Machinima On The Horizon

Anonymous Coward writes " Just giving ya the heads up that over @ the ILL Clan's site. They've released their latest Quake II machinima piece entitled Hardly Workin'. Very impressive stuff. Directed by their group lead, ILL Robinson (who's an Emmy award winner, btw), it looks like this Machinima stuff is actually becoming a medium of its own. The convergence of filmmaking, animation & game development all rolled into one! Its fun to watch & even more impressive that it was all created in the Quake II engine. "

Comments

Re:Anybody else unimpressed...

[zlite]

Uh, you know what? If you FF through *any* film it looks like "this happened, then this happened, then this happened." Why don't you actually watch the thing, you know, listening to the dialog and all. You might just be able to "bare" it better.

As it happens, it's actually a pretty funny short. Dunno if's a masterpiece or even if the fact that it was done with the Quake II engine makes it particularily memorable, but it's definitely a reasonable way to pass ten minutes.

Re:Linux?

[Lazaru5]

It's either an installer or a SEA. Just get the DM2 file from it and you can play it in
Quake2 under Linux just fine.

Re:Quake TF Scatman animation?

[British]

It's somewhere on newgrounds' portal. You can serach for it.

Re:Redundant, Score -1

[JabXVI]

Um, it was just released. Since the ILL Clan site seems slashdotted, here's the Google cached version. On July 12, 2000, ILL Robinson made an update saying that "Hardly Workin' is finally complete."

Re:mirror --- THIS IS AN .AVI MIRROR ONLY

[Lazaru5]

FYI

Re:Anybody else unimpressed...

[Malc]

It wasn't funny, it was boring. It only lasted 10 mins because I skipped parts of it. If you watch it all, it's 60% longer than 10 mins. How dull.

Sorry, that's my opinion.

Machina: more than just a quirky hobby?

[fudboy]

I am an artist working for a major video game publisher. I've been in the industry since, oh, about the time the CD-ROM appeared on the scene. When that happened, intro movies and "in game cut-scenes" became the standard, and almost all high profile games are compelled to include them to this very day.

I've noticed something about all the cutscenes and intro movies. They all have two things in common- they are all very expensive to make, and they are all crap. With a few exceptions (fer instance the stuff from Starcraft), I've never been moved to admire any of that effort. The stuff is always too stiff, phony looking, poorly written and cornily voice-acted.

IMHO, this has proved to be a big problem in the industry, I'd even venture say that 'cinematics' are ultimatly the number one reason so many game companies fold. See, these cut scenes end up accounting for a huge chunk of a games budget. It generally takes 8-10 people a whole project cycle to wrangle these movies together, sometimes as many as 15 or 20! That's translates into 18 months of paying those big salaries, buying all that 'bitchin' equipment, office space and outrageously expensive software packages.

But that's just where the trouble begins. Due to the commitee-like arrangement of a software project, work is slow and prone to revisions. Several months of work can be undone in one email from marketting. Imagine how it is to be the executive that makes the decision whether to delay a game because the cinematics have fallen a bit short of spectacular, to pay that much more while going that much longer without revenue, because some primmadonna (that btw isn't 'hot' enough for pixar, disney or real films) insists that just a few more weeks of rendering volume search lights on the Nebulon Battle Cruiser will make or break the game? Of course your going to let crap out the door at that point.

Stress really begins to mount towards the end of a project. ship date begins to really loom on the horizon. maybe a competitor beats yoou to the market with a similar game, but then it flops! People are always saying very mean things about you at places like Old Man Murray and Fatbabies and there's the almost ever-present threat of the numbers just not adding up this month. And cinematics are taking half the entire budget!?!!

I hate to admit it, especially since I have a professional interest, but I almost always click through cinematics after I've seen the first couple. I am always eager to get back to the action, in my mind, like a real gamer. I am rarely hooked into the story, almost never interested in the setting enough to sit idle for 2-3 minutes to see obscure details. I'm satisfied with the gameplay I guess, and maybe I'm soured to them by the process- but I can't think of many games that would have been lesser for their lack of cinematics...

