Guide to Deadlock esports and content creation: observing and camera controls

Hi Everyone,

My name is Kris (Kashi) and I am the lead producer behind quite a few Deadlock events such as Deadlock CORE, College Deadlock, First Strike, and Death Slam Events.


This guide will outline some entry level information for anyone interested in being an observer for tournaments, or even recording their own content around the game.

The basics of observing Deadlock:​

Spectating and observing Deadlock is very simple - you select the player you want to watch and the game shows you their POV. It only gets more complicated if you want to dynamically switch between players or create fancy cinematic action shots.

When you first join a match as an observer, your camera will be locked to a player. Moving the mouse will rotate the camera, but it will quickly return to the player’s POV. To enable the cursor and change players you need to use J. This will allow you to freely move the cursor without controlling the camera, and you can now click on the mini map or the hero portraits at the top of the screen to switch to someone else.

There are currently no keybinds to quickly select a specific player (see the commands section below). Left and right mouse clicks allow you to cycle through players, but it only switches between the players on the currently selected team - you will not be able to switch from Amber to Sapphire or vice versa.

When spectating a player, the default camera view is the “close” camera, which is the same over the shoulder camera you have when playing the game. Using the scroll wheel allows you to switch back and forth between the “close” and “far” views. The “far” view is positioned further away from the player, placing them in the centre of the screen, it moves the HP bar from the left side of the UI (above the items) to above the player character and it also shows player names above the HP bar. Please note that the "far" view does not properly display any aimed abilities (like for example Grey Talon's Charged Shot) - it does not show where player is aiming the ability.

Using WASD or pressing C when following a player releases the camera and allows you to enter free cam mode. With this you are able to freely fly across the map and show any location and angle of the map, which is especially useful when there is a chaotic fight. To change the elevation, press Shift to go higher and Control to go lower. Pressing C again will automatically attach the camera to the closest player and will use the “close” view, even if you entered free cam while in “far” view. Keys F1 to F4 will allow you to switch the fog of war to show both teams or the target’s, Amber team’s, or Sapphire team’s view.

These are the default keybinds for the spectator mode, and can be changed through settings if you prefer a different layout.

Console commands:​

Default console bind to bring up the console is F7.

Useful console commands:​

(if you are already familiar with the Source console commands, you can skip this section)

Prevent FPS drops when game is not in focus:​

• engine_no_focus_sleep 0

Hide/show game UI:​

• citadel_hud_visible false - disables the game’s UI
• citadel_hud_visible true - enables the game’s UI

Hide/show replay UI:​

• citadel_hide_replay_hud true - disables replay UI
• citadel_hide_replay_hud false - enables replay UI

This command is most useful when covering content from the ingame replays as it hides the timeline controls at the bottom of the screen, making the UI look exactly the same as a live match.

Important note: the command also hides UI clutter like the control keybinds, but it also removes useful elements like the selected player name in the top left corner and the team bar at the top. The command also works for live matches, so it can be used for a cleaner game feed.

Changing camera traverse speed:​

• citadel_observer_roaming_speed X - changes the horizontal and vertical camera traverse speed, where X is the speed variable

The default value for the camera speed is 600 - changing the value to 300 makes the camera move at half speed, and 1200 would be twice as fast. Please note this only affects the camera traverse speed, your mouse sensitivity will remain the same.

Binding commands to hotkeys:​

• bind "[key]" [command]
  • Exchange [key] for the key you wish to bind, making sure you keep the quotes.
  • [command] is the entirety of the command you would enter into the console, including any variables.
  • List of names can be found on the Source 2 Dev Wiki

For example, if you wanted to bind number 5 from the num pad to double your camera speed, the command you enter would be:
bind “kp_5” citadel_observer_roaming_speed 1200

Location binds for spectating:​

• spec_goto [coordinates]
  • To obtain the camera coordinates, use spec_pos

Using spec_pos will output 5 sets of numbers, they will be the X, Y, Z coordinates, pitch and yaw. Currently the spec_goto command only functions with the coordinates, the pitch and yaw will remain the same as they are when the command is executed

Commands to bind player selection:​

• spec_target [1-12]

This command should be the way that keybinds are set, however it seems players are randomly assigned numerical values when they load in. The player selected by the command will not be in the same position across games - in one game it can select Amber player 1, the next it can be Sapphire Player 4.

• spec_player [name]

Currently the more consistent way of selecting players but it requires some prep time before matches and has certain limitations. To use this command you need the exact player Steam name - if for example the player has their name set with Cyrillic letter, the command must use the exact same Cyrillic characters in order to function. The command will not work if the player has any spaces in the name, so for tournament purposes, players should be made aware to remove any spaces ahead of the match start in order to avoid any issues.

Offsetting the ingame UI to allow overlays with player names:​

NOTE - this method only works with the replay UI hidden

1. Enter the game properties in Steam and add "-dev" in the launch option
2. Go into any live game or replay and press F6 to bring up the dev console
3. Highlight the hero bar on the UI (should be a light blue/green highlight behind the hero icons, down to just below the ultimate status icon), and click
4. Find <CitadelHudTopBar... and click on it
5. On the right side add a line under color
6. Type in margin-top (press M and click to select the line) then set the value of the offset followed by "px" - for example "55px" would offset it by 55 pixels

Fixing objective health clipping with UI:​

1. Open the dev console
   Search for "objective"
2. <TeamObjectiveHealthPanel... should be highlighted and automatically selected
3. Increase the margin-top value by the same amount used in the UI offset above
4. If the hero bar has been offset by 55px, the margin would need to be increased from 130px to 185px

I hope you found this guide useful! If you have any feedback, recommendations or requests, feel free to reach out to me through Discord (kashiwardian) or email (kashiwardian@gmail.com).

Thanks,
Kris