Chrono Compendium
Marbule Gallery - Completed Fan Creations => Crimson Echoes => Topic started by: Ramsus on February 15, 2009, 02:42:55 pm
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This thread is for putting together art and design resources related to the game. This way we can work together to give this release plenty of awesome artwork, banners, and designs.
For example, Luminaire provided me with some good vector art of death peak and the frozen flame (see attached), that I'll be using for part of a prerelease site design, as well as other ideas.
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Here's some preview art that I was able to quickly throw together using Luminaire's death peak and frozen flame graphics.
EDIT: After thinking about it for a second, the frozen flame isn't supposed to be that big, is it?
*Fixed: See below.
Also, we need someone to make a shinier, glass-like, rendered version of the frozen flame. Luminaire's vector art should be a good starting point.
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No, the Frozen Flame is about half the size of that.
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Yeah, more like this, right?
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Some banner art from the encyclopedia.
(http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/f/f4/Cebanner2.jpg)
(http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/9/96/CrimsonEchoesSig.png)
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Holy sheeet. Could we use that pic of Crono with the Frozen Flame on one or more of the preview vids? That's exquisitely perfect!
Also, do we have a vectorized Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes logo like what's in the first banner pic you posted just above, Ramsus?
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I just started asking Z about CE art resources yesterday, and this is all of the art I've been given so far. I'll take a look for other stuff later.
Also, if you're going to make preview videos, let's try and coordinate them here so I can make use of them for the trailer site. Otherwise, I have to spend a lot of time recording gameplay and making my own videos, which takes away time from making a site or creating more art.
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Oh yeah, I'll take care of the preview videos; I did two for Prophet's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuAkxoSFdSA) Guile last year. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH7_3IvdqTo) I've learned a bit since then, so I hope to implement text overlays and crossfades and stuff. Do you have a target date for the teaser site? I was thinking of doing three separate previews.
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Next weekend.
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Hopefully I'll be able to swing at least one preview vid in that timeframe. I'll post the audio tracks and video cuts here and get advice.
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Thanks.
At the very least I'd like to get everything ready to go by the end of next weekend, so even an unfinished preview video would work as a placeholder. I want to make sure everything's had a chance to get tweaked a bit for maximum impact before the trailer site goes live. Also, if I can get my idea for the site working and have you view it, maybe you can tailer some of your future preview videos specifically for the site.
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Sure. Can you use raw .AVIs, or would you rather embed Youtube videos, or how is that going to work?
I'll probably begin capturing for the first preview video on Wednesday and finish capturing Friday, then do editing and effects all day Saturday. So Sunday afternoon or so is my ballpark figure for getting a video complete.
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Raw AVIs work. So would Quicktime or WMV, but whatever the encoding, I definitely need the original video for this one.
Also, I might have a Crimson Echoes team name/logo along with a Kajar Labs productions logo lined up and ready to use sometime Saturday (I'll post them here). The trailer site version will definitely be flashing them before playing the video, but if you want, you can just edit them in yourself. I'll also try to dig up a good version of the Crimson Echoes logo.
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Now would be a good time to specify what's not allowable in the preview videos.
- Chapters 7-9
- Chapters 21-23
- Try to avoid spoken reference of King Zeal. His sprite might be okay, because then people would think "wow, is that King Zeal? I need to play this!" but we should avoid anything like "{Crono}: So, King Zeal is behind this?" or "KING ZEAL: I'm the King of Zeal, woohoo!"
Other than that, I'll leave it up to JP to set any further restrictions. Once Chrono'99's sidequest ship is implemented, it might make for a "wow" effect if we want to spoil it in the preview video.
Edit: For music...you can, of course, click any track in the Compendium encyclopedia to find a list of remixes.
Edit 2: The opening of http://chronofan.com/Black/Music%20(Chrono%20Trigger)/Compendium/zykO%20-%20The%20Queen%20with%20the%20Silver%20Eyes%20(Dream%20Extension).mp3 might be a good lead in to a preview video, depending on time / application; we definitely don't have to use it, but it's probably the rarest "diamond" among CT remixes. The intro has Magus speaking this:
now that I have seen you
naked as trust and freezing cold
i'll keep our secret silently
and close your eyes when i'm told
live the summer endlessly
and forsake the coming fall
for fear a vision can tell it all
It could be faded out before it reaches the end.
Still, FW knows a lot of great topical music applications, so feel free to use something better.
As for my creative short ideas...If I whip up the audio for those, we can do them. This'll be from my end.
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Here's a big version of the CE logo from my sig.
Edit: The ship has been inserted in the latest patch: http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,5209.msg146025.html#msg146025
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Here's a big version of the CE logo from my sig.
Edit: The ship has been inserted in the latest patch: http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,5209.msg146025.html#msg146025
That logo's amazing. I'll be sure to put it to good use.
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Oooh, pretty, thanks '99! ZeaLitY, thanks for the guidelines. I'll take a gander (er, a listen) at/to the audio you suggested too.
Yeah, I'll definitely edit in the logos. Given that there's going to be a full teaser site, I'm skiddish again about using copyrighted music (though I'd absolutely love to do so). Obviously I'd start out the videos with something along the lines "This is a non-profit fan creation. Chrono Trigger and all associated property are copyright Square Enix," yadda yadda. Whether we incorporate copyrighted audio or not, I'll credit the audio sources too.
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That is one seriously kick ass logo!
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I'm roughing out a teaser trailer concept. Here's a proposed audio track (http://www.sendspace.com/file/685rlh).
My plan is to draw the audience in with mysterious visuals, then freaking blow them away, in under three minutes.
Teaser Trailer Concept
00:00 ~ 01:19 Mysterious visuals, no dialogue or battles. Should make the viewer feel unsettled yet intrigued. We use this opportunity to overlay things like "Kajar Labs Presents..." "A Temporal Flux project," "A new entry of the Chrono saga," etc.
01:20 ~ 01:35 Unveiling of the CE logo and artwork according to these suggested keyframes:
(http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/8469/teaserframesjk0.th.png) (http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=teaserframesjk0.png)
01:36 ~ 02:36 Show the viewer some epic battles, new techs, and maybe an intense dialogue with some important enemy, possibly misleading the viewer into believing that said enemy is really the main antagonist.
02:37+ Release date and assurances that the project is a non-profit fangame and acknowledgement of copyrights.
As for the audio, the clip used from 00:00 ~ 01:19 is zyko's intro as ZeaLitY suggested and from 1:20 onward it's "Sauron's Grip," an obscure track often credited to Magic Box Music. (http://www.magicboxmusic.com/) I've never actually heard it on any Lord of the Rings trailers, so it's a pretty fresh piece.
If this concept becomes the teaser trailer, the "Time's Scar"/"Ladies and Gentlemen" combo would go into a longer preview. If ZeaLitY wants the "Powah" concept to be the teaser, I'll toss zyko's leadup into another, even longer preview of 5+ minutes.
