[CaptainX]

Greetings all.

I have just completed the trailer cutscene mission for a capaign I'm working on, called "Independence: Omicron". It's a revamped story from my original Omicron Incident campaign, if anyone remembers that

The trailer is just a single FS2 mission made with the cutscene engine. The ZIP file is available for download via the link below.

I created the scene using the latest Inferno build of FS2, mainly because of the higher limits available on new ships and models. This scene should work just fine on any build, as long as it's FS2 Open.

Please, let me know what you think!

Note: There is music in the cutscene. If you don't have your music option turned on on FS2, be sure to do so before watching, or the scene will be very quiet.


Download Link:

Omicron.zip, 23.2 MB: http://www.sector114.com/omicron.zip

[ShadowGorrath]

Not bad. Could use different music during the battle though.

How did you get that kind of font and image to appear?

[CaptainX]

Thank you. I searched long and wide for a good musical score, because I wanted one with a very dramatic ending for the last scene. After that much searching, that was the score I settled on because I didn't want to waste tons of possible development time on a single item.

Getting the image to appear is in the "Subtitles" sexp. That sexp has 12 options. Image name is the 5th option down. I was always curious about this but never really tested it.

So I made an image with a black background and saved it as a jpg. Then I put it in the Maps folder. That didn't work. I then tried it in the Effects folder, and viola!

The font used in the story subtitles is simply an image, the same as the campaign title image.

I wasn't expecting the black background to appear as transparent, that was a very welcome side effect. I haven't tried using an image with a different colored background, I suspect it would then appear with that color as a background. But I can confirm that black is read by the game as transparent.

[ShadowGorrath]

Nice. Never knew that you can use images for cutscenes. Until now.

And as for music, maybe I could advice you next time? I mean, there's a lot of music and all, and I've got some dramatic music. Ah, never mind, it was good anyway. Just that the battle music sounded like from the 80s for some reason. 

[CaptainX]

Just that the battle music sounded like from the 80s for some reason.

I thought so too . I found lots of good scores out there, but I wanted one with a real dramatic ending... building up and up with a loud ending. If you've ever seen the trailer for Mass Effect on Gamespot, you'll know what I mean.

I had never seen images used in cutscenes in other campaigns, but I figured I could crack the code, given enough time. It actually opens up a lot of possibilities.

Imagine the Transcend campaign with a mostly transparent image of a creepy face taking up the whole screen, coming out of nowhere... like the pilot is having a vision or something. Or better yet, get an image of an Orion destroyer, edit it to where it is a ghostly white, and throw that up on the screen where it looks like the player just saw a ghost ship.

The possibilities are almost endless.

[Ransom]

Not bad at all. It's an interesting idea for a campaign.

The combat scenes don't sit right with me, though. Every ship is perfectly straight and the camera angles are decidedly undramatic, which makes the whole thing feel quite flat and sterile. And, yeah, the music's kind of goofy.

Nice use of the subtitle sexp, though. It's good to see more people using the cutscene features.

[CaptainX]

Not bad at all. It's an interesting idea for a campaign.

Wait until you see where and how the player enters the story. 

The combat scenes don't sit right with me, though. Every ship is perfectly straight and the camera angles are decidedly undramatic, which makes the whole thing feel quite flat and sterile.

Yeah, I really hate that, but it was the only way I could think of to keep the ships within the camera view as the scene progressed. Otherwise, by the time the camera reached a certain scene (a couple minutes while waiting for the story to finish), the ships have migrated far away and are no longer visible.

And, yeah, the music's kind of goofy.

Ahh, well, I suppose it could be worse. If I could find a better music track, I'd use it. The dramatic ending sequence at the end of my track where the title appears is the main reason I chose it.

Nice use of the subtitle sexp, though. It's good to see more people using the cutscene features.

Thank you. It's one of my favorite features of FS2... the ability to create your own in-game movies, as it were.

As soon as I learn more about how to move the camera from one location to the other while the player can see it, the scenes will be much better looking and more active.

[Goober5000]

Now that is a good trailer.  Well done!   Here's a highlight.

I only have two small issues with it.  One, as Ransom said, the battle scenes are all pretty static -- pans and zooms would have helped (especially with WMC's new camera code).  The other is that I'm not a fan of those models; a few of them are kind of ugly looking, being over-polied and poorly textured.

But those are minor complaints, really.  The story and execution are the most important things, and those are superb.  It sounds like a really interesting idea for a campaign, too.  I look forward to it.

