[Fury]

Not sure if this has been suggested before but here goes anyway.

I know this is possible with right software and powerful system (or a second computer). But what if you could code this feature to the game itself?

This is like a review feature from X-Wing Alliance. Player hits record key and then reviews it later. But we could make this in-game film.

Argh... I hope you get what I mean. Can't explain it better.

Somebody made some kind of trailer of TBP in action, he used two computers. Another recorded what happened in playing computer. Frames per second was quite low and quality below average. I don't know if it could have been made in better quality. But I am sure that in-game feature would result in same quality as the game is while you're playing it. This feature is in XWA, but for FS2 it could be used for in-game film. As a mission where player can't do nothing but watch what happens.

[RandomTiger]

I believe coded a bit of what your talking about in.
I would have thought that you would want three runs.

1st time you play it your movement data is recorded
2nd time (optional) its played back but your viewing data is recorded so you can view your ship from outside etc while action is going on
3rd time both movement and viewing data are put together and game runs itself while saving a numbered picture for each frame.

User can take these pictures and make them into a animation.
What do you think?

[Fury]

Otherwise it is just what I thought, but...
1) A "normal" mission is recorded.
2) This recorded mission is saved to a file, but this mission file contains extra record data which is needed to determine what happened in the recorded mission.
3) Now a new player who now plays this recorded mission can't do anything else but watch what happens.

-You can select if you want that player is able to change views while recorded mission is playing.
-You can actually DIE in the recorded mission and still move forward in the campaign.

So, this is not a cutscene or command briefing animation, but a mission. Recorded mission. It's like you're watching a movie where you see everything from pilot's eyes.

This one's hard to explain when you don't know how to explain, eh.

It would be even better if you could make in-game cutscene so that by certain event, a normal mission turn to cutscene. Think of I-War 2 for example. When you're returning home after a succesful mission, suddenly it turns to in-game cutscene showing you a raider fleet jumping in. This cutscene may contain chatter and prerecorded conflict with few ships and then cutscene mode turns back to normal mission mode and you can start playing again. Of course what happened during cutscene mode, is already happened in the mission mode.

Argh... now nobody won't get what I mean...

Aww... hopefully few I-War2 and X-Wing Alliance players hops in to assist me.

[Darkage]

Hmmm....sound like the cutscene type that homeworld used, like in the begining of the game, the firts part of mission *The garden of cadesh* etc. those where in game cutscenes after they where done you could control your ships again and battle it out.

[Fury]

Exactly darkage.

[Darkage]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Exactly darkage.

See some one does understand ya:D

[DTP]

well just as long as you freeze the posistion of the player if you got an MID-battle record/demo/movie. i have triede this with Star lancer, pop ingame vidio, when it was over i was 1 feet away from capship with full thrusters.

BANG, dead.

that was the demo however, and one of reasons i didnt buy it.

[Killfrenzy]

By not buying Starlancer you've missed one of the most intense SCGs in history!

Anyways - I spose a 'Starlancer Film' feature could be useful, but what effect will that have on making missions? They'd suddenly become hugely complex, and FRED is renowned for its (comparative) simplicity!

[DTP]

well to me, SL looked like WC in new clothings.

[Killfrenzy]

Does the name 'Chris Roberts' mean anything to you? Of COURSE it was very WCish - it's made by the same man! To some extent, SL was WC6, but I found the story so hilarious!

Back to source code chatter!

How could we implement such a film feature, and yet keep it 100% accessible?

[RandomTiger]

Sounds like a difficult job to me.
Here comes the age old question:
If someone did it would people make enough use of it justify all that coding?

[EdrickV]

There is a demo recording/playback system started, DaveB mentioned it in the guided_tour.txt file. I'm not sure how far along it is, but someone might be interested in taking a look at it to see what is there.