional: you may switch away and then back to the weapon (make sure to let all animations play out in full) to demonstrate the holstering and equipping animations.
Demonstrate the item. There are exceptions, but the process generally goes like this for non-melee weapons:
- Wait a few seconds doing nothing.
- If the weapon has an inspection animation, perform it, and then wait another second after the animation ends before moving on.
- 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 using a melee weapon, give yourself crits by pressing ⇧ Shift while hitting the Medic.
- If you are demonstrating a non-melee weapon, try to shoot the wooden target at the far back.
- Reloading: Reload only when the demonstrated weapon is fully out of ammo, or when it's the end of the first clip. Always let the reload animation finish completely. This rule doesn't apply to non-demonstrated weapons, to other players/bots involved in the demonstration, and to clips other than the first (Pyro+Soldier+Medic) one.
- After the final reload, taunt, and then wait for the camera to move all the way back to the first-person perspective.
  - 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 taunt kill him has come.
For melee weapons, 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 can be made to crit with an external source (Kritzkrieg etc) (Southern Hospitality), then don't show crits. Just kill the Medic without crits.
For items that are equippable by multiple classes:
- For weapons, demonstrate the weapon on each class individually, and concatenate the videos, including a backpack view for each class.
- For cosmetics with gameplay effects (usually just changing the killfeed) which work the same way across all classes, demonstrate in full for one class only, and then have each subsequent class only show the loadout view and the in-game view of the cosmetic. No need to re-demonstrate the gameplay effect.
If the weapon has resistance/vulnerability to fire/explosive/bullets/etc., show a split-screen with and without the items equipped (and if necessary, equipped but holstered). (See the Chargin' Targe video for an example.)
If the item has other attributes, do what you feel is best to demonstrate the effect of that attribute.
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 extracted from .../steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/tf/tf2_sound_misc_dir.vpk → 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. You can also use this set of pre-lengthened music files (MediaFire mirror) by Karmacharger.
Edit your video so it's just like the video already on the channel. Add fade out effects to the end of the video, at the start of the video, and before and after every scene transition.
Export/Convert your video to a web-friendly format: It is recommended that you use HEVC/h265 compression. Only 60 FPS videos are accepted (FPS are capped to 60 in YouTube).

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 (Google Drive is preferred, as it allows for viewing the video before downloading) in order for it to be uploaded to Official TF2 Wiki Channels.

Talk page reservations

On the talk page, anyone can reserve a 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 (this condition doesn't apply if the item is up for redo in less than a week)
The reservation is only valid for two weeks after being posted on the talk page
One person may not hold more than 4 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, five reskins of the same item)
For demonstrations that need to be redone and that have been up for redo for less than a week, the creator of the previous version may override any reservation on that demonstration and have their reservation take priority. To do this, the creator must explicitly post within 48 hours of the section appearing on the talk page and must have less than 4 other active reservations.
If you have had less than 5 demonstration videos approved in the past, you can only reserve demonstrations for items that have been released for over 2 weeks. This is to ensure that new demonstrations primarily get done by demonstrators who already know how to create a video meeting all the requirements, thus having quick review time.

To reserve a demonstration, please write {{Reservation|~~~~}} at the top of the item'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 behaviors. Most of these work only when sv_cheats has been set to 1.

Map chat commands

As of March 2024, tr_karma_wiki and tr_karma_event_wiki includes vscripts that can be used via the chat typing the following commands. Remember that the chat is hidden if you executed demonstration_basic.cfg and can only be seen if you open it.

!demo - Enables the same server settings for demonstration from the demonstratin_basic.cfg file.
!c - Toggles a critical boost on the user.
!n - Toggles noclip on the user.
!p - Spawns a certain ammo or health pack at the player's crosshair. Usage: !p <<PACK>>. PACK can be: al: ammo large, am: ammo medium, as: ammo small, hl: health large, hm: health medium, hs: health small, clear: delete all packs.
!r - Regenerates the player (gives health and ammo).
!clear - Deletes ragdolls and weapons on ground.

You can bind a key to one of the commands as follows: bind "kp_end" "say !c".

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 kit 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.

If in tr_karma, you can use the !p chat command instead. If not, you can use this script, which binds the spawning of health kits and ammo boxes to Numpad keys.

mp_restartgame 1 - Restarts the 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.
r_cleardecals - Clears all decals (blood and bullet holes) from the map.
cl_jiggle_bone_framerate_cutoff - the minimum framerate at which the item's jigglebones still work. It is set to 20 FPS by default, lower it to the desired value if you're rendering at low FPS.
ent_fire team_round_timer addtime <number> - Adds time to the timer of the round. Can be used with a negative number to remove time instead.
cl_yawspeed <value> - Adjusts left/right turning (yaw) speed. Value should be changed to match the duration of a taunt (if infinite, simply set to a value that feels right). Use in combination with a +right and +left keybind to smoothly rotate the camera around your class.
tf_use_match_hud 0 - Disables the team information HUD on the top of the screen.
hud_reloadscheme - Refreshes the TF2 HUD.
tf_forced_holiday <0-11> - Forces holiday mode (0: default; 1: TFBirthday; 2: Halloween; 3: Christmas; 8: FullMoon)

Bot scripting commands

bot -team XX -class XX -name XX - 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 is 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 the bot_mimic is active. By default it is set to 180 so each bot faces the player when stared at.
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 its 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

bot_mirror "x" if you replace x with the name of a bot it will force that bot to mirror whatever items you have equipped allowing them to hold non-stock items such as the Sandvich.
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.

List of screen recording programs

These programs have been successfully used to create demonstrations videos in the past.

Source Recorder is part of TF2, and should be used for in-game footage when doing so has no visible side-effects.
- Although not required, SrcDemo² can be used with it to make it less painful to record smooth high-framerate footage.
Open Broadcaster Software. Remember to adjust the video quality settings in Output -> Recording -> Recording Quality = High Quality (refrain to use higher values, as it will increase file sizes unnecessarily) and in Video.
Fraps (full version only, require purchase)
ShadowPlay from Nvidia's Geforce Experience (Nvidia graphics card required)
Xbox Game Bar (Windows 10 built-in)

Key

T (Talk): Link to talk page section
D (thumbnail Download): Direct link to the thumbnail image. Turns red when there is no thumbnail uploaded. How to make thumbnails.
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.