Ryukbot is a popular program written in Python that helps automate recording footage within the Source Engine. It is specifically designed for Team Fortress 2 but was able to work in a few other Source Engine games as well.
Download the latest stable build here or from the official discord server.
If you'd like to record in h264 (the default for Ryukbot), it's also required to install either Quicktime or Quicktime Alternative. Quicktime itself has been tested significantly more and is the recommended one for this purpose. Restart your computer after installing.
Extract the contents of the zip file to any folder, preferably outside of the Team Fortress 2 directory. Inputting prefered settings happens upon first running the program.
- If you do not have a killstreaks.txt or events.txt file already, make sure to create one in either the /tf or /tf/demos folder. Ryukbot uses this to automate the VDM creation later.
- Run Ryukbot.exe.
- The first run will always prompt you to set up your settings, follow the prompts and decide on what you'd like to see from your clips. (note: these can be changed later by editing the ryukbot_settings.json file or can be completely reset by deleting that file.)
- If there is anything in your events.txt file (or killstreaks.txt file but I'll use events for the purpose of this write-up due to being less typing) there should be a lot of colorful output from the console. This means it ran successfully and you can skip to step 9.
- If your events.txt file is empty, a dialogue will pop-up asking if you'd like to add events manually. Hit Y and then enter.
- Type in the name of the demo you'd like to record. If you don't have any you'd like to record, leave it blank and hit enter to exit the dialogue and it will run Ryukbot. Go to step 4 if you left it blank.
- Input the tick you'd like recorded. (note: Ryukbot does not record entire demos, there are mushc better ways to do that and so Ryukbot is not optimized for it.) It's recommended to stick as close to the actual event you'd like recorded as possible. How much you actually record will be based on your settings you input previously, but it always records atleast the tick you input. If you have no more ticks on this demo, leave it blank and hit enter to close that demo. Go to step 6 if you left it blank.
- Depending on your settings you may have a screen prompting a "type". This is used for Ryukbot Modding and changes what the name of the event is, Default is "General" and if left blank it will just put that. If you don't have any Ryukbot Mods installed (note: these are not TF2 Mods) then you can safely ignore this and leave it blank. Go to step 7 no matter what you put in.
- After it has run, you can close Ryukbot completely.
- Move all .dem files you plan to record and all .vdm files of the same name to the /tf folder.
- Open Team Fortress 2.
- Play the demo you wish to record. (note: if you have multiple, make sure to start with the one that was at the top of the file as they open the next demo in the list automatically) If you used demoui to play the demo, make sure to close it.
- get coffee or something idk
- Return to find a bunch of .mp4 files in your /tf folder.
Here I'll be listing a few common issues and how to fix them.
This is often the first error people see if they have never used prec or the built in demo system before, and never added the file themselves manually. To fix, just add a file named events.txt or killstreaks.txt in your tf folder and restart Ryukbot.
If the error is still there, it's likely your settings were incorrectly put in for the tf_folder setting. Open the ryukbot_settings.json and ensure that it is correct. (note: there should be 2 slashes per folder in the path, if there isn't please add a second slash.)
There could be quite a few things that cause this issue so lets start with the simple ones and go down the list.
- Quicktime was either not installed correctly, or the computer hasn't been restarted since it was installed. To fix, installed Quicktime and restart your computer.
- The no Quicktime command is in the games launch commands on steam. Remove this while recording to fix.
- The VDM is formatted incorrectly. This can be fixed by loading the backup from the /ryukbot_backups folder and pasting that back into the events.txt file to rerun it.
Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
This project isn't active so requested changed/pulls may take some time to be approved or implimented.