Discussion: Matrix Machinima Contest

To re-aim the camera in-game, hold down the PageUp key while moving your mouse. If you have a scroll wheel, that will zoom in and out. Press PageDown to reset the camera.

The camera will still be centered on your character. If you want true independece for the camera, then what Zloth said - learn how to manipulate demorecordings.

On the plus side - lots of folks are hitting Gametrailers.com now to watch E3 trailers and there are big advertisements for this contest right there for them to see.

On the minus side - Gametrailers has started letting some RMT advertisements through again. They are for Everquest but still.... I complained about these advertisements once before on their forums and the advertisements did vanish for awhile. Now they are back.

I wonder if NCNC could explain the whole "RMT is bad" concept to these people better than I did? People around here clicking on the winning video and finding our old spammer company's advertisement sitting in the links below it wouldn't go down too well, IMHO.

OK - LOL @ self...

Any of y'all using your own voice for parts of your vids?

I believe it's pretty much a truism that everyone hates the recorded sound of their own voice. Am I right? I did a little announcer-voiceover myself for my contest vid, and even though I added reverb and lowered the pitch - I still cringed when I heard it! The spousal unit listened to it and said, "No, it's OK. It sounds campy!" Campy! OMFG!!! I sound like I should be in "Remedial Person" classes!!!

Anyway. Just saying, my vid will most likely be "an attempt" at humor. I don't have much choice at this point.

I might... and I think I sound fairly camp, too. Not sure yet, though.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Everyone hates the sound of their own voice.....period!

Back when I was in a band, when we were recording, the vocals always took the longest because the lead and backup vocalists were never satisfied by what they sang.

So, just record it! If your better half says it's good, then be satisfied with that and let it roll!!!

It shouldn't matter so much what you sound like, but the content of what you say that should count. Heck, Kevin Costner still has a job...........

I am not sure if I am going to use my actual voice or create chat bubbles in after effects. Probably will just go with my voice and if I cannot edit it to sound better I will just leave it to the viewer to read it like they were in game.

I am kind of mad at myself because I haven't gotten anything done in the past few days for my video. After Effects keeps locking up on me at one part because I have too many particles going on screen.

Chat bubbles can be a bit tough. Remember, your video is going to be shrunk down to a little square. People with higher rez monitors may have a hard time reading them.

My own voice sounds great... with a nice skull to act as a sounding board. Now if I could just figure out how to stick the microphone far enough up my nose...

Umph... Zot... howb do i ket dish micapobe oww my nobe??? Ish tuck!

Oh my. You, uhh, did get one of those bio-degradable microphones, right?

I did all of the voices for my last video using Sound Forge and really liked how they came out. I'll probably be doing the same for the contest.

I've finished the storyboard for the entire thing and know what to do and I really like what I came up with. The few people I've presented the idea to thought it was pretty funny Now all that's left is the fun part of putting it together.

After the contest is over I'm probably going to redo the whole thing by taking out all the voices and adding in the song track that I originally wanted to use when I first came up with the story idea. Honestly, I'm not sure how I would have gotten Juno Reactor to let me use the song in the first place even if they'd have let us use any song we wanted

Hope everyone is coming along well with their projects!

I'm still waiting on Audio for mine. Not sure I can compete with some of that talent in this forum, but I'm gonna make you laugh at the very least. :-)

Music is proving to be a bigger challenge than I'd expected, even with all of the CoX sound files that are available. I just can't seem to find certain themes. For instance, I wanted an fast, energetic heroic theme for the intro. The closest I can find is the Atlas Park loop.

{sigh} Why must we suffer for our art?

(I'm sure this has been discussed before, but...) Does anyone know of a collection of the sound FX for the various powers and other MOVs? Yes, I can generate them in demoplayback, but I'm feeling lazy and whiney today... LOL

I'm wondering about the sound FX as well, I need them for the very end of my video.

If I remember right, there are some fx sounds in the fansite kits.

