Spring Videos

[smoth]

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.

Evo rts has some sd videos.

He even recorded some mumble voice chat.

Not me, someone else's game.

I was just hanging with those guys in mumble.

[Floris]

Oh, well... I guess CoffeeCrazy was the one recording then.

[smoth]

http://www.youtube.com/user/smoth7?feature=mhum
^is my channel btw.

[babbles]

The blue guy going before me was clearly visible,

clearly visible to people who understand BA/comm dropping =/= clearly visible to those who don't:

I designed it to be viewed by like 3 stripes, and certainly not for the eyes of the veteran.

And sorry,

was gr8 teamwork to see

I don't seem how it was exactly "gr(eat)8 teamwork"...

And eh, you really ned to focus on your own units and not the whole front.

also he telling me our north was failing helped too.

Good thing he was looking at the whole front then, otherwise you may have lost and most likely not have uploaded this video.

And I mentioned the damage graph because there's no reason for it to be in the video. You're showing people the game, and then you show how much damage you've done, but that's not the whole story.

[knorke]

these videos are interessting for the novelty (dont think there was a speed up first person video of complete game yet) but other than that, they do not have much substance. They do not really show or promote anything.
It is like putting a small camera on the head of a soccer player and speedup the 90minutes into a 5 minute clip. That might be interessting as an experiment but you do not want to watch the worldcup this way. It would not make for a good soccer ad either. Some watchers unfamiliar with the sport might not even notice there is a ball because it moves too fast. And most of the time everybody would have a hard time seeing what is going on because the player is running, jumping, falling or just

[Aether_0001]

Hey, don't know if this was mentioned before, but if you want to promote the game, make a music video of air raids and artillery battles - those are the most visually entertaining.

[zwzsg]

We already have the ActionFinder widget, and i remember there was an other, similar one.

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.

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.

Here is what happens when a video of SPRING RTS is shot with the camera fully automated by the action finder widget (originally from xyz, then modified by zwzsg):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfuryWiWxp4

[Floris]

Lol, those sounds made me really laughing out loud :-D

Well I dont think you want to automate it all but maybe it has a few good camera transitions you can cut out and use in your video.

Yeah, the video's I made arent really promotional material. But just something I didnt saw anywhere else yet, and it shows how the game is played. Because most promotional vids arent having a lot of real case scenario's happening. We got some nice promotional vids already, just not in full HD.

I still dont have the tools to make good camera movement myself so i wont be doing promotional vids yet.

[knorke]

"Fairly long and boring video of KP 3.5"
while that is decent, with you KP you can point the camera anyway, there is always something exploding. With BA you have to decide what event is most important. Like show the dying commander (you have to switch to com before he actually blows up) or show the fusion that gets bombed? Generally, the commander is more important. But maybe with that fusion alive the nuke would have had enough energy to fire and so that really was more game deciding etc...
And in BA there might be periods where nothing intessting happens so you have to edit these out anyway.

make good camera movement

yes, its kinda impossible atm I found keyboard actually works best, ie just hold down crtl+arrow key for slow movement or crtl+page up/down for slow zooming etc. With mouse the movement is jerky and with smoothing i find it hard to point the camera in right direction.
Never got around to make my planned move-camera-along-path-set-by-markers because wtfisthishit: http://springrts.com/wiki/Lua_camState
made a spin camera though, then gave up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-JfponLOZs
link in comments

[zwzsg]

My manned camera video would have smoother movement if dev stopped ignoring http://springrts.com/mantis/view.php?id=2220

[Floris]

Wow, that video is really nice, also because your give a clear explanation too. It only needs HD quality so you can actually identify the units by shape. (ofc the enemyspotter / teamplatter widget would come in handy too)

We definately need such a tool, too bad you ran into problems

Thumbs up for the movie and the attempt for the widget tho!

[Johannes]

Here is what happens when a video of SPRING RTS is shot with the camera fully automated by the action finder widget (originally from xyz, then modified by zwzsg):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfuryWiWxp4

Exactly, it's impossible to get a clear picture of what's going on in the game, especially when theres no minimap, basically you just see random explosions in random angles.

Though that can be ok too, if you want to just show off the games graphics in the video, but gives very little info on gameplay.

[smoth]

I still see the same kind of popping that I got when I recorded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDM_R4CZFC0

There is that really smooth camera mode thing but it slides and glides around making it next to useless for me.

Exactly, it's impossible to get a clear picture of what's going on in the game, especially when theres no minimap, basically you just see random explosions in random angles.

you need more info than just the minimap. It would only be less confusing for you because you are used to spring. You still would not know why the decisions are being made.

[CarRepairer]

Try my camera widget. You can use the mouse or keyboard to pan/rotate/zoom/move in any direction, and it will do it smoothly.

[hoijui]

if you are good in doing videos, and you have the replay of a good game, you, most likely, will be making a better video then an automated solution ever could.
If the replay is only half decent though, and you do not want to spend one day making a nice video, but still want to have it on youtube for example, you rather feed it to the automated solution, which may run in the background for at most as much time as the duration of the game.
-> There is a "market" for automated video generation. simply undeniable.
it is just a question whether it is worth going for it, and who would do it.
The automated KP video for example surely is good enough for attracting a random computer nerd that never heard of spring.

[CarRepairer]

In ZK you can check a box that will make your camera follow a player's cursor. You can also check a box that will highlight the units they have selected.

[Noruas]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5je8TKDfNA

[luckywaldo7]

Waaauw

That is epic enough to deserve its own thread tbh.

[knorke]

thats nice and impressive indeed but more for devs, cant attract players with that video

[SirMaverick]

That is epic enough to deserve its own thread tbh.

+1

Is it possible to make it fade out longer at the end? It stops too abruptly.