By rights, this should be a video blog. I finally got round to buying Fraps.
The reason for this is that I want to show off Project Y4 in motion. No more static screenies — I can finally show you its full glory. Or rather, its heavily-edited-to-make-it-look-really-dramatic glory. But it’s cinema, so you expect a bit of embellishment.
Aside from some minor difficulties (VideoPad dies just looking at videos that use the Fraps codec, so I need to pass all clips through Animation Shop; which is even flakier and runs out of memory at the slightest provocation), everything is recording beautifully.
Since the final video was always going to be 640×480, I decided to reduce WC3‘s resolution for the recording process (recording at 1280×1024 gave me a performance drop by the final video came out fine, but it also made processing the clips in Animation Shop even more troublesome). This gave me a collossal boost in mouse sensitivity, so if it looks like I’m having a small seizure at the controls in all that footage…
There also isn’t a lot of clicking on the command card. The four AP-AM ability slots are assigned to QWER (I think this is going to conflict with that other kind of keyboard, so I may need to find an alternative… Is ZXCV is the same on both layouts?), and I’ve ended up designing most combat to be so snappy that without hotkey use you’re probably going to die. When I say this is going to be an action adventure, there is heavy heavy emphasis on the action.
I chose OMD’s History of Modern (Parts III & IV) as the music because, as I’ve said before, Dazzle Ships is pretty much the reason for RDZ Industries. Yes, History of Modern (Parts III & IV) is one of the B-sides from their most recent album History of Modern, but it sounds and feels gloriously Dazzle Ships. It’s contemporary, fresh and exciting and new, yet still captures that fascination with technological sounds… Perfect.
Don’t take this as an indication that I’m anywhere near done, of course. I just wanted to show you the game, as it stands, in motion.
Rao Dao Zao 
Hmmmm ZXCV might not be a good idea… Some keyboards have Z and Y flipped … so there are QWERTY and QWERTZ keyboards… There is no ‘universal’ keyboard layout, but the standard QWERTY it’s pretty close to that…
Nice progress … keep it up :]
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It’s also annoying that ASDF is out of the question because A and S are locked in to attack and stop, or else I’d be using the full 4×3 square of keys to match the command card.
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Is it just me or the graphic is on par to UT2004 and Quake?
I’m amazed!
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It’s just you.
The lighting is pretty reminiscent of Quake II (makes everything brown), but Q2 and original Unreal/UT characters still have a higher polycount than any of my staples. Never played the original Quake, mind you, so it’s not impossible that my polycount matches that level.
I think the most important thing is that it doesn’t look like Warcraft III.
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You’ll never finish it, am I right?
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In twenty years’ time, when we’re all old and grey and jaded…
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