Great change is always rocking the industry. But there has collected a sediment, an entrenched school of thinking that is slowly entrenching itself out of business. This school of thought that says that 'cinematics are in' also says that 'consumers like crates and jumping puzzles' and 'let them eat bugs'. The industry is crowded and stuck, everyone is chasing the sequel, (franchise), investor dollars and the reviewers. (The PS2 is promising a sort salvation for all (in that the sales will be high enough to support even the gluttonous lifestyle of a contemporary software studio) though it is a shaky bet at best considereing the N and X box/cube FUD and all the negative PS2 info floating around...)

Which all sorta leads me to my point: A fantastic thing is happening to videogames lately, and it has almost nothing to do with the industry. Level Designers, Artists and Programmers are all creaping out of the woodwork, out of the nooks and crannies of the Internet. The game industry is headed back into the garage, at last, though we may as well start calling it the 'bedroom' as that's where most people keep their computers AFAIK. They are putting together some great stuff- just think of all the mods and skins for UT and Q3a. With the adoption of the term 'machinema', another crucial element of gamemaking has reverted to the hands of the ameteur. With half a gig of warez audio and graphics apps, an open-source engine and a little bit of scripting magic, a near-professional quality game can once again get hacked together by a couple of geek comrades-in-arms on their summer break from High School. It is only a matter of time before machinema and all the other elements come together and spontaneously create the next Doom2 or even a Final Fantasy and capture the attention of the gaming public in a #1 hit kinda way.

And I want to participate! I will begin browsing heavilly after I post this. Hmmm, I wonder if I can participate in something like this. I signed my name to an awful lot of intimidating legalese during the course of my rather short career, I imagine I could get fired or sued for something like this. All the [free software] triumph in the world isn't going to pay for my Dual P4 or 60" HDTV.

:)Fudboy

Re:Machina: more than just a quirky hobby?

[Jason Skomorowski]

It is only a matter of time before machinema and all the other elements come together and spontaneously create the next Doom2 or even a Final Fantasy and capture the attention of the gaming public in a #1 hit kinda way.

I thought Counter-strike was the next Doom II? ... sure they didn't make the engine (they modified Half-life, which itself was a version of Quake modified by Sierra), but they made the *game*. I don't find Quake or Half-life all that fun, yet they form the basis of my favourite game. It's even open-source-ish, they encourage people to develop patches to Counter-strike, some of which get included in the next releases.

It's one of the more popular games, yet it has no single-player and no cut-scenes.

Re:Machina: more than just a quirky hobby?

[_Mycroft_VII]

I have to say that I agree that the cut scenes in MOST games i've played haven't been stellar, not really as terrible as he says, certainly not worth the expense the game companies put into them.
That said the I really the like the ones int diabloII sofar they make it worth the high price it's selling for even though a higher poly count per frame on the rendering woulda been nice.

Mycroft

Re:Machina: more than just a quirky hobby?

[fudboy]

yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about... I haven't been playing CS much (still playing UT ctf constantly- I still have weeks of that left with all the mods that are available) but it is extremely popular around the office.

:)Fudboy

Machinima == american reinvention of demoscene?

[Knos]

Quite frankly, this is the way I feel about it.

If you're interested in something more abstract and experimental, you may check the productions released this year at Assembly'2k, Spot by Exceed, the winner is for example a software rendered movie sharing some imagery with pixar movies, Art by haujobb is a 3d show in a dreamy museum, featuring unreal objects, (Lapsus/Maturefurk is sharing the same design) ...

Basically all the productions kicked ass. And this weekend just finished the LTP4 party, where we had a great fun seeing stuff like Antimoney/3state (a 1bpp, nicely designed windows 64k intro which works under Wine), Just a touch of funk/digital murder, a wonderfully keyframed music video, and lots of other lush stuff... (like Downtown / retro ac. and Purple / Orion)

for links... follow your instinct and:

• scene.org (epicentre)
• ojuice.net (news)
• demoo (demo selection)
• cde (demo reviews)
• pouet.net (demo database)

Re:Machinima == american reinvention of demoscene?

[Junks Jerzey]

The demoscene was different. It was more about coders pushing the limits of what was expected from home PCs. That side of it was amazing. The general creativity and art direction was pretty bad overall, though. Sometimes it was good, but it was mostly about showing one effect for far too long from every camera angle imaginable. That, and lots of text in unreadable, animating fonts. The demo scene has fallen apart, as demo effects are no longer as impressive as they once were.

