How to Use Battefield 2142 to Benchmark your PC

How to Create Your Own Demo

Creating your own demo is quite easy. The complicated part is to create the camera track.

A demo file is simple a record of a game sequence. You can record your demo at any time during your gameplay by calling the game console (pressing `) and entering the command demo.recorddemo file_name, where file_name is obviously the name you want to give to your demo. After entering this command everything that happens on the game will be record to this file. Stop recording your demo by entering the command demo.stoprecording at the console.

Since this will record a real game, you will need to decide with map and game type you want to record. This is up to you. Resolution and image quality aren’t important here.

After recording your own demo, it will be saved to C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142modsbf2142Demos (if you use a Windows version not in English, Program Files will have a different name). Two files will be created, the demo file (.bf2142demo) and a camera file (-def.bf2142cam).

Since you record the demo while playing it, the camera file will play your demo as the view of your character during the gameplay. The problem, though, is that your head will appear all the time, spoiling your demo.

You will need the Demo.cmd file in order to create your own .bat and .tmp files necessary to play your demo and record your new camera file. The Demo.cmd that Electronic Arts provides works only on Battlefield 2. We edited this file and made the necessary changes to allow you to use this utility together with Battlefield 2142. So the Demo.cmd file present in our zip package is a different file than the one provided by them. Copy this file to the game main folder (C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142).

Enter the command prompt and run the following command to watch your demo with the default camera: C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142Demo.cmd demo demo-def, where “demo” is the name that you gave to your demo. After entering this command Battlefield will be loaded and your demo will be played. Notice your character’s head appearing in front of you all the time, spoiling your demo.

The next step is to create your own camera track, i.e., a camera track without your character’s head on it.

To create this, you will need to run the command C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142Demo.cmd +c demo camera-def, where “demo” is the name of your demo and “camera-def” is the name of the new camera file that will be created.

After entering this command, Battlefield will be loaded under camera editing mode. Here things get a little bit complicated, because this mode is badly documented.

You will at first see a paused screen on the map you played, but at a location that has nothing to do with your gameplay. This happens because the game is paused and the camera is located in a different place. You must move the camera to the correct place you want to record. You can do this by hitting the Q key and then using the W, A, S, D keys and mouse to move the camera around.

After you positioned the camera on the correct place, you start recording the camera track. Basically, the demo will play and you will be able to view it from a different perspective. Everything you do with the camera will be record on the camera track, i.e., the way you are viewing the demo is the exact way that it will be recorded.

Besides the W, A, S, D keys and the mouse, you can also move the camera up and down with the Z and Ctrl keys. The mouse scroll will work as zoom in/zoom out. Clicking with the mouse you can change between free camera mode and player follow camera mode, i.e., from looking the gameplay from “outside” the character’s head to looking the gameplay as if you were one of the players (the advantage here is that you can zoom out from inside the character’s head, so you won’t be “inside” the character’s head anymore as it occurs with the default camera track). In the player follow camera mode you can hit the spacebar to change the player.

The game will still be paused. You can control the playback speed through the number keys. “1” means “pause”, “2” means “normal speed” and “3” on plays the demo in slow motion. After exiting the pause status by pressing 3, for example, everything you do will be recorded.

Of course at your first you won’t get a perfect camera track at your first try. Record as many camera tracks as you like – your demo file will remain unaltered. Play around until you get what you like.

To playback your demo again but now with your new camera track, just run the command C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142Demo.cmd demo camera-def, where “camera” is your new camera file.

After you think your have you camera track ready, you will have two files created by Demo.cmd under C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142, demo.bat and demo.tmp. You will have to edit both files to setup the resolution you want to use. After doing this, follow the procedure we described in the previous page to benchmark your system using your own demo file.

You have to copy our init.con file to C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142modsbf2142. Battlefield 2142 has an internal 100 frames per second lock, and we disabled this lock with a command inside our Init.con file. If you do not copy this file, your results will be wrong, since the game will easily reach 100 FPS and then the average number of frames per second will be compromised. Our configuration file will also make Battlefield 2142 to skip all the introductory videos that play every time you load the game, speeding up the benchmarking process.