Very ambitious megel, I like it. But yeah, that would be very difficult to do with the available animations. I think that'll look great once aircraft are done.
erm, right, i don't know what you're erm... talking about. ahem. This story line can't just be like a film. it's got to be more like an actual battle that might take place, except we follow one group of people and it's all hyped up. We can't do "building falls on light tank, destroying it" because that won't be in empires. Also, we need to remember pacing. it needs to be fast. action needs to be viscious and brutal. camrawork can make an ordinary scene dramatic, without requiring ambition timing. for instance, you and a guy infront of you can be running through some trees, when an enemy APC drives past with some men escort. the men spot you, and you see your ally open fire and kill one of the men, before you both finish the second. the APC then swerves to a stop, searches through the woods. you hide, watch your ally run for a tree, chased by tracers. for a feeting glance, you see him pinned behind the tree as well. then you turn, run along the side of the wall while the APC is enguaged, launch some grenades under the APC, destroying it. but more and more enemies are appearing. you kill two ahead of you, and one cutting across the nearby feild towards you. you and your ally are back to back now, firing constantly. perhaps he gives you ammo, and heals you if he's an engineer. lets say he is. you're frantically defending him while he sets up a turret. two more men appear around the corner you were scouting out, and you drop back. keep firing. final shot is birds eye, directly above you, panning out through the trees and fade to black. length: 1 min. remember- hype things up. in the intro to BF2142, everyone is firing into thin air, there are 10 times as many players on the screen as usual, people are running out of cover....
Stop teasing Megel. There's plenty of time... Anyway, once the script is done (I'll have a draft written by the end of the day) it's just creating the set (4-5 days? less if I have help from other mappers) then shooting it (a week?). Editing will probably be the same as the last one (a week). So unless the publicised release is going to come out less a month after 1.08, it'll make it easily. As I said, I'm writing the draft up now. I'll post it in here, but you'll have to be quick with criticisms, because I'll be starting on the set almost immediately. After that's done, story can be changed, but location can't. EDIT: In other news, I've been playing about with the demo recording and bink. So this should be just as pretty as the official binked trailers that you all saw for HL2. The trouble is, Empires doesn't support less than 1024x768 (widescreen is 1024x576) so I have to record at an unnecessary resolution, then cut it down afterwards. Also, the quality is a little iffy at the moment (blocks very visible). A few more tweaks and it'll be sorted. EDIT2: Here's the first draft:
ok... would it be possible to replace the village with a base? or even just a forward base? i mean, it could be amongst the ruins on dustorm or something, bu t it would make more sense. other than that, it's all good.
Yes, it will be similar to the ruins on duststorm. The idea is that it's an uninhabited (and relatively neutral) zone, which neither faction has a complete grip over. I'm working on the BE base now. It's all looking quite groovy. Because I can't place any vehicles in hammer, they will have to be built and arranged just before filming begins. That could be interesting :D There are some watch towers, but I'm not completely happy with them. If anyone wants to map anything they think would fit, just PM me.
are you sure we're allowed to include things that arn't actually in the mod? i mean, it might be seen as false advertising to include a watch tower if they don't actually feature. sorry to poop on everything, but i just want us to consider everything
This isn't solely to demonstrate actual gameplay. It it were, I would have just shot it on public servers like the last one. Just think of all the adverts you have seen, and how truthful they have been to the actual product. You are allowed a little artistic licence. The main purpose of this trailer is to generate hype, and really get across the message that Empires is something more than a buggy little mod that's no fun and too slow (which seems to be the popular belief). It's not really deception, because nowhere am I claiming that it's plausible gameplay (although the vast majority would be, regardless). And the watch towers are a feature. If anyone wants to include them in a map, they can!
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to call off this whole idea for the moment. I just don't have the time to build the sets required at the moment, and organising enough players to film properly would take a crazy amount of work. I was probably a bit ambitious when I started this, and I can see now that it's just not going to work. But that doesn't mean that this will be wasted. I will continue to work on the sets, and the possibility remains that they can be used in a future trailer. The new plan for the 1.08 trailer is to follow the format of the old one, with an upbeat soundtrack and a greater amount of first person footage. Once 1.08 is out I'll post a thread in general discussion asking for demos people have recorded. My apologies to everyone who contributed, but your work will not be wasted. I just hope the tried-and-tested format can work out again.
There will be one, following the same format as the last one, filmed on public servers during real games. I'll also accept footage from other people in order to reduce the amount of time spent filming. It should still be a good trailer, but it's not going to be story-driven. This way, I can show off everything in 1.08, including new maps (which wouldn't have been possible with the old idea).
