Cleaning up NS demos

Unfortunately, moviemaking is a process that requires both mindbendingly creative and horribly boring tasks. Most of the preparation work that has to be done before making a movie falls under the “horribly boring” category. Cleaning up demos is one of these essential tasks that need to be completed before the actual “moviemaking” begins, in order to create a great movie. In this guide I will show you how to clean up demos easily and reasonably efficiently.

By following this guide you will remove the scoreboard, popupmenu and minimaps from any demos you apply it to. The result is a demo (and by extension: movie) without unneccesary visual obstructions.

Cleaning up demos is only necessary for POV (some call them first person) demos. HLTV demos aren’t dirty and don’t require cleaning (…sorry). This guide was made with the Half-Life modification Natural Selection in mind and will probably not be applicable to other games.

1. Download XVI32 (or a similar HEX editor).

2. Install XVI32.

3. Open the demo you want to fix with XVI32.

4. Click CTRL+R (opens up the search and replace box).

5. Follow the illustrated examples:

(Click Replace all)

Easy peasy eh? Once you realize you may have to do this to more than 30 demos for a decent length movie you might not feel so cocky however…