demo_goto Command Help & Examples

The world of Counter-Strike has evolved into something special a long time ago. It is one of the world’s most popular tactical competitive shooting games. With so much competition, the players know they have to step up their game to climb up the ranks and become good at it.

Playing most hours a day, crafting shooting and moving skills, and studying the maps is not enough anymore, as players are actively watching and analyzing the games of the next opponent they have.

Scouting is a regular activity in sports and crucial if teams and individual players want to improve. Esports caught up with it, and with the introduction of the demo mode, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players can now do scouting.

It is great for watching your favorite professional teams and learning something from them, but it is also perfect for scouting your next opposition to see what they are doing in certain situations or just watching your own games and looking for mistakes.

Stay with this blog to see all the most important demo commands in CSGO, learn how to use the demo mode, and see what you can do with it.

What is a Demo and What Can We Do With It?

A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive demo is a recorded match in CSGO, archived in the Valve servers that everyone can rewind and use to their liking. Wherever a game is played, whether it is an event or just an everyday game with your friends, it is always recorded and archived.

You can find professional games on third-party websites online, and you can download them to your folder, and launch them. Depending on the policy of the website, those games remain in the archive for a long time. However, if you wish to watch non-professional games, they are archived on the Valve servers.

That means there is a time interval for those games in terms of how long they are going to be available for download. There are four most common ways to use the CSGO demo mode:

• Watch professional games: This way, you could learn more about tactics from really good teams. Professional demos can be downloaded online. 
• Scout your opponents: It is always an advantage to watch your opponent before you play them. That way, you will learn a lot about them and what to expect. For example, you see the way they defend a bomb site or how they react once they are a man down. 
• Rewind your team performance: If you rewatch your games, you can always see mistakes you were not able to see while in play. That way, you improve your individual game and team tactics. Timings, smoke placements, different site executions, and individual errors can be spotted with a demo, giving you a better idea of the game you played. 
• Create highlights or frag movies: It is always nice to show off your skills on YouTube or social media and let people see what you are capable of. You can use demo mode to create this type of video content, although it is different from the classic demo playback.
  From a content creator standpoint, you should use more demo commands in the process. The gameplay has a lot of built-in cosmetics that are not exactly eye-friendly when watching Counter-Strike: Global Offensive content, so the removal of certain things like fog, HUD, and other distractions will help you be better at it.

How to Watch CSGO Demos

To watch the demo, we have to download the .dem file first. Here is a simple guide on how to  download your games and replay them:

• Open the CSGO client
• Click on the TV icon in the menu on the left of the screen
• Click on the Your Matches tab at the top of the screen
• Click on the match you want to download
• Click download

After you download the demo file, this is the path to help you find your files: \Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\replays. Once you do all this, we recommend renaming your file for easier manipulation.

If you want to download games that you have not participated in, you can also do that, although you will have to know the game ID number. Follow these steps to download:

• Open the developer console
• Type csgo_download_match followed by the match ID that consists of seven figures.
• Press ENTER to execute the command

Use the Developer Console to Launch Your Demo

You can then launch the demo through the console by doing the following steps:

• Start Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 

• • Open the developer console: The default key is “~”. If you cannot open the console, enable it in the settings following this path: Settings- Game settings- Enable developer console. 

• Type ‘playdemo’ followed by the demo_file_name: See the example below. 

• • Type ‘demoui’ to enable the playback commands on your screen: This will allow you to control the playback speed, jump to any game points you like, and more. 

• Press ENTER to submit.

Here is an example: you named your demo file demo_inferno.dem. You can launch it from the developer console by typing: ‘playdemo demo_inferno’.

Launch Your Demo Through The Playback Control Panel

You can get access to the playback panel through the console:

• Open the developer console
• Type ‘demoui’
• Press ENTER to submit

You can also press SHIFT + F2, and it will appear on the screen.

After you see the playback panel on the screen, click LOAD in the bottom left corner. Once you do it, the game will automatically take you to the default demo folder, and then you can choose a file and launch it.

