Spring Videos

[Johannes]

Record at <1 speed, then speed it up to 1 (or maybe 2 or so) after recording and then you have better fps.

And I don't think videos need to be too fancy, just basic showing of how the game plays. This is hard to see for a newb if its sped up many times... And it's easy to get the idea that this game is just about comdropping when you focus on that so much.

Why not just do something simple like this, for a skilled and entertaining game ofc. Simple showing of what the game is about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF7iXDY9PRw

[luckywaldo7]

The camera from CA/ZK is pretty nice, offers a lot more ways of control, but will probably take some getting used to for you:Complete Control Camera widget

Alternatively, this will smooth out your camera without doing anything else: Smooth Cam widget

[smoth]

it works ok for ta view and not so ok for fps last time I tried it.

[hoijui]

We already have the ActionFinder widget, and i remember there was an other, similar one. you may combine that with some sort of script that scans a demo file, and gathers some stats. for example, marks periods of 3000 frames (~100s) that have a lot of units killed. when playing the demo, you can use these stats as input for the automated movie maker widget. scanning a demo-file is not too hard, when you use the demo-tool, which converts it into a human readable series of commands.

[Johannes]

We already have the ActionFinder widget, and i remember there was an other, similar one. you may combine that with some sort of script that scans a demo file, and gathers some stats. for example, marks periods of 3000 frames (~100s) that have a lot of units killed. when playing the demo, you can use these stats as input for the automated movie maker widget. scanning a demo-file is not too hard, when you use the demo-tool, which converts it into a human readable series of commands.

Seems a bit pointless though since decent human cameraman will still do beter job.

[Floris]

Uploaded another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwwnBpt_u2I

It shows my new 'reclaim stopper' widget in action. For the rest, its about DSD tech game, so I'll flame myself before anyone else does it now )

[BaNa]

Uploaded another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwwnBpt_u2I

It shows my new 'reclaim stopper' widget in action. For the rest, its about DSD tech game, so I'll flame myself before anyone else does it now )

that one is actually good, it is spammable to noob techers as a how to guide

[knorke]

the demo-tool, which converts it into a human readable series of commands.

link?

Your movie still looks someone let the camera on in between the shots and so the movie includes lots of footage of the ground and sky and whatever. Does your recording software have a hotkey to stop/start record? Use it, so you have many small clips are easier to organize than one large clip. Even then you will have to cut some scenes. It is not possible to record a movie in a whole take without editing unless you make a dotwar video.
Turn of these (blastrange marker?) widgets that draw everywhere.

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

Yes, they want you to remove all the menus, markers, circles and stuff

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

This is very true.

Movie making is not easy and movies from video games are espcially hard.
The audience often does not know the game. If you ie show the comb bombing of a fusion farm, spring players "get it" because they know the fusions took long to make, power the big weapons and they will also know the explosive commander is in an atlas air transport.
Non spring-player thinks "why did this mess of pixels just turn into a smoke cloud."

Generally beginner filmers in RL and video games shake the camera too much and change zoom too much.

makes the game scenes very separated since the viewer doesn't know very well when or where the new scene is.

Yes but generally it is more important to see what is happening and not where.

Uploaded another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwwnBpt_u2I

-first 30 secs are useless, video could start at 0:30 without losing content
-the scene showing the growing/teching of the base is good but without camera movement (->record from demo) it would be better, less annoying to watch.
The random flashing of looking around really interrupts the video. That is really obvious imo.
-video would be good if you just had 2 camera positions and change between those:
camera 1: showing the base, how things are build, reclaimed etc
camera 2: combat zone

+1 internet for settlers music

[knorke]

an old "base building" video of mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQhFnN92lCw
i think replay unsynced towards the end so i didnt finish it. still shows how its easier to follow the progress when the camera movement is calm.

[Floris]

nice replay though it's not very apply-able to let the camera stay the whole game attached to your commander

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

Those lines are the widgets for radar-range, weapon-range and explosion-range, but I guess that was a retoric question anyway. I should put those widgets off when I really want to make a clear and clean promo video for BA. Any prediction of when the new models will be finished? And after that how much time it takes to get them scripted and implemented? Since making a promo video is too much effort when the newly modelled version awaits in a few months.

And another.. another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e82V5qOKvrY

Last one for now because I really need to come up with improved camera-work and better content will it be showable enough.

And btw I know a lil something about gamevideo producing. But that is a little diffrent since those were from a fast paced fps-shooter.

