RoOst3r's OpenArena Frag Movie

[RoOst3r]

Hello. I've been playing OpenArena for awhile now and I think it is a great game. I have also been trying to make a frag movie to show off how much fun OpenArena can be. It's my first attempt at making a movie of anything so I have had to learn everything from scratch. Still, I think it turned out pretty good for my first effort and well worth the download. Hope you like it. :-)

Here is the movie. It's an mp4 and about 8 minutes in length. 300MB. Please download it rather then stream it cause the streamed Filefront version looks horrible in comparison.
http://files.filefront.com/13557039

Slightly lesser quality than the above version for half the file size. 150MB.
http://files.filefront.com/13596782


Hopefully no one will have problems getting it to play. However, if you do run into problems I would recommend playing it with a good movie player such as MPlayer or VLC.

MPlayer - http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
VLC - http://www.videolan.org/

[Martian]

Great video and nice skills.

[vindimy]

I know of one place where you can post the video and its streaming quality will be nearly as good as original So, I saved you the trouble and did the posting

Here's the direct link to the video: http://www.facebook.com/v/66700440668

And here it is as part of the Openarena group: http://www.facebook.com/video/?oid=8946150591

Enjoy

[KILLIE THE GREAT]

I was inspired by that video, well done brah, not even im that fast. i,ll never get that good

[Udi]

The best OA video so far. It made my day. I'm watching it the 4th time, but my jaw is still dropped. A lot of maps, beatiful maps, lot of models, different people, awsome frags, and nice music. This music genre is quite unique in frag videos, makes it remarkable. Great work! More, more,  more !

I know of one place where you can post the video and its streaming quality will be nearly as good as original

Nearly as good quality as the original? LOL You can only achieve the same quality if you encode it with H.268 MP4, and then give it to the flash player. No video site does that for you. But with a small do it yourself you can achieve nearly HD quality in 500kbp/s. People, you should download the original, it is a must have, trust me .

[Neon_Knight]

Downloading. ^^ I'll be watching it the next week since I won't be at my house in the following days. :/

I was inspired by that video, well done brah, not even im that fast. i,ll never get that good

Killie, don't say never. ^^ Nothing is impossible to make.
One of the ideas behind videos and demos, I guess, is the possibility to learn new tricks and jumps (something which is achieved with nothing more and nothing less than practice -and practice, of course, requires time-) and then apply what you've learned.

[HITMAN]

WOW..this video is the truth...Although I got my ass handed to him several times, i feel like I contributed in making this film awesome :-D ..Amazing Air Rockets! Stunning Rail skills..the dude is a beast! Great job man for your first film!

[vindimy]

I know of one place where you can post the video and its streaming quality will be nearly as good as original

Nearly as good quality as the original? LOL You can only achieve the same quality if you encode it with H.268 MP4, and then give it to the flash player. No video site does that for you. But with a small do it yourself you can achieve nearly HD quality in 500kbp/s. People, you should download the original, it is a must have, trust me .

LOL back to you First of all, you were probably meaning to say H.264, not H.268 (former is a.k.a. MPEG4 part 10, latter is Intel's proprietary codec). Secondly, Facebook and other video sites have long been using H264 to provide HD video streams

Code:

Facebook HD: 1280×720 - 2.5mbit/s H264 - full framerate - 44hz 146kbit/s AAC stereo audio

(See link: http://techvideoblog.com/reviews/online-video-sites-hd-quality-comparison/ )

I agree that people should download the original. But they better do it at night, 'cause it takes 1-2 hours over regular DSL connections. Right now, best thing to do is hop over to Facebook and watch the HD version

[pulchr]

i'm impressed - very nice frags. i especially like some of the air rockets and twitch rails.

this is how the upcoming 0.9.0 version should be promoted - a nice video showing some real game play

very well done!

[KILLIE THE GREAT]

Downloading. ^^ I'll be watching it the next week since I won't be at my house in the following days. :/

I was inspired by that video, well done brah, not even im that fast. i,ll never get that good

Killie, don't say never. ^^ Nothing is impossible to make.
One of the ideas behind videos and demos, I guess, is the possibility to learn new tricks and jumps (something which is achieved with nothing more and nothing less than practice -and practice, of course, requires time-) and then apply what you've learned.

i,ve almost reached the limit of my talent.

[RoOst3r]

Thanks for all the great comments. I am happy to see that people are liking the movie.

[Udi]

Code:

Facebook HD: 1280×720 - 2.5mbit/s H264 - full framerate - 44hz 146kbit/s AAC stereo audio

(See link: http://techvideoblog.com/reviews/online-video-sites-hd-quality-comparison/ )

Yeah, sorry, I meant H264, my mistake, and watching the high quality version assures the data above, but your link points at the regular version. Offtopic discussion closed.

[Cacatoes]

Nice vid indeed, could be nice to use it to promote OA (but here I fear about copyrighted songs ...)
cg_draw2d off and high framerate are good points.

You catched the video with the built-in /video command ?

[RoOst3r]

You catched the video with the built-in /video command ?

Yes. That was definitely the most tedious and time consuming part.

I left cg_draw2d set to 1. With cg_draw2d set to 0 nothing that is 2d gets drawn to the screen. Which means that I would also lose Frag Messages and Rewards being drawn to the screen. So I had to leave it set to 1 and remove everything I didn't want manually. I couldn't find any built in commands to remove either the scoreboard in the lower right hand corner or the weapon switch animation that pops up every time you change weapons. To fix that problem I downloaded the OpenArena source files. Commented out the code in cg_draw.c that was responsible for drawing those things I didn't want. Compiled and then used the new qvms from that instead.