Machinima is more about the artistic side of things than the technical. The idea is less to wow with the special effects than to entertain. So far, the mark has been missed--they all suck--but this is worthy of note because it is bringing in a different type of creative person.

It's also very nice to see a new pseudo-medium come along, even if it ends up a novelty. There tends to be much more creativity and experimentation at the beginning than in the subsequent generations. The big problem the game industry is having is that games are now being created by people who grew up playing corporately developed games, so there's too much influence from and reliance on cliche-ridden genre titles (or in simpler terms, "We put a boss at the end of the level because that's how it's supposed to be").

Re:Off-Topic: "Machinima?"

[carlfish]

Actually, it's an amalgam of the words "machine" and "enema". Or maybe I've just been listening to too much Tool again...

Charles Miller
--

AVI Mirror

[jmcamos]

Anyone have a fast mirror for the AVI version? My box is too slow to run Q2 :(.

Redundant, Score -1

[Anonymous Freak]

Well. This is actually old news. If you want lots of cool alternative animations, try HotWired's Animation Express. This animation has been there for a year now. (Post date 16 Sep 1999, which is when I saw it.) Be sure not to miss Edgar Beals excelleng works, including Gia nt Cow and the Wenchel l Bogum series...

But, it is hilarious...

P.S. Yes, I know it's considered bad form to point out when a /. story is out of date, but this one is even worse because the story says that they just released it...

Did this link not work for anyone else?

[AFCArchvile]

the server is ponging pings, but no response at all through the browser.

Off-Topic: "Machinima?"

[ewhac]

The term Machinima is clearly an amalgam of the words "machine" and "cinema." I don't know who coined it, but it doesn't roll off the tongue very well.

I think a better term would have been Mechanime (mechanical anime).

Schwab

Re:Off-Topic: "Machinima?"

[Alatar]

BTW, "anime" is just the word for "animation" in Japanese. Therefore, it IS anime.

However, this conversation is in English. "Anime" in English means "Japanese animation", and is hardly applicable. Anime (pronounced AH-nee-may) is a term for a style of Japanese comic book and video cartoon animation in which the main characters have large doe-like eyes. Anime is the prevalent style in Japanese comic books or manga. In Japan, the comic book is a popular form of entertainment for adults as well as for younger audiences. Story lines are often very sophisticated and complex and extend into episodic series. Typical anime themes or genres include Ninja and other martial arts; the supernatural or horror story; the romance; and science fiction including robots and space ships. Foils for the main characters, including robots, monsters, or foreigners, often lack the doe-eyed quality.

I guess it's cool that people are doing things with Quake that were never intended (the mark of a good tool), but giving it a pretentious name and calling it art just really stretches the bounds of credibliity a bit too much.

Re:Off-Topic: "Machinima?"

[Alatar]

The term Machinima is clearly an excuse for dorks to try and apply some kind of pretentious artisness to the act of recording themselves doing funny stuff. I did the same thing in 1981 with a tape recorder.

I think the term Mechanime would be misleading, as it is neither mechanical nor anime, and besides, you want to stay as far away from the dreaded "anime" tag as possible.

Re:Off-Topic: "Machinima?"

[java.bean]

1000 BC: I guess it's cool that people are doing things with canvas and colored mixtures of water and various substances, but giving it a name like 'painting' and calling it art is a bit too much for me. Hand me my chisel, Oog.

(Actually, I'm not personally defending this as art, but it all depends on how you look at it.)

--jb

Re:Off-Topic: "Machinima?"

[E_Lizardo]

Personally, I prefer "Machinime", because it has a cool sort of Japanese-y quality to it.
---

Re:Off-Topic: "Machinima?"

[Anthony Bailey]

I confess to being the originator of the term.

Although I'm not sure I like "MechAnime" any better, I agree the term "Machinima" is far from perfect. In my defense: I didn't know it was going to become a registered domain name some day. (And at least I didn't call it "e-cinema" or "I-Film" or "holo-fLix" or something like that.)

At the time that I started using the word, there were a lot of people using the term "Quake movie" to mean the same thing, and it was about to get confusing since some of them were getting made in things like Unreal and Half-Life. Necessity is not the best of all mothers.

