[Trasher258]

Nice trailer... but where are the images? I don't see any in-game.

[Goober5000]

Model rotation is defined in the POF file.

[Hyper Ion]

Model rotation is defined in the POF file.

Ah, thanks Goober. I used yet another BluePlanet comparison. Turns out the "Outer" and "Inner" rings have the same rotation values. The Inner Ring should have its rotation as -35, not 80.

[phreak]

It looks promising, but as others have said, it could have used more variation in the camera positioning and orientation.

[CaptainX]

Wow... lotsa responses in the 24 hours I was gone 

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.

Thank you! It's always nice to know one's work is appreciated.

Great minds do think alike... I never was satisfied with the battle scenes. I believe the ships have to remain static so they don't migrate to some other dimension before the camera gets there... but once I figure out how to work the code to get the camera to transition, I'm think of a camera that moves into the battle, circles through it, and then out again to the next one. Or something to that effect, anways 

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.

Thank you also. I've got some really good ideas of where I want the story to lead. I have two distinct ways to go... one very exciting and fast paced, the other intensely creepy. Haven't ecided which way to go yet.

I actually tried having more activity during the story titles, but I always ended up watching the movement of ships and missing the story. I figured that te story was important, so the station just sits thee as a background.

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.

Hmm... not sure what could be causing he sound problems. I would think that 3.6.9 can handle ogg files, but I don't know for sure.

As for the weapons fire... that's the distance from the camera. Happens on my machine as well.

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.

I'll check that out. Might do a remake of the trailer so I can get in good practice for the cutscene code.

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).

Ahh, you're correct... a good thing to know for future designs.

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).

- I agree, but I didn't design the model and don't have the slightest idea oln how to fix it  In fact, modelling is the one thing I wish I knew how to do, so I could design all my own ships for a campaign.

- There is music during the intro... should be one song for the intro, then a faster piece for the battle scenes.

- I saw this sexp, but had no idea exactly how to use it. I'll play with it and see how it works.

Other than that, nice work

Thanks! 

Nice trailer... but where are the images? I don't see any in-game.

The text subtitles in the first 2mins are images, and then the campaign title at the end of the trailer is an image. That's all that should be in there.

It looks promising, but as others have said, it could have used more variation in the camera positioning and orientation.

Yeah, I'm gonna work on that part of my cutscene skills. I desperately wanted a moving camera but haven't had the time to really sit down and tinker with it. Hopefully I'll be able to this weekend.

[blowfish]

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).

- I agree, but I didn't design the model and don't have the slightest idea oln how to fix it  In fact, modelling is the one thing I wish I knew how to do, so I could design all my own ships for a campaign.

- I saw this sexp, but had no idea exactly how to use it. I'll play with it and see how it works.

I've seen working versions of the model around.  I know for a fact that the one in BluePlanet works correctly.

About the FOV sexp, here's how to use it.  If you don't have a FOV set in the launcher, you are using the default value, 0.75.  So take your FOV setting, and multiply it by 57.2958 (radians to degrees).  That is the value you should use in the SEXP.  Also remember to use the reset-fov sexp if you want normal gameplay after the cutscene.

[Hyper Ion]

As for the model itself getting to work properly, here's what you do. If you used Turey's installer, and checked the "download Freespace tools" option, then you should have a folder hanging around called POFCS2, which contains the needed program for editing models aka .pofs, PCS2. If you didn't get it, go download it here.

Now, once you have it, run PCS2. Seeing as how you haven't packaged your files into a .vp, this makes life easier in finding the JumpGate model. Find it and open.

Don't worry about the missing textures (if there are any) as they will show up in game. Click the plus sign on "SubObjects" and then click again on "Gatea". Then click on "InnerRinga". You should see this information on the right hand side of the window.

Code: [Select]

$special=subsystem
$name=Inner Ring
$rotate=80
Go ahead and change that "80" into "-35". Then save it and replace the old .pof. Viola! You just fixed a model. PM me or use the Modding board for further assistance.

[Kie99]

The battle scenes needed more explosions IMO, perhaps have some cruisers duking it out before the Sirona (Magnificent ship, wanted to see that used in a campaign for ages) comes in and unleashes a broadside that wipes it out.  Still, nice trailer, look forward to the release.

