How about supporting flash movies...?

[sherry]

hello, I'm new here, it's my first post.
... and I'm Chinese, so please excuse my poor English. T_T

First I want to say, Ren'py is great! Compare with some similar Japanese engines such as KiriKiri, Nscripter...Ren'py is more open and much easier to use.

I'm just thinking, would it be better for Ren'py to support flash format movies (just like KiriKiri, it has a flash plugin), because flash movie files are much smaller than mpeg files, and more people are familiar with making flash animations...

I know nothing about programme or media compatibility...
I'm just wondering if it's possible...

Well...em...Thank you...(= =b, I'm really bad at making a conclusion...in english...)

[NetGenSuperstar]

Greetings from the United States.

I only realized just yesterday that KiriKiri supported Flash animations. I probably would never use that feature, but I suppose it would make it easier for people to create videos. The problem is that I don't think there's any way to play a Flash movie through SDL, which is the basis for Ren'Py. I also don't think it's worth finding a different way to make it work.

Then again, I'm not the developer. It all depends on what PyTom thinks about it.

[PyTom]

Well, tentatively scheduled for a release or so in the future is ffmpeg, which would allow for reading a number of movie formats, but not Flash. I may also try to integrate libswfdec around then, which would support Flash. But no promises.

[NetGenSuperstar]

Well, tentatively scheduled for a release or so in the future is ffmpeg, which would allow for reading a number of movie formats

I was going to suggest that, but I feel like I talk too much already. I would love to not be limited to MPEG-1 video; Ogg Theora is a much better codec, and there are better ones than that if you feel like licensing one. Plus, that's one less thing ONScripter has that Ren'Py doesn't.

I may also try to integrate libswfdec around then, which would support Flash. But no promises.

That's good to hear, too. Though if it never happens, it's not a problem for me; I don't even have Flash.

[sigmaxion]

I don't think integrating flash is a good idea...
Because if you right click, it will prompt out a 'Macromedia' staff...
umm, this makes me creepy...

[PyTom]

It would be libswfdec, not flash proper. So no worries on that regard.

A big question is if flash support is really necessary, or if support for video files (like XviD) would suffice.

I'm also wondering (on a selfish/strategic level) if adding movie support will really be worthwhile. People have a hard enough time making games as it is, without then going to the trouble of animating a movie scene as well.

[sherry]

Thank you all for replying.

I understand the situation now.

But, excuse me...I still think movie support is necessary, and I think it is a common thing to do to add movies in games. Maybe some people think the plot is the most important thing for a game, and instead of making the pictures beautiful, they make the story good. But there is no limitation of game making, and it's fun to see how many possibilities we can achieve with a same engine. Personally, I like games with short movies, maybe as a introduction at the begginning, or as a ending, they always gave game good atmosphere.

You've added mpeg support as a function, which I think is really helpful for those people who wants to put animation in their games(like me T_T), altough it's hard to make mpeg movies, but "possibility" is always good.

[PyTom]

But, excuse me...I still think movie support is necessary, and I think it is a common thing to do to add movies in games. Maybe some people think the plot is the most important thing for a game, and instead of making the pictures beautiful, they make the story good. But there is no limitation of game making, and it's fun to see how many possibilities we can achieve with a same engine. Personally, I like games with short movies, maybe as a introduction at the begginning, or as a ending, they always gave game good atmosphere.

Sure... but I have limited time to work on Ren'Py, and so I need to prioritize it. So other things are taking precedence, like making Ren'Py easy to use.

I would suspect XviD movie support (through FFMPEG) to come out fairly soon. IIRC, Flash supports exporting to AVI movie files... so this would let people make a movie in Flash, and then show it.

[monele]

The only problem remaining is file size. If people plan to have MAD-style opening (see that other thread to know what MAD is), xvid will be the best because there's no way you could do that in Flash. But if people just want simple vector animations, with plain colors, they would benefit from the small files that Flash provides. Mostly, exporting Flash to AVI will make things a lot bigger than it should be.
What kind of videos are planned in the end ?

[Counter Arts]

Yeah, I'm soooo not kidding about those "MAD" videos either. That's why I mentioned it. I was just wondering just how many people here knew of it.

While the community here isn't exactly ready to start making those just yet, (Make the game first people!) it's important to keep in mind that nearly any new japanese game has at least a opening intro and/or promotional video available to download or in their demos. Sometimes several.

As for ffmpeg actually, currently just being able to play a decent compressed movie is just fine. Japanese games usually have it as mpeg anyways, usually at the same resolution as their games. Then again, being in Japan probably means you have fiber optic internet.

Also, a bit of trivia too. There are also websites in Japan that look like they are purely dedicated to downloading those big 30MB~300MB intro movies. The ren'ai game companies use several or all of them. Massive waste of bandwidth through.

[DaFool]

For the bandwidth cost of a typical ren'ai mpeg movie that lasts 1.5-2 minutes, I could download a full version of O3 --with full stereo sound--that lasts more than 60 minutes.

I'm not against you wanting to create intro animations, but unless you're recycling a lot of material, you would better use those extra art for the actual game itself.

The only commercial intro animations I'm impressed with are ones that took the time to do it in typical anime studio fashion. I could care less about event and character CGs whizzing up, down, left, right.

[monele]

I would agree with this when it comes to filesize ^^;... Plus, the last type could be done with the in-game engine and a little bit of imagination .