[Gerbil]

wow dood, that was actually really good

Definitly the best oa frag vid out there

[RoOst3r]

Thanks Gerbil! :-)

[chaoticsoldier]

Definitly the best oa frag vid out there

Your "Welcome To OpenArena" video is nothing to be sneezed at though.


@RoOst3r: Good work! Very intimidating play.

[Gerbil]

You catched the video with the built-in /video command ?

Yes. That was definitely the most tedious and time consuming part.

I left cg_draw2d set to 1. With cg_draw2d set to 0 nothing that is 2d gets drawn to the screen. Which means that I would also lose Frag Messages and Rewards being drawn to the screen. So I had to leave it set to 1 and remove everything I didn't want manually. I couldn't find any built in commands to remove either the scoreboard in the lower right hand corner or the weapon switch animation that pops up every time you change weapons. To fix that problem I downloaded the OpenArena source files. Commented out the code in cg_draw.c that was responsible for drawing those things I didn't want. Compiled and then used the new qvms from that instead.

So do you have the config file you used to make the video? If you do, could you send it to me?
Yeah, getting rid of the scores/flags in the bottom right corner is the only thing I need to get rid of now :/
I was having trouble capturing sound when I use the /video command, do you know what may have caused this?

[RoOst3r]

So do you have the config file you used to make the video? If you do, could you send it to me?

Yes. That can probably be arranged after I clean it up a little.

Yeah, getting rid of the scores/flags in the bottom right corner is the only thing I need to get rid of now :/

I created/used a pk3 file to fix that problem. It will remove the scoreboard in the lower right, holdable item icons, connection interrupted messages, and the scoreboard on death. It can be downloaded here:

http://files.filefront.com/13591253

To use it just put it in your baseoa folder.

I was having trouble capturing sound when I use the /video command, do you know what may have caused this?

It most likely has to do with s_UseOpenAL. I believe that must be set to 0 to record audio. Occasionally I had to reset it to 0 and restart the game a few times before it seemed to take. It may be that it needs to be set on startup. If thats the case it is probably a good idea to have s_useOpenAL set to 0 in your default cfg. If you are converting a demo with /video and the in game audio sounds like a freakshow then everything is good and it is capturing the audio. On the other hand if the in game audio during /video sounds normal then it is not capturing the audio.

Hope that helps.

[RoOst3r]

I managed to compress my movie a lot more without losing much in quality. Instead of 300MB download it's now down to 150MB. That should make it much more manageable for those with slower internet connections. There is actually very little difference in quality. You be the judge. It will probably stream a lot better as well. It can be downloaded here:

http://files.filefront.com/13596782

[Gerbil]

thanks a lot man, I appreciate it

[Cacatoes]

Hm, I have to say I reay prefer the 300MB version Did you change framerate to the half ? (from 50 to 25 ?). Maybe my imagination, but compression also seemed better on 300MB one.

[menganito]

How do you do those rail-twitch-hits? Is it like Air rocket: you "calculate" where the enemy is at a given time and just shoot that place? Or is there another trick?

BTW realy impressive, great skills. (at least it seems to me)

[HITMAN]

How do you do those rail-twitch-hits? Is it like Air rocket: you "calculate" where the enemy is at a given time and just shoot that place? Or is there another trick?

I can't speak for Rooster but when I do them, its more instinctively judging where to aim, quick reflexes and remembering where your target is. You would have to have semi-high sensitivity and it helps to have brightskins.

[RoOst3r]

Hm, I have to say I reay prefer the 300MB version Did you change framerate to the half ? (from 50 to 25 ?). Maybe my imagination, but compression also seemed better on 300MB one.

Thanks for telling me Cacatoes. I did lower the frame-rate from 50 to 25. At 50fps it is indeed smoother. I would prefer to only make movies like the 300MB version. In this aspect I am trying to figure out how to approach my next movie. If anyone is put off by the thought of having to download a 300MB+ movie and would rather download the 150MB version instead please let me know.

How do you do those rail-twitch-hits? Is it like Air rocket: you "calculate" where the enemy is at a given time and just shoot that place? Or is there another trick?

Yes, with all the shots there is some visual cue at first of where the player is. From that I then make a guess as to where I think the player will be. So, before I move my hand I have already committed in my mind as to where I will shoot and it is a location and not a player. If you watch my mouse movements in the video there are tell tale signs of this. There are spots where, like a cat wiggles  its butt when it's going to pounce, I wiggle my aim as I am preparing to do some twitch shot. At that point I have already committed to where I will shoot. Or for another example, at about 3:16 in the movie I pass by a female player model. I flip and shoot at the wrong location and miss. However, luckily someone, the model that looks like a gargoyle, had the misfortune of spawning and getting in the way. So I hit him instead which is why that one made it into the movie.

I find that those shots are much easier when there is no vertical mouse movement and the target is close. Like air rockets, as the target gets farther away predicting where you need to shoot to hit becomes much more difficult. Also, when there is no vertical movement it's pretty easy to guess where someone will be when they run in a straight line. However, if they are jumping off a ledge and you then have to guess at that too then the difficulty of the shot takes a steep climb.

Another thing to remember is that it's CTF and I am usually playing offense. When I grab the flag everyone that sees me will chase me. So if 3 people are chasing me they will almost always just fall into a nice little cluster behind me trying to catch up. At that point if I flip a 180 and shoot I am bound to hit someone.