How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

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United States of America musketeer925
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How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

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Post by musketeer925 »

In light of a recent thread (viewtopic.php?p=566980), I thought I would write up a more polished tutorial on how to watch a recorded game from an older version of DE. Note that doing this isn't the easy task, and requires downloading a full copy of the game (50 GB), so is going to take some time.

Prerequisites
  • At least 50 GB of free hard drive space on the drive where you have AoE3:DE installed
  • Own a copy of AoE3:DE purchased through Steam and installed on your computer
  • Know your Steam username and password
  • Some basic computer skills - we're going to use Windows Explorer to copy some files around and use a scary command prompt
Disclaimers
  • On some old versions of the game, some players reported cases where AoE3:DE spontaneously deleted files from their computer. Run old versions of the game at your own risk.
  • If you mess something up in this process, you could easily mess up your game files and need to reinstall the game altogether, or if you are very poor at reading directions, you could accidentally delete all the files on your computer.
  • I won't guarantee the accuracy of anything here. You might download a version and find out your recorded game still doesn't work with it. If that happens, let me know and I'll try to fix it.
  • I am not the author of the DepotDownloader tool. It connects to Steam network using your Steam credentials. To my knowledge, your credentials are sent directly to Steam's official servers, but I haven't verified this. I do not believe Steam officially condones usage of such tools. Use third party software at your own risk.
Procedure

1. Locate a recorded game you'd like to watch. If it's uploaded to ESOC, the version should be listed as "Definitive Edition <number>", as shown below. Currently there's no other tool available to identify the version, so you'll have to upload your recorded games.

Image Image
(these are screenshots, don't try to click on them)

2. Using the table in the spoiler below, determine the "Steam Manifest ID" for the version of DE. If a manifest ID isn't listed yet, you'll have to reference this SteamDB page: https://steamdb.info/depot/933111/manifests/. The "SEEN DATE" column there should roughly correspond to the release date below (which I collected from the Age of Empires official blog, https://www.ageofempires.com/news/?page ... #newsPosts).

Spoiler

3. Download and unzip the latest depotdownloader-x.x.x.zip from this GitHub releases page: https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader/releases

4. Open the unzipped directory in Windows explorer, to get a window that looks something like this:

Image

5. Copy the file path from the top bar of Windows Explorer. Note that I moved my folder into Program Files, but I don't recommend this unless you know what you're doing, as it will create some permissions problems.

6. Click your start menu, type "Command Prompt", and open the "Command Prompt" application. In the black window that appears, type cd, followed by a space, and paste in the path you copied earlier. Surround the path with quotes if your path has spaces in it. Press enter. Things should look like the screenshot below:

Image

7. Run DepotDownloader by pasting in the following command, replacing the manifest ID with the one from the table above, and putting your steam username and password where appropriate:

Code: Select all

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 3502290014427690652 -username <steam username> -password <steam password>

8. Wait for it to download. It should show a percentage progress while it's running.

9. In Windows Explorer, navigate to wherever your Steam games are installed. On my computer, this is ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common". You can also find this by opening Steam, right clicking on AoE3:DE in your library, go to "Properties", "Local Files", and click "Browse".

10. Rename the folder "AoE3DE" to "AoE3DE_backup" or something similar.

11. In the DepotDownloader folder, it should have created nested sub folders called "depots" -> "933111" -> "<some number>". Drag and drop the last folder to where the "AoE3DE" folder was, and rename it to "AoE3DE". Your new "AoE3DE" folder should contain as "AoE3DE_s.exe".

12. Launch your game as you normally would. At the main menu, check the bottom left of the screen to confirm the version matches the version your wanted (just the second to last number, e.g., "v. 100.12.56860.0" is listed as 56860 above).

Image

13. Watch your recorded game, and close the game when you're done.

14. Go back to the "AoE3DE" folder, and delete it (or rename with the version if you want to keep it around for watching more games - could rename "AoE3DE_56860" or something). Rename your "backup" folder back to "AoE3DE", and you should be able to play on the latest version again. If things don't work, in Steam, right click on the game in the library, go to "Local Files", and try "Verify integrity of game files".

If you successfully watch a recorded game and the manifest ID wasn't in the table, comment below with the manifest ID and version number, and I'll add it to the table.
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Re: How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

Post by redrocket »

insane thread
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Re: How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

Post by I_HaRRiiSoN_I »

hmm sucks ive deleted lots of recs off my system. but iguess this is a hell of a lot of hassle to just watch a rec game
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Re: How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

Post by musketeer925 »

I_HaRRiiSoN_I wrote: ↑
30 Jan 2022, 17:25
hmm sucks ive deleted lots of recs off my system. but iguess this is a hell of a lot of hassle to just watch a rec game
Sorry, I have been aware that this should be possible for awhile, but finally tried it in the last couple weeks. I guess I should have publicized a bit more that old recs shouldn't necessarily be thrown away.

Anyway, I think this process could be improved a bit with a nice frontend that intelligently downloads only the files needed from Steam. If the Steam API allows downloading partial files, I think it could be highly efficient and only need to download a very small portion of the game. If only full files can be downloaded, it gets a bit harder since most of the game's files are stored in gigantic BAR files.
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Re: How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

Post by draztik »

hi,

Can you confirm to me where do we have to set the username and password please ? I have set something like this but the command is not working coz of syntax error :

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 8524294253688536702 -username <bobinsone> -password <123456>
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Re: How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

Post by musketeer925 »

draztik wrote: ↑
23 Aug 2022, 13:33
hi,

Can you confirm to me where do we have to set the username and password please ? I have set something like this but the command is not working coz of syntax error :

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 8524294253688536702 -username <bobinsone> -password <123456>
Sorry, don't keep the less than/greater than symbols <>. Just do:

Code: Select all

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 8524294253688536702 -username bobinsone -password 123456
No Flag draztik
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Re: How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

Post by draztik »

musketeer925 wrote: ↑
23 Aug 2022, 15:04
draztik wrote: ↑
23 Aug 2022, 13:33
hi,

Can you confirm to me where do we have to set the username and password please ? I have set something like this but the command is not working coz of syntax error :

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 8524294253688536702 -username <bobinsone> -password <123456>
Sorry, don't keep the less than/greater than symbols <>. Just do:

Code: Select all

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 8524294253688536702 -username bobinsone -password 123456
thanks mate. It looks to work but I have this message error now

<screenshot deleted>
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United States of America musketeer925
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Re: How to Watch an Old Recorded Game

Post by musketeer925 »

draztik wrote: ↑
23 Aug 2022, 15:37
musketeer925 wrote: ↑
23 Aug 2022, 15:04
draztik wrote: ↑
23 Aug 2022, 13:33
hi,

Can you confirm to me where do we have to set the username and password please ? I have set something like this but the command is not working coz of syntax error :

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 8524294253688536702 -username <bobinsone> -password <123456>
Sorry, don't keep the less than/greater than symbols <>. Just do:

Code: Select all

DepotDownloader.exe -app 933110 -depot 933111 -manifest 8524294253688536702 -username bobinsone -password 123456
thanks mate. It looks to work but I have this message error now

<screenshot deleted>
I had linked to a specific version of the DepotDownloader (2.4.5) in my original post, but it looks like you now need 2.4.6 or higher to avoid the "Encountered 401" error you saw, due to an update to Steam. I get the same error with 2.4.5, but the latest 2.4.7 seems to work for me - download it here: https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloa ... ader_2.4.7

More info in: https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader/issues/34

I also will update the original post above to just point to the releases page and encourage people to get the latest.

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