Calling them "Quake movies" was also going to stop someone such as a frustrated wannabe director from taking the technologies seriously. I appreciate the jury is still out on whether they should (c: but still suspect there is real promise once the right tools come along, and do think that "Hardly Workin'" is well-made and really funny.

In the late Eighties, the technology arrived that meant artists without many resources could begin to make records in their bedrooms. I think that overall this was a good thing. I hope that the same sort of thing is beginning to happen for cinema. Digital cinema is a good start for docu-drama and fly-on-the-wall pieces but it can't cope so well with anything with a more ambitious scope. Machinima is one way in for people who want to make this sort of stuff.

As well as open access, the other thing for the short-term is that this stuff compresses fantastically well compared to conventional digital video formats, because it's at a higher level of abstraction. Given that your client-box is powerful enough, the Quake2 version lets you playback at a resolution and framerate that would cost GBs to deliver as Mpeg. It's basically 3D Flash, and I think we'll see that sort of technology playing an important part in the Net distribution of cinema whilst we wait for that long-promised, never-here bandwidth revolution.

--Anthony.

Actually

[popcornmechanic]

One of the best machinima ever, imho, is the Seal of Nehahra for Quake1. It is an amazing four hour long Quake movie. One of the best pieces of work ever to be produced on the Quake Engine. If you still have Quake1 installed, I highly recommend a DL. The "sequel" to the movie is an actual mod, one that is also very well worth a download. Nehahra:: Link

Anybody else unimpressed...

[Ando[evilmedic]]

...with the movie? If the director is an emmy winner, what is he doing messing around with the quake2 engine? I was astonished that the titles were done in Quake2 too, but I just couldn't bare to watch it. Th music is bad, the plot is worse. Just FF'ing through it, it looks like "this happened, then this happened, then this happened."

Just IMHO, though. If you disagree, please don't moderate this down.

apartment hunting was good!

[GoNINzo]

I remember apartment hunting! that was a good movie! I used to collect Quake/quake 2 movies quite often. Keygrip is an awesome tool, crt did a great job making it.

Some other gooes ones were Babalicious, any of the Ranger ones, and his first quake move 'Apartment Hunting' was pretty good, customized skins and everything.

Anyway, if you're interested in doing this yourselves, it can be quite rewarding when you get it working. I helped as an actor in one or two, and when they finally worked, it was cool. `8r)

--
Gonzo Granzeau

Other recent Machinimas

[VenTatsu]

Another recent Machinima that I don't remember seeing /. report on is The Seal of Nehahra. It uses a modified Quake engen and has a playable mod along with it.
The movie itself tells the back story to Quake and is about 3 hours long but can be watched in parts.

Re:Redundant, Score -1 - Not really

[Turmio]

Yes there are lots of animations in the Internet but these animations you linked to aren't made using Quake2 engine like this one but they are some QuickTime and Flash animations. That isn't exactly the same thing.

Re:GO HERE NOW OR GO TO HELL!!!!!

[pest]

ROFL, yah, it would be, cept all them damn fat americans would become even more fat. heh.


now i expect my karma to fall even more, as the majority of readers of this site are american, and thus the majority of moderators are american, thus will take offense to my comment and mod it down. heh.

Re:Haiku

[Dirtside]

Quake haiku?

http://www.planetquake.com/que/haiku /haiku.htm has been around for a couple of years... not updated any more though.

Re:Meept!

[pest]

Hate to say it but that ain't really a troll, its more of a offtopic comment. but now i expect my karma to drop. heh.

Re:Linux?

[Felinoid]

Yeah it seems like someone forgot some people don't use Windows...
(that seems to happen a lot)
Thats fine thow... It's the hype factor so people just don't know better...
It's when people say "Get a real operating system" when I get annoyed...

*Rant on*
There are only two operating systems that had any real challange against any clame of being a "real" operating system.
Windows and Forth...
Forth is an 1970s programming language... Much like Basic it was in the roms of some 8 bit computers.
However Forth functions as an operating system on thies computers where as Basic never dose get past being a programming language.

Windows clame to being an operating system is the same as Forth... it functions as one...
But as with forth Windows isn't ground up an os. It runs under Dos.. even 9x... An os running under an os? No applications run under an os... therefor Windows is an app...

