Balshor

So, the first thing we need to do is gather the information we need in order to write this demo. It consists of the following:
<ul type="square">[*] A truck driving down a street[*] A hero running alongside the truck[*] The hero jumping up onto the truck[/list]So, we need to figure out the NPC model for a truck, a good straight stretch of road, and the MOV commands for a hero running and jumping. We'll also need a costume for the hero, but that will come automatically with the rest of the stuff.

Run around Atlas Park until you see a truck driving around. Take a quick demo:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>/demorecord truck1
/demostop</pre><hr />
We'll read the NPC info out of this in a bit. (This is truck1.cohdemo from the link in the first post).

Next, running and jumping MOVs. Start a demo, run a bit, then jump (preferably fairly high, but it doesn't really matter).
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>/demorecord runjump
(( run and jump a bit ))
/demostop
</pre><hr />
I actually forgot to get the running MOVs when I did this, so I had two demos: jump.cohdemo and rundemo.cohdemo.

We'll need another piece of information that's a little trickier: we need to know how tall that truck is. The easiest way to do this is to find a parked truck somewhere and jump on it. (There's one in a parking lot in the NE corner of Atlas Park.) Use /loc to get your coordinates at the top and at the bottom. Remember that CoH coordinates are ( EastWest, UpDown, NorthSouth ). So, take the difference in the middle coordinates at the top and bottom, and that's the height of the truck (11.7).

Now let's find a good place for our scene to take place. I used a section of the road that runs over the lake in Atlas Park, but anywhere will do. We'll get a few more locations by standing in the road and using /loc again. We need:
<ul type="square">[*] Where the truck starts[*] Where the truck ends[*] Where the hero starts[/list]I put the truck in the east-most lane of the road, starting at coordinates (1176.8, 41.5, -287.4) and ending at coordinates (1176.8, 41.5, -1134.1). The hero will start at (1228.7, 41.5, -287.4). Note that once I picked the first point, I changed the numbers in the others a bit so everything lines up nice and straight -- this isn't terribly important, but it will make things a little easier later on.

Finally, I'm going to grab a quick demo just to have something to start with. In particular, this will give me a fixed camera so I can deal with the action before figuring out how I want the camera to behave. So, I'm going to stand somewhat near the "finish line", zoom into first person, and face the "start line". Again, we do a quick
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>/demorecord camera
/demostop</pre><hr />
Again, if you want mine, it's camera.cohdemo at the link in the first post.

That's all the information we need in-game. Now to analyze the demos we took....

Seeing how I've never actually made a CoH movie, I thought I'd start getting my feet wet by demo-editing together some action shots. Since I'm basically teaching myself as I go along, I also thought that I'd share the process with you all, in the hopes that you find something educational or at least interesting in my fiddling-around.

My first action shot is pretty simple: a hero, running beside a moving truck, takes a leap and lands on top. The demo will last about 5 seconds.

Here's what you need to follow along:
<ul type="square">[*]A copy of my demo editor. There's a new version up (0.8.14) that corrects a bug in one of the wizards that we'll be using later on, so grab a new copy even if you already have it. Note that you need to have Java 1.6 or higher installed to use it. (If you don't have it, you can get Java from www.java.com.) [*]A basic understanding of demos. The goal here is to talk about how to put the pieces of a demo together, not what each individual line in the demo does. So, I'm going to assume that you understand how to read POS coordinates, what CAM refers to, and what a MOV command does. If you don't know how to read a demo, I recommend reading one of the guides stickied in this forum.[*]Knowing how to use the following commands in-game: /loc, /demorecord, and /demostop.[*]A calculator (or not, if you're confident of your arithmetic prowess)[*]Something to take notes on.[/list]If you want to follow along exactly, you can get the various demos I recorded (including the final demo, truckjump1.cohdemo) here.

That's it. The instructions for making that begin in the next post....

Just as another thing to try, do the attackable police drones in the PPD faction use the same model and FX as the CoH police drones? I can't remember if they have their lights on in mayhem missions or not, but it certainly seems as if they should.

One word:

Plastics.

Two words:

Awesome video!

A couple years ago, Ms. Abyss made a collaborative video All Star, where various heroes contributed demos of their heroes and she spliced them together into a single video.

Well, given that we have a nice new forum and the 4 year anniversary of this game is coming in a few months, I think it might be nice to put together something similar. Now, never having made a video before, I possess very little of the necessary knowledge and none of the experience necessary for such a project. But, that's why it's a community collaborative project!

Before this project can get started, we would need two things.

First, some people interested in helping me produce the thing -- I can handle demo editing, but ideally somebody (or somebodies) with some experience would be willing to do things like video capture, vocals, sound editing, post-production, and so on.

Second, we need some ideas as to what the video would contain. As a couple of starting points for discussion, we could do a "clip-show" type video where we show numerous heroes, doing whatever they do one at a time. Alternatively and slightly more ambitiously, I was thinking that we could get a bunch of demos of people fighting Rikti, then demo-edit them to all appear in the "second coming of the end-of-beta invasion" in Atlas Park.

