Hi.

If you've read my previous posts on this forum, you know I'm serious about making an original FMV game in the vein of NIGHT TRAP. I'm trying to acquire the license to a little-known movie. I know the copyright owner through a mutual friend, and I'm hoping I won't have to give him any money up front unless I can secure a distribution deal. He doesn't want me to talk about the movie, so I can't tell you the name. I have all the video footage I need and I've designed the whole game on paper. Now it's just about programming. Besides Inform and a few other scripting languages, I'm not that good a programmer. So I'm wondering...

Would anybody be interested in helping out? Unfortunately, I can't pay you anything. I'm broke, believe me. Like I mentioned above, I'm hoping I don't have to pay the copyright owner up front. I could only do that if I landed a distribution deal...and pay the owner with the money they'd give. If the owner doesn't want to do that, then it's game over for this project. We're still talking about things. Basically, he wants to see a semi-large demo of the game before he talks any further. You might be wondering why I don't just film my own video footage, so I don't have to work with license. The reason: I can't even afford to buy blank videotapes, much less hire a cast, crew, etc.

So here's the question: Does anybody know make a game like NIGHT TRAP in Games Factory? I talked to Rob Fulop, who programmed that game, and he said this:

***
I really don't know a lot about the technology behind FMV engines, sorry Keith. The most important aspect of Night Trap is that of simultaneous streaming of multiple video streams ... basically you need four-six movies streaming by at the same time ...so that any video can run at any moment

obviously, due to compression ... most engines can't support random entry into the video stream on any frame, but only at predesignated points in the video presentation .. thus making multi-streamed presentations such as Night Trap unfeasible.

Night Trap needed a custom video player built by Digital Pictures ... they are long since out of business

sorry I couldn't be more help

rob
***

So is Games Factory capable? Would anybody be interested in trying to configure it, so it could work? Anybody interested in writing a scripting language in a different language? I could do the actual coding in Games Factory or maybe a new scripting language...just if somebody told me how to deal with multiple streaming videos.

If somebody did, I'd they'd receive proper credit in the game and I'd pay them something if I landed a distribution deal...I can't say how much...it depends on how much he/she contributed and how much the company would buy the game for.

Anyway, please let me know. If you want to talk privately, my e-mail address is KeithScott84[at]aol[dot]com .

THANKS,
Keith

I don't know anything about the games factory, but I don't see why you couldn't use daphne.

As long as you can keep a running timer (in seconds), you can use that to seek to any frame you want within however many video streams you want. You would just have to build a framefile with each stream at a given offset, and add the amount of the offset for each seek.

For instance, let's say you have 6 night-trap-ish rooms with video that should be playing in each room at the same time. First, structure your framefile like this:

1000 stream1.m2v
2000 stream2.m2v
3000 stream3.m2v
4000 stream4.m2v
5000 stream5.m2v
6000 stream6.m2v

with each stream corresponding to a different room.

then let's say that exactly 2 seconds have passed when the player enters one of these night-trap-ish rooms. If the streams are at 24 fps, then 2 seconds times 24 frames-per-second = 48 total frames passed.

So, if the player entered room 4 (which corresponds to stream4.m2v) after 2 seconds you would seek to frame 4048. If 2 seconds later he enters room 5, seek to frame 5096.

Voila, instant (simulated) multiple streaming technology, courtesy of Matt_O

Daphne can seek to any random frame despite the fact that it uses mpeg2/mpeg1 compression. This was one of the hardest features to add, and I am rather pleased with how well it works

I don't mean to insult anyone, because maybe I'm not understanding what you guys mean, but how exactly would that be hard to do?

I know in direct-show it's as simple as setting the ".CurrentPosition" before continuting the render. All one would have to do to jump to a random frame would be to determine the clip length and multiply it by a random seed. The current frame can be changed without even pausing the playback.

AFAIK unless there are syncing issues (framefiles and such), the compression method shouldn't have anything to do with it.

I think you'll find that most (all) mpeg2 decoders for DirectShow will only seek the approximate frame, even if .CurrentPosition is supposed to provide the exact frame.

This is precisely the reason I had to develop my own ...

and then there's getting the sound to sync up. But that's probably easier to do.