If you want to see what I brew years ago then check out these: (made them 6 or 7 years ago)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUa8hZfmMpI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luczk8G_X1E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=870yVt6IZzI

[Floris]

Oh eh, just saw that Smoth made a HD video too a month ago, and I was the lucky one to be in there aswell. He even recorded some mumble voice chat. Oh and his camera is indeed a lot smoother, and its just 1x gamespeed. He has a whole diffrent (a lil weird) HUD though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vMkZ-UKsCI

[hoijui]

*make automated movie widget*

Seems a bit pointless though since decent human cameraman will still do beter job.

No.
1. If the camera man is good, he could make the automated widget just as good.
2. Even if you believe 1 is impossible, the automated solution still has pros that the manual one could never have. For example, it would be mass-applyable, with what i mean both applyable by the masses, and to masses of replays.

[Floris]

Okay, maybe not the last.... I've got one worth submitting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KFlJMh_nG8 - DSD (t1 spamming)

The above has all the gfx I could apply enabled, and the smoothcam/smoothscroll widgets are used here too wich is a real relief together with the fairly 'low' 3x speed. Oh... did I mentioned te content is worth it too?


(btw I generally think having 'mapmarks' on is your friend, unless you want a very clean-cut showcase video where it's not really about the content but about the engine or mod)

[babbles]

that video seemed like a good one for showing how not to d gun, how to make your base really compact and how to steal metal from your allies

these videos seem to be just watching you play without any explanation. you always go to the damage graph at the end and show us it, why? you don't show metal/energy used/sent/produced, damage receieved etc

someone watching this will go "why is there green spray going to that building, and why has the building now vanished?", a newb would go "why is he reclaiming his solar?".

you still only watch yourself, your ally comm dropped in the middle which allowed you to push as far as you did, yet you appear to take it as all you. why was there a blue commander in the middle? how did he get there? why did he go there?

and all the points on the map seemed to tell me was your ally went "share man" and you ignored them and took all the metal for yourself

I also see the title is "tech 1 pushing", yet the most effective thing seems to be those big bombers flying around, yet we don't know where these came from or anything

[Johannes]

Yeah, watching mediocre dsd play isn't entertaining.

And widget cannot be as good as a human, there's tons of things to look at that are not "action", and there is no simple way to see when they should be shown for a script.

[Pako]

Sadly BA DSD 8v8 even with the over 10 year old models is currently the best SpringRTS has to offer for the normal players and these videos shows the gameplay and fun of it somewhat better than many other videos.

I think generally more players should upload their random game videos to youtupe, it's not like it costs too much and there would be many worth watching and the bad videos would just get buried quite well. Like I won't see myself joining a CA game ever again but would definently watch any game video someone bothers to make.

[babbles]

I think generally more players should upload their random game videos to youtupe

yey we get to see people fixed on their base for an hour ignoring the vast majority of things around them

I assume floris is seen as a good player (for BA DSD) and although he didn't remain static on his own base, I didn't seem him look at anything else on the map unless it directly related to him

[Pako]

yey we get to see people fixed on their base for an hour ignoring the vast majority of things around them

Generally it's better to concentrate on units what you can control. Also DSD gameplay is very allowing for narrow minded people. Spring definetly needs more women and more gay people.

[babbles]

Not really, it's better to look how you can help your allies/if they need help, and look at the battle altogether rather than your narrow corridor

[Floris]

Eh what the crap.....

The blue guy going before me was clearly visible, he did a gr8 job securing the area, it was gr8 teamwork to see (how can I claim all for myself), also he telling me our north was failing helped too. Since both the enemy and ally at north were green and I didnt saw our north was that bad in shape.

I didnt steal metal? I killed 2 enemy coms which I reclaimed. When the request for sharing came, I quickly gave a lillte (I admit it could be more but I later forgot in the heat of the moment to give some more.
Those t2 bombers were really helpfull but we had so much t1 at their front door it was enough already. And hey, it's just eh... real gameplay... only one recording got deleted, all others I've put on youtube.

And eh, you really ned to focus on your own units and not the whole front. (thats why I usually give the units I send that is not really my front, since it would hurt my own front and my eco if i try to manage stuff scaterred all over the map)

And about the noobs that dont understand whats going on.... well.... I can alwasy decide to add some descriptions/markings with youtube, and turn it into a tutorial. I designed it to be viewed by like 3 stripes, and certainly not for the eyes of the veteran.


Oh and about the dmg-dealt graph, it's just generally the most interesting graph to see. I never hear anybody say, hey look, I've got the best eco! Or look I had the most units at one time!