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Ah, those would be only 15-second long throwaway pieces. Earlier today, I listened to Ladies and Gentlemen and conceptualized a video to that, but I can't see it going on longer than the end of the first chorus of the song. The buildup would have the party in less-important situations, then the part before the chorus would have scenes of the party running through locations, and then BANG, when it finally hits, the screen would pan up to this shaking / vibrating image of the Atash Kedah. You can imagine how intense that'd be, hah...
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those would be only 15-second long throwaway pieces.
When you said that, the word "micropreview" popped into my mind. We could churn out little ads like short television spots. And hack them into Hulu.com videos, where they would replace the commercial breaks. ...or not.
"Ladies and Gentlemen" is 03:39 by itself. If used on its own, it's short enough for a teaser I suppose. Do we want "Ladies and Gentlemen" for the teaser? If so, I'll toss zyko's music into an extended preview vid.
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Hm...I'll let Ramsus comment. Whatever works best for crimsonechoes.com; perhaps Ladies and Gentlemen would have a stronger effect on people.
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those would be only 15-second long throwaway pieces.
When you said that, the word "micropreview" popped into my mind. We could churn out little ads like short television spots. And hack them into Hulu.com videos, where they would replace the commercial breaks. ...or not.
"Ladies and Gentlemen" is 03:39 by itself. If used on its own, it's short enough for a teaser I suppose. Do we want "Ladies and Gentlemen" for the teaser? If so, I'll toss zyko's music into an extended preview vid.
Not to limit your creativity, but I want something very Chrono Trigger for the trailer site's music. There won't be any game information on the site until the release, so there needs to be enough with the video to make it obviously Chrono Trigger-related and get people excited, but vague enough to stir up the rumor mill.
Starting out with the Crono and Marle song with the video appearing out of a completely blank page, and then transitioning to something more dramatic was what I had in mind, followed with the video fading out into silence and the site's background image appearing. Other than the Crimson Echoes team logo and the Kajar Labs productions logo, there won't be any extra graphics or text in the video -- only game footage until the video fades out at the end. Then the background music would stop and after a bit of silence, turn into the Lavos heartbeat in a continuous loop with a timer counting down to the release date.
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So a basic, no-frills teaser video would play automatically upon site loading? What length are you looking for for that? Also, would you be willing to consider tracks from Chrono Symphonic? Or, would you rather go with all in-game audio? Might lend the opener an authentic feel.
Do you need other videos for site content, or just the teaser opener? I'll make a few anyway and upload them to Youtube or something, under a new account if the team wants to obscure connections to the Compendium.
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After the real site goes online and Crimson Echoes is released we can consolidate them all into a video library on the site, but other than that we'll only have one video on the site at a time.
We could also make a few videos that are loaded at random on the trailer site, so each time the viewer visits the site it's something different. We could also match the music that plays after the video to it as well (i.e. Magus-like music for a video that features more of a Magus-theme).
Also, length-wise, it's whatever you can put together that has the most impact going memorable, dramatic, dead stop with it, and that'll just depend on the music you choose for each video as wells as what scenes you want to throw in.
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I absolutely can't stop myself from carrying out the concept I mentioned earlier, but first I'll tackle a much simpler, no-frills (as in no text overlays) video for the site opener. Since there's no text to appear in this very first opener, I'm ruling out use of copyrighted music, excluding videogame music. The length will be determined by the track or tracks used.
If I limit the music to in-game music from CT and CC, and fan remixes, anyone have any suggestions? Ramsus wanted it to start out with Crono & Marle's theme, which can transition into something more energetic easily enough.
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King Zeal's operative theme is "Ocean Palace", in the way that I believe you mentioned you like it (I like it that way too; whenever you hear it pop up in a Chrono series setting, you KNOW something reeeeaaaally precipitous is about to happen).
I need to start fixing the CT Wikipedia article, but I can go ahead and try to pick "CE-inspired" versions of each song that we're definitely using in Crimson Echoes later. It'll be fun. Expect something by tomorrow.
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Kind of an odd question I guess, but Ramsus, do you have a preference on the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the video? I can capture video of any dimensions, I'd just prefer to not have to resize the frames after the AVI is made.
I'm thinking about capturing a video with frames of size 512x448:
(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2439/512448zq9.png)
However, if you really prefer a smaller video (due to file size issues, for example), I'd go with 256x224:
(http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/9673/256224hz6.png)
Also, let me know if either of those dimensions seem wacked out; I'm staring into one of those monitors that's really long horizontally, so these appear more natural to me than 480x360, for example, which I would have gone with had I been working with my old monitor.
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Use the largest size you feel comfortable with, as long as the pixel ratio matches that of the original SNES. If it ends up being too big, I'll make a scaled down version for streaming on the site.
My two biggest concerns are avoiding compression artifacts with the original video (use high quality video codecs, and opt for bigger sizes), and having really smooth footage, but if you have to reduce the size to capture higher framerates, then higher framerates and smoother video comes first.
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Oh, I forgot about framerates. You want 30fps, 60fps, or something else? And do you know the original aspect ratio of the SNES offhand?
Just found this from the ZSNES site:
Please note that the internal resolution of the SNES is 256x224. Certain special high-resolution modes can produce up to 512x448 resolution. You may notice that the internal resolution has an 8:7 aspect ratio. SNES video output is not intended to be viewed at this aspect ratio, however. The 8:7 video signal would normally be scaled to a more-typical 4:3 aspect ratio when viewed on a television.
Based on that, should I go with an 8:7 aspect ratio or a 4:3 aspect ratio?
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Do whatever looks best resolution wise. If you record at anything smaller than 640x480, definitely use 256x224 and keep it that size and ratio (unless you stretch it out to something much bigger, like 640x480). If you record at bigger sizes, especially using filters, then you can go ahead and stretch it to a 4:3 aspect ratio and use something like 640x480. Basically, test it out a bit and see what works well.
The video's framerate can be anything between 15 and 60fps, as long as there isn't any frameskipping or lag being recorded. Even 15 fps will look smooth enough, as long as it's a consistent 15 fps, so go for consistency. In other words, just pay attention to the actual perceived smoothness, not the numbers, since they can be misleading when the framerate varies.
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Ramsus, here's a test clip that I want to get your feedback on.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5naxp7
I'm worried about the B-Frame decoder message I get when playing it. If that's a problemo, I'm going to play the game in SNES9x and use its internal AVI recording feature. I was using ZSNES and converting from ZMV to AVI via an XVID codec.
Other than the B-Frame decoding error, what's your opinion of the smoothness and frame size of the video capture?
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I know the music's delayed a bit, but I'm really putting together the sweetest selection of Chrono music drawing from the complete collection. This...this is REALLY going to be burned to a lot of CDs / MP3 players; I can already tell. It was one of my longtime plans to release a remix album of "inspiring music" with Crimson Echoes, and so I'm basically putting it together now.
