I don't know if demos playing can be used to show those additional console outputs one can usually obtain with debugging commands like g_debug* (which need "devmap", IIRC..), or like "developer 1".
No, the code explicitly disables debug commands during a demo playback (both in the native client-demo facility or my server-side demos patch) to avoid tampering the content of the demo (and also probably because some debug commands are not meant to be used in a non-interactive replay, and thus can probably lead to big bugs and maybe even game crash). This is simply because, as you said Gig, when a demo is launched, the map will be called with the "map" command (which prevents any debug command), and not the "devmap" command, but you can easily fix that in the code I guess (there's no other way around editing the code, there's just no way to change the commands used by demo playback at runtime to my knowledge).
Anyway, I hardly see why you would need to use debug commands in a demo. If you want more data anyway, you will probably need to inject your own logging code inside the engine/gamecode. If you use the server-side demo patch, you can easily place your logging code inside the functions you want, the main ones for your purpose being:
- SV_DemoWriteAllPlayerState() that manages the players states (everything that is necessary to track players):
https://github.com/lrq3000/openarena_engine_serversidedemos/blob/latest/code/server/sv_demo.c#L520- SV_DemoWriteAllEntityState() that manages all the other entities states (like flags, ammos, powerups and other stuffs like that)
https://github.com/lrq3000/openarena_engine_serversidedemos/blob/latest/code/server/sv_demo.c#L554- SV_DemoWriteAllEntityShared(): I can't remember what it records exactly but it's also critical
https://github.com/lrq3000/openarena_engine_serversidedemos/blob/latest/code/server/sv_demo.c#L589- And if you're eager for a LOT of user data, you can uncomment the function SV_DemoWriteClientUsercmd() and hook it with you logging function:
https://github.com/lrq3000/openarena_engine_serversidedemos/blob/latest/code/server/sv_demo.c#L481
