Controlled Chaos; or, Second Origins (demo up to Ch 8)

[Watercolorheart]

omg, that has more lip-sync than even some anime I've seen.

So if you have to end up converting all of those to mpeg...actually I think the filesize will increase far more than what its worth...since its only a few frames, how about just making an animation sprite out of it...

-Export the frames from Flash.
-Use a constant rate for each image, i.e. .1 seconds

OR

-Export just the keyframes
-Use a variable rate for each image, i.e. .4s, .3s, .2s, whatever timing you used in Flash. The last frame shouldn't have any time if you want the animation to stop and not loop back.

So how about it? Ren'Py the Real-time Animation Engine. Cool, huh?

edit: Oh yeah you have to start the sound just before showing the animation. Theoretically it should be synced.

Well, I thought the same thing, but the thing being that Ren'Py runs at different speeds on each machine, I think ... (though the SWF is out of sync on my computer anyway because of all the image operations ... it runs fine within Flash itself.)

Well, if its encoded at 12 FPS, that gives you a 1/12 second for each frame (if I keep the length of each frame the same) or about 0.0834 seconds for each one ...

So, yeah, I could make an animation out of it. I think.

[PyTom]

Unfortunately, precise synchronized timing is sort of beyond what Ren'Py was designed for... unless you're playing movies. (And it's just a matter of time before XviD is supported on that front.)

For one thing, It's not clear to me that Ren'Py could load images at a rate of 12fps. It almost certainly depends on the computer you're using, and the size of the images... a LiveComposited mouth will be faster then loading fullscreen images, which should probably be faster the compositing things.

Another thing is that the sound timing isn't very accurate. Ren'Py uses a sound buffer of 8192 samples. Since sound is played at 44100 samples/second, and we only start decoding sound at the start of a buffer, this means it may take up to 1/5 of a second before a sound starts playing.

There's also the fact that the amount of time it takes a Ren'Py statement to run is undefined, and it depends on the load of the system.

Well, you can sort of fake timer synchronization with the following code:

Code: Select all

init:
    python:
        import time

         def set_time_base():
              store.time_base = time.time()

         def pause_until_time(end_time):
              return renpy.pause(store.time_base + end_time - time_base)

$ set_time_base()

show crazy animation 1 which lasts 3 seconds.

$ pause_until_time(3)

show crazy animation 2 which lasts 2 seconds

$ pause_until_time(5)

I haven't tried this, so it may not work well. At the end of the day, Ren'Py isn't a movie player. (But it may integrate a better one at some point.)

Ps. Animation itself should be fairly accurate with regard to the spacing between frames. But I wouldn't go beyond about 5 or so full screen frames in animation, as the image cache only holds 8 screens of images.

And you need to leave some pauses without screen updates for image preloading to work, or else Ren'Py will block on image loading.

[Watercolorheart]

Oh, yeah, and I used the gave you gave earlier to change the color of the links, but it broke the script until I removed it again ...

Could it be because I was using the hexadecimal codes for colors?

[PyTom]

What was the error message it gave?

[F.I.A]

After trying out the demo(I am rather a slow-poke, eh?), I am rather interested in this kinetic novel(Or is it?), even though I got many stumped moments. Yea, I might be as bad as Laura in science.

I have been wondering about one of the background music, namely melancholy.ogg. I've heard of it before, so I am curious if it is some sort of free musics. No, I am not calling you unoriginal or something, just wondering...

[Watercolorheart]

After trying out the demo(I am rather a slow-poke, eh?), I am rather interested in this kinetic novel(Or is it?), even though I got many stumped moments. Yea, I might be as bad as Laura in science.

I have been wondering about one of the background music, namely melancholy.ogg. I've heard of it before, so I am curious if it is some sort of free musics. No, I am not calling you unoriginal or something, just wondering...

It's in the author's note, and my current version finally listed the link. It's TAM Music Factory, used by some other insani.org translation game (I forget which one ... ) and it available at http://www.tam-music.com

PyTom: Ugh, I forgot. >_< Meaningless garbage generated by renpy.pyo, mostly. I think perhaps it conflicted with the style extra?

BTW, do you have "bright_grey" and "grey" definitions as well as "bright_cyan" and "cyan"?

[PyTom]

No, but it's fairly easy to define them yourself:

$ gray = "#888"
$ bright_gray = "#ccc"

[Watercolorheart]

Ah.

[yummy]

Unfortunately, precise synchronized timing is sort of beyond what Ren'Py was designed for... unless you're playing movies. (And it's just a matter of time before XviD is supported on that front.)

So that means in the very near future (5.6.2?) there'll be support for XviD?
Well it means I might have time to recruit animation specialised buddies for an opening demo movie then

[PyTom]

I'm not promising anything for anytime. Showing me that the community is capable of producing of a movie would probably go a reasonable amount of the way to convincing me this would be highly desirable, however.

(Figuring out a way to add a couple of extra hours to the day would also help.)

[DaFool]

Hmmm,

An OP would surely be sweet, and is one of the major distinguishers between the amateurs and a professional company. Perhaps instead of having event animation for CC/SO, combine all the scenes and time it to an opening music.

However, even the compressed video alone (say, 1.5 minutes), will take up to the same size as the rest of the game. Is it worth it, or is it better to use that effort for a more epic game, or at least have more CGs for the game itself? A good way to save effort would be to pick certain CGs from the game and make them zoom around on the screen for the OP animation. But of course I prefer 'real' animation.

On a side note, my project is fast becoming a sci-fi story, which will be the third(?) one. Yeah I know, sci-fi + comedy is bad, but just couldn't help it. I originally wanted to do slice of life, then it became fantasy, now...

[Watercolorheart]

I'm not promising anything for anytime. Showing me that the community is capable of producing of a movie would probably go a reasonable amount of the way to convincing me this would be highly desirable, however.

(Figuring out a way to add a couple of extra hours to the day would also help.)

You know I can ...

It's not that I wouldn't mind animating for Second Origins right now (Chapter Four most likely), but I'm holding out for .... er ... the turning point. We're going to hit it at (I'm estimating here) around Chapter Eight.

That's the writing that I really remember doing for Twist of Fate and Controlled Chaos, when we reach the point that all the characters undergo a major change of events in the near future.

It's my thread so I change the topic back to my game at any time, right? *laugh*

[Watercolorheart]

I really should release the Chapter Four demo, but I've been drawing for it. Reading the Chapter Three one was depressing for me with no visual aids at all ...

I'm also midway through finishing writing Chapter Five.

[Watercolorheart]

Sorry that I have been slacking off on this a bit. I finished writing Chapter Four, of course, and I finished up Chapter Five yesterday.

I would have done my usual immediate dub for Laura on "5" but I am as sick as a dog. It's really hard to concentrate through the cold medicine on drawing, but writing is fine as long as I take my time with it.

I've been looking forward to the change in setting in Chapter 6; it's unique.

[Watercolorheart]

Do do do ...

The more I play with Flash, the more I find that it won't cleanly export AVIs only the BMP sequences. And I can just forget encoding any sound ...

*sigh*

What program do I use to turn a BMP sequence in a 12 FPS MPG, and also encode a ripped WAV file for the sounds?

The free one I have is crap, it fscks the borders every time ...