Tf2DemoSalvage

A standalone parser for Team Fortress 2 .dem files — built to read demos from any era of TF2's 18-year history, including ones Valve's own client updates have broken.

An independent, clean-room parser for TF2 demo files. It ships no Valve-authored game assets — maps are resolved from your own TF2 install or a source you configure, not bundled. Not affiliated with Valve.

Status — early, and honest about it

Phase 1 is in progress. The container and much of the network message layer decode against real demos. Entity data — where player positions live — does not yet.

Done and tested: the bit reader and varint decoding (unit tested, mutation tested, fuzzed), the demo header, the command stream, and a text dump CLI — tf2demosalvage <demo.dem> prints a readable dump.

Partial: net messages, and the entity schema. dem_datatables parses and flattens, svc_PacketEntities headers decode, and 98% of property value encodings are implemented. Entity iteration hasn’t started, and the missing 2% includes m_vecOrigin — which is, inconveniently, the interesting one.

Not started: the 2D viewer (Phase 2) and 3D viewer (Phase 3).

Where decoding stops

svc_SignonState in the signon stream, and svc_PacketEntities in roughly 90% of gameplay packets. The latter needs the property list flattened — entity deltas index into a list built by merging nested tables, applying exclusions, then sorting SPROP_CHANGES_OFTEN properties forward.

The emblem on this page is a Team Fortress 2 style logo by PD Balthazar, released into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons. It is fan-made and not an official Valve asset. This project remains unaffiliated with Valve.