How to watch Quake Live demos

1 Jan 2009 by Malice in beginner guides with 8 comments

Playing back a quake live demo still requires more work than it should. Yet with time new features will be developed by id software that will make demo playback a lot easier.

To watch a Quake Live demo follow these 5 simple steps:

1) first go to your Quake Live demo folder:

Vista

%appdata%\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3\demos\

Windows XP

%userprofile%\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3\demos\

GNU/Linux

~/.quakelive/quakelive/home/baseq3/demos

If you don’t have a “demos” folder yet, make one yourself. Read the quake live folder location guide if you have trouble finding the quake live folder.

2) Place the demo file into your demos folder

If you want to watch a demo you recorded yourself, it should already be in the demos folder.

If it’s a demo you downloaded, just place the file here. A Quake Live demo file has a “dm_73″ extension.

3) Start a practice game:

You still need to be inside a game to launch a demo.

4) Open the console

If you haven’t figured this out yet, here’s a step by step guide that explains how to open your quake live console.

5) Use the /demo command

To start your demo, type the following command in your console:

/demo filename

So if your demo was named fragownage.dm_73, you would have to type /demo fragownage in the console. There ya go!

Don’t press too many keys during the demo because it might just suddenly stop playing. To fastforward use the command /timescale in the console. The default value is 1. A higher value speeds the demo up. There’s no rewinding though! Have fun!