Hi, I play on a laptop and adore b-hopping in l4d2, which consequently resulted in me learning a lot of skips and shit on my own or through various youtube channels and then to speedrunning. I want to submit runs but I can't stream on this rig, my fps drops too heavily and playing up to par is impossible if running OBS, even with high frame configs.

I'm asking you to open submissions for demo recordings (.dem files).

I guess some people care about an advantage someone might have in regards to mods and special infected; which honestly unless you can see them through walls, you're just knit picking. Not that I currently run them, but people having skins for specials doesn't give them an innate advantage against someone who has been playing this game for a while, they know what their sound cues are and I bet most of you run closed captions to see what your ears miss. Someone said something along the lines of 'if I had an anime skin for the Witch I definitely would not have shot her right there' or something to that effect. This is secondary because you hear a witch before you see it 99% of the time, and the 1% that you don't hear a witch first before seeing it, it shows up in closed captions. If your problem is how she blends in, she has an aura around her.

All in all on the other side of the fence I can see how BRIGHT ORANGE jockeys can be an advantage, but fragmenting the community due to something so small is simply trivial, I feel like more people would be competitive runners here if .dem files were allowed, but it may just be me. Perhaps a way to see what addons you're running could be found, or a console command to temporarily remove them, or a way to show you aren't running any. I don't know, anything to get over this roadblock would be beneficial.

Thanks for your time, please discuss your opinions below. I'm very interested in what you all have to say.

show_addon_metadata shows in the console if you have any addons loaded and what they are, but that wouldn't work for demos since it shows your own addons, I don't think there's any way to see what addons people had from a demo. I don't see anything wrong with demos as long as you use the same timing method as all other runs.

Okie dokie, thank you for your input though, I suppose I'll only have to worry about it when I get good times.

I record demos for my IL runs just in the event that the timing method reverts to demos later on down the road, like the L4D1 IL runs are timed. If Derpduck/other IL runners and I keep fighting over the times, it's going to mainly come down to a battle of load times, but that won't be for a while, as most of our runs are far from perfect RNG-wise. As for running categories like Main Campaigns or All Campaigns, setting up a demo bind for each campaign would be a pain in the ass, and considering that demos don't record loads, it would be a huge advantage to use demo time as opposed to RTA. This would mean that all current runs would have to be trashed as they do not use the same timing method; not to mention that the moderators have to bust our their copy of L4D2 and look through all the demos one by one as opposed to just watching a YouTube video. It's more of a hassle for everyone to use demo time, even though it would give a more accurate time. Are you sure there's nothing you can do to record, even if it's just a 700kbps 240p 20fps recording? Even if you just record your screen with a camera? I would say that submitting your PB's RTA splits along with the demos associated with it would be good enough, but until something like that is formally permitted by a mod, I wouldn't just assume that'd work. Also, people who'd like to watch the run that don't have a copy of the game won't be able to watch it. You'd have to find someone that's willing to record all of the demos for you and put them together in a video, syncing them up with the splits. (I'd do this for you if I had internet/if it was allowed.)

(I can't remember if I did this for L4D2 or L4D1, but I submitted my RTA time and only had demo recordings to back it up, as I don't currently have internet at my house and have to travel an hour to my Library to upload videos, and the submission got denied. So as of right now, I don't think that method would work.)

Also, about the add-ons, the possible benefits you could get by modifying infected textures/sounds will be for naught, as add-ons can increase load times tremendously, which will destroy your RTA run. However, if we were to use demo time, load times wouldn't exist and weeding out cheaters would be next to impossible. Hell, people could run the game with a wallhack and triggerbot and nobody would be able to tell the difference. (Unless they're making it obvious, of course.) It's not like we're destroying the community by not allowing add-ons, we're just trying to make runs as watchable and legitimate as possible.

Sorry about typing up a novel, I always do it without thinking. Hopefully you can find a way to record your times soon, as I'd love to see more competition here. Also, look on the bright side, the lower your FPS, the easier it is to bhop! (Unless you're getting under 32, that is.)

tl;dr git a gud pc

Nah I feel you, there's no real way to see if I'm cheating or not, or even scripting bhops for that matter if all you get is a demo and a playback recording of a demo.

Would some poop-shit like hypercam or other offline screen recording work for you guys? I figure no because it could always be a demo playback I suppose.

Also as for now my runs will be single-level submissions. I have a few that I know can have great times with some grinding so I wanted to get some questions out of the way first. I'll figure something out I guess in regards to streaming when I need to worry about it. Thanks for the info.

You can record offline, that's what I've done for all of my PBs so far. Just make sure you submit your splits if you can't overlay them onto the video. As far as recording single level runs I still don't see a problem, as long as you show the menu before hitting start game. I don't even know if we accept single-level runs; IL runs for this game constitute the entire campaign in one go, as opposed to an actual Individual Level run. I think it's a little strange to do it this way, but I can see how it makes sense.

(I show a keyboard overlay on my runs (via NohBoard) to prove that I'm not using strafehacks/scripts, but that would be kinda impossible for you, since you cant use OBS/Xsplit/etc at the moment.)

GL with runs!