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Plot screens as intro movies

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 12:10 pm
by Gambit37
Firstly, big Wayhay! on the new 0.45 -- just managed to have a quick play last night to check out the plot screen implementation --very nice indeed!

Looking at the way the CSB intro is handled got me thinking about how to do the more complex Amiga version -- with background music and all the animations throughout. Pretty sure it's doable, though will take a bit of time to work out.

However, one concern is that you're forced to watch the intro on entering the dungeon and can't escape it. If an intro is very long this could be a barrier to people getting into the game quickly.

Would it be possible to either:
1) Have theability to escape the movie and go straight to the dungeon
2) Improve the main screen to have an extra "play intro" button that is wholly independent from the "enter" button?

There are probably flaws in my thinking, I'm still a bit asleep. Input would be useful.

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 2:22 pm
by Sabreman
I was thinking it would be rather cool if someone did the DM dungeon but incorporated that Japanese DM album as a soundtrack.

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 3:00 pm
by Gambit37
I did start that a few years back but got bored playing the FM Towns version trying to work out where all the triggers are and what tracks they played...

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 3:28 pm
by zoom
1)Definitely there should be a way to end the intro.(without resetting your pc)
(esc , mouse click, space...or a click on upper right corner )

2)suggestion:
You could add a checkbox to activate and disable the intro
on startup show intro while entering the dungeon

it will get automatically unchecked, once you would create
savegames for that particular dungeon.

There could be another one that just plays the intro
but does not start the game per se.

It is maybe better to have intro independant on actual play of the game,

could be you want to look at the intro and not play the game,
(switching through several intros to look for a theme you like,
show friends?? )

you could as well, just want to play the game and not look at the intro

or you like to watch the intro and then seamlessly enter the game without
another click on the enter button(no stop of action)
while being able to end it somehow, but it should be accident proof,
by making the intro stop a double click
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If I get it right,
you are forced to watch the intro each time you press enter.
THis could be circumvented , with a checkbox whether to show intro

to be able to watch intro independantly from playing the game, there
could be a play intro button. Maybe on the same level like where you
choose the dungeon modules from?

too much buttons could get messy.
But there should be a way to switch music on / off(already there?)

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 3:46 pm
by George Gilbert
You can do all of skipping stuff suggested above with the existing mechanics.

Simply create your intro with each screen being one big button that's as and give it a null action (i.e. so when clicked the intro ends and you get on with the dungeon), if you don't click, then the timeout action kicks in and displays the next part of the intro.

Being able to activate dungeon mechanics from the entrance (and therefore kick off the intro, or anything else) is an interesting idea though...

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 3:54 pm
by Gambit37
George Gilbert wrote:Simply create your intro with each screen being one big button that's as and give it a null action
Aha, cool, thanks!

I've had a quick look at how to get the Amiga CSB intro into RTC. It's going to be fiddly, but it's certainly doable. However, it'll be around 10MB (with all the repeated frames and background music). Too big?

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 7:40 pm
by Gambit37
Aaaaaaahhhh! I ddn't realise I was going to have to clone 800 or so info screens for the CSB anim. Oh well, sorry, I ain't gonna undertake this in the near future, it's way too big a task. I see now why you did the simple ST version, GG. ;-)

Is there any way RTC could support other animation formats, such as Flash, raw AVI, FLC or even animated GIF? We could then simply use ONE of these as the resource displayed for the INFO SCREEN object?

Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 7:05 pm
by George Gilbert
As a half step towards this, RTC V0.46 can now take multiple bitmaps for each plot screen. In particular, this means you can have a large background static bitmap and then smaller animations on it - as an example of this, I've enhanced the CSB intro to use the animated version (as seen on the ST) rather than just the series of static screens...