PLAYBACK (file format)

The information on this page is specific to Quake 4 .

Playback files are recorded by the in-game playback editor. They are used to animate func_playback entities.

Playback Syntax

playback playbacks/flyer/flyer_oldcanyon_arena_2 
{ 
  sequence 
  { 
     origin      -12989.3,8291.7,1975.1 
     frameRate   15.0 
  } 
  data 
  { 
     { pos -1.2,4.3,-1.1 } 
     { ang -15.0,55.7,-13.0 } 
     { pos -37.0,137.9,-29.5 ang -15.0,55.7,-13.0 } 
     {}
  } 
} 

Playback definitions are broken into two parts; header and data. The header defines the origin, or starting position, as well as the framerate for the playback. The data segment contains either: a position vector, angle vector, both, or an empty bracket pair if there is no change from the last frame. The example above shows all of these cases, though the majority of .playbacks consist of a long string of position vectors.

Playback Workflow

Playbacks are created with the following workflow:

• open the map you would like to contain the animation
• open the editor with the editPlaybacks console command
• set up your options and hit record
• move around the map pretending to be your animated object
• switch back to the playback editor and hit stop
• save your playback from the playback editor
• create a func_playback entity in your map, set its playback key/value to the file you just created