Now we can dismiss both arguments simply...
An os isn't how it loads or how it runs but what it dose. Windows operates the computer.. It runs programs.. it provides an interface for the user... As dose forth...
Radicly diffrent systems but they both are operating systems...

On the side.. I said "real" challange...

Sevral operating systems have been challanged but here are some examples of those challanges...
Dos.. becouse Dos dosn't have "feature XYZ" while very nice XYZ is a feature and it's absents is like a car with no cup holder.. it's still a car...
XYZ being absent from Dos is what makes Dos obsolete.. but it's still an os...

Annother example....
Geoworks isn't an operating system becouse it runs on top of Dos...

No du... Geoworks was an app pacage (like Ms Office) before it became a PDA operating system.

Other arguments including arguing purely on the sake of the name.
Confusing the os with a similer os.
Having no clue at all... such as "It runs under dos" when it has nothing to do with Dos at all whatsoever..
or confusing the os with the hardware it runs on...
*rant off*

Re:Quake TF Scatman animation?

[UnknownSoldier]

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal /view.php3?id=4060

Unfortunately that isn't the one I am looking for. That is the Counter-Strike version.

There was a TeamFortress version.

Sequels and Prequels

[Cryptosporidium]

The film he points to (September 16, 1999) is Apartment Hunting.

Hardly Workin' is the sequel.

GhostFire

Re:Sequels and Prequels

[Anonymous Freak]

hehe.... <Wipes egg off face>

Oops. Since the site was slashdotted when I tried to get there, I just saw the link, which had in it 'apthunt.htm' so I assumed it was the same animation I saw a year ago... I have since d/l'ed it, and it is most definitely *NOT* 'Apartment Hunting'. It is just as cool, though. (Although, I'm going to have to find my old Quake 2 CD so I can view it 'properly', instead of the AVI I just watched.)

Teaches me to open my big mouth... (Moderators, please moderate my original comment back down as 'ignorant')

/.'d

[Ruthless_Advisorette]

Machinima.com and all related sites have been brought to a SNAIL'S pace...anyone know of any mirrors up yet?

Wow...

[Cygnus Rosebud]

Now if only I had the bandwidth to give it a try... Damn slow modems ;-)

Haiku

[psm]

Quake movies are made
Slashdot - "technology leap!"
Quake haiku is next

Re:/.'d - here's a fast mirror

[Turmio]

Here

Now everyone go show me that Slashdot effect! I don't believe in it until my very own box is down :)

Re:PIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[asscave]

I second that

Fast mirror, and real one this time

[Turmio]

HardlyWorkin-UE- DM2-Install.exe

Got it from that horrible FTP site running Serv-U.

Re:In my day...

[Alatar]

I believe the Anonymous poster was speaking about the demo scene, when machine language coders would make absolutely dazzling things happen with very limited hardware , for example VGA cards with 256k of video RAM, and four megabytes of system RAM, and a 16MHz processor.

Re:/.'d - here's a fast mirror

[pod]

Here as well, for a limited time only and with rather limited bandwidth, but at least it's not /.ed yet.

shades of stephenson

[CrazyJoel]

The innovation is in making 3d animation without having to wait Pixar-like lengths of time for it to render. In a game engine, the animation is rendered real time. The real innovation would be to use the gestures and models for a sort of real-time vr puppetry. Then, you'll soon approach the stuff you got in "Diamond Age."

Quake: The Movie, and other films.

[citizenc]

I am currently doing voices for Quake: The Movie, a machimania by Tritin Films. Now, the difference between regular films and Q:TM is that Quake: The movie is completely computer generated -- no demo camming to be found.

QTM will not be specifically Quake 3, but rather a combination of all of the games -- I've seen a bunch of it already, and it looks quite impressive.

In addition to QTM, Tritin Films is going to me making the intro movie for Quake 3 Fortress.. I can hardly wait!

--
CitizenC

Job security...

[tolldog]

I am a Render Architect... things like this give me the willies...

The more real-time 3D viewers that we have (Game engines or otherwise) and the more content that is developed for it is less work for me.

I am glad to see somebody being inovative and working in a new medium... but as a simple guy that is trying to pay the bills:

Please keep buying 3D videos... the type that take time and people to render...

