Breunor Posted September 11, 2003 Report Share Posted September 11, 2003 And remember that there will be the opening sequence that people can watch to see all kinds of fancy graphics and animations, this should be a little less active IMO. Even WC3's menu is pretty active, I don't know if you need that much going on as eye candy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim69 Posted September 11, 2003 Report Share Posted September 11, 2003 Is there anything anyone else can think of to make this more interesting, still image being the main criteria at the mo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breunor Posted September 12, 2003 Report Share Posted September 12, 2003 I don't know if you had more options planned for the middle box or not, but what if it was slid up to dock in the indentation beneath 'new game'? The box could be shortened a little as well if no other options are going there. If that was moved up there, you'd have an open space in the lower left, lower right, and upper right where small boxes could be put showing different shots or video clips of alien sightings. They would be overlays around the globe, along the edge of the screen like your dialog currently is. It could cycle between the three spots, it would be blank like your picture now, then a clip would fade in, go through it's animation, then fade back out. Then the next position does the same. We could find maybe a dozen different clips of grainy, real ufo sightings, I think that would look pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim69 Posted September 12, 2003 Report Share Posted September 12, 2003 Like the avatar Back to the subject, yeah I have more options planned but we can't put them in v1.0. I can shorten it a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breunor Posted September 12, 2003 Report Share Posted September 12, 2003 Here's the positions I meant if it didn't make sense. The green areas wouldn't actually be there, that's just where the video clips would fade in and out. There would be the stars there normally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim69 Posted September 12, 2003 Report Share Posted September 12, 2003 Sorry, didn't read ur post very well, I was pretty tired and I was using my supervisor's computer quickly while he was off doin something for 5 minutes Sounds good 2 me, could definatly work. Can someone who knows about these things tell me if we could do this for v1.0? Seems viable, one thing we would need is a video format we can definatly use without copyright issues. For that matter they could be stills that show up every 30 seconds in a random box, just a matter of getting the photo's. Considering how much "information" there is on the net about UFO's that shouldn't be a problem if we want to use real pics. Also, since they are all amature photo's ( and probably fake ) there is no problem with using them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drewid Posted September 12, 2003 Report Share Posted September 12, 2003 There are a few open source video codecs, the best known being div-x (or a variant thereof.) Using video clips suddenly adds a big chunk of work though. I quite like the stills idea, it would tie in with ufo culture, less work too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim69 Posted September 12, 2003 Report Share Posted September 12, 2003 Does someone know exactly what effects we can reproduce in game? Like fading, overlaying filter layers etc. These can all be done in PS but how much can we code in? Stills does seem like a good compromise, however we probably will need video at some point 4 the intro etc. I didn't know Div-X was open-source, that means we can include it without asking right? Or do we need to give them a mention somewhere? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breunor Posted September 13, 2003 Report Share Posted September 13, 2003 AFAIK Deimos is working on an opening video sequence using models and animation. I expect he would just run the animation and record it all as an avi/divx or something like that, and then the file is called when the program starts. With multithreading I would guess(big guess, I really have no clue!) that while this screen is open we could have the stills fade in and out like you said as an overlay. Still are fine with me, I didn't think the video would be any harder as it would be clips that people have already made as "real ufo footage". So fading a pic in and out would be similar to fading a video clip in and out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deimos Posted September 16, 2003 Report Share Posted September 16, 2003 Jim, that design is much more stiking. I like the amount of detail you've got on the earth, its just right without being too much. I also like the idea of pics fading in an out in the areas Breu placed in. Maybe we could doctor up some of our own "official" ufo photos that could fade in and out as suggested. Finally yeah I'm working on animations for the intro and end sequence, (very slowly though, I want it to look right oh and it take ages to render a sequence ). As for the codec what we'll be using in xenocide is the xdiv codec which is the open source version of divx. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drewid Posted September 16, 2003 Report Share Posted September 16, 2003 I haven't actually given up on the static yet, tho if peeps still don't like it I will get shot of it. Well, here is the new background in glorious technicolour Edit: I want something that will give a hint of the impending alien invasion as well, but not quite sure what. Ne1 got any idea's? Subtlety is key methinks.hey I like this. for the final we could put the in game globe in there and have the meu fade out into the geoscape once the new game is started. I'm going to echo this again as it's a great idea and pretty easy to do. we just draw a couple of polys with the static texture on them , over the existing earth model, then we fade them out once the choice is made and the game kicks off Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim69 Posted September 16, 2003 Report Share Posted September 16, 2003 If someone sends me a .3ds file and the needed textures for the Earth globe I can do that 2nite. Never thought of that. How easy is it to change the poly's opacity ingame? I can do it in 3ds but can the engine do it independantly. This would mean needing a render window just for this screen, is that really necessary? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted September 16, 2003 Report Share Posted September 16, 2003 If you have installed Alpha, then you already have textures. I don't think there is a 3dfs file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted September 16, 2003 Report Share Posted September 16, 2003 Just one suggestion, try to make the opening menu the same as the initial one that it is in another thread, and just change buttons and that stuff, not the whole UI from one to another... Just make some buttons fade in and out when needed... (Looks good and it is pretty easy to code)... About the globe, we just can use the geoscape globe and get that strange effect you are using in realtime (blending trick or shader)... and then take out the effect and move the camera toward the final destination on geoscape... Just an idea... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breunor Posted September 17, 2003 Report Share Posted September 17, 2003 And to tie that into other menus, when you go to game options you could have the camera pan back from earth and over to the moon, and have the menu appear over it. Or maybe not... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim69 Posted September 17, 2003 Report Share Posted September 17, 2003 Just continuing on that thinking: What if both this screen and the startup screen were averaged out so they have a compromise between the lengths and we use a different part of space for that one also? Maybe not, but the entire menu could be a trip around the Earth part of our solar system. Just a idea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted September 17, 2003 Report Share Posted September 17, 2003 Good idea. That is exactly why we should look at all screen at the same time and not to hammer out one after another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim69 Posted September 17, 2003 Report Share Posted September 17, 2003 Well, it's always easy to change things at this stage, anything could happen How easy would the rendorer be to setup? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drewid Posted September 18, 2003 Report Share Posted September 18, 2003 Just one suggestion, try to make the opening menu the same as the initial one that it is in another thread, and just change buttons and that stuff, not the whole UI from one to another... Just make some buttons fade in and out when needed... (Looks good and it is pretty easy to code)... About the globe, we just can use the geoscape globe and get that strange effect you are using in realtime (blending trick or shader)... and then take out the effect and move the camera toward the final destination on geoscape... Just an idea... GreetingsRed KnightI like this. it would look good and it follows the KISS principal, which is always a good thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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