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Sweet, looking forward to it. :lee:
Take your time, I'm going to spend a few days capturing literally everything that looks interesting in the slightest to prepare for all possible preview videos, so I won't need music until Friday, probably.
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Ramsus, here's a test clip that I want to get your feedback on.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5naxp7
I'm worried about the B-Frame decoder message I get when playing it. If that's a problemo, I'm going to play the game in SNES9x and use its internal AVI recording feature. I was using ZSNES and converting from ZMV to AVI via an XVID codec.
Other than the B-Frame decoding error, what's your opinion of the smoothness and frame size of the video capture?
The smoothness is perfect, and the frame size is good, since the video quality is so clean.
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Okay, time for me to start the captures! I'm a day late on this already. I may just have to use clips from the first half of the game for the teaser.
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Preliminary release of Crimson Echoes Remix Side Music Thingie Which I Don't Have a Name For Yet:
http://chronofan.com/Zeality/CEM0.5.zip
Let me know if it doesn't unzip, and I'll reup.
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It unzips fine. I'll listen to these when I'm not playing CE, and the first teaser will flow from there.
How do you guys want the first teaser to flow?
Option 1:
*Some video footage
*CE Logo and Kajar Labs logo
*More video footage
Option 2:
*CE Logo and Kajar Labs logo
*Video footage
It's a matter of when the logos should appear, which will help set the mood. Or something.
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Personally I think Option 2 is better as people will immediately know that it's something brand new. They'd think "CT:CE" before even thinking about the original CT.
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I probably won't be able to start on the video til Sunday unless I stop capturing clips now, and I've only finished Chapter 4. Ramsus, what's your status on the site? On the other hand, since the first teaser is relatively no-frills, it should be pretty quick to whip up.
That gives you guys some time to bicker over the "options" I mention above. Anything's fine by me. I'll go with what '99 says if everyone else is neutral.
ZeaLitY, these are some kickass tracks you gave me. I'm usually really picky when it comes to music (heh, who isn't?) but a lot of these seriously inspire me. Ramsus will get a Crono & Marle theme intro to the teaser, but in a style I find so much more palatable than the original song. :D
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Ramsus let me know what info you need for the site and it's all yours. I'm cool with either option.
--JP
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I just finished modifying some screen capture video recording code from Apple into a tool to record time-lapse videos, since I wanted to document parts of making the site (i.e. creating some logos, creating some art, etc.).
I only got up a few hours ago, so I'm going to follow-up by making a logo for the team and creating the trailer page. I'll post updates here as I finish stuff.
FaustWolf,
Go ahead and finish capturing however much video you'll need. We'll push back getting the site up and ready until next weekend. For this weekend, just upload a 1-2 minute test video sometime Sunday morning. I'll try to get it set up Sunday so all we have to do to go live with the site is drop in some videos and move a few files.
Also, JP,
If you just e-mail the information to jodoherty@gmail.com, I'll go ahead and set up a preview once I get it together.
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Peach Mountain Shoguns, black background, first attempt.
Not quite where I want it to be, so I'll redo it later. We'll have to use them for now though.
EDIT: Also, the-making-of video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATwdF5oDPMs).
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Of course the standard for Kajar Labs are these:
(http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/c/c8/KajarLogoBlack.jpg)
(http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/3/3a/KajarLogoWhite.jpg)
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Oooh, I like the track that plays on Ramsus' "making of" vid -- I'd like to have a snippet of that play while the Peach Mountain Shoguns logo displays if nobody minds. It could be the Peach Mountain Shoguns' official jingle.
Also, which version of the Peach Mountain Shoguns logo should be used? I guess we can have a different version used for each of three trailers. We have the CE logo on a black background and the Peach Mountain Shoguns logo on a black background, so I'm leaning toward using the black background Kajar Labs logo too.
At the start of the first teaser vid we'll display each of the logos (PMS -- oh jeez, I guess I'll use the full name from now on -- Kajar Labs and CE). Going with the no-frills setup for the first teaser, should we just play them in a certain order? Like, the Peach Mountain Shoguns logo would play with the jingle, then the jingle fades and the Kajar Labs logo and CE logo appear in succession while the teaser audio kicks in. Or maybe the Peach Mountain Shoguns logo jingle will continue while the other logos display?
In any case, after I get some homework done today I'm going to do some more captures and make the first teaser with what I've got. I currently have 34 clips in my CE video repository, so if I can get in another 10 I should have plenty to run with.
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Crossfade the second Shoguns logo into the third, so the Peach simply appears in the background (see the end of the making-of video for an example).
Anyway, I'm starting on the trailer site now.
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That song is available:
http://chronofan.com/Zeality/MNSG.zip
The songs of the dungeons in that game were divided up into three parts. The second part is probably "smoothest" for an introduction like this. (It starts at 0:58.)
Or maybe part of the third part is...well, take your pick.
I'd show Peach Mountain Shoguns first as Ramsus described, then Kajar Laboratories, then CE. Start the CE music with its logo.
Last Edit: If you want to check out other MNSG / GGA music, hit http://www.hcs64.com/usf/ USF Central. Goemon games had great soundtracks. One of the greatest pieces of VGM ever composed is GGA's Creep Village / Without Relying on the Map, which you can sample right way in the music section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goemon%27s_Great_Adventure . For reference, we are borrowing the Peach Mountain Shoguns / Spring Breeze Dancin' thing from these games. The "Well, that's it for us. They should have called it Guardia NPCs #1, #15," etc. comes from that in CE.
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CHOOSE YOUR
DESTINY JINGLE.
Jingle Option I (http://www.sendspace.com/file/3dbnym)
Jingle Option II (http://www.sendspace.com/file/u6kqql)
However, I clipped these before I read ZeaLitY's post about the typical structure of Goemon soundtracks, so I may go back and grab some more jingle clips based on that. See if either of these hit the spot though.
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Yeah, I guess the first is too much on the minimalist part of the song, and the second isn't exercising the main melody.
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There's a good clip opportunity circa 01:07 of the song.
The next best opportunity IMO comes just before 02:21, and the song seems to be in full swing there.
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How about 2:29 (starting at the third measure) on?
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Okay, how's this (http://www.sendspace.com/file/cbjcb6)?
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Perfection.
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This is what shows up after the movie plays and fades out:
http://www.alarmblue.com/cetrailer/
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How indescribably beautiful, mysterious and succinct.
So you can make headway on the audio end Ramsus, I was thinking about using this as the audio for the first teaser trailer. (http://www.sendspace.com/file/t6o7ex) The PMShoguns jingle would come before all this of course.
I'd kick and scream if anyone asked for a change of the intro, but the followup is certainly negotiable. It's currently "Darkest Omen" from Chrono Symphonic, but I was thinking about using "Darkness Dueling" for that as well.
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Use whatever CT remixes or music you want for the audio. I'm sure whatever you choose will work out fine.