Ok, that being said... I am gonna sit back and watch me a nice, old, good-for-you 3D video.

maybe...

[fudboy]

I know it's bad form to mention them, but maybe all the slashdot trolls could get together and make a machinama flick about their favorite troll topics? Maybe those elements could be woven into a compelling love story, or an action adventure...

That would be sweet, it would be both funny to watch and it would get them off our backs for a while so that (threshold: 0) could once again be useful and pleasant to read.

Say, it's kinda cool to be able to discuss /.trolls and for once be both on topic and insightful.

:)Fudboy

GS Cube

[Rhys Dyfrgi]

The GS Cube is one of Sony's latest devices. It's got the rendering power of 16 PS2 chipsets in it, and it was recently demoed rendering scenes from Antz in real time. I can't find a link on the web, but it's in the latest EGM, which, amazingly, appears not to have a website.

The shot in the mag looked a little blurry around the edges of the screen, but that could be because it was shot from motion. Still, it looked pretty good. Damn good, for rendering in real time.

Of course, this box has $5000 of PS2 in it, so I don't think you'll be watching real-time rendered Antz in your home anytime soon. EGM speculated that their eventual plan was to use it for broadband realtime 3D broadcasting, though.

Let's just hope.

Can anyone find mention of the GS Cube on Sony's website? I can find it on other sites, but not there.
---

This movie is not very good!

[darekana]

I don't think its worth the 16meg+ download. Read The Onion or something else that doesn't suck.

Re:In my day...

[Anonymous Freak]

Yeah, I know. That's why I was being sarcastic. For a more realistic 'in my day', how 'bout this one:

In my day, we had to code 3d by hand, not to mention such now-standard effects such as alpha transparency, multitexturing, and 'plasma' effects. We only had 256 colors to choose from, not this strange thirty-two-bit stuff. So we had to invent our own routines to make it look like there were more colors. Plus, we didn't have the luxury of 3d accelerators, SIMD extensions, or even floating point units to help us! All we had was 386 protected mode assembly instructions.

And as for your 'internet'? No fancy-pants 1Mbps DSL connections for us. We had to download these demos the hard way. Over a 9600 baud modem dialing to foreign countries, and downloading all night long. (Yes, I dialed from Portland, OR to a BBS in Norway to download '2nd Reality' on a 9600 baud modem. It took about 2 hours. Not to mention the pain of dowloading Linux kernel 0.9. My hard drive wasn't big enough to fit all the disk (3.5" floppy) images, so I had to download a few, write the disks, delete the images, download a few more......)

And, yes, I was learning assembly during that time frame. I don't remember a bit of it now, but at the time, I could code a 'plasma' routine that looked pretty wicked-cool.....

Re:Did you even read the article?

[John_Prophet]

I just saw the Quake symbol. What, we're supposed ot read everything all of a sudden?

The above quote was marked -1:TROLL.

I don't see how it could possibly be VIEWED as a troll, but I guess that things that are funny just aren't funny if they are posted anonymously, eh?

If I were a moderator today, I would've modded it up to FUNNY. Goddamn guys, it's not a war, it's a message base.


-The Reverend

Re:Redundant, Score -1 - Not really

[Anonymous Freak]

Well, I didn't mean that the idea isn't original (although it isn't. They used the Quake 1 engine for the first movie 'Apartment Hunting' I linked to) I meant that the STORY was old news because I (mistakenly) thought that the animation announced in the story was a year old.

Re: don't agree

[Knos]

You're talking about the <1993 demoscene. How can you make such statements when you obviously has now knowledge of the current stuff?

it's not a coder thing anymore (a coder only can't compete) and with the new hardware accelerated stuff and acceptance of use of third party libraries the focus is less on code, and effects than the overall feeling/artistic aspect of the demo.

It's quite clear if you check all the latest and/or good demos/intros (moralhardcandy/blasphemy, metamorf/zden, 96/damage, codename chinadoll/katastro.fi, antimoney/3state, spot/exceed, art/haujobb...)

Did you even read the article?

[_Bean_]

Using a game engine to create a comedy movie seems pretty damn creative to me. Did you even read the article or did just see the quake symbol and post?

In my day...

[Anonymous Freak]

We had to code the 3d graphics by hand.

