draft for videos about classes/weapons/whatever, request for comment

[zybork]

Besides some stupid videos about strategy, I also want to make videos that are a kind of video guide for the game and several alien classes, weapons, buildings, equipment, you name it.

Here is my first video draft, about the dragoon, those videos are supposed to be composed as follows:

• a display of the model + some specs
• some gameplay footage, portraying its behaviour ingame

However, about the specs, I do not list the health points, but how many rifle bullets it takes to take that class down, damage done by the class is in fractions of 100hp, and the size is the size in units, where I consider 32u to be one meter (which gives 1.75m for a human, btw), I hope to create a more vivid impression of the class that way.

I still have some weird technical problems, however, I think you will get the idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwlT32f53qA

I still wonder how to get the cost into the video, I haven't figured out a way I am comfortable with yet.

[Meisseli]

However, about the specs, I do not list the health points, but how many rifle bullets it takes to take that class down, damage done by the class is in fractions of 100hp

Why on earth? It's terribly simpler for everyone and especially for newbies to understand the alien has 200HP and deals 100 pounce/80 chomp damage instead of some weird percentages and bullet counts.

If you're using the numbers from the armour modifier thread you might just want to make a simple table that lists for example how many hits it takes to kill a naked, larm, larm+helm and battlesuit human.
(naked = 1 pounce or 1 headchomp;larm = 2 pounces or 1 headchomp;larm+helm = 3 pounces or 3 headchomps;battlesuit = 5 pounces or 4 headchomps, by the way.)

And I really hope it's going to include real in-game footage preferrably in both first and third person, rather than some screwing around in devmap mode with immobile buildings.

Here's actually a good sample of a dretch video tutorial: http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=14115.0, although that video lacks some minor details that people have pointed out in the thread.

[zybork]

Why on earth?

To make it more vivid. But you may be right, I'd probably stick to damage points and health points, and mention the bullet count only in the audio, however, I'll keep the meters, they are still of more use than mapping-units imo.

And I really hope it's going to include real in-game footage

Of course, man This is a first draft, I just put in a filler.

One thing: This is not supposed to be a tutorial, this is supposed to be a quick introduction, 1'30" being the maximum duration such a video should have, it should only give a quick idea what that class/weapon is, but should be as representative as possible nonetheless. This creates the old "journalistic" problem that you have to decide which information to go in and which to be left out. I still wonder how to put in the cost btw.

And if there is anybody here who can teach me how to amplify audio and fade in videos in Blender, I wouldn't have to rely on cinelerra, which is giving me nightmares right now *hint hint*

[Meisseli]

I still wonder how to put in the cost btw.

Cost = 3 evos? Feeds humans 600 credits. I don't see a problem there.

[janev]

I'd talk much less in the video unless it is strictly related to what is being shown on the screen. It's confusing to have multiple sensory inputs simultaneously.

I'd also break it down into:

- Offensive capabilities
- Defensive capabilities
- Movement demo
- Special ability demo
- Attack demo (killing a stage 1, 2, 3 human (hits to torso and head) / being killed by turret, rifleman), a table would work here too but would be less intuitive imho
Light up the topic as you go through it in the video.

To present the offensive and defensive capabilities you could frame that first rotating goon with a something like:

Traits

Offensive

Defensive

Damage / hit

Hitpoints

Damage / pounce

Fast movement

That gets the stats out of the way and anyone who is really interested can pause the video. Moving on to movement I'd first show how in this case the goon moves (in third person) and then piece together advanced maneuvers: Jumping, pouncing, pounce - jump combo for speed, chained movement and escaping,

For the special ability you could just show how the targeting of the pounce works and that you can actually hit things by looking at them.

Dimensions and percentages are largely irrelevant. Use small - medium - large and hit points. I'd also leave the defensive multipliers for various armor for a separate video.