Here's another problem I have just run into: The following FX command does nothing to my toon:

OneShot 186249 WEAPONFX/CROSSBOWHIT.FX 186248

It is part of a unaltered demorecord file with my toon being hit by a Mortificator's crossbow bolt. When recorded, the toon did a nice reaction to the hit. But on playback - Nada.

Thoughts?

[ QUOTE ]
If I remember right, there are some fx sounds in the fansite kits.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not really. There are a couple unidentified sounds used for the various ATs, but even those don't seem quite right.

Hmmm. Once this contest is over, I might just create a web repository of sounds similar to Mantid's animated emote guide. Assuming, of course, that it is OK with NC to do that...

[ QUOTE ]
Here's another problem I have just run into: The following FX command does nothing to my toon:

OneShot 186249 WEAPONFX/CROSSBOWHIT.FX 186248

It is part of a unaltered demorecord file with my toon being hit by a Mortificator's crossbow bolt. When recorded, the toon did a nice reaction to the hit. But on playback - Nada.

Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

I would bet 2 inf that the FX above is just the bolt sticking out of your toon's chest and that there is a MOV that's associated with the actual "reeling back" reaction.

That's on my long-term wishlist of things I'd like to do is document all those associations, but probably on the "long way off, if ever" pile.

EDIT

Whoops. I missed that it was unaltered. Still, is there a MOV attached to your toon at the time of the hit?

If not, I wonder if the game has some of the reactions as inherent that aren't captured by the demorecord (or maybe the particualr recording just happened to hiccup right there and missed the MOV). You might be able to apply/add-in a hit reaction MOV to get the appropriate visual in that case.

At a guess, HITQUICK might be that reeling back reaction (just a guess, I'd have to try it to be sure) and you could splice that in with a zero time change right after the FX.

Scuzz, you may be right about the hiccup. I just noticed that the FX for the hit is a hair BEFORE the baddie firing the bolt!

Anyway, I'll try splicing in a JumpPost or something similar to see if that will look OK.

Thanks!!

Additional general questions as a first time FRAPS user:

How to (or can you) remove -
- your toons name and title?
- NPC and other's chat balloons?
- the game tray (I know how to clear the nav and the chat)?
- any 'conning' cursor (brackets)?

Thanks in advance for anyone who answers!

2cents: Go into options and click "disable" for all player and other-character names

chat baloons: i don't think this is possible.

For the game tray, you can go into options and make a bind to "remove UI". I use Shift-U. Hitting Shift+u again reactivates the user interface.

the cursor, i'm not 100% sure about

[ QUOTE ]
Additional general questions as a first time FRAPS user:

How to (or can you) remove -
- your toons name and title?
- NPC and other's chat balloons?
- the game tray (I know how to clear the nav and the chat)?
- any 'conning' cursor (brackets)?

Thanks in advance for anyone who answers!

[/ QUOTE ]

There is an option called 'Disable UI' that you can link to a key, I put mine on + and the Fraps toggle on - to make it easy.

It removes everything all at once, tis nice.

[ QUOTE ]
Additional general questions as a first time FRAPS user:

How to (or can you) remove -
- your toons name and title?
- NPC and other's chat balloons?
- the game tray (I know how to clear the nav and the chat)?
- any 'conning' cursor (brackets)?

Thanks in advance for anyone who answers!

[/ QUOTE ]

The best way to get rid of all of this would probably be to utilize the /demorecord function.

And then use Zloth's Demo Player.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Ahh yes of course... unless you like editing shortcuts a lot .

I think I've spent just a little too much time crunching CAM movement path numbers lately...

Last night I dreamed I had been hired as a CoX developer. While learning the internals, I stumbled across some existing but unused functionality that opened up some interesting possibilities. One of them was the ability to select a "missile cam" option for sniper blasts. The camera would show a missile-eye-view as it zeroed in on the target, then stop at impact so you could enjoy the knockback.

I always liked the way the energy blaster sniper bolt would jink around after targets that were on the run. Just think of how cool THAT game angle would be in a video!

Well, back to demo editing...