Sonic_Moonbeam

Well, I usually come here and link to the rules page but I just opened a browser and typed in gametrailers.com and went to their main page. I didn't see the car ad to click on like in the link page here so I typed in "matrix contest" and searched their site and BAM! 3 came up.

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This may explain why there's only been one entry so far. There may have been dozens that have been submitted and only that one made it past the legal section.

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I was over there today to read rules again and I found 2 other entries but they aren't listed under the submission area. Not sure what that means??

Thanks and I'll get the new version of your editor and use camdist. This is what I needed.
And now that you have revealed your SECRETS! BAHAHA I shall win the contest!!!!

hey, zloth! thanks for the reply. I think the editor I have been using is Balshors. I have yours but, in all honesty it was harder to read for me at the time Anyway, I opened yours up to take a look earlier and what I did was place my toon on top of the city hall at the flag. I scrolled out as far as the CAM would go and used the in game camera to circle my toon. Looks great. Now...i want to go EVEN FARTHER out and circle. That is what I can't figure out. In your editor, I don't know what the CAM line is. Is that an object? I see the player names listed as objects. I have been trying experiements in moving things with "Movement" but I get the same demo played back each time, nothing is changed. I guess I need some more practice time with it. Thanks again for the reply and if you could tell me how to move the camera, that'd be great.

Edit: I just found "Camera" way down in the middle of all that


Edit: Also, zloth, when opening it, I get a LOT of costume parts error boxes, is that normal?

I have tried many wizards and undoubtedly I do not understand how to circle with the CAM. I want to be able to stand in a location and move the camera out about 1/2 the distance it will go when scrolling out and then at that point, circle my toon 1 revolution with the CAM. Any tips or hints for that? I used the Circular Interpolation wizard (among others) and it always dips down under the map or zooms out in space. Help would be appreciated. (As an aside, I know how to circle my toon with the in game camera but I mean using a wizard to do it if I want to zoom way out and spiral around at a large distance away using the Demo Editor. )

I guess I can only echo what others have stated but the "example" video goes totally against the rules posted!

*"No violence" yet we have a superhero kick a guy in the head and presumably kill him.

*joins soldiers who are gonna "wait for me to fire then go around the back" and "then we'll let 'em have it. This is gonna be awesome!"

*Joins a gang and is then set on fire by a member of that gang!!

I guess "showing your darkside" isn't such a good campaign slogan to pair with CoX. On the other hand, I am happy that CoX is able to participate in this contest.

hmmm, that reminds me more of the Ray Bradbury novel about a Dark Carnival (carnies?) that comes to town in October. Perhaps it could be using Carnies for a Halloween video contest? That would be awesome!

But goggles could indicate that underwater map?

Sounds interesting, though. More Clues Please!

I had 2 characters that had not been logged in for approx. 10 days and logged both last night. Upon going back to the login screen to choose another character, I noticed the new last logged in days said 49,710 days since last login for those 2 characters. After about 30 minutes, it defaulted back to reflect that I just logged in. I logged that character once again and back to the character screen to see it also reverted back to 49710 days since last login. I suppose that will be fixed but odd where it came up with that number? Also, last night our SG kept losing peoples Globals again for them to reappear later and did that all night.

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Hehe good joke.
April fools day.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on bob over there. Fool me thrice umm .... wait thats not how it goes...

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nope... this is how it goes, silly!

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It was like a lollypop where you bite into it expecting a fudge center and then find out it's full of concentrated pickle juice.

