Six Thousand Feet Under

Update.
Pallas, here's some more requirements from Sarg on the movies.
They're to be about 23-60 seconds long (tending towards the low range) (except for the final, which we'll both do, I'll do the particles and certain ships, you can do the rest).

Origionally Sarg wanted them 24-40 frames per second. 60 seconds, 30 frames per second results in 3600 frames. I don't want to render that.

Fortunatly, we now only need about 300 frames for most. (Except the final, which I think should be a full 2 minutes).

BTW, leave the power station and maybe the Pfhor station to me, I'll need them for the final movie.

Also, I might do any new planets we would need.

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

Yesterday I typed up a nice response, but never sent it.

Alternative Hill method: Hill unowned, two new objects.
(S) Active Scorer: Period 20 ( Alter Occupation 1; DO Planet )
(I) Inactive Scorer: No actions; Placeholder

Initial Objects
Hill (H)
Player 1 (1)
Player 2 (2)
Player 1's Scorer (A)
Player 2's Scorer (B)

S O Fl Condition Val Actions

000 1 H -- Proximity 250 ( Alter CTY False 001 | Alter CTY False 002 | Alter BaseType B I )
001 1 H DI Farther . 250 ( Alter CTY False 000 | Alter BaseType A I )
002 2 H DI Farther . 250 ( Alter BaseType A S )
003 2 H -- Proximity 250 ( Alter CTY False 004 | Alter CTY False 005 | Alter BaseType A I )
004 2 H DI Farther . 250 ( Alter CTY False 003 | Alter BaseType B I )
005 1 H DI Farther . 250 ( Alter BaseType B S )

I think that's about it.

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Using an MW3 Tight Beam since '99

I'm not sure, I think my method might be better if we're doing this fleetwise.
We could do BOTH as different levels, so we have 2 KOTH levels, one with fleets, one without.

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

I was using Solo... so yes, 2 types.

Also, just some more things to add
P1 Active Scorer: Period 20 ( Alter Occupation 1; DO Planet | Change Score 0 0 1 )
P2 Active Scorer: Period 20 ( Alter Occupation 1; DO Planet | Change Score 1 0 1 )

S O Fl Condition Val Actions

006 - - -- Counter 0 >60 (Change Score 0 0 -60 | Change Score 0 1 1 )
007 - - -- Counter 1 >60 (Change Score 1 0 -60 | Change Score 1 1 1 )

This makes it easy to display times in the Mission Status. mm:ss

For yours, do we want some sort of organization, or just A-H-B?
It might be interesting to use a crossfire style:
. A .
B-H-B
. A .

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Using an MW3 Tight Beam since '99

Well it seems M:Inv will be going nova. The folks at Ev-Nova.net have signed on for the Nova portion, and I am in the midst of negotiating for support with multimedia files (sounds, movies, etc.).

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(url="http://"http://www.dissectional.com/swf/index.html") Dig a little deeper (/url)
(url="http://"http://www.axisnet.f2s.com")=Axis Software Integrated=(/url)

Hmm. Good fricking luck to them.
I really think it works better in an Ares format, but I'm ok with that.
I can send some Nova-quality renders of the various ships to them if they want.

BTW, Vylae station is coming online. Nar and Jjaro not far behind.
Do we wanna animate stations or not? Also, how big should they be (pixels)?

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

Vylae Station final model (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/w_darkk/.Pictures/VylaeStation.jpg")http://homepage.mac....ylaeStation.jpg(/url)

Do you think I should animate those two rings, or would that be a waste of space for the extra frames?

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

I've always had a "the more the merrier" philosophy about this plug, so I'm all for animated rings.

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(url="http://"http://www.dissectional.com/swf/index.html") Dig a little deeper (/url)
(url="http://"http://www.axisnet.f2s.com")=Axis Software Integrated=(/url)

We've only got a limited amount of space to play with.
I'll get my other sprites loaded, then give you an estimate on how much is available. I believe the limit is 80-96 megs, but it's entirely possible we'll hit that.

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

I believe we should be operating somewhere inbetween 65 and 80 megs. At 65MB, there won't be any way to play without registering.