Now the site is being held up, because we need to look at our hosting options again. Apparently GoDaddy now sticks banner ads into sites hosted on the courtesy economy hosting that comes with their domain names, so that's no longer an option.
EDIT: Hosting is taken care of. We should have the complete trailer site up next weekend now.
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Cool timing, because I've decided to go ahead and cobble together the first teaser trailer. Although the teaser isn't supposed to have any text overlays or anything, I wonder if CE should have a slogan to put at the end of the video. I'm thinking about not even having the May 2009 release date at the end of the teaser since the site takes care of it already.
Do you guys want a slogan? For CT, it was "It's about time." CC didn't have one. Terminator 4's slogan is "The Future is Now."
I was thinking about: "One small step for fans...one giant leap for fankind." but that might be too tacky. Ideas?
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whats at th eend of th emontage thing after the prologue? The cogs of fate begin to turn again or something?
--JP
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CC had a very good slogan actually: "Challenge Fate".
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Oh, I didn't know about CC's slogan. This means you guys just have to have one!
Perfect, it actually appears in the segment I call "the promise of a story," and reads:
The cogs of fate turn once more...
That's it. That's CE's slogan.
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I kind of like "The heroes of time return."
Zeality said that when we were thinking of stuff for the trailer site, and it just clicked. If you use it in your own CE videos, it'll match the trailer site and stir up some marketing synergy, but it's not important.
As far as the teaser trailer for the main site goes, we need to stir up lots of wow factor while keeping an aura of mystery, and narrating everything with text or throwing in special effects or distracting transitions will only take away from that. Not only that, but showing lots of gameplay footage instead of describing the game also implies a much more finished product (i.e. this is not in the idea and early development stage; rather, this is in the busting out the seams almost ready to release stage).
Anything else on the main site would just seem tacky and forced, like what Square did with their CTDS teaser trailer/site.
With everything else though, it's anything goes. If you can follow-up the main site's trailer with lots of your own videos on YouTube that include narrative text, neat slognas, special effects, non-gameplay artwork (which I'll try to create a lot more of), and actual descriptions, then we can stir up lots of interest before the game even comes out.
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The teaser's shaping up to be pretty kickass...expect it by Wednesday. I'm glad you said "lots of wow."
I can do "The heroes of time return" as the only text overlay at the very end. Should I use a certain font? Should I say "The heroes of time return this May"? "This May, the Heroes of Time Return"?
I'm still planning on three trailers total, and I guess I'll name them to whet everyone's appetite:
Atash Kedah (the first teaser -- don't worry, KZ's cover isn't blown, but he's shown to create mysterious badassness)
Death is Nothing to the Reaper (concept I outlined a few pages back).
Ladies and Gentlemen, This is What You've Been Waiting For (take a wild guess for the audio there.)
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Since the trailer video is viewed in the context of the site (as soon as it ends, it fades out and the site fades in and flashes text with the teaser art), just leave out the text overlays and fade to straight black. That way there's a seamless transition.
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Here's the rough teaser cut. (http://www.sendspace.com/file/g4th6e)
Actually ended up being longer than I had originally intended, but it's much better for using the whole of "Darkest Omen." I need to do transitions yet, and I really need an image of the CE logo shrunken by better software than what I have. The best resizing algorithms Paint Shop Pro has are Bilinear Resample, Bicubic Resample, and something called "smart size," and none of these methods seems to cut it. It looks passable when viewed in its original 256x224 scale, but it becomes sucktastically pixelated if blown up. Sorry about that. ZSNES dumped all its movie footage in 1:1 zoom ratio (I thought I was going to get 512x448 frames), but it's too late to turn back now, at least as far as the teaser is concerned. I simply won't have time to go back and recapture all that beautiful bean footage.
As for content, the video constantly flirts with revealing King Zeal's identity, but actually tries to mislead the viewer into thinking this new sprite is somehow a representation of the Entity, and there may be this Entity vs. Lavos thing going on. Like the Entity is trying to take matters into its own hands. Should be a conversation starter among fans.
As part of the Compendium's viral advertising campaign, I think someone outside the CE team should drop a link to the teaser site in the GameFAQs Chrono Trigger/CT:DS forums and let a firestorm of speculation erupt.
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Yea we should try to keep the compendium out of it as much as possible :) Amazing trailer FW..... so much awesome footage from 6 chapters of a 23 chapter game :)
--JP
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Yeah. People will really get a sense of the breadth of the game by watching all three trailers that will eventually be made. I think I'll keep King Zeal out of the other trailers completely; should be enough material for that.
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I'll make a special epic King Zeal battle at the throne painting for the King Zeal one, then make each trailer appear randomly, so people have to stop and wonder what else might be hidden on the site.
Of course, first I have to play through enough of the game to know the context in which to draw it.
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Nice video.
I think the Frozen Flame sprite might be a bit of a spoiler though. (In the past, Chrono'99 suggested the opened-up form should only first be seen at the Atash Kedah.)
Ramsus:
If you didn't know about it already, this is (http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,5497.msg99838.html#msg99838) Chrono'99's sketch of King Zeal.
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The second trailer, Death is Nothing to the Reaper, is going have a very eerie feeling set up by zyko's intro audio, and things like Frog walking past dead Mystics and Porrean soldiers (neutral choice in Chapter 4), and the Zealian guy's dream of being chased by the Grim Reaper will appear. Then there'll be a 1:20 burst of some of the game's most exciting moments. That'll probably focus on Magus vs. Dalton, but I can be steered in other directions at this point. Maybe it'll feature Dalton, Montcrief, and whatever Ozzie's up to, and some reptite stuff (making it look like it's all taking place in prehistory, thus hiding the time traveling nature of some of the reptite characters).
The mood for the third trailer, Ladies and Gentlemen, This is What You've Been Waiting For, is completely up to you guys. I know nightmare975 suggested starting with Time's Scar and transitioning into "Ladies and Gentlemen."
Is there some way of crediting trailer audio sources and acknowledging Square Enix copyrights on the trailer site?
EDIT: This is going to sound corny as hell, but I think I could add a filter in Virtualdub to fuzz out the Frozen Flame's open form as if it were some kind of censored nudity...
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Is there some way of crediting trailer audio sources and acknowledging Square Enix copyrights on the trailer site?
Perhaps we could set up a small "Credits" link somewhere that would list them?
The Black Dream preview video is great. As for the FF, I guess it's okay, considering the teaser site background totally shows the Frozen Flame anyway.
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If you can pull it off, work in the mon (attached to an earlier post) after the Peach Mountains logo (perhaps that sequence can go slightly faster to allow 2-3 seconds for the mon). Just invert the colors so the lines are white; then it'll fit with the black preview screens.
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Sure, I'll toss it in. I still need a CE logo that's resized better than the one I used, but not sure if it's even possible.
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Ramsus:
If you didn't know about it already, this is (http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,5497.msg99838.html#msg99838) Chrono'99's sketch of King Zeal.
Actually, I hadn't seen that. Thanks.
