Multi view demos
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A Multi view demo is a demo/movie that is recorded of a computer game which allows the user to view all players playing in the game and view what each players is viewing. It also allows for clients to change which person they are viewing in the case of first person shooters.
It is in general a recording on the server of the game. However there exists client demo recording software that records entire games as well. Recording can be in many formats. For example Quake 3 demos are a recording of all the network data and some addition data about entities in game. It can also be in the form of a movie recording e.g Avi or Mpeg. However in the end they all allow the user to play back the recorded part of the game.
[edit] An example: MVDSV
The Multi View Demo Server (MVDSV) is a QuakeWorld-dedicated server application based on the QuakeWorld sourcecode released under the terms of the GPL by Id software in 1999. MVDSV was initially created by Polish Quaker HighlandeR, and is currently being maintained by Russian Quaker VVD.
Since its release MVDSV has been the most popular dedicated QW server application due to its ability to record .mvd formatted demo of the games it hosts, importantly containing positional information for all the players. Thus, playback of each game demo is possible from all player perspectives; something impossible in normal QuakeWorld demos. Users connected to the server can select and download the .mvd files via console commands. Only QuakeWorld clients with .mvd format support can play back MultiView demos. These include MQWCL, ezQuake, FuhQuake, FTEQuake and ZQuake.
MVDSV was created to compliment the KTPro mod (Kombat Teams Pro by RXR with HighlandeR) , and indeed KTPro relies on MVDSV for much of its functionality.
The ezQuake, FTEQuake, QuakeForge and ZQuake projects also provide dedicated QuakeWorld servers, but cannot record multiview demos.
