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cutscenes for the Foundry please
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In STO's Foundry, the best we can do is create a pop up window with a static NPC face in the corner and a wall of text to convey important story.
This is beyond unsatisfactory.
I know it would be a challenge to make it easy to use (though looking at games like "The Movies" its clearly very possible) but we need some time-line driven cutscene animator with subtitles or there's really no story.
No one likes a wall of text and no one feels moved by a static portrait. We have stories to tell.
We can make your game rich with content -will you give us the tools to do it?
This is beyond unsatisfactory.
I know it would be a challenge to make it easy to use (though looking at games like "The Movies" its clearly very possible) but we need some time-line driven cutscene animator with subtitles or there's really no story.
No one likes a wall of text and no one feels moved by a static portrait. We have stories to tell.
We can make your game rich with content -will you give us the tools to do it?
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well, in my live D&D games, Im able to portray groups of NPCs having a discussion with my PCs -having cutscenes would allow for something at least dramatic in a video game format.
Its voice voer content that would be impractical, if only because we'd have to be limited to premade voice clips. We'd never be allowed to record our own voice dialogue and upload it, for fear of viruses.
But being able to stage a scene instead of just having a pop up appear with a paragraph would be integral to story immersiveness.
Doesn't have to consist of much.
1) choose a room from your module.
2) choose the actors from your NPC list
3) select an emote for the npc (bow, gesture, talk, walk, run, swing sword etc -much like you'd find in an MMO)
4) input dialogue text that will appear at the bottom of the screen like subtitles.
5) string together multiple clips like this along a basic timeline
voila instant cutscene.
If they can get the Foundry to support placeable cameras, and attach those cameras to lines of dialogue, you've got your cutscene functionality. There would be limitations to what you could have the characters do, of course - and I think for the sake of player experience they would want to rule out any functionality that disables the player's ability to skip, or at least breeze through, the cutscene. But at a very basic level like what you've described I don't see any reason to avoid this feature.
Okay now that actually sounds practical.....I wonder if that is how they are currently doing it in STO's cutscenes?
to my knowledge, it is still just a pop up window with a crewmember face in a small portrait staring at you beside a wall of text.
One of the devs said they were granted an extra year by the new company to make Neverwinter "more immersive." A feature like this gets my vote as ranking among the top features that would do just that.
Your description is not far off from how it currently works in Neverwinter's Foundry. Dialogs are done in a cutscene style with actor emotes and strung together in a flowchart style editor instead of a timeline.
For more advanced cutscenes like you see in our other games, we actually have a fully functioning cutscene editor available to players in STO and Champions, but that editor isn't hooked up to the Foundry currently. I could see this being implemented before ship, but it's too soon to confirm at this point.
that's the second time you've sung music to my ears, mapolis. You guys are clearly on the same wavelength. Now I'm looking forward to this game more than ever.
BTW I'm available to beta! *shameless plug mixed with grovelling*
On unrelated news keep your eyes posted on IGN and our site today for some NWN eye candy I put together (least I heard it posts today).
- Mark 'H2orat' Valentine on the NWN vault
Yeah I just finished the Reaman episodes the cut scenes and how they were placed in the missions were awesome. If that can happen it would add quite a bit of functionality to story telling, I remember how much the cut scene added to the Witches Wake in NWN1.
that would be awesome. Hopefully simplified a bit for the nonprogrammer, but yeah a cutscene tool is just vital.