Demo Commands to Take Full Control of Your Playback

Here, you can see the most important commands that will help you with controlling the demo playback:

• demoui: You can already see this command in the previous paragraph. It is used to enable the demo control panel on your screen. After you enable it, the panel allows you to use commands such as pause, play, skip, fast forward, and many more. You can retype the same command in the console to disable the panel.

• demo_pause/ demo_resume: It is pretty straightforward what those commands do. Using these two will stop and resume the playback.

• demo_timescale: The demo_timescale default value is 1. Typing a higher value after the command will make the video run that much time faster. Typing a lower value will make it slower. Players can use this to fast-forward to the parts they want to see and slow them down for better analysis. For example, demo_timescale 3 makes the video run three times faster than the default. On the other hand, demo_timescale 0.5 makes the video run at half speed.

• demo_listhighlights/ demo_listimportantticks: You can use this command to acquire a list of important ticks or highlights identified by the game client. The list will show up in the developer console. 

• demo_info: This command will list information about the demo you are playing in the developer console.

• • csgo_fatdemo_enable: You can toggle this feature on and off by typing a value of 1 and 0 after the command. It will result in a bigger file but will record additional information regarding the demo you are playing. For example, to toggle it on, type ‘csgo_fatdemo_enable 1’. 

• spec_show_xray: Using this command, you can use wallhack vision, allowing you to see every player on the map at a certain moment. To enable this, type ‘spec_show_xray 1’, and to toggle it off, type ‘spec_show_xray 0’. 

• cl_show_only_deathnotices: This will remove a lot of distractions from the screen, including the HUD, crosshair, scoreboard, and weapon selection screens. This will allow you a clearer vision when watching a playback of a demo that only shows the death notices. To enable this command, type ‘cl_show_only_deathnotices 1’, and to disable it, type ‘cl_show_only_deathnotices 0’.

Demo_goto: How to Use it

The demo_goto command saves us some time while navigating through the playback demo video of a certain game. It is used in three different ways:

• The default is that the command takes you to a certain tick number. Once you type demo_goto followed by a number, the default setting is that this command takes you to the tick number you followed that command with. For example: demo_goto 10 takes you to tick number 10 in the video. 
• If you enable the relative command, ‘demo_goto’ will take you forward as many ticks as you specified in the command. If you put a value 1 for the Relative command (the second number in this command), and you type the same ‘demo_goto’ command, instead of taking you to a certain tick number, it will take you that number of ticks ahead. For example: ‘demo_goto 10 1’ will take you 10 ticks ahead, meaning if you were at tick 3 at the moment of submitting this command, it will take you to tick 13. 
• If you type Pause 1, the command will take you to the tick you submitted and pause. The pause value is the third number in this command, and it causes the playback to stop automatically. You can also enable the pause without enabling the relative command. For example: ‘demo_goto 10 1 1’, if you are at tick 3 at the moment of submitting this command, will take you to tick 13 and stop the video. On the other hand, ‘demo_goto 10 0 1’ will take you to tick 10 and pause the playback.

Although it is a slightly different command, you can also skip as much time in the playback as you want. To do that, you can use the command ‘demo_gototick’ followed by the number of minutes you would like to skip. For example, typing ‘demo_gototick 12min’ will take you exactly to the 12th minute of the game.

Conclusion

The Counter-Strike demo is very useful for multiple reasons. You can watch the weaknesses of your opponents and the strengths of the professional teams and analyze your games, too. It will also help you make highlights and build your profile as a player. With the demo commands in CSGO, you take full control of the demo reproduction. You can see the game from multiple angles and catch whatever you want.

You can download the games you have participated in from your library and find and download other random games by finding their match ID. Launching the demos is pretty easy; you can do it from the console or the control panel, and you can control the playback with multiple useful commands.

The demo_goto command is one of the most important commands when playing a demo. It saves you a lot of time. You can skip to certain ticks or skip ticks relatively compared to where you are at the moment. It also has a command to pause the playback automatically. With the demo_gototick command, you can even skip precisely to a certain minute of the game.