Fixing old NS demos

This guide is woefully outdated. I’ve left it up in case someone finds it useful. Let me know if there is any interest in an updated version — I might feel compelled to fix it.

Lately I’ve gotten a few questions about the new Steam patch making old demos not work. Obviously this has been a problem for me as well, as I’m in the process of making an unannounced NS fragmovie (uh-oh!), so I decided to do some investigating on teh intarwebz. Fortunately I was able to find a reasonable solution quickly, although it isn’t perfect. For one it only works on first person demos, although eventually it will also fix HLTV demos. It also requires a tiny amount of effort on the part of the user. Anyway, for those of you interested in watching old firstperson demos — and hopefully HLTV demos in the near future — here’s the solution:

IMPORTANT: MAKE BACKUPS OF YOUR DEMOS BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO USE ANY OF THESE FIXES

1. Download the latest version of Half-Life Advanced Effects.

2. Install it (extract the archive durr).

3. Launch HLAE.

4. Follow the illustrated examples:

Click Tools-Demo Tools

Tick Convert to new demo version-Next

Select the demo you want to fix, Select a location and name for your fixed demo file-Finish

That’s all there is to it. Hopefully it won’t take too long until this, or something else, can fix HLTV demos too.

Update: The manual method described in this post should work for ALL demos, but it takes a slight bit of effort.

Update2: The complexity demo player supposedly also fixes all demos. I haven’t tried this yet however.