And I don't mean just that we had to code it manually, I mean we had to punch out the little holes in the punch cards with our own hands! No machines to punch them out for us, not even a pencil to punch out the holes. You little whipper-snappers. I have so many paper cuts on my pinky finger, it aches every time it rains!

You and your 'limited resources.....'

</sarcasm>

New to the game industry?

[mholve]

...it looks like this Machinima stuff is actually becoming a medium of its own. The convergence of filmmaking, animation & game development all rolled into one!

Err, MOST games these days qualify for that. Where have you been hiding?

Re:Am I The Only One...

[GreenHell]

Yah, personally I've always been of the opinion that the more a game boasts about its graphics, the more likely there's little to no actual gameplay... Point, shoot, dodge, point, shoot, dodge, dodge, dodge, die.... repeat ad infinitum....
Hmmmm... maybe there's a scientifc relation...
X is inversely realted to Z^2
Where X is the amount of press space (reviews, ads, etc) that talk about the eye-candy, and Z is the actual gameplay...

I'm not planning on upgrading my video card anytime soon, and if a game requires a 3D card, then I just don't play it (so there!). Not that there is anything wrong in enjoying these games, but call me nostalgic, call me stuck in the past, call me whatever... but I miss my Zork!

-GreenHell

Quake TF Scatman animation?

[UnknownSoldier]

Did anyone see that quake tf scatman animation?!

I lost the url and can't find it. It's funny as heck.

mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

A mirror is available on a tripod server...

available here

Linux?

[reddeno]

Is there any way to get this to run under Linux? Wine perhaps?

Re:Linux?

[Steveftoth]

Dude, get a real OS.

Stunt Island

[hugg]

Does anyone remember the 1995 game "Stunt Island"? It was the first real film-directing game I'd ever seen. The theme of the game was to fly stunt planes for points, but the business end of it was the movie studio -- you set up cameras, scripted events, place props, and film, then edit the footage into a finished movie. It was quite well done, esp. for 1995. You can still find people publishing movies for it on the Net.

Unfortunately there's been nothing like it since -- but I suppose completely scriptable engines like Quake fill that void.

For the record...

[ILL Robinson]

My take on Machinima is that its not about "Wow, look what we can do with a game engine", but more about the where & how entertainment will be created in the future.

Currently, most 3D animations are pre-rendered. Its only a matter of time before pre-rendering is a thing of the past & we will be controling the elements in a 3D animation via human operators (like puppeteering) & scripts. With this, its easy to see how it will intrude on traditional filmmaking. Sets will be digitally created as well as they more easily modified & less costly to make. And as 3D technologies advance, those sets & characters will become more realistic as the blurring line between real world filmmaking & the digital recreation/representation becomes moreso.

Is this going to put Arriflex out of business yet? No way. But in the evolution of passive entertainment, the technology will pave the road to make it wider & smoother.

-ILL Robinson

P.S. |>ro$$er - Yes, all the dialogue in HW was improvised. Which may explain why some people liked it & others not. I created all the visuals for Hardly Workin' solely on my own, which to me, is another example of the benefits of Machinima. You could argue that anyone with a 3D proggie can do the same and that would be correct, but it was easier for me to build placeholder models first, direct the "actors" through the diner environment using those models, record those actions & then swap back in the finalized characters @ the editing stage so that the production could happen in parallel form rather than with a serial approach. For future productions, those finalized characters can now be re-utilized.

Re: don't agree

[Junks Jerzey]

You're talking about the 1993 demoscene. How can you make such statements when you obviously has now knowledge of the current stuff?

I follow the demoscene, though I have no idea why. The modern demoscene is stale, stale, stale. It should have died years ago.

Re:Moo!

[Vuarnet]

I can only say...
El gato voladoooooor!
El gato voladoooooor!

Don't even ask where that came from...

Re:Am I The Only One...

[extar-bags]

This isn't boring

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Re:MODERATORS!!! MOD THE PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Freak]

Really? Did you click his links first? That most certainly is *NOT* a mirror of what you think it is...

Although, I think a moderation of 'Off-topic' is more appropriate than 'Troll'...

Just what I want in an experimental film

[K-Man]

A chance to chain-gun the filmmaker.