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Author Topic: Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia  (Read 10727 times)

cycyc

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« on: August 24, 2006, 07:06:49 pm »
Hopefully I dont get banned for referring to the storyline, but currently the intro sucks. The text is fine, but the presentation is just annoying.
Also in the storyline.txt there is the comment : ufopedia entry - but none of it in  the ufopedia to be found. For a while I've been sketching for my idea for the intro:
The Intro-Sequence is chopped up into slides. Each of one supplied with nice artwork.  Beetween every slide is a fade and for the whole Intro background music (maybe dawn.ogg). Afterwards the slides can be accessed through a special "politics" branch of ufopedia, or through an already existing on (Developments).
Whuddya think?

Offline Winter

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Re: Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2006, 08:08:42 pm »
Quote from: "cycyc"
Hopefully I dont get banned for referring to the storyline, but currently the intro sucks. The text is fine, but the presentation is just annoying.
Also in the storyline.txt there is the comment : ufopedia entry - but none of it in  the ufopedia to be found. For a while I've been sketching for my idea for the intro:
The Intro-Sequence is chopped up into slides. Each of one supplied with nice artwork.  Beetween every slide is a fade and for the whole Intro background music (maybe dawn.ogg). Afterwards the slides can be accessed through a special "politics" branch of ufopedia, or through an already existing on (Developments).
Whuddya think?


Hullo, I'm Winter, the other half of the story team. You've certainly got a point -- the scrolling text is a bit naff. Trouble is, any changes are up to the coders. You'd probably have more luck posting this in Bugs & Feature Requests.

Regards,
Winter

cycyc

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2006, 09:28:29 pm »
Hi Winter, I'll try this, but for me its important wether to continue sketching or not. I guess blending in 4 pics could be done in 12-20 lines of code, if I remeber OpenGL right. Not so quick drawing / rendering nice pictures....

So to me its a design question. I could be back in 3 weeks with some really nice themes for Intro and Outro, if they wont go to waste..


My concept:

[intro_sentence1 - dawn.ogg 0sec - basic picture of the globe as one sees it at geoscape ]
2084 - A time of relative peace has finally come to Earth. Old wars have been fought out, old borders have been broken and new ones esablished, and governments have stabilized. Former nations and super-nations have coalesced into major political powers and the remaining lone nations are working together closely. Prosperity is no longer a stranger to many of the peoples of Earth as it once was in the 20th century, and the population now trusts its leaders to maintain the balance of power and carry them forward into a tranquil, thriving 22nd century...

[intro_sentence2 - black background - text stands alone]
until... the invasion begins

[intro_sentence3 - dawn.ogg - 22sec + additional loud noise from rocket landing, maybe from wartape... - render/drawing of the alien-falcon]
It is during this time that the aliens invade Earth. They launch an attack on the city of Mumbai, it being the most densely populated area on Earth. Hundreds of thousands of innocent citizend are killed before the aliens are finally driven off by Commonwealth forces.

[intro_sentence4 - dawn.ogg 35sec - drawing of alien in fighting postion]
Nobody knows where they come from. An attempt at diplomacy is made, but is met with force. Forty-eight hours after the initial attack, all seven political blocks have declared a state of war. For two weeks, the armies of Earth try to fend off the alien attackers, but they score precious few victories. The United Nations, in accordance with the seven blocks' petition, authorizes the creation of a specialized combat unit: PHALANX

[intro_sentence5 - dawn.ogg 54sec (guitar solo) until 1.06 - drawing of phalanx logo..]
Charged with countering the alien threat, this combat unit is funded by all seven of the political powers, and draws its soldiers from the elite of their armies. Whether PHALANX is able to face up to the challenge remains to be seen...

Offline EsbenMoseHansen

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2006, 09:39:54 pm »
I love it, except one thing ... the story doesn't match!

It doesn't seem to me that the humans are in a all-out, armies versus armies kind of situation.  Rather, it seems the aliens are leading a guerrilla warfare against the humans. So probably,  we want something like "several unconfirmed attacks by aliens" "reports of superior technology" "local police forces killed at a punishing rate" and stuff like that. Whenever one nation gears up to kill the alien invasion, the aliens concentrate on another region. Finally, the nations agree to a joint, dedicated venture: the PHALANX.

Needs to be fleshed out by someone who can write, but isn't it more in line with the actual game? :)

Offline Winter

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2006, 09:45:11 pm »
Quote from: "cycyc"
Hi Winter, I'll try this, but for me its important wether to continue sketching or not. I guess blending in 4 pics could be done in 12-20 lines of code, if I remeber OpenGL right. Not so quick drawing / rendering nice pictures....

So to me its a design question. I could be back in 3 weeks with some really nice themes for Intro and Outro, if they wont go to waste..


My concept:



I think the important thing -- as usual -- is not having 4 pics to blend. They'd have to be made, to a certain standard of quality, and who's going to make them?

Also, your intro text is outdated, I've put it through a significant rewrite and BTAxis has uploaded the new text to the wiki here:

http://ufo.myexp.de/wiki/index.php/Storyline/Final

Regards,
Winter

cycyc

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #5 on: August 27, 2006, 02:00:18 pm »
Quote from: "Winter"

I think the important thing -- as usual -- is not having 4 pics to blend. They'd have to be made, to a certain standard of quality, and who's going to make them?