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EWWWW! a fudge center?!

how about a quick easy way until you get the hang of manipulating the actual CAM coordinates? Go to your postion for the chest close up and place your logged in toon there. Swing the camera around to face your toon and move in toward your face until it looks the distance away that you want. Do your demorecord. Go into the demo and decrease the 2nd set of numbers which will move the camera down from your face to your chest. It would probably be less than 1 whole number since it isn't far from your face to the chest. (Example... in 12.456 35.890 -23.890, you would make the 2nd set of #'s 35.490 and keep moving down until you got it) NOTE: for me, it is easier to go in and film from the camera angle I want and then just copy those CAM coordinates over to my demo I want it in. I have learned to manipulate the CAM but it takes time sometimes to get it just where I want by "guessing" the numbers in and changing the PYR to get it just right when I can just log in game and go to first person and get the pos/angle I want and copy it over but that is for "simple" shots. Its harder when you need the camera where you can get your in-game camera to go but for your purposes, this method might be easier.

Edit: what Balshor said above

Star, I might have found a work-around, at least for a video. I used the demo for the Legacy bow. I had the hero shoot off 5 snap shots in a row and the bow disappeared after each one. After trying numerous things I changed out the MOV animation to the bow arc (rain of arrows MOV I think) and what happened was the bow stayed in sight with shot #s 1-4 but between 4th and 5th shot, the bow disappeared. Hmmm, I wondered why it only disappeared then. I looked at the times on each and they were 5000 apart EXCEPT for the 5th time I used the power. It was at 8000, so I shortened it to 5000 from the last time and the animation played 5 times with no bow disappearing. OK, now I went back to shorten the time for Snap shot and it wasn't as good because the hero fired the bow almost constantly but it didn't disappear IF you get the timing right. Perhaps you can use a combination of differnt MOV animations/powers such as snap shot, rain, rain, snap shot and get the timing right enough for your movie. It does look odd but kinda cool so see her constantly grabbing an arrow and firing it, so try working with the time and see what you can do. Shorten the time between the MOV animations so one picks up right as the other ends because it appears the bow disappears after the MOV has completed but even using something like BOW_READY in between might work although the bow slightly changed angles in her hand.

Hmm, which weapons? I wanted to see so I made a dual blades scrapper and the demo played them back fine. Is it other weapons that are missing besides dual blades?

Edit: Ok, I didn't try to attack so I created a blaster with the legacy bow and then attacked with it. It showed up fine but after firing the arrow, the bow disappeared until the power was activated again. I think my blaster with a bow on live holds it until I use a different power. That is the only thing but it definitely showed up. Can you check again, perhaps it is fixed now?

very nice job! I still don't know how to do smooth camera movements that move around like that for long shots as you did in the beginning. I still got lots to learn!
The Jaegers putting along, that would look awesome!

Well, I'm new to this too, but it could prove useful as I have had the same issues and what I discovered my problem was is that the first 3 lines of the code needs to be the Version, Map and Time of day. I had a few lines in there of NUL and things to show me where to add in things I wanted but when I resorted them, it placed those NUL commands at the top and it said it couldn't read it and closed the program. So when I took them out it worked. Make sure you don't have anything before those 3 lines. Then, make sure you have a CAM POS & PYR (i move mine to be lines 4 & 5 just so they are at the top and I can find them easily) or it will say it doesn't know how to read it (because without the CAMera angles and placement, it won't know where to start. This may not be your problem but it might help. Balshor, Zloth or Relentless can chime in if I am not correct on that or I am reading your question wrong. Good Luck.
Oh..and on movement, this might help. they are in X Z Y fashion (such as 34.5678 42.456 -98.19874) where the first sets moves one way like North/South then the 2nd set of numbers is how high you are so moving from 34.5678 to 40.5678 moves you STRAIGHT UP 6 increments (like in the air)and the last moves you the other direction such as west/east. For starters, try making a demo with an object in your view. Then in the editor, move the first # up or down by 2 and see which way it moved. (move the whole numbers not decimals like move 34.5678 to 36.5678)Do the same with the other numbers and it won't take you long to see how the movement works. 1 or 2 numbers won't move it far so you can see it but larger numbers might move it off the screen or down inside the map or above you so take your time and you'll get used to it..I am !

