This is a windows front-end by Andrew Smith for using and co-ordinating all the shell-based utilities that QdQ use to process demos. It is designed to offer an intuitive interface both for people who have experience of refilming demos and those who are just learning the process.

You use a simple, methodical interface to tell it where various files are, and which files should be created by various shell-tools ( LMPC, ReMaic, DemTool, AutoCam, AutoMAP), and QdQFront will automatically create the correct batch file.

It will create a batch file for any of the tools or any combination of them. If you want, it will even launch Quake and play the demo that you've created. In theory, it will allow you to completely refilm a demo without ever leaving the safety of your Windows desktop.

You can read further details in the text file.

If you would like to make any comments about QdQFront, or there are features that you think should be added or improved, then please feel free to contact me.

Also contact me if you find any bugs. If you find a bug with the way the batch file is written then please send a copy of it.

Andrew Smith

Installation

3rd December 1997 - version 1.3 released

• Added the option of inserting additional commands into the batch file at every step of the process. Click on the "Advanced" button on the "Filming" page. You can then set which additional commands will be used and you can either write them in the edit boxes or click on the "Edit" buttons to bring up a dedicated editing window. You can also import files through the editing window.
• Added a new page - "Options". The only option at the moment is "Use intelligent field completion". With this selected, QdQFront will try to update related fields on all pages when just one is changed. For instance, changing the output LS file on the LMPC page will automatically update the input LS files on the AutoCam and ReMaic pages, and changing the input ACM file on the AutoCam page will automatically change the output ACM file on the AutoMAP page.
• Added an option to the LMPC page to decompile demos using DemTool. You still set the input and output files on the LMPC page but DemTool will be used instead of LMPC when the batch file is written.
• Added "Read and write same file" option to the DemTool page. If this option is selected, DemTool will read the input file and write over it with the output file.
• When calling ReMaic in the batch file, the directory is no longer changed to the LMPC directory. Instead, a "ReMaic.cfg" file is created in the ReMaic directory containing the location of LMPC.EXE, so ReMaic will always know where to find it. This is a better way of achieving the same result because it's now much easier to use relative file locations for ReMaic.
• Added a few hot keys here and there and enhanced some parts of the interface slightly. Nothing major.

2nd December 1997 - version 1.2 for release

• Added support for Stefan Schwoon's DemTool.
• Added "Use additional parameters" option to the ReMaic page. Useful for people that are using customised versions of ReMaic with options not in the release version.
• Changed the default filenames to "default_input", "default_output", etc. Some of the utilities may have crashed when reading and writing files of the same name. (Note: you're not really supposed to keep the default names!)
• Added numerical hot keys (alt+1, alt+2, etc) to the "Browse" buttons on all utility pages and dialogs. Also added hot keys to a few options. Should make things a bit better (and faster) for all the hot key junkies out there.
• Changed the name from QDQFront to QdQFront (small "d").

1st December 1997 - internal version 1.11

• The way the batch file was written failed to take account of the fact that people use more than one hard drive. Fixed.
• Improved some interface stuff. Now, when a text box is disabled, its description (and / or "Browse" button) is disabled as well.
• On the "Filming" page, when no tools are set to run, all batch file functionality is disabled. It didn't make sense to write a batch file that wouldn't do anything other than run Quake.

30th November 1997 - internal version 1.1

• The file dialogs for several input files on the AutoCam and ReMaic pages would only accept files that already existed, even though they would not yet have been created by LMPC or AutoCam. Fixed.
• Added the "+playdemo" command to the Quake command line so the demo will automatically play when Quake is launched.
• When running ReMaic, the directory is changed to the directory where LMPC.EXE is located. This is so that ReMaic can use it to recompile the demo to DEM format.