Is there some way of crediting trailer audio sources and acknowledging Square Enix copyrights on the trailer site?
I actually hadn't considered it for the trailer site, since I'd been focusing on the idea of keeping things anonymous and mysterious until after the game's been released. Not just to build tension and generate interest, but to deter any C&D letters until after the game's already out there and everyone knows about it.
That means that until the game is released, we should try to avoid:
- Admitting that this is a ROM hack or even an actual game
- Identifying related projects, resources, and sites
- Identifying anyone involved with the project
- Associating this too much with Square Enix, even just to acknowledge their copyrights (a handful of people might just see Square Enix and think it's a new official game, because nobody on the Internet actually reads anything)
There should always be the slight doubt about whether or not this is a game, a flash video series using sprites and backgrounds, a giant fanfic with fake gameplay footage trailers, or just a complete hoax. That's why it's essential to only have what's needed on the site and in the video to stir up interest and nothing more.
However, the release site will just be a skinned Wiki with Dream Team edit rights, so there's no problem making an About page and a Credits and Acknowledgement page. Once the game is out there, the game itself is not very likely to disappear, regardless of what happens to the site or the team, so we can explain everything in full detail and give kudos to people then.
In the meantime, I suggest simply letting anyone whose music or media you use know that you're using their stuff and that they'll be acknowledged later.
EDIT: To be more clear, these restrictions are only with main site, since its target audience is the general gaming community as a whole, rather than the Chrono series community or the ROM hacking community. As such, we should approach visitors as though they have no clue what Crimson Echoes is, and try our best to keep from stirring up a real storm until the release.
Sure, I'll toss it in. I still need a CE logo that's resized better than the one I used, but not sure if it's even possible.
Actually, I'd go ahead and replace the Peach Mountain Shoguns thing for now with the mon image, and shorten the entire pre-teaser logo thing as much as possible. Most visitors will have left by the time they get to the game footage.
Or you could let it play the "Crono..." dialog box, cross fade to the mon image for a few seconds (no text, not even "Peach Mountain Shoguns"), cross fade back to "Good morning, Crono", cross fade to Kajar Labs, and then start the video. I wouldn't even put the CE logo in the video itself, since it makes for more impact to show it after the video.
The video looks great though. I can't wait to see the others.
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For the teaser preview, the Marle and Crono audio track is:
"AD794 - Celestia - Square Music Arrange Festival - Epilogue -My Dear DTMers- [Goodbye for a While]"
But I'm not sure where the author/s are in that. The Chrono Symphonic team should be pretty reachable. I'm not particularly up for asking Nintendo if "The Peach Mountain Shoguns" can borrow Goemon audio, so...
...should we just run with it? Aside from the Goemon audio, it's fan music, and videogame music copyrights don't seem to be nearly as heavily enforced as mainstream music.
There's not a whole lot of work to do on the teaser trailer since it's going for a minimalist feel to begin with, so I can have it ready on Wednesday.
EDIT: Okay, I'll take the CE logo out altogether. It works best that way for now. Should we actually just have the mon image play without the Kajar Labs logo and get right into the video within the first five seconds?
Or I could do the following:
"Crono..."
Mon image
"Crono!"
Kajar Labs image
Rest of the video plays.
I'd feel bad about not using the Peach Mountain Shoguns logo at all because it's so awesome, but it's your call. I could work it in somehow. On the other hand, representing the team with only a symbol and no words would effectively leave people in the dark as to who's behind all this, which adds to the mysteriousness and effectively covers your tracks.
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The AD794 Celestia track is from a Japanese remixer... Mhm, I wonder if it's okay to use that track? There isn't much contact between the Japanese and English Chrono communities, but we don't want them to think we're stealing their music or something.
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Removing the Peach Mountain Shoguns jingle (much as I love how that turned out) will get rid of the very slight risk associated with using official Goemon music, and we could approach the creator of the AD794 arrangement through Lorenz or something.
ZeaLitY, do you want to do the honors with the Chrono Symphonic team, or should someone else?
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We can steamroll right over AD794's lifeless corpse if he complains, because his work is derivative of a copyrighted song. Remixes and doujins continue to exist because the companies choose not to prosecute. Since the remix is an illegal object, he could never pursue any kind of legal remedy for our unapproved usage. He should feel lucky to even get the exposure. And to even complain, he'd have to find someone who can translate for him. The Japanese Chrono community has never done us any favors at all in this regard, so there's no need for us to burden ourselves.
I...ah, it's hard not to use that jingle.
Ramsus, what if you removed PEACH MOUNTAIN SHOGUNS and just left the peach and three people? That + the mon + KAJAR LABORATORIES, except shorter than it exists in the first mockup. If we don't leave in your drawing, we can just do the mon and Kajar Labs with a shorter version of the jingle (it did seem a little long).
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Well, if the fan musicians found out about it they're more likely to be honored than anything I guess. It'll be credited once the teaser site has a credits link, so better later than never.
I could shorten the Goemon jingle to five seconds and fit the mon, the Peach Mountain Shoguns, and Kajar Labs logo all in one fell swoop. The question is, if you could pick five seconds from the current jingle, which five seconds would they be? 8)
EDIT: Oh, wait, do we even want the Kajar Labs logo? That might lead to the Compendium. For example - if we're actually worried about this - a quick Google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2B%22kajar+laboratories%22&btnG=Search) leads straight to the Compendium pretty much.
Since the teaser site could literally be up for a few months before release, I'm thinking that maybe we should just go with the Mon symbol for now to confuse the hell out of people. People will think there's this weird conspiracy going on. I'd use the Peach Mountain Shoguns and Kajar Labs logos and associated jingle for the two later "full" trailers.
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That sounds great. As for the jingle, the 5 seconds of the measure beginning at 0:12 in the current teaser have a bit fuller instrumentation thanks to the extra synthesizer.
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Hey Faust, would you mind holding off on that Prehistoric footage? I had made a better version of that crater area without the lave and shit, I'll get on it later tonight though, since all my work is at home (I'm at my college).
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Which prehistoric footage, nightmare? Just the crater overworld? Or the battle with the Megasaurs too? If I can get a savestate from somebody I'll be able to capture new footage and recut the video.
Here's a concept using just the Kamon, but neither the Peach Mountain Shoguns nor the Kajar Labs logo. (http://www.sendspace.com/file/tz6krf)
I could bring back the jingle and incorporate the other logos too, but see what you guys think of this first.
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Just the crater overworld, that's all.
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That's great. We can revive the jingle for the later videos, which will have more titles.
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Alrighty then. I'll throw in some smoother transitions tomorrow night and then shoop in frames from the new prehistoric overworld whenever that's ready.
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Ramsus, what if you removed PEACH MOUNTAIN SHOGUNS and just left the peach and three people? That + the mon + KAJAR LABORATORIES, except shorter than it exists in the first mockup. If we don't leave in your drawing, we can just do the mon and Kajar Labs with a shorter version of the jingle (it did seem a little long).
