Guess what it is

[Gambit37]

Does anyone know of a better solution to produce videos that would work on all platforms?

As far as I know, there aren't any lossless formats that are consistent across Mac and Windows and come preinstalled for playback in a browser.

I have Camtasia Studio. It can output lossless movies, but the user needs to install a codec on their machine. If you wanted to go that route, you can provide a link to the codec on the Encyclopeadia and I could convert your demo movie into that format for you.

http://www.techsmith.com/codecs.asp

For PC, the codec is TSCC codec. For Mac, the codec is EnSharpen. I can create a TSCC encoded AVI on Windows which should play back in any AVI player on a PC, or within the QuickTime player on the Mac.

This is all theoretical, I haven't tried it before.

Alternatively, the AVI can be converted to GIF since you're not using sound and it's less than 256 colours.

Another alternative is to try converting to FLC format -- but I don't know how many players will play that back. It was a popular lossless animation format in the 90s, but not so much now. Looks like Quicktime still supports FLC: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/operations ... g/flc.html (Note that FLC can't handle audio though so it's not suitable for anything with sound.)

[Sphenx]

what represent the two drawings in top on the right and left of the door ???

I would say two demon faces, one female and one male.

[Gambit37]

I recaptured the Smacker video and converted it to a double size GIF -- you can view it here:

http://www.dmcodex.com/v/?p=dmdemo.gif

The animation isn't smooth: I don't know if that's because Christophe's grab wasn't smooth, or if it's actually like that in the origial demo.

[Gambit37]

By the way, has anyone read through those text files that Ene posted? There's some very interesting conversations in there, including talk about a packer program that FTL wrote to remove copyrighted info from a save game file for swapping among friends:

Category 9, Topic 38
Message 118 Thu Feb 01, 1990
FTL at 20:11 EST

We have completed programming the utility to compact the DM save games so that
they can be uploaded for Champion swapping. We will test for a day or so
before we upload, but are there any volunters for further testing?

Category 9, Topic 38
Message 122 Wed Feb 07, 1990
ST.REPORT [Ralph] at 08:19 EST

FTL, WE WANT to be able to exchange characters between each other legally, we
do want to be able to upload a character or set of characters we are using in
CSB..... you are missing the point, the exchange of characters, maps, hints
etc.... is another major source of enjoyment in participating in the
phenomina known as "The Dungeon Masterites"... If people wanted to "cheat"..
the editor would amply take care of that. Please make it possible to export
CSB game characters too. The exhuberant participation and character exchange
for the DM series should not be driven 'underground' because of someone's
conservative extremes.
------------
Category 9, Topic 38
Message 123 Wed Feb 07, 1990
FTL at 20:57 EST

Currently, Champions do not exist separate from a saved game file. The CSB
Champion Portrait Editor is able to extract Champions from one game and insert
them into another, but currently we have not yet defined a format for export
of Champions alone. The DMPACKER program was a quick way to solve a problem
caused by the fact that saved games contain info copyrighted by us. It simply
strips a saved game down to bare bones so that it can be uploaded. The
problem is that the CSB Champion Portrait Editor was only designed to
currently import DM games. CSB games are in a different format. I understand
your request and we are currently considering how we can support this in the
future, but it's not the kind of thing we can do now because we first need to
consider how this will fit into other future plans we have. Sorry.

[Chaos-Shaman]

what represent the two drawings in top on the right and left of the door ???

warning of demons

[Sphenx]

The animation isn't smooth: I don't know if that's because Christophe's grab wasn't smooth, or if it's actually like that in the origial demo.

The original is like this. You don't have to expect a smoother animation from an old program which is 23 years old.
Final DM was not ... smooth either - 6 frames per second if I understand well.

Your animated gif renders very well the teaser.

[ChristopheF]

Code: Select all

a packer program that FTL wrote to remove copyrighted info from a save game file

Here it is: http://cd.textfiles.com/geminiatari/FIL ... DMPACK.TOS
I have not tried it yet, but if you open it in a hex editor you can read the FTL copyright and a description of the tool that fits the one you found.

[ChristopheF]

While exploring on the same site (http://cd.textfiles.com/), I found this interesting discussion with Wayne Holder and Andy Jaros about CSB before they decided to release it as a standalone game: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1489

[lavalevel]

What in the heck was the phone number? A BBS site? (i hope!)