[Nico]

Originally posted by penguin
As far as DIVX goes, it's a nice idea, but is anyone really going to make new cutscenes for their campaigns?  This point was made at the developer's chat last weekend.  The consensus was that making a cutscene would probably be a lot tougher than making a mod...

let's make a shorter answer than WMCoolmon:
yes, we would. some peoples like the MT staff already work on them, and I do plan to put some in OTT ( if divx is to be supported ), not only coz it would be cool, but also coz I can

[Stunaep]

Originally posted by darkage


So?

I already seen the originals 20.000 times, they get kinda boring:)

The FS2 intro is still the best intro I've ever seen.

[Inquisitor]

I hate to mention this.... No, I actually don't.

Don't violate the DMCA. Interplay has said "no" to the MVE stuff, it was stripped out for a reason.

Don't get legit development here squashed because you don't want to follow the rules.

[Kazan]

inquisitor the DMCA can kiss my ass, im waiting for an opportunity to challenge the DMCA in court.

Not to mention before they can come knocking on your door they have to send you a warning, and since we're just linking to a publically available executeable they cannot say anything

not to mention this entire discussion was theoretical

[Inquisitor]

So in addition to being an expert coder, you also have a law degree, eh?

You really should pay more attention to HOW the DMCA has been enforced and pursued. There was that case where they started going after a professor, and that was NOTHING but theory. Also consider Blizzard's recent crusade against bnetd.

Circumventing Interplay's express wishes and the efforts of Volition to remove Interplay IP so they could release this source code to us is MUCH less noble that the professors academic work. Theoretical or not, you are either going to get yourself (or worse, us) in trouble if you continue down this path.

Of course, you refuse to cooperate on so many levels, why should I be surprised if you ignore this?

Weren't you the one who said all the other video methods sucked, and insisted people use DivX?

[Kazan]

inquisitor - i didn't insit on ****, so monkey off

I was addressing individual protocols, and if you notice i haven't been editing the source myself - therefore i haven't insisted on ****.

it would be best to support multiple file formats, divx, avi, etc.



Now you can go and worry yourself to death about whether a "discussion about whether it would be possible to dllink to the origional executable to watch the origional cutscenes is possible or not" will piss off Interplay and have them TRY and use the DMCA


IIRC that profesor got them off his back

[Inquisitor]

Read your own posts on the subject of cutscenes, shall I link them? According to you, anyone who wouldn't use DivX (albeit for a new implementation) was an idiot as far as you were concerned.

Hope you have cash, son, you're gonna get someone in a lot of trouble on of these days.

[Kazan]

[Snide]Yes, adult[/snide]

Go bother someone that has time for your DMCA sniveling

i didn't actually expect this to get implemented

[Fineus]

Stop, now. Both of you. Inquisitor is right - if anything is going to be done then it must be legal, even if the entire community shuns DMCA and what they (or it means, I don't know) - we still have to keep everything we do legal.

DivX seems to be the favourite for future movie installations and as near as I can make out it's a good idea that is perfectly legal to implement. We don't need MVE support and it's certainly not high on a list of things to do, if it violates laws then it's even less approved and since those on the SCP are those who decide what goes into the "official" modifcation everyone has to agree. I don't see that happen - especially since you (Kazan) just admited that you didn't expect it to get implemented.

Suffice to say, keep things legal. Obey the rules - even if they are stupid ones. And please keep the outbursts to a null - I really don't want to get trigger happy again.

[Inquisitor]

[Fineus]

Done

[Shrike]

So..... is it possible to simply redesign the system so it'll read DIVX movies as well as MVEs?  I don't claim to be an expert on the legalities of this, but that should (theoretically anyhow) allow you to put in fan-made movies without having to mess with anything Interplay-owned.

[Bobboau]

I realy don't think this would be worth the trouble, legal or otherwise, I honestly don't give a damn about DMCA, but this realy would be more of a waste of time than anything else,
if you can get it done easily, then do it outside the main comunity and have it be like MVExtract were there is no offical  site with it but if you're in the comunity enough to know about it then you can probly find someone with it, but I realy don't care if the origonal movies can play or not becase I've seen them all already, I would rather you worked on getting FS up to DX8 or built a few new data types or something worth while like that

[WMCoolmon]

A compromise might be to make it possible for the source to run an EXE file for a cutscene, or whatever other implementation is decided. This would allow the cutscene to use a different format, and if someone happens to have the MVEs as EXEs, they could make use of a modified SEXP to play them (the original cutscenes).

[Bobboau]

ya, a run EXE sExp,
this could have other uses too, like swiching to FPS engine, and it would probly be easier than... some realy easy... thing...

[aldo_14]

EXE is the bets way, mainly because we have some form of converting to that (I have MVEExtract if no-one else has).... IMO, putting in MVE support is simply asking for trouble - if it's expressly illegal (which I think it is - it's effectively a breach of trademark).  Whilst Interplay may not be so bothered about it themselves, hosting sites certainly would.

IMo, new movies aren't that hard to do.... simple stuff is easy (flybys, a little text fade), but in terms of yer bang-per-meg, it's not really worth it except where absolutely necessarry for a story.

[Sesquipedalian]

My question is, is it merely the MVE format that is copyrighted, or are the images and sounds of the actual FreeSpace 2 cutscenes also off-limits?  For example, if one were to output the audio/video sequence to one's VCR and record it on tape, and then make a DivX or something from that recording, would that be illegal?

[Kitsune]

Personally I'd rather see some kind of other movie graphics support.

Anyone who plays the source-code version still needs the original game to install the dang thing (I'm pretty sure of that at least, unless some idiot tries distributing it and the 3cd's worth of .vp's and stuff too.  *bad idea*)  So if they want to see the movies they can just finish the game then run the regular game and view the cutscenes.

Or, we could put something up, just a screen whenever there would be a cutscene saying "play cutscene "the ancients 1" now" to tell the person to go and run the original to see it.


But as far as MVE goes, it is still a valid movie format that could be used in future games.  If they released it too then they'd be giving away a possible trade secret that some programmer spent good hours on to get working.

The last thing I want to see is an official Cease & Desist order from intercrap over this and have it nuke the whole project.

[Vasudan Admiral]

would it still be ilegal just to make an avi and make a fred sexp to play it as mabey a new window or somin? or just make em command briefing ani's with the voice over as the sound, although command briefings kinda lack something that a full on movie has. namely size.
this is just an idea so don't nuke me yet

[IceFire]

Using something like DivX I think would be perfectly legal because as I understand it...DivX is an open source kind of format and not owned by anyone in particular....and while I bet Blizzard has a license for using it in War3, we don't need that because anything that we're doing is not being sold.  Plus any number of community people could then do "full screen" cutscenes for campaigns.

would it still be ilegal just to make an avi and make a fred sexp to play it as mabey a new window or somin? or just make em command briefing ani's with the voice over as the sound, although command briefings kinda lack something that a full on movie has. namely size.

I don't think I understand what you mean.