Don't worry, we'll find a time and place for it. After all, once the game is finished and released, marketing will pick up big time and we can start indulging in full length trailers with more details interlaced, as well as lengthier intros. That's when we can really take advantage of all the stuff that we'll be gathering in this thread.
In the meantime, we should only hand-pick the most useful and fitting pieces for use in the pre-release compaign.
EDIT: I'm going to have to finish one full playthrough of the game after getting the first teaser trailer site up, so I can start working on piecing together relevant art and creating a unified theme for the design of the release site. As such, after this weekend, I probably won't have much to contribute to this thread for half a month or so.
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CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR (http://www.sendspace.com/file/xvnvmz)
:lee: :lee: :lee:
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CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR (http://www.sendspace.com/file/xvnvmz)
:lee: :lee: :lee:
*sigh* At least it show that I've got some touching up to do around the crater area still. :x
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I don't think people will notice the ground around the crater so much. The audience's attention is drawn more toward the unexpected lake and the light erupting from the crater itself.
Ramsus, ZeaLitY, Chrono'99, and jsondag will be the final judges I guess. I can recut if necessary.
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Totally up to you guys. I do think the crater is really important, I watched the atash kedah scene without the crater there and the light beam looks really weird coming out of nowhere. That scene is too important to the game. Maybe you can put the little spire things in front of the crater?
Up to you guys if you want to touch it up and recut. The movie is going to blow peoples minds!
--JP
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I was just saying that I had to touch it up for the final product.
My opinion was that people would think that the crater was too bland, since it was in the original game, I thought the spire would make people open their eyes to the changes to Prehistory, (plus I thought it was pretty cool looking, considering that I made it using the sides of the crater) but you're right, the lake does just that.
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Yesterday, I emailed AD794.
こんにちわ。
Greetings. I am a member of a western Chrono-series community. We want to use your song 「エピローグ -My Dear DTMers-」 in a trailer of a Chrono Trigger fan-project.
Do you approve?
Nice to meet you. Thank you for wonderful mail.
of course i do. but could you write my name and my website's url clearly
somewhere on your site please?
And i need to see the trailer when it's finished. can i?
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Yesterday, I emailed AD794.
こんにちわ。
Greetings. I am a member of a western Chrono-series community. We want to use your song 「エピローグ -My Dear DTMers-」 in a trailer of a Chrono Trigger fan-project.
Do you approve?
Nice to meet you. Thank you for wonderful mail.
of course i do. but could you write my name and my website's url clearly
somewhere on your site please?
And i need to see the trailer when it's finished. can i?
We'll make a news post mirroring the trailer and giving props for the music here on the Compendium early next month.
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As far as I'm concerned the trailer is finished. Thanks for doing that Vehek, better safe than sorry. Ram, Z, '99, and json can decide on the timing of its distribution to AD794.
Is the teaser site going to unveil next month or still...oh wait, this weekend is next month. My, how time flies.
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http://www.crimsonechoes.com/
More tweaking to come in the next few weeks, but the site is now live.
EDIT: Now for the follow-up. My new idea is to make it so there's multiple trailer videos, with one being randomly selected every time you load the main page. So FaustWolf, if you're up to it, I've got everything ready and waiting to go.
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I'd prefer to wait to do the last two trailers until I've captured video from the entire game, but hopefully I can have another trailer done each week for the next two weeks. I might have to wait til spring break though, so let's settle on mid-March for the last two trailers, which I'll do back to back.
EDIT: Good lord, did the teaser turn out grainy when blown up. Damn. Well, that'll differentiate it from Square Enix I guess. I'll have to see if there's a way of remastering the videos with a greater frame size.
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Let me know if you make anything higher quality. It's probably too late to recapture anything, but I think 640x480 original video is the only way to go in the future. The lossy video compression just kills everything, so we're better off capturing as big as we can and scaling down to our target size, especially since I don't have any fancy post-processing tools right now.
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Exciting. By releasing these trailers to the world, you're committing to the final completion of the project in the very near future. With CT:DS having recently been released, Squeenix will catch wind of these trailers relatively quickly, and is unlikely to display its usual generosity. CE will get the C&D, and it'll go underground from there. Now all you have to do is actually release the game before that C&D shows up, so that the Compendium's full audience-reaching potential can be leveraged.
They're not bad trailers, either, although you may as well come out and fess up that it's King Zeal. I don't think yer fooling anyone. =P
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Had I been seeing the trailer for the first time, I would have thought the enemy was the Entity. I mean, "Earth angry!"...You've been watching us this whole time!?"..."I'll destroy Lavos at all costs," etc. The only thing that could give it away is that KZ refers to his "kingdom," but what kingdom could be greater than the very planet itself?
It would be fun to spread rumors that you fight the Entity in this game.
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My money says the Entity doesn't dress that sharp.
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Anyone happen to know what kind of filter Youtube puts on its videos when viewed in "high quality" mode? This is much closer to the original quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfZaG_bf6ro&fmt=18
Unfortunately recapturing the hours of CE footage I've got on my hard drive isn't an option, and it would seem that ZSNES will dump movies in 1:1 zoom regardless of the frame size it's running in to my knowledge. I think we'd face the same limitations with SNES9x too, judging from my experience with the Prophet's Guile trailer. We may be forced to display the videos in their original size for the sake of quality -- is that an option Ramsus, much as I hate to ask? Shouldn't be any worse than making people stare into the screen of their Nintendo DS.
On the upside, maybe people will have a hard time ID'ing the bad guy. He can only dress as sharp as the image quality. :)
EDIT: Only other way to have done this would be to use a screen recorder a la Camstudio to record the gameplay, but I've had some awful experiences there.
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I do agree with Lord J above, we do have to make sure we step up to the plate here. Thankfully I honestly don't think we have alot more. I'm going to make today another CE day partly cause there's a bunch of bugs from yesterday andly partly cause my legs are so sore from skiing i don't want to get up and walk around :). I may even get to add some of those endings in the other forum.
But beta testers are starting to get closer to the end of the game, and we haven't had any MAJOR show stoppers in awhile (the battle one was pretty hard to repro, same with the spikes), Zeality has a few bugs but a couple hours and he should be able to plow through them, and I imagine 99 is somewhat close finishing chapter 23, I'd still like for him to take a quick speed run through chapter 14 before we release though.
Also one more thing, I was under the impression we were going to leave the compendium out of all this hype building? I noticed the youtube was released under the compendium's account and we advertised on the front page, I really honestly think we should do our best to leave our names out of this (to the point where i'd think we shoul dtake that video down and repost it), and we can probably take down the front page banner.....i mean i dont think were going to get any help from it anymore?
Yes with even the most minute amount of digging they'll realize it's us from the demo releases but atleast it's some digging?
