Spring RTS Engine

Right now we have plenty of 'videos'.

All the videos we have at the moment are not usable for most fo the things we need them for because:

• They focus on BA
• They focus on advertising a game under Spring, then calling that game spring
• They're schizophrenic and shift rapidly from scene to scene just to cram as much as possible in
• They warp and distort the colours of the logo massively, or don't even use it at all
• They do not tell you what spring IS
• They fail to give the user any features of spring. Simply saying its in the video in the background in the forum thread isnt good enough because you shouldn't have to look for it

We need a video that features the logo at the start, says exactly what spring is, and focuses on spring as an engine, not a game. We also need to be aware that this video may not cover everything (indeed it shouldn't), and that follow up videos are a good idea.

Things to focus on/selling points we ignore:

• Strategic zoom
• Giant maps
• Our unusual widgets, like custom formations (we should pick only one or two, and not choose UI widgets like RedUI/Chilli as they're not features, they're frameworks)
• Water
• The sheer quantity of content we have ( maps should suffice, we have hundreds of them, any commercial game would have trouble competing)

There's plenty more, but there's no reason to have a video plastered in peewees, kernel panic bits, or P.U.R.E voice overs, we should be able to have a good simple video that has no visible units whatsoever that can sell spring to developers and game makers, or at least explain what spring is.

I've always wanted to capture some video but found it impossible because every time I try it, it caps at about 1-5 FPS.

Sounds great, why don't you get started?

Hobo Joe wrote:Sounds great, why don't you get started?

I lack the means, or rather the necessary knowledge to produce something of any use. I am interested in learning, but the need is now, not a year away. If I could do it myself, this would have been a release thread, not a request thread

AF wrote:we should be able to have a good simple video that has no visible units whatsoever that can sell spring to developers and game makers, or at least explain what spring is.

I find the two parts of that sentence contradictory. I mean, selling Spring without showing any units? It would be very misleading to represent Spring as just a 3D terrain viewer.

If you're afraid of showing too much one particular game instead of Spring overall, then feature several games to give a feeling a diversity, or pick one with bland units like Cuberor's Finest.

AF wrote:I lack the means, if I could do it myself, this would have been a release thread, not a request thread

How so? There is no video editor on the Mac?

Dot wars do a wonderful job of selling spring in a way that other games don't while showing no units at all.

But as I said, we have plenty of videos showing units already, and there's nothing stopping a chain of videos focusing on individual things, e.g. a unit showing off squads, research, etc

zwzsg wrote:

AF wrote:I lack the means, if I could do it myself, this would have been a release thread, not a request thread

How so? There is no video editor on the Mac?

I have windows 7 on my mac, and I have more than one machine. I have Adobe CS3, but I don't know how to do anything beyond copy paste videos into After Effects into it at the moment. I could learn, but I don't have the time to right now, and by the time I've done it, someone else will probably have done it anyways. When I have figured out everything, videos for my own projects rank higher on the priority list.

Eitherway right now I lack the skillset to produce anything more than a load of tosh video-wise

all good points AF, i am in agreement... nothing wrong with the existing videos but we could really show a lot more; like the tactical zoom, there are a lot of awesome things about spring engine that just don't seem to have been highlighted in any vid i've seen yet

i'm pretty proficient in aftereffects... i feel i could edit a spring video and produce something of a near professional quality

however like jaz, video caps are chunky and fail when i try to grab them myself

We could collaboratively create a script on Google Docs.
Can I be the narrator?
I know my way around Audacity.
Also, I could render a few 3d logo cutscenes/intro.
I suggest using Jamendo for a legal music background.
I can do this myself, except I need a script and actual video footage.

Zoom to cursor is quite simply fabulous, it shows attention to detail and usage, but its an undersold feature of all the games that use spring. It makes such a huge difference but its normally overlooked.

I also think that logo wise we should not make things overcomplex. We want people to remember spring, and a fancy animation distracts from that, and reminds people of Powerpoint presentation transitions. A quick fade in and ending in a quick fade out to make things smooth should be much better.

What other features do we need to highlight?

Anyone interested, please check this out.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATv0B ... e=CNLf3Y4D
Edit the document to your liking, I will base the video on it.
But I am not a playwright. Just a lame voice actor.
Please insert links to the videos you want in it, and I'll do the rest. In a week or so.
Please don't publish this outside the community - it depends on security through obscurity.

I made changes, moved script into a table format, added notes and things

Yay! nice. I'll be able to start working on it in ~15 hours.
With this organization and response speed, I might finish it tomorrow!
G'night.

zwzsg wrote:

AF wrote:we should be able to have a good simple video that has no visible units whatsoever that can sell spring to developers and game makers, or at least explain what spring is.

I find the two parts of that sentence contradictory. I mean, selling Spring without showing any units? It would be very misleading to represent Spring as just a 3D terrain viewer.

You could show terraforming with the 3D terrain viewer .

to showcase the modding aspect it might be cool to have a timelapse video of the creation of a map or a unit.
Like show painting the heightmap then show the map in spring.

If someone wants to try, with irfanview you can do screenshots of your desktop in intervalls (options->capture/screenshot) and then use JPGVideo or Picture2avi to make it into a video clip)

Nevermind.
I suck.

knorke wrote: If someone wants to try, with irfanview you can do screenshots of your desktop in intervalls (options->capture/screenshot) and then use JPGVideo or Picture2avi to make it into a video clip)

That's a good idea. I wonder if I can press the F12 faster than 5 times per second...

[x] automatic timer, delay: 30 seconds

If you don't have the means or knowledge to do video editing you can at least get fraps and do some recording and pass along the clips to someone who can edit.

You should know by now that nothing like this will get done if you just ask for it.

Go AF, you CAN do it!!!!