Well... me. If you aprove the sketches. Its cleart that there cant be any comic artwork in Ufo as it is now. It'd had to fit the bulky, gree-gray style of the GUI. The only option is: render pictures that look like the defeat/victory screen. I.e. take the existing .blend models, arrange them in a setting with blender, put a lot of flashy light.. render and maybe polish with gimp afterwards. Lots of work but I'd be willing to do it.
But first of all one has to create the concept. If you agree on a slideshow, then I'll take lots of materials on vacation and continue drawing.

Quote from: "Winter"

Also, your intro text is outdated, I've put it through a significant rewrite and BTAxis has uploaded the new text to the wiki here:

Unfortunatley the new one is longer and can not be read in the 1.06 minutes dawn.ogg offers until the fisrt interlude. Though there is a nice break at 1.43 aswell.

Offline Winter

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #6 on: August 27, 2006, 08:57:38 pm »
Quote from: "cycyc"
Well... me. If you aprove the sketches.


Huh. Okay, I'll talk it over with BTAxis, but it might be a while -- I'm meant to understand he's away for a few days.

Quote
Its cleart that there cant be any comic artwork in Ufo as it is now.


It is? The old X-COM games had comic artwork, it's just a matter of what style you do it in.

Quote
It'd had to fit the bulky, gree-gray style of the GUI. The only option is: render pictures that look like the defeat/victory screen.


Well, if you're dead set on doing that, okay with me.

Quote
But first of all one has to create the concept. If you agree on a slideshow, then I'll take lots of materials on vacation and continue drawing.


I'll try and bring it to the attention of one of the project leaders, as it'd take a recoding of the intro sequence, and I'm still not sure exactly whom is the final word on  this stuff.

Quote
Unfortunatley the new one is longer and can not be read in the 1.06 minutes dawn.ogg offers until the fisrt interlude. Though there is a nice break at 1.43 aswell.


I write prose to be good, fun, interesting and informative. Not so much to fit the beat of a song. :P

. . . Oh yeah, and I've never even heard the song before, or knew about its existence! That counts too, right? ;)

Regards,
Winter

Offline BTAxis

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #7 on: August 27, 2006, 11:19:24 pm »
I'm quite in favor of the idea. About the style, Winter and I both doubt that all the graphics can be realized through 3D rendering. Especially autopsies and certain story-related imagery would be used only in one place, and that makes creating a 3D scene all the more expensive in terms of the work involved.

As stated, we are not authorities when it comes to support for this in the game, but if/when you have a sketch that you think would fit, I would be interested to take a look.

Hoehrer

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #8 on: August 28, 2006, 03:09:19 pm »
Small input here:

The existing lost/won shots look pretty good, but if we get better handdrawn images/sketches I suggest to replace  them anyway ... IMO

I've also made one test-technology (advances laser tech) myself in Blender some time ago, but I'm not sure if it's worth the work/time put in it:
See http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ufoai/ufoai/trunk/base/pics/techs/laser.jpg?view=markup
EDIT: the biggest problem here was to get the existing md2 files from the scientist into blender and make it poseable again ... since we have no source files (I think they are max) for that ... gotta write to rastaman again. This includes the 'neutral' position of the model.

Werner

PS: Just FYI ... I've recently seen i neat trick to still use very crude 3d-renderings next to  handdrawn/skeched images by applying an oilpainting- and/or blur- and/or other filter to the image (e.g gimpressionist is your friend here).

ubequitz

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2006, 10:26:51 pm »
Quote from: "Hoehrer"
Small input here:
I've also made one test-technology (advances laser tech) myself in Blender some time ago, but I'm not sure if it's worth the work/time put in it:
See http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ufoai/ufoai/trunk/base/pics/techs/laser.jpg?view=markup


I reckon this can look awesome with a few simple filters applied. Here is my 1 min hack job:
http://img101.imageshack.us/my.php?image=laser2bw8.jpg

the jpg+jpg compression introduced some artifacts and the pixel outline around the scientist dude could be fixed with some care (I would want to work on a non-lossy compressed image first... or it is easily fixed if the original had a transparent background).

PS: sorry for the bad image hosting site, I don't know of a good place to put images at the moment.

Offline Winter

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #10 on: August 29, 2006, 09:35:09 am »
Quote from: "ubequitz"
I reckon this can look awesome with a few simple filters applied. Here is my 1 min hack job:
http://img101.imageshack.us/my.php?image=laser2bw8.jpg


That's not bad. I'd use it. The filters do give it a bit more atmosphere and, dare I say it, dynamism.

Regards,
Winter

Hoehrer

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #11 on: August 30, 2006, 08:47:55 am »
Quote from: "ubequitz"
I reckon this can look awesome with a few simple filters applied. Here is my 1 min hack job:
http://img101.imageshack.us/my.php?image=laser2bw8.jpg

the jpg+jpg compression introduced some artifacts and the pixel outline around the scientist dude could be fixed with some care (I would want to work on a non-lossy compressed image first... or it is easily fixed if the original had a transparent background).


A transparent background is no problem at all when rendering this, but i trieed to save space for the game/engine and use jpeg compression for this image.

Everything blue in this image is just the world-color which is made transparent with one click... before rendering that is  ;)

EDIT: just tell me if you want one with transp background.

Werner

ubequitz

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Design:Intro & Storyline in Ufopedia
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2006, 01:01:32 pm »
High res version thanks to Hoehrer sending me some more data :D

http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=laserhigh2mg3.png

(warning takes a little time to load)