--JP
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What could be killing a lot of the quality is a lot of format conversion and re-encoding. How's the stuff straight out of ZSNES look? If there's no compression artifacts, I should be able to upscale it to a larger size and filter it so it looks good, then you can re-edit the clips back into to a high-quality, hi-resolution master copy that we can use to encode the lower-quality streaming versions. That should help cut down the compression artifacts.
The problem I'm running into is re-encoding the small trailer video into a streaming FLV file with a low enough bitrate. That's what's killing the quality, not the change in visible size. Shrinking it will only hide the artifacts, but they'll still be there, and the viewer will just be squinting instead of watching.
Right now, I'm not sure what bitrate would work best, because I'm not sure what connection speeds are typical these days, but so far I've been trying to stay real conservative at around 300 kbits/s. If I find out people have faster connections than I'm assuming, I can up the quality a lot more.
Also, as I familiarize myself with flash development and rewrite the post video animations so everything's just one big flash animation, I might be able to rewrite the movie player so it varies the quality based on connection speed. We'll see if I have time.
I do agree with Lord J above, we do have to make sure we step up to the plate here. Thankfully I honestly don't think we have alot more. I'm going to make today another CE day partly cause there's a bunch of bugs from yesterday andly partly cause my legs are so sore from skiing i don't want to get up and walk around :). I may even get to add some of those endings in the other forum.
But beta testers are starting to get closer to the end of the game, and we haven't had any MAJOR show stoppers in awhile (the battle one was pretty hard to repro, same with the spikes), Zeality has a few bugs but a couple hours and he should be able to plow through them, and I imagine 99 is somewhat close finishing chapter 23, I'd still like for him to take a quick speed run through chapter 14 before we release though.
Also one more thing, I was under the impression we were going to leave the compendium out of all this hype building? I noticed the youtube was released under the compendium's account and we advertised on the front page, I really honestly think we should do our best to leave our names out of this (to the point where i'd think we shoul dtake that video down and repost it), and we can probably take down the front page banner.....i mean i dont think were going to get any help from it anymore?
Yes with even the most minute amount of digging they'll realize it's us from the demo releases but atleast it's some digging?
--JP
The Compendium news post definitely generated a stronger response than I expected. I mostly suggested it so we could credit the music authors like they asked us to, but second thought, I'm thinking it might be better of we just wait until the release site and acknowledge the music authors there. Then we'll send AD794 a link to that page when it exists.
At this point, the risk of AD794 running across the trailer site before the release site goes up and feeling upset is probably minor compared to the threat of a Square-Enix C&D aimed at the project's home base here on the Compendium.
Still, I think there's a difference between reporting on the Crimson Echoes project and reporting updates as part of the Crimson Echoes project.
EDIT: I moved the news post to Viper Manor for the time being and disabled the YouTube video until we have a chance to stop and consider the consequences of that style of reporting on the CE project.
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Hmm, would it help any if I uncompressed the preview video to raw RGB (essentially making every frame a keyframe -- and gigabytes in size) and recompressed with a better quality codec or something? There was double compression when I made the first teaser cut -- first compression round to make the AVI, second compression round to add the fadein/fadeout filters. That might have done it. If so, maybe we'll have some measure of control over the video quality.
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No. The only way to improve the quality is to go back to the original sources, and run them through the entire workflow without encoding or compressing them until you export the finished video. So if you want to really improve the quality by doubling the size and filtering the video, you have to do it with the original ZSNES videos before running them through your workflow and without compressing the results too much.
Then as a last step, instead of exporting a compressed AVI to share with me, if you exported the raw video and generated several FLV files with different bitrates, it'd reduce yet another re-encoding and recompression step on my end and further improve the quality.
So ideally, it'd be this:
Convert the ZSNES videos to raw video -> upsample and filter them -> edit them into the trailer video -> export an uncompressed final version of the trailer at the upsampled size -> encode and compress the final trailer as FLV files at the target web sizes (namely, 480x360) with streaming bitrates.
That way, the only quality loss is at the final step.
EDIT: This is why 500GB scratch disks come in handy. :)
Also, don't forget to gradually fade in the audio more in the beginning and normalize the volume next time. If in doubt, lean slightly on the quiet side. Other than that, your trailer's turned out perfect. I'll try one more, slightly higher encoding bitrate for the streaming video, but if the quality still looks noisy by this time tomorrow, then that's as good as it's getting for now.
EDIT2: Uploading a 500kbit/s encoded version to the main site now. It should be viewable within an hour or so, but you might have to clear your cache to see it. This means if you usually have a hard time getting 70KB/s+ download speeds, the video may have to stop to buffer.
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I have all the raw video footage on hand, with one minor problem -- I dumped them through an xvid codec in the first place, so there's already some degree of compression on the files from the get-go. If I can find a way to resize the frames, I'll recut the first teaser and complete the other two back-to-back during my Spring Break.
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If CE gets the C&D, I'll make sure it's released to the public. Whether or not I get sued in the process.
Some sacrifices are worth it in my opinion.
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Wow, fantastic job on the reupload Ramsus! Changing to a 500kbit/s bitrate did that? My connection didn't have to stop to buffer at all. The quality's passable on the teaser site now, so I'll churn out the other two previews in a few weeks.
Seeing the teaser site animation after the movie was really awesome. One thing though -- I got this weird square on the site:
(http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4881/image1r.png)
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To celebrate the Crimson Echoes release here at the Compendium, I'm thinking we could do some interviews with the developers. However, rather than just have a normal interview article, we can do them as a series in a graphical style similar to last year's Dream Splash preview show (http://www.chronocompendium.com/dreamsplash/zeal/ps1/). Only this time, the engine will be flash based rather than Javascript based, and the scenario scripts will be more straightforward and easy to use in format, so Z can fine tune every last bit of the presentation. If I have time, I could even try making a graphical drag-and-drop scenario builder to make it even easier. Using flash as the target platform also means we can have cutaways to video clips from the game, or screen recordings showing how specific tools were used, in addition to sound effects and some background music.
However, for this to work, I'll need to know what kinds of art resources people will want for their avatars or for backgrounds, so I can get those done over the next few months.
Wow, fantastic job on the reupload Ramsus! Changing to a 500kbit/s bitrate did that? My connection didn't have to stop to buffer at all. The quality's passable on the teaser site now, so I'll churn out the other two previews in a few weeks.
Seing the teaser site animation after the movie was really awesome. One thing though -- I got this weird square on the site:
(http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4881/image1r.png)
Yeah, Firefox doesn't layer some things properly, so iframes and flash objects tend to appear on top of stuff they should be underneath. I'm converting the entire site to flash this weekend, which should take care of that problem. I might even add some interactive easter eggs and what not, if I can think of anything.
As a side note, I'm doing all the Flash stuff using haXe (http://www.haxe.org/), but the documentation is kind of bare. However, today I got a 600+ page book on using haXe for web and desktop application development in the mail, and I'm already up to page 364. The remaining chapters after this one aren't even relevant to doing stuff with flash, so all that's left now is to write up some more code.