[Akalabeth Angel]

  Yeah that was pretty cool, story's a bit different from the usual fare.
  It might've been cool to have uh, events being portrayed at the same time as the text. Though, at the same time perhaps it would've been distracting. Or even just had a few different views, like . . . have some convoy moving through sorta thing, then when you talk about the station, switch to that sorta thing.

[Snail]

The other is that I'm not a fan of those models; a few of them are kind of ugly looking, being over-polied and poorly textured.

Hmm which ones would those be? The Sirona or TrashMan's models?

[Alan Bolte]

I watch the mission, but I'm having two sound problems. One, no music. Yes, music is turned on. I hear music if I play a mission from the FreeSpace 2 campaign. Either the build I'm using (3.6.9) doesn't support ogg vorbis, or I'm doing something wrong. A weirder possibility is that it's some sort of hardware/driver issue. I can play the music successfully with VLC media player.

The other issue is that only small amount of the weapons fire is heard, and frequently I only hear bits of it, as though a beam started to power up, but was cut off. Perhaps part of this is to do with the distance the ships are from the camera, I don't know how FS2 handles that. Again, seems fine in the FS2 campaign, but I haven't properly tested the distance issue.

[Stormkeeper]

For dramatic music, I always think that "Requiem for a Tower", which is a rock remix of Lux Aeterna, is a fitting kind of piece. Very majestic, which would fit your needs.

[NGTM-1R]

The other is that I'm not a fan of those models; a few of them are kind of ugly looking, being over-polied and poorly textured.

Hmm which ones would those be? The Sirona or TrashMan's models?

I'm going to guess Trashman's since the Sirona is a thing of beauty.

[ShadowGorrath]

Or this one also sounds good

And I don't know, the ships look good. Especially the Sirona. Though they could use a more GTVA-ish mapping.

I watch the mission, but I'm having two sound problems. One, no music. Yes, music is turned on. I hear music if I play a mission from the FreeSpace 2 campaign. Either the build I'm using (3.6.9) doesn't support ogg vorbis, or I'm doing something wrong. A weirder possibility is that it's some sort of hardware/driver issue. I can play the music successfully with VLC media player.

The other issue is that only small amount of the weapons fire is heard, and frequently I only hear bits of it, as though a beam started to power up, but was cut off. Perhaps part of this is to do with the distance the ships are from the camera, I don't know how FS2 handles that. Again, seems fine in the FS2 campaign, but I haven't properly tested the distance issue.

Change the sound option... Don't remember if it's supposed to be 'Generic Hardware' or 'Generic Software'.

[Hyper Ion]

Am I the only one to have noticed the Alliance Knossos's eight ring segments rotating the same way?

Other than that, this should be an interesting storyline.

[Alan Bolte]

I get same results with Generic Hardware as I do with Generic Software.

[blowfish]

I wasn't expecting the black background to appear as transparent, that was a very welcome side effect. I haven't tried using an image with a different colored background, I suspect it would then appear with that color as a background. But I can confirm that black is read by the game as transparent.

For images like JPG, where there is no alpha channel (transparency), the game uses additive blending (eg. black = transparent, white = opaque, anything in between will show the background partially through).  You can see this a little in the end title (it's not very noticeable though).

A couple of things:

-As Hyper Ion mentioned, all of the Jump Gate's ring segments rotate the same way.  Half should rotate one way, half the other.
-Like others, I'm not a fan of the battle music.  What might have helped even more was having some music during the intro (the text part)
-When using in-game cutscenes, use the set-fov SEXP.  Many people, like me, use an ajusted field of view, which tends to make in-game cutscenes look odd (the edges are cut off).

Other than that, nice work

[ShadowGorrath]

-As Hyper Ion mentioned, all of the Jump Gate's ring segments rotate the same way.  Half should rotate one way, half the other.
-Like others, I'm not a fan of the battle music.  What might have helped even more was having some music during the intro (the text part)
-When using in-game cutscenes, use the set-fov SEXP.  Many people, like me, use an ajusted field of view, which tends to make in-game cutscenes look odd (the edges are cut off).

Other than that, nice work

The model isn't made by him, so I doubt he could have done anything about it. Or maybe he could have and I just don't know how...

[blowfish]

I've seen that model (TrashMan's jump gate) work fine in other mods, so I'm sure something can be done about it

[Hyper Ion]

Well, there's no SEXP causing the problem. I compared with BluePlanet, and no remedy SEXP was used there to make it turn correctly. I wonder if the LOD could be responsible in not discriminating the two ring sets the further away you get. Nope, not that. My next hypothesis is that the table was copied incorrectly. Another BluePlanet comparison shows the table to be working fine. I got no more ideas.