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Using an MW3 Tight Beam since '99

Actually, we might be able to push it all the way to 80 unreg.
Simple, really - I think we can store the data in Ares's application, for an extra 16 megs or so.
I doubt, however, if it would in any way get close to being necissary. I think we can do it inside 50, unless the sounds are really big.

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

Well, if we use a lot of music we could be up to 80 with the soundtrack alone. Although we could just house that in a sepreate file that players could use optionally.

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(url="http://"http://www.dissectional.com/swf/index.html") Dig a little deeper (/url)
(url="http://"http://www.axisnet.f2s.com")=Axis Software Integrated=(/url)

(This message has been edited by Sargatanus (edited 04-19-2002).)

Well, of course, Ares already has stuff in its Resource Fork. Probably a quarter to a third of its capacity. So we could probably have around 90 megs and still force the player to register in order to play it.

However, I'm not quite sure if it would load resources there. There's an SMIV resource in Ares's resource fork; try using it on an object to see if Ares loads it.

We should probably have a reasonable amount of music. Definitely more than the original; we'll need a Title Theme, an Interlude, and a Finale. If we're then to give each piece a maximum of 3 levels to be used on, then we'll need 17 Ingame. So we might want to aim for 20. And no, I don't know how big that would be.

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Using an MW3 Tight Beam since '99

Ok, current calculations indicate my half of the ships (well, 4/7) will weigh in at 20 megs total, including stations and stuff.
Assuming you get 20 megs, that leaves about 24 megs or more for music.

Assuming we can find playerpro somewhere. I'm looking into it. The music format's currently my "greatest Ares engine atrocity", ranking ahead of "the color table" for the first time ever.

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

OK, Main Screen Interface and Ares Application Hack are both done.

We'll probably want to add more content to the main screen, but it looks pretty good. I had to add another 11 picture box slots to get it to work, BTW 😉

The Marathon Invasion application will now read from "MInv Data f", "MInv Scenarios", "Your MInv Net Portrait", etc. I haven't yet changed the Creator Type resource to MInv or the BNDL with the icons, but we should probably do that, just so that things don't get confused.
Also, I think that if Ares's GR profile is duplicated and ar12 is replaced by MInv, then we can get Multiplayer for it without confusion.

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Using an MW3 Tight Beam since '99

I've finally got POV's "spherical camera" to work. Now I can make starfields for movie backgrounds. My first movie will be coming soon.

I've decided that since I'm away from my Mac 13+ hours at a time due to school, I should be rendering something in that time.

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

Bah. Image maps are crashing POV for some reason. I'll get to the bottom of this, or I'll hack around until I get my from the lousy betas. I can probably just put the damn star objects into the scene itself - just scale x10k.

In other news, dare to compare: new warpgate sprite and old: (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/w_darkk/.Pictures/Warpgate.png")New(/url) (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/w_darkk/.Pictures/WarpgateOld.png")Old(/url)

The new one's getting a little bad from the Ares color table. No clue where the orange came from. I'll look into that.

(update)
I've tried converting to 8bit before converting to Ares color table: the results, Mr. Compiler!
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/w_darkk/.Pictures/Warpgate8bit.png")8bit(/url)
Not sure that's an improvement. YOU THE VIEWERS DECIDE!!!
(/update)

Oh, yeah - New and 8bit (new) scale based on how wide your screen. Unless your monitor is much bigger than mine, they might not be actual size.

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"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 04-25-2002).)

I'm working on background images for movies. I want to get as many movies as I can done during school, so I don't have to sit through a 14 hr render during the summer.

I've got some REALLY COOL (in the humble opinions of me and wyvern(sp?)) nebula macros going, and a nice spherical camera to prevent distortion (I hope).

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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

Nar movie going into production 😄
Soon, I will be 4|| 1337 ∫1|∑∑4k39 (an elite filmmaker).

😉

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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

I realized that the S'pht Gunship was designed in my notebook as well, so I put it into POV this morning (It's not as hard as it looks).

Radiosity may be experimental, but it looks perfect on the Gunship anyways.

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"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."