[kkmic]

Anyone can come forward with a Youtube link? I'm kinda out of Freespace 

[CaptainX]

Tans for your instructions and suggestions, guys!

I'm gonna rework the trailer and add smoe more dynamic stuff to it.

I tried to convert the gameplay to a video using FRAPS, but the video came out to 1.87 GB. By the time I managed to tune it down to a size acceptable for youtube, you couldn't read the subtitles anymore.

That's why I decided a 23 MB file with data in it was a better way to go.

[Mobius]

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). 

Mmh?

[MC_Kejml]

Me likey

Yeah, I'm impressed by it, first, I thought my PC was laggy, but then it was aonly because of that cutscene... huh. Some of the models look very familiar to me, like the EAC Eclipse with Orion design But that's just fine. I also liked the music.
So basically, the only minus were the choppy fps which I don't know what was the reason for them.

Keep up the good work!

PS: I want shivvies 

[ShadowGorrath]

PS: I want shivvies 

Everyone wants them. I mean, since when there's a FS fan that doesn't want those adorable Shivvies in campaigns?

[CaptainX]

I've been trying to play around more with the cutscene mission, but I'm at a loss.

Perhaps it's staring me right in the face, or maybe it isn't possible... but I can't figure out how to smoothly move the camera from one spot to another.

For those who have seen the trailer, I would like to modify it where the camera switches to a battle scene, then follows a path through the scene.

The only way I can do this right now is to use Alpha 1 as a camera, but the AI pilot sucks... the ship's movements are too artificial, and lack the smoothness of a camera sweep.

I'm at a loss here... I might just have to skip the cutscenes and just focus on the missions, although I really wanted to use scenes to suck the player into the story more.

Any ideas?

[Darius]

Sexp set-camera-facing has three arguments (coords) plus two more optional ones that set the rotation time and acceleration. So for instance, you have the camera facing one spot, and punch in where you want the camera to end up, and how long you want the camera to spend turning to face those coordinates.

Set-camera-facing-object also has the two optional arguments.

[Ransom]

At the moment the camera movement code is very patchy. Set-camera-facing doesn't work properly, and neither do the recently implemented movement arguments for set-camera-position. If you want to do this stuff you might be better off waiting until they're fixed.

The alternative is to use the every-time conditional to get the camera to face an invisible camera ship that you've ordered to move across where you want the camera to look. If you set that up right it'll get you a decent turn. You can also set up some pans and such with it, but in most cases that looks pretty ugly.

To be honest, I'd just leave it be until the cutscene SEXPs are more functional. Right now your time would be better spent on the missions themselves.

[Admiral MS]

There are other workarounds to get the camera moving, mostly by using every-time in combination with set-camera-position (variables and/or ship-coordinates). They are fine if there is no object near the camera and you're looking from some distance but in the middle of combat it looks weird (depending on the speed of the objects and the FPS).

So I think it's best to wait until the new code works as it should.

A bit easier would be to use set-camera-position and have the camera facing on a ships flying waypoints through the combat area - like a cruiser. Then some seconds later change position and facing and show it from a different perspective or how reinforcements jump in and so on. That won't take too much time and doesn't lappearas static as it it is now.

[Trasher258]

The text subtitles in the first 2mins are images, and then the campaign title at the end of the trailer is an image. That's all that should be in there.

I heard about that already but I don't see any images OR subtitles anywhere! All I see is the station, portal, ships, etc. (Sorry for not saying so before)

[Jake2447]

I actually tried having more activity during the story titles, but I always ended up watching the movement of ships and missing the story. I figured that te story was important, so the station just sits thee as a background.

If you could get someone to voice act, you could have scenes going in the background.  And you'd only need one actor to narrate.

[WMCoolmon]

For future releases, please try and run them through a debug build. I noticed a bug with the engine when I was watching the trailer, but I've had to spend at least an hour now dealing with all the problems with the models and tables. I've also had to fix three buffer overflow related problems in order to be able to actually get to the mission.

I don't know exactly how many warning dialogs there are, but I'd guess there's something to the order of 30-60. Including missing weapons, bad turret normals, and bad MOI values for the models. Works fine for the cutscene but there's no way I'd ever be able to bugfix efficiently with this media, and the engine is already ignoring bay paths to keep itself from crashing, so you might have some playability issues.

EDIT: I did manage to fix the bug though.