CS:GO Demos and Network Messages

Demos and network messages in CS:GO use Google's Protocol Buffers (protobuf). Protobuf is a message/object serialization language that generates code to serialize the objects efficiently. For information about protobuf, see https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview

demoinfogo is a tool that parses CS:GO demo files (ending in .dem) and dumps out every message in the demo. Using this tool, third parties can parse the demo for various game events to generate information and statistics.

The repo contains the source code required to build this tool on linux. The source includes the proto files containing network message definitions.

Building demoinfogo

In order to build demoinfogo on Linux, follow these steps:

1. sudo apt-get install cmake libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler libjson-spirit-dev
2. mkdir build
3. cd build
4. cmake ..
5. make

Replace step 4 with cmake .. -DRPATH=ON to force the generated executable to search for shared libraries in the libs/ subdirectory first.

Working with Network Messages

Building demoinfogo generates C++ classes from the network protobuf files. Follow these steps to generate these files for use in your application without building demoinfogo:

1. Follow the instructions above for downloading and compiling protobuf 2.5.0 from source.
2. Run make generated_proto. The generated C++ files are created in subdirectory named src/generated_proto.

You can now use the generated classes in your C++ code to send user messages. Here is an example of how to send the HintText message

CSingleUserRecipientFilter filter( this );
filter.MakeReliable();
CCSUsrMsg_HintText msg;
msg.set_text( "ExampleHint" );
SendUserMessage( filter, CS_UM_HintText, msg );