Spring Videos

[Floris]

Well, I used to make (frag)video's for Quake1/QuakeWorld, and I just tried to do some recordings in spring.

Here are my attempts: (updated along with the posts below)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjVBsQXGYQg - DSD (the comdrop)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CNlFANagxs - Tabula (t1 spamming)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgWYf678tIU - DSD (comdroppers game)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwwnBpt_u2I - DSD (air teching)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e82V5qOKvrY - Nuclear Winter (t1 spamming)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KFlJMh_nG8 - DSD (t1 spamming)

CoffeeCrazy recorded one aswell I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vMkZ-UKsCI

I used: Taksi Desktop Video Recorder (http://taksi.sourceforge.net/)
Codec: DivX 10000-15000kbps (Youtube compresses it further to like 6000 kbps)

I recorded the video's with fps ranging from 4 to 8. If you scale it later up to 20 or 25 fps it will have like 6x...3x speed of the original.

The good part of recording while you play is that you can fully track someone's pov/mouse/queue/widgets/HUD which is impossible if you record a replay.

It's nice to have some video's that display the real power of spring (and that is the superb control over your units in my opinion).

[BaNa]

Some feedback:

f5 is your friend for nicer vids, also /mapmarks 0
Also not showing pauses.

Good idea though, I will take a look at the vid recorder you linked. Ive been trying to record with fraps but it eats resources to record at full speed.

[MidKnight]

Oh hey, neat! Videos!

...Wait a second, what's this TA Spring thing mentioned in the title? Are you talking about the old project that got reworked and renamed to Spring Engine about 3 or 4 years ago? Man, I didn't know BA still works with that old thing!

(TA Spring isn't the project's name anymore. Please use "Spring Engine" or "Spring RTS")

[Floris]

Oh right, totally forgot about it, I've renamed them.

I didnt try f5 lately but a couple of months ago it didnt work for me.

[AF]

Actually snip out the spring rts and just call it BA

[Wombat]

f5 and change map... please... and dont advertise combomb :DDDD

[knorke]

good for start but terrible camera.
often the void around the map is shown. like 50% of screen is mapedge.
ok during gameplay, absolute fail in a video.
what resolution did you record at?
dunno if compression or just zoomed out too far but even on hd its hard to see what is going on. Only spring players can recognize a random pixel mess as a commander. For normal watchers, you must zoom in more.

"choatic" camera movement. you record from a replay so you can think what you want to show.
too much setting up ques (esp. mexes) compared to actual combat.
instead of speeding up everything, only leave the scenes you want to show. Seems like you just recorded the screen and moved the view "on the fly" and did not bother to edit/cut it at all.
if someone who does not know ba/spring watches the cb video he would be like "meh wtf was that?"

Sounds very negative but well, I did not like the execution of these videos, sorry. I do however VERY MUCH like the idea of showing typical, actual gameplay scenes. Maybe most players play on low details, with shadows off, far zoomed out, fast camera movement when switching from base to combat and back but that is not nice to look at in a video. There must be a compromise between "faked" videos and "recorded straight from players screen."

[Wombat]

There must be a compromise between "faked" videos and "recorded straight from players screen."

do u really think spring vids should show 'true' look of it ? :> i think only kernel,s44,evo and cursed can do this (4 games, but sadly quite rarely played)

[knorke]

probally not :)
of course players are playing to win, not to play pretty or point the camera at nice details. But that is the case in all games, not just spring games. Thing is, even such "like the player sees it" videos from ie starcraft look better than similiar spring videos. Even quake 3 videos with all the pr0gam0r superlow details are somehow more pleasant to look at...
A free moving 3d camera is very flexible but it gives room for many mistakes...

[Wombat]

u said 'players'. these vids are not made for 'players' but 'potential players'. its better to scare them off after trying the game, not before even installing it xD ofc, showing hud , how formation works is good idea, but majority of vid should cosist 'beauty shots'.

anyway, gogogo, spring definitely needs more vids.

[knorke]

'potential players'. its better to scare them off after trying the game, not before even installing it xD

yes, thats what i meant?

[Wombat]

well ok then, <high_five>

[Johannes]

u said 'players'. these vids are not made for 'players' but 'potential players'. its better to scare them off after trying the game, not before even installing it xD ofc, showing hud , how formation works is good idea, but majority of vid should cosist 'beauty shots'.

anyway, gogogo, spring definitely needs more vids.

A ton of people try the game already, with or without beauty shot videos. But most just don't stay...

If there'd be interesting game videos available it'd make it much more fun for those newbs to keep playing and learning. And I don't know if grafics of BA will attract anyone anyway, so why make that the focus of videos when you could just be honest and concentrate on gameplay.



And yeah video quality is good but their content is pretty boring for anyone I think?
And the fp view is not too good for a 4v4, since you're leaving out 3/4 of the game almost.

[SirArtturi]

It's nice to have some video's that displays the real power of spring (and that is the superb control over your units).

DSD and combomb, right...

[babbles]

I saw some lines be drawn with triangles in them, some explosions which I couldn't really see for frantic camera movements, oh and some cricles around things which seemed to move

I don't see how some not very good graphics, with some not exactly brilliant micro (there was no need for any) with a drilled in routine shows the "real power" of Spring...any video showing the "real power of spring" should include different mods, different maps, different styles of play etc.

you never looked at anything but your own stuff, and even when you did it was quick glances.

what was the video trying to say? Spring is one mod, with poor graphics, a not so good looking map* and it doesn't need much teamwork? and players win by having a well drilled routine using (I only saw) 2 types of combat unit? There was no sea, no air, you didn't finish your tech two lab, no advanced economic works...

*(it's a good map, but compared to some of the awesome new stuff it's not as graphically good)

[Floris]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgWYf678tIU
- using xrayshader widget (with adjusted intensity)
- using 'reflective units' setting
- forgot lups particle widgets
- horrible camera movement

Anybody knows how to refine the camera movements?
Any other settings that would improve the quality?

And about the content.... ehhh its just random live games I recorded, since I did it to test the recording programs/settings the content came only as 2nd important. It still is better than the avg game tho. At least the quality is like 4x better than the bunch of horrible 320p video's that are on youtube momently.

Eh how can you record with f5 ingame? f5 currently is the key to remove the gui, not to record a video?

[smoth]

Try doing mor cuts, as in not move the camera and show the pan but edit the pans out, so for example base a peaceful cut base b cut base a loading com cut base b cut com flying from base a cut base b, watch as transport comes in and boom.

You will likely need to record a scene multiple times to do this well.

At the very least use cuts

[Floris]

Yep I know that moar cuts is definitly the thing to do, but I want more than just that since it makes the game scenes very separated since the viewer doesn't know very well when or where the new scene is. And following a game is then very hard too.

Slowdowns are good to use too probably, but setting a high recording fps will eat up more cpu/gpu than my pc can handle. I can up it to 8-10 fps but higher I doubt it will work well atfter 20 mins ingame.

[Sucky_Lord]

Zoom in on the action at normal speed, then zoom out to the whole map and speed it up until the next bit of action.. and so on..

[BaNa]

get the new camera movement widget from ca or zero-k or whatever, it has much smoother scrolling and panning et al.