Possible method for FMV cutscenes?
 

I am such a geek.

One of the random things I thought of today was horribly abusing the level system in Jazz Jackrabbit 2 to actually show FMV cutscenes within the level.

Hmm... crank it down to 320x240 resolution, that gives 75 32x32 tiles per frame (10 across, 7.5 down). Actually, make that 80 tiles per frame as we can't code half tiles. Given that there are 1024 tiles available, and each animated one counts for one of those, this gives 11 frames of video. (Ignoring TSF as I at least don't have it)

But we can optimise this by coding similar tiles only once, and by making good use of static and/or tiled backgrounds. We could also reduce the picture size - if we drop the bottom (or possibly top) row of tiles, and only use 70 for each frame, we get at least two more frames of video. Same goes for chopping off the sides, or could go more extreme and have widescreen video.

So what can we do sensibly with this? Given that extra frames only cost tile space for new tiles, we could easily do a pair of (non-overlapping) talking heads and give each head a dozen frames or so. Use the game engine to show text captions by abusing sucker tubes and text events, or even record speech and play it back. JJ2 uses tracker-based music, so this could be abused to give sound. There's various tricks to reduce the size of a sample, so it should be possible to get a good dialogue going. The main limits for length are the complexity of the animation, size of the music file, and the maximum size of an animated tile. We could probably get away with a frame rate of 12fps, though higher is always better.


So, thoughts on this? Anyone going to have a try at making it happen? I have no art skill but I may knock up a proof-of-concept if I get the chance.

*thick british accent*... Good lord! I think you're onto something!

*back to normal"
Uh... I won't be doing that soon. But it sounds like it would work, and has been done before. No, wait, something similar. I'd love to try but my anim skills suck.

For all I know Neobeo may pop in to say that JCS+ can get around this, but I seem to recall that animated tiles are limited to 64 (or 63?) frames, and I think you can only have 256 animated tiles period, assuming the tileset is small enough to allow you that many. It is of course possible that a level consisting of nothing but cutscene would be simple enough that you could go over the 1023 tile limit without too much danger.
I think the best bet is not to pretend it isn't JJ2. Use multiple scenes, have parallax backgrounds, layers, etc. Each scene can involve trigger scenery so you don't have to worry about animations starting at the wrong times, just the fact that only one speed is available. Lots of animations can be used more than once to conserve space. A full-out entire-scene-changes-every-frame video makes no sense at all.

I think cutscenes in jj2 are best done in the half-life (2) style, where they are sometimes interactive and blend in seamlessly with the normal gameplay. Trigger tricks and special tilesets designed for these levels help.

I thought of this long ago, but when I calculated the amount of frames possible, I dropped the idea. :P

Say, isn't it possible to make animations if the player moves really fast in a sucker tube, with the images on foreground?

Yes, but then the level would have to be huge.

Well, it would only get very long, not very high...

I can agree to that. No but this post wasn't made to insult so i'll lay off the jokes as best i can.

or...why don't you just do this...

like mike said, there are special tilesets that can be used for this reason. So why not just say make your level...then make the next level a cutscene...then make it go to the next level using an EOL event?

That's the way i'd do it if i was making a sp pack. If you download teamfoo05, you can see Spotty made a good use of a cutscene. Just warp to position 120,103 (that's about position 0x3FFF0F05, 3298 in microtwips)

That's my $0.02

*shrugs*

I'd say the best way would be to just make a tileset consisting of comics. Cutscenes don't have to be animated, children!

I've been thinking about that option too, but that would be a lot less spectaculair...

Idea thief. ;(

Potentially more spectacular than 4 seconds of film.

EDIT: I WAS FIRST I HAD THE IDEA YEARS AGO YOU >O

I'm in 1998, dude, I'm WAY first!

Devil Dash has been actually using it for ages, just like many other elements that were revolutionary in the time they were made, but eventually got old and discovered by someone else. ;P

Will Devil Dash actually ever be released? Or did I just miss the release? I'm especially wondering because a year ago or so it was "90% finished".

I've recently (as in, that year mentioned above) became very bored with the creation and find it very difficult to force myself to finish the tileset needed for just one missing level. =P Guilty Gene is my most beloved "child" now, but slowly, Devil Dash is being made in the shadow of it.

Pretty much how I would have discussed this if Violet hadn't already done so. So I'll just reply to this reply instead. No, the J2L format probably does not allow for animations with more than 64 frames (unless I play with some serious buffer overruns). If I'm not wrong, you get 128 animated tiles for 1.23, and 512 for TSF.

And yes, it is an interesting idea which I have considered before, but never to this extent. I may also knock up a proof-of-concept if I can find some cute animation/movieclip to steal from.

lolz, faw, i had music on and that animation danced *right* to the music :P hahahaha

on topic:

cutscenes would eb interesting, isnt it possible (or more easy) to use the standard jj2 video format, and make a patch to let them play inbetween levels instead of only ending cutscene (you know..)

It seems to work just fine with more than 128.

Well, that would make the cutscenes really big and I don't know if the "next level setting" an be set to a video...

BTW: isn't this supposed to be placed in JCS?