So, anybody interested in doing this? Any suggestions for what to stick in the video? (Plot? Setting? Music? All we know is that we have a large cast of characters....) This can be as simple or as complex as we're willing to make it, and with a target release date of April 28, it's not a bad time to start planning.

Hey, everyone!

I've never finished a film -- closest I got was storyboarding out a humorous take on a stalker's love life (set to an a capella rip-off of "Happy Together").

I did, however, write a demo editor a long time ago to help out in that project, so maybe this new forum will re-interest me in the project. If any of you would like to use the editor, feel free to barrage me with questions or requests. I haven't messed around with it in over a year, though, so no promises on whether I remember how it works.

You can also try my demo editor. The "Interpolation Wizard" can handle lines, circles, and parabolas. Unfortunately, all the reference points need to be static (so you can rotate around a single location, but you can't rotate around a moving character).

You might also want to check out the "Generate PYR from POS" wizard, which can automatically point the camera (or anything else) at another reference in the demo or automatically make them it forwards along its movement patch.

I'll warn you that I haven't touched this thing in a year or so, but I'm always happy to muck around in the code if you have any questions or requests.

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all defeat rewards, including experience, prestige and influence or infamy will be doubled!

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Drops are a defeat reward. I suppose it's too much to hope for that all drop rates will be doubled, as well?

Here's some approximate off-the-cuff calculations from a demo snapshot of the Hive:

The Antibodies are 160-175 feet from the base of Hamidon.
The Electrolytes are 105-128 feet from the base of Hamidon.
The Mending Mitos are 55-85 feet from the base of Hamidon.

(A fair amount of this variation is undoubtedly due to their varying heights. The mitos are arranged horizontally in almost perfect hexagons.)

Again, very approximately:

Two adjacent antibodies are ~160 feet apart. Two opposite antibodies are ~330 feet apart. Two non-adjacent, non-opposite antibodies are ~270 feet apart.

Two adjacent electrolytes are ~105 feet apart. Two opposite electrolytes are ~190 feet apart. Two non-adjacent, non-opposite electrolytes are ~187 feet apart.

Two adjacent mending mitos are ~55-70 feet apart. Two opposite mending mitos are ~110 feet apart. Two non-opposite, non-adjacent mending mitos are ~90-100 feet apart.

Assuming that the mitos have ranges of 600/150/150, respectively, this means that the yellows can easily hit anything inside of Hami. Players shouldn't be able to be hit by more than three blues at once as long as they are outside the ring of blues. All six green mitos can hit players slightly ouside of the ring of mending mitos. I'll try to draw a schematic diagram of mito ranges when I have more time.

In the words of Billy Idol:

So let's sink another drink
'Cause it'll give me time to think
If I had the chance
I'd ask the world to dance
And I'll be dancing with myself

Updated reception hall. That's the oversight room / meeting hall from this post through those doors.

More base pictures as soon as I have time to upload them....

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I like the wooden floor! Did you use floor tiles for that effect or something else?

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A tall bookcase is exactly 2 levels deep, so that's a pit with 256 bookcases carefully arranged in it. I originally wanted to make a firepit out of torches using a combination of bookcases and floor torches (which are also exactly 2 levels deep if you subtract the flame), but it didn't look nearly as good as I thought it would.

Team Evil's new oversight room:

Picture 1
Picture 2

Banners (mostly) belong to our allied SG/VGs.

If anybody wants to borrow the room (on Pinnacle) for an event, we even have a ballroom with a custom wooden dance floor adjacent to the hall:

Picture 3

Nice work, Zloth! You might just inspire me to redo the parametric equation path thing in my demo editor to be usable by people who didn't major in math in college....

[ QUOTE ]
I've got a particularly tricky camera movement I'm doing in an upcoming movie... it's basically just .25 of a circle, only using two dimensions (up/down and north/south) but during the whole time I'm trying to keep the camera pointed at one particular point, not a direction, which is what it wants to do.

[/ QUOTE ]

DrZeus -- if you need to get the camera tracking properly after using Zloth's movement path generator, you can use the "Auto PYR Wizard" from my editor. Basically, it will automatically create the PYR commands for a moving camera to track a moving object. The interface is more than a bit clunky (I'm more a mathematician than a programmer), but hopefully it's fairly self-explanatory. A word of warning: I haven't had time to do any serious updates on the program in months, so if it chokes on a demo file or you have other problems using it, drop me a PM and I'll see what I can do.

Huh? They display just fine for me without any downloads....

Just for fun:

I believe that the height number is actually the height difference in inches from six feet. So, a five foot hero should have -12 there, where a 6'6" hero would have +6. The game coordinates are all in feet, too, so to find the position of a player's head, take their POS commands and add 6+height/12 to the Z coordinate.

This is basically how automatic camera panning in my demo editor tracks player's heads instead of their feet.

Well, you could just post it to ImageShack, and make sure to uncheck the "resize image" box.

Let's not let this thread get eaten by board maintenance. Show us more sexy base pictures!

