For anyone who was wondering how the Freaks were made to dance, and other things, there were three main steps involved; demo editing, demo editing, and demo editing.
Seriously though, the dancing Freaks, and pretty much everything else in this movie was done from edited or custom written demos. (actually, now that I think about it, only 4 shots were recorded in game and edited later, the rest were ground up creations)
As for what demos are, how they work, and how you can edit them to create a Freakshow chorus line, the
Guide to Guides in the
Player Guides board has some very usefull guides that explain most of that far better than I could ever hope to here.
Zloth's guides are where I started. You can also search the Players Guides forums for "demos" and should come up with a few more results that have yet to make their way into the great, big guide to guides.
I suppose I could toss out one of the demos I wrote for this movie. Preferably a short one. Here's the first set of dancing freaks (and the Doc) from the start of the movie, as they appear in the demo file.
1 0 Version 2
0 0 Map maps/City_Zones/City_02_02/City_02_02.txt
0 0 Time 18.375
0 CAM POS 1591 -105 -4025
0 CAM PYR -0.0 2.345 0
0 1 NEW Dancer1
0 1 NPC FRK_15
0 1 POS 1579 -110 -4021
0 1 PYR -0 2.1 0
0 1 MOV READY
0 2 NEW Dancer2
0 2 NPC FRK_24
0 2 POS 1582.5 -110 -4017.5
0 2 PYR -0 2.2 0
0 2 MOV READY
0 3 NEW Dancer3
0 3 NPC FRK_36
0 3 POS 1586.2 -110 -4014
0 3 PYR -0 2.3 0
0 3 MOV READY
0 4 Player
0 4 NEW "Doc Trauma"
0 4 COSTUME 0 c9dfff 5.494505 -0.538462 0.000000 -0.269231 -0.711538 -0.792308 -0.269231 0.004176 0.000000 0.180000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 -1.000000 0.000000 -1.000000 -0.990000 -0.150000 0.000000 0.510000 0.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000 0.000000 -0.100000 -0.250000 -0.170000
0 4 PARTSNAME Tight tights Stripe_1 ffffff 0000d4
0 4 PARTSNAME Tight tights Stripe_1 ffffff 0000d4
0 4 PARTSNAME Standard skin_glowing_eyes_01a skin_glowing_eyes_01b ffffff 5800ff
0 4 PARTSNAME Smooth skin_fingerless_01a skin_fingerless_01b ffffff 5800ff
0 4 PARTSNAME Smooth leather_01 None 000000 000000
0 4 PARTSNAME Tactical tactical_02a tactical_02b 0000d4 3b3b3b
0 4 PARTSNAME Style_03 Style_01a Style_01b 4cfdff 7eeef1
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 1f0000 5800ff
0 4 PARTSNAME Goggle_03 Lens_01a Lens_01b ffffff 0000ff
0 4 PARTSNAME Tight base Cross_1 0000aa 0000aa
0 4 PARTSNAME Small spiked_01a spiked_01b 0000aa ffffff
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 1f0000 5800ff
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 1f0000 5800ff
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 1f0000 5800ff
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 1f0000 5800ff
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 00000000 00000000
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 00000000 00000000
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 00000000 00000000
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 000055 000000 000000 000000 Auras/Male/Glow/GlowEyes.fx
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 00000000 00000000
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 00000000 00000000
0 4 PARTSNAME None None None 00000000 00000000
0 4 POS 1586.5 -110 -4019
0 4 PYR -0 2.4 0
0 4 MOV READY
13000 1 MOV EMOTE_JUDGE_1
800 2 MOV EMOTE_JUDGE_2
800 3 MOV EMOTE_JUDGE_3
300 4 MOV EMOTE_ATTACK
1000 4 MOV D_BLOCK
0 1 MOV D_BLOCK
0 2 MOV D_BLOCK
0 3 MOV D_BLOCK
3000 4 MOV D_WASHER
0 1 MOV D_WASHER
0 2 MOV D_WASHER
0 3 MOV D_WASHER
3000 4 MOV D_BOUNCE
0 1 MOV D_BOUNCE
0 2 MOV D_BOUNCE
0 3 MOV D_BOUNCE
2500 4 MOV D_BASE
0 1 MOV D_BASE
0 2 MOV D_BASE
0 3 MOV D_BASE
3000 4 MOV EMOTE_WHAT
0 1 MOV D_ARMSUP
0 2 MOV D_ARMSUP
0 3 MOV D_ARMSUP
2500 4 MOV EMOTE_POINT
2000 4 MOV EMOTE_CHAMPION
3300 4 MOV EMOTE_THUMBSUP
9000 4 MOV READY
You should be able to just higlight the above, copy and paste into your prefered text editor (notepad for example). Then use "Save As" to save it as "freakdance.cohdemo" and put the file in your "City of Heroes\client_demos" folder (you may have to create a folder with this name, don't know if its there by default) and follow the steps in Zloth's or MasterMarble's guides from the guides forum mentioned above to play it back. (or just get Zloth's
DemoLauncher )
If you have any trouble getting this one to work, or if you have some specific questions about editing demos feel free send me a PM (I check those about once a week,
and sometimes I even respond to them
) or post the question on the
Player Questions board or in one of the threads that follow the above mentioned guides and hopefully someone can get back to you with an answer better than "read the guides."
CoH's demo system is one of the most powerful and flexible videogame movie making tools I have ever seen. Just one more reason to give thanks to the the folks a Cryptic.
Thanks again,
-Doc
