Unable to play a demo from 2003

[Makadon]

The demo is from the 7th of July 2003, and I presumably had the mod up to date at the time. Trying to play it in the 'reversed' beta v1.1 results in the console message:

WARNING! demo protocol outdated.
Demo file protocols 46:5, Engine protocol is at 48:5
...
Host_Error: UserMsg: Not Present on Client 188

I'd appreciate any help firing it up.

 

[Andreasus]

Do you have Half-Life 1 on Steam? Following the instructions of the Beta v1.1 reversed pack to install it works.

 

[Makadon]

Yes, I can get the mod to load up but this is the console output of attempting to play the demo file.

 

[Andreasus]

Ah, I see. Maybe recent Half-Life 1 steam updates could have broken demo file viewing. Not sure about this, maybe other people know more.
Could be useful to try to downgrade Half-Life 1 on steam in a way or to find an older CD version from that time to test out

 

[Makadon]

Alright, I eventually got there. Protocol 46 is Half-Life v1.1.1.0. I ended up in VMware Player and having to settle for software rendering. Overall a terrible recording and skill on show, haha

For anyone else googling away one day:

• a missing fmod.dll can cause a crash and needs to be in some combination of half-life/, half-life/esf/, and half-life/esf/cl_dlls
• 'can't load library from client.dll' occurred when running under Windows 10 but not in a Windows 7 VM
• firing up the map in the console (e.g. map esf_whatever) before playing a demo can avert a crash