Here's Team Evil's atrium, using Ruin_of_Irony-inspired skylights:

Atrium Screenshot

Yes, you can walk on the grass without falling between the 128 potted plants I used to construct it (unless you're really trying). It's about 4 feet tall, though -- we have to go kidnap ourselves some gardeners. I'd have preferred more benches and less plinths, but I needed something to cover up the edges of the plants poking up through the wood floor.

Some bases are places of learning filled with students. Some are fortresses of solitude. Some possess impregnable defenses and will guard mysterious items of power (someday). Some are places to recover, recuperate, and get back into the fight.

Ours just has a secret club in the basement.

http://img109.imageshack.us/my.php?i...81834332wq.jpg
http://img109.imageshack.us/my.php?i...81833545uo.jpg

Well, I finally managed to get inside a Mayhem Mission tonight. It was generally awesome, but here are a few things I thought could be improved (probably stated by others above me, but I haven't read this thread):

1) Side quests should indicate what the objective is in some way or indicate that their objective is complete. I managed to figure out what to do without too much trouble, but it was unclear how many firebombs to plant (did I need to go upstairs and plant more?), and the smash&amp;grab wasn't obviously a smash&amp;grab (and how much to grab) until I had finished it. Also, there wasn't any smashing involved inside...would have been nice to be able to take out some of the display cases or something. This isn't anything that a bit of experience with the missions wouldn't solve, but it would be nice for the first few times exploring them.

2) I could not successfully complete the mayhem mission solo, even on villainous difficulty, because the hero who came after me was an EB version of Aurora Borealis (who was initially a full hero on relentless). Since these are replacing heists, I'm assuming that we'll need to complete these things in order to get contacts -- as long as the game throws EBs with triangle-mez-protection at my lvl 40 dominator, he's never going to be able to complete these missions. I would consider this a feature-breaking bug for me.

3) The unkillable, attackable civillians played havoc on my imps. I'd be fighting against a couple of PPDs, and my imps would be chasing down civillians as they ran away in terror. Would be nice if it could be fixed, but it's not really that big of a deal.

4) My imps wouldn't attack the cell door from the inside after being defeated by Aurora (twice). It would be nice if my pets would help me break out of jail.

Overall impression: excellent work, lots of fun, and really a more villainous experience than anything currently in CoV. However, I wouldn't push this live as long as it forces solo heroes to defeat elite bosses in order to get contacts.

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The villains just won the zone a moment ago. I along with some other heroes simply dismissed the turrets and let villains take over the pill boxes.

The zone looked pretty cool. When the villains won there was a counter that said to defeat villains to revert it back. 100 kills to do that. I assume it is the same for when the heroes win? The countdown finished before that was ever possible and the zone reverted back anyway. Perhaps the countdown timer should be a little longer or the number of kills lowered for that phase.

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Yep, 100 kills to revert the zone back early...that's what we villains see all the time.

The timer is 5:00, right? 100 kills in 5:00 does seem a bit extreme, especially considering that whatever side just lost the zone is probably outnumbered and outfought. With the 1HP/1END ressurecting thing, I doubt that there would even be 100 targets available to kill over the course of the 5 minutes unless the zone were packed.

As an alternative, how about each kill subtracts 5-10 seconds (or some other small amount of time) from the clock? I'm assuming that such tech wouldn't be too hard to implement, considering that you have +time modifiers in mayhem missions. As it is, it's easier and more productive (in the sense of earning less prestige for the heroes) for my villain to just hide in the base or the corners of the map until the timer ticks down.

Villaingroup Name: Team Evil

Website: http://covteamevil.blogspot.com

Leaders: Palcioz (@Balshor) and Omicron Cypher (@Maverick X)

Preferred Method of Contact: global tells or in-game email

Villaingroup Description: Relaxed and drama-free. We are currently in the process of rebuilding the group after losing members to WoW, Auto Assault, overseas military service, and general MMO fatigue. Currently maintaining a nicely appointed base, outfitted with all teleporters, 5 worktables, medical transporter, and auto-doc. No prestige quotas, no mandatory voice software, and casual-friendly activity requirements.

We are also open to merging with other rebuilding VGs -- contact a leader in-game, and we'll see if we can work something out.

Pinnacle's Team Evil recently revamped out base -- screenshots can be found on our blog.

I love what you've done with the tables in your base, especially the conference table with the integrated holodisplay.

The item named "Mission Computer" is the tech version of the mission computer. You should be able to craft an Oracle at the basic arcane table that does exactly the same thing. To craft "Mission Computer", you'll need to use a basic tech table.

As with all aux items, use the tech version if you use tech control items and the arcane version if you use arcane control items.

The IoP trial is the Cathedral of Pain and will be available to both hero and villain sides once it's moved off of the test server. (Hero groups on test have successfully completed this trial.)

The Silver Mantis strike force is a villain-only 20-25 strike force accessible only through the mission computer. Supposedly there is a comparable task force for heroes that has not yet been implemented in the game.