I will tell you how to make your own. I don't know what Operating System you have but if you have windows XP it is VERY simple and inexpensive because it takes a couple of minutes and is FREE! lol
Step 1: Go to "My Documents" and then to "My Pictures" and clean that folder out by placing any photos into another folder. Then download any CoH images you like and place in that folder, "My Pictures"
Step 2: Right click on the desktop and select "Properties" or go to "Control Panel"/"Display" then find the "Screensaver" tab. Click the drop down box and select "My Pictures Slideshow" and viola! you have an instant screensaver of CoH stuff. Then you can mess with the settings for speed,etc. Under settings you can also specify a different folder if you don't want to empty "My Pictures" Enjoy.

Thanks again, Balshor and Relentless....HEY, somebody gotta keep you demo pros on your toes! One hell of a demo, yep! *Sigh* too bad my demo needs to be at evening sunset so 20 is too late. Well, it doesn't HAVE to be but some people have trouble seeing it when it's dark, so by having it right before sunset, 18.75 is what I'm using, then it works good but those little lights would have been so nice! I might settle. Thanks again and I'm sure I'll run across more questions I don't have answers for. Thanks also for helping everyone out like you all do, it means a lot to me anyway.
Ok, ok..a little teaser for me demo. I'll say it stars "Elena" our lovely Paragon billboard eyes and lips woman and quite a few well known NPCs. Positron never busted so many moves and who knew Castle had tats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was my next try but I felt it probably wouldn't make a difference, because that is sort of my point. Playing the demo back at nighttime hours made the lights come on BUT I didn't add any other FX to the demo to cause that, so how did it know to do it? lol Thanks, will be trying it tonight and let you know.

Ok, so I got a question for Demo Editors...I have found something odd to me. I am using a COH Police Drone at zone ent/exit (Police_Drone_Guard) in a video. When it gets "nighttime" the drones have 2 small lights like emergency lights that shine onto the ground. I figured there were 2 NPC's for this, one for day and one for night (with the lights on) but this doesn't seem to be the case. If the time of day for that NPC is changed from day to night, the lights come on in the demo playback. Does that sound logical? I just figured in a playback, the NPC would be the same regardless of time of day unless I used an NPC for night being another name like Police_Drone_Guard2 or Police_Drone_Guard_Night. Hmm.... How do I get the Drone with lights on during "afternoon sunset" time of day?

OH! Relentless! I am SOOO happy!!!!!!! Thank you guys so much for all the help. Learning this Demo Editing has taken time and I'm hoping the fruits of all this labor will pay off in creating my vision as I see it. Stay tuned to see your help in video one day.....

Badda Bop Bah Bah...I'm Lovin' it (and you)
Sonic Moonbeam

Thanks, Scuzzbopper, the lightning rod is definitely the FX! Since I don't have another color, I'll try to change the color out. YAY! I got my lightning I wanted.... You rock

Relentless, Thanks...I thought that could be it, too and the FX on the hand and the ground is working in my demo but there is no lightning coming down? This is the video I saw it in, at :30 seconds.
Perhaps I am leaving out something.

Statesman hammer?

Could someone tell me the name of the FX where it looks like lightning is coming down from the heavens? I saw a couple of fan videos with it and in one Statesman has this power but don't know if it is his real power or not. Any clues? I have seen it referred to as "Zeus Lightning" but, again, I don't know the name of it to find it. I would be using it thru the Demo Editor. Thanks.

thankyou all for the suggestions. I will try them out.

Also, is there any way to use Base objects? like pillars and chairs, desks, file cabinet, etc.? I took a demo in a base but only saw the generator, reclaimator, etc. listed.

I was wondering if someone could tell me an easy (or easier) way to do some CAM movements. Currently, I move to first person and fly or hover around for shots that circle the player or scene. I have tried to do it putting in CAM coordinates but you have to do too many to get it smooth. Is there a wizard or a good way to make the camera circle around? I can move it in X,Y,Z fashion fine but its the panning around that I can't figure out.
Also, anyone have any luck in using FXSCALE to cut the FX down or enlarge it? Maybe I don't know the right arguements to use.
Thanks.