Wesnoth "Commercial"

[Fynmiir]

Okay, I had this crazy idea. I am fairly adept with Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 and was thinking wouldn't it be cool to have a Wesnoth "movie." I was thinking along the lines of a commercial. I would probably make it 30-45 seconds and use Wesnoth music. There are several ways I could go about this:

-LEGO stop action (I'll make LEGO Konrad and such, and post pictures later)
-Screenshots/Portraits and action art scenes (let me know about good still images and where to find them)

I suspect people may say "what about 3-D art graphics for it?" I'd say yeah sure, I'd love to put them in a movie, but I can't do 3-d graphics. So if anyone wants that idea to go somewhere, they'll have to do 3-D graphics for it.
Obviously this is just for fun and a way I thought I could add a new dimension to the game. Please let me know if this idea is worth pursuing because it would require time and effort. THis would also be a secondary project of mine, so it will not likely happen FAST. I have other projects and obligations that do take precedence.
Further, I run on WINDOWS, so if anyone knows of a movie file extension that operates on MAC,WINDOWS,and LINUX that would be awesome!
One last disclaimer, if this goes anywhere, it would be first done in English. People would have to translate it for me to make it more accessible (very sorry that I can't do that, I know it does limit it, and I don't like that at all.)

[turin]

I would advise that if you're doing a Wesnoth commercial, use Wesnoth's graphics.

Perhaps you could use a screen-capture technique to film the AI fighting itself, and use a few clips of that, combined with some narration, and some of Jetryl's and Johann's awesome art.

[Fynmiir]

Sounds like a very good idea! As I thought about it I began leaning more and more to that type of a direction. Do you have any ideas about how I could go about such a screen capture?

[romnajin]

You could use the realplayer format for mac/windows, not sure about that on linux though, or, if it's just a series of images, you could make it a campaign with JUST the into, and no scenarios in it.

[Quensul]

Sounds like a very good idea! As I thought about it I began leaning more and more to that type of a direction. Do you have any ideas about how I could go about such a screen capture?

In Linux, xvidcap will do the trick. I'm reasonably certain software exists for Windows intended for creating instructional / howto videos that would capture the contents of a window for a time.

[Fynmiir]

Thanks for all the tips. I have gotten other advice outside the Wesnoth forums, gut will look into all of these suggestions too. Hopefully I can have a rough draft or storyboard by later today, maybe.

[Florob]

Further, I run on WINDOWS, so if anyone knows of a movie file extension that operates on MAC,WINDOWS,and LINUX that would be awesome!

I'd personally use Theora, because that is a free codec available for Mac/Windows/Linux, works out of the box on most Linux distributions and is easy to install at least on Windows (don't know for Mac, but it works with VLC which should be easy to install).

XviD should work on most systems, too.

[allefant]

Maybe have a scene in the beginning of a big LAN, where you see real people all playing Wesnoth

[Fynmiir]

Since I'm still new to the forums, I have a quick etiquette question:

I really like Johaan's work and have a good idea for a use of it in this project. Is it fine for me to just get it right off of the Art Contributions wiki or is it more polite for me to private message him to request the use of his pictures?

[turin]

Well, you can use any of the images that have been added to the game in SVN - it would be exactly the same as using the image of the Elvish Fighter. But the images he posted as examples he didn't intend to be GPLed.

[Fynmiir]

So I can use the picture of Delfador attacking Prince Garad of whoever, no problems?

[Fynmiir]

Okay here's a rough outline of what I'm going for:

Title screen displaying "Battle For Wesnoth" probably with the logo--->dissolve into probably a screen sequence of the ai fighting itself (about 5 seconds)--->Blast into a short screen and Johaan's picture of Delfador in action--->this will be followed by a probably fast pace section of similar pictures/portraits (each one will be overlaid with a word so "The Battle for Wesnoth" is spelled out.--->Fade out to black and there will be probably an advertisement saying something along the lines of: "Bo to http://www.wesnoth.org today to join the battle." and fade to black.

I'm thinking I will use a variety of the music from the game all throughout. I will probably start off with calmer elf-land music and such, but the fast sequence will probably be the Orc drum music.

[jonadab]

You could use the realplayer format.

What possible reason could there be for choosing a proprietary format that's a royal pain to work with and only works with one company's proprietary software, which is not widely deployed, is nagware of the worst kind, has serious performance issues, and additionally is a serious contender for Most Gratuitously Convoluted User Interface Design Ever?

Just use a standard video format, such as MPEG, which should work with basically every media player on pretty much every platform. .avi is also fairly widely supported.

[romnajin]

I was just thinking of something universal...maybe it's a clunky piece of crap for creating movies, but it works fine(for me anyway) for playing them.

[Fynmiir]

If .avi is pretty universal, then I think I will just use that then.