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I'm slightly worried about the interviews being......more wall of texty.....than the dream splash was. The dream splash worked well since it was showing off pictures and wasn't really focused on the text.
What something like this might work well for is a feature I wanted for the "history of Crimson Echoes". Where we could have me/zeality and 99 walk people through the projects history with screen grabs from the initial demo, Demo 2, the Real life taking over periods and the final sprint to the finish.
That would actually work really well since really the project had distinct sections where it was led by different people:
Zeality => conception to demo 1, Me=> demo 1, Demo 2, Chrono99=> Picking up the reins in my absence, Me=> Taking it to the end.
I definitely think it would be funny if we can pull out old patches and show the my original ugly chronopolis, or my original ugly singing mountain (i looked for this lately and couldn't find it though :() Maybe pull out the old drafts for some of the plots.
--JP
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I've updated the trailer site to the all new all flash version. Feedback is welcome. :)
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Using the Zeal Palace background music was a superb choice. The Lavos screech made me jump out of my seat though; totally wasn't expecting that.
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I'm currently bogged down at work, and at home I'm studying 3D modeling and animation in blender during what little free time I have left right now, so I won't have much to offer the beta testing for a few more weeks. After that, I should finally have time for a serious play through of the game.
I can definitely fit in some extra work on the site on the weekends though, so if you have any suggestions for things I can add (spec sheets on the game, hidden mini-games or interactive art galleries, an updates mailing list form so people can sign up to be e-mailed when the game is released, etc.), feel free to let me know. Anything is possible at this point.
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Question: now that Human Glenn is in play once again, how do we want to handle the newer preview videos? My current inclination is to just capture with Frog (I'm doing some new tech captures this run-through), but I wanted to consult with you guys. If we show Frog during the previews and suddenly Human Glenn is in, it'll create a huge firestorm within the fan community, but after CE is released. If we show Human Glenn in the last preview video, it'll create a firestorm before CE is released.
However, if we just go with Frog in the previews, we're covered regardless of whether some huge problem crops up that prevents Human Glenn from making it in.
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um definitely frog...it'll be awhile till glenn is in play.
--JP
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If you save Human Glenn for the release, it helps cut down on the possibility of the game leaking, while giving people an incentive to get the final release even if the game does leak early and they already have the leaked version.
Also, I'd say firestorm after the release is more desirable.
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It's my intention to finally get another preview done by May 1, and a third preview done by May 15. While I'm planning the next one out, question: do we just flash the mysterious Kamon again, or do a full Peach Mountain Shoguns logo with jingle this time?
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A second preview appears...
The Dream of Zeal is Alive! (http://www.sendspace.com/file/8xrezz)
The logo unveiling halfway through is a bit repetitious considering the main CE site, but I figure it'll go over really well on Youtube. The original's a 256x224 frame size again (sorry sorry), but I'm going to try recapturing in 480x360. In any case, the only compression involved was in the very last step, so hopefully it'll look decent if you give this the same treatment as the first preview, Ramsus.
Next up is "Ladies and Gentlemen," which I hope to get done by May 15.
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Hold on, I just found a really good way of changing the frame size that I'll be using from now on. I should have a pretty high-quality 480x360 version up soon.
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:lee: :grimm :kamina :jiraiya: :D :) 8) :mrgreen: :twisted: :P
The Dream of Zeal is Alive (High Quality) (http://www.sendspace.com/file/juqofp)
Get stoked. People will flip when this goes on the CE site. And to think it only scratches the surface of what's actually in the game.
EDIT: I've got a cool little music piece on hand I could use if you guys happened to want to tag a "May 31" and some little explanatory notes (e.g., a "this is a fan project, not for profit" disclaimer) to the end of this preview.
EDIT: Oh! Forgot this, heh heh...
Audio Track:
Zyko, "The Queen With the Silver Eyes (Dream Extension)"
Magicbox Music, "Sauron's Grip"
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I'm working on the release site right now, but I'll create an updated pre-release site right afterward. You can catch me on the IRC channel if you have some suggestions about it.
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Wow, so will the release site have a different URL or will the release site be swapped in on May 31?
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Swapped.
If we have until May 31st, I'll have some time to work on some character profile artwork to randomly toss into the layout.
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The second trailer is awesome, especially the showing off of the new techs. It's also deceptively sweet that people will think Frog is in the game for now.
The only part I'd keep out and replace with something else is the snippet for Project Anabasis. Belthasar's lie depends on the party and player believing that the Frozen Flame wasn't used in the reactor. While viewers of this might think while playing that perhaps this scene took place in the future, it's still betraying a little too much since King Zeal's already the villain during the game's events, and the scene itself is colored yellow (the "flashback" color in anime).
The third trailer, hah...we'll have to preview Chrono'99's Neo-Epoch. People will go nuts.
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Aha, didn't catch the Anabasis issue. I have other clips I wanted to use, so no biggie. I'll post an update soon.
Do we want any info tacked onto the end of the trailer? Even a "May 31"? Or leave the end as is?
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Let's...perhaps shoot for third trailer to be released May 15 (the day I leave) with the "May 31" since we'll know if that's realistic then. For now, perhaps...
SOON
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Gotcha. I've got the ANABASIS scene replaced with a scene of Kasmir confronting Flea. I figure that way, it'll throw the viewer off to the fact that the Zenan Bridge scene has anything to do with the Fall of Guardia in 1005; seeing Flea confronting Kasmir will make the viewer think that the Zenan Bridge scene just after the logo unveiling is something that happens in the Middle Ages.
I was also thinking of replacing ANABASIS with a scene of Frog and Magus trading blows (with one of Frog's new techs) in his Frozen Flame trial, but I can always save that for #3.
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http://www.sendspace.com/file/nsog9r
Final answer (tm).
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http://www.sendspace.com/file/nsog9r
Final answer (tm).
Did it upload completely? I get an end of file crash before the ending when playing it.
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It works fine when I play it (I tried with Media Player Classic and WMP). Maybe it was a bug from the Sendspace server?
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See if this works better Ramsus. I sure hope it wasn't an encoding problem or something.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2ffa80c7805fde6ca0f2f20c509059d9e04e75f6e8ebb871
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Because studying monetary policy is obviously conducive to this sort of thing, I went ahead and whipped up an audio track for the final trailer. Nightmare originally suggested "Time's Scar" for the lead in IIRC, but "Lost Fragments" better produces the kind of effect I was going for:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2ffa80c7805fde6ca0f2f20c509059d91bd7a270815928cd5be6ba49b5870170
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Is it still going to bust out with Ladies and Gentlemen? :1999
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:1999
I'm still aiming for the 15th.
The plan is to show some mellow randomness and then bust out "Ladies and Gentlemen" and just blow the audience away by showcasing a bunch of new stuff (arena, some more portraits -- including Frog's to throw everyone off even more -- some full techs, Neo Epoch, minigames) while "Ladies and Gentlemen" plays.