Orxonox Commercial

Talk about Orxonox and related stuff.

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beni
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Orxonox Commercial

Post by beni » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:08 pm

If we really want to get a huge community at the end of the semester we should make a Orxonox commercial.
The commercial can be uploaded at youtube and other sites with huge communities (newgrounds for example).
This movie can be made with either flash or some moviemaker. The conversion from one to another is easy.

This would raise Orxonox's publicity enormously.

I do have the newest Flash Editor Program, but we would rather go with one that the ETH has the license for (don't know if ETH is interested in flash at all).
Using Windows Moviemaker is easy and everbody with a Windows on his computer got one, so that's probably a better idea.

What do you guys think? What has to be in the commercial or should we make two commercial (one about the game and one about the project)?

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Post by Marc » Sat Nov 11, 2006 11:03 pm

I think we should better first have something to promote before we break our head how we promote it.

Might be that it is only me, but this semester's project is highly "undefined" currently. And so far there hasn't been any general talk on the ideas and inputs (although I'm surely going to start that soon on the PPS board with the thoughts I had so far) nor anything else. We are doing introduction and "tutorial" lessons currently.

All we have is a red line and a lot of more or less unexperienced people that are meant to create something useful out of this red line, which seems a little unrealistically to me. (I'm part of the moderation team of the official RealmCrafter boards *MMO Creation Suite*, as well of the german BlitzBasic community *Blitz languages are rapid development languages for 2D / 3D applications*, so I've got a some experience in "unexperienced game devs and high targeted projects", which for some reason especially includes shooter and thus most of the time badly fail)

The plan seems to assume that with like 60 hours or so per PPS member (7 weeks of implementation of ~8 hours), this project is doable. Assuming that half of the PPSers are doing media (if not more, as they continue to fail to compile Orxonox outside the pingu world), this means something like 400 hours in complete for the PPS members. This means for "getting into the framework", research and actual implementation, as well as debugging and bug fixing.

This most likely should be enough to create the minimum targeted game. But I'm actually not sure if it will be enough to create a game that will attract a larger community, as a single small level and a space station most likely won't get anyone to play it more than once. And that's most likely all we will have, as creating the level on its own will take a lot of time (as the movement track system needs to be in first and because there is no editor to do this inworld from what I've seen so far), balancing it will become an even harder thing due to the living world it should be.

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Post by Nowic » Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:43 am

@Beni:

You don't need a license of Flash. Xvid would be fine. The movies get converted on their server.

"Uploading your videos to YouTube:

Once you're happy with your final result, you'll need to save the video in a format that YouTube can accept in order to upload. Unless you're a professional video producer, we recommend that you save your videos as either QuickTime .MOV, Windows .AVI, or .MPG files. these are the most common formats and they work well within our system. We specifically recommend the MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format at 320x240 resolution with MP3 audio. Resizing your video to these specifications before uploading will help your clips look better on YouTube."
Source: http://www.youtube.com/t/howto_makevideo

@ Marc:

I know what you are talking about. I also experienced many game/mod projects which failed. But Orxonox is in a different situation. We have a group of very enthusiastic core devs. We can meet in real life (very important!) and last but not least we have (motivated) students (PPS) which _have to_ work on orxonox ;) and they get support from more experienced devs. We will make it!
"I've always lived cheaply. I live like a student, basically. And I like that because it means that money is not telling me what to do. I can do what I think is important for me to do. It freed me to do what seemed worth doing." -- Richard Stallman

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Post by beni » Sun Nov 12, 2006 12:21 pm

It's crazy how much we could do in the last two semesters. But because you're right, that we can't do lots and lots of stuff, we decided not to do that first person thing, but rather something smaller.
Our experience with the last PPS semester is, that we did a lot more than we expected to do and that even complete newbies are able to implement great stuff after a very short time.
Now you shouldn't forget that nearly every other OLD PPS student from last year is happy to help us with orxonox. Also this time, we have 14 instead of only 7 PPS students.
Also Nowic's points are valid and so I don't really think that we are dreaming or something. Instead I'd wish for a bit more motivation, that you at least finish your project, which you will have to choose next time in the PPS lesson.
But who knows: It's still possible that none of you is motivated at all and that you won't be able to get anything implemented. But that would be quite surprising.

And yes: We first should start implementing stuff. The commercial will be a piece of cake for me, since I'm quite experienced with animated presentation. I'll do this while I implement some code or build a model.

Thank you Nowic for the part out of YouTube. I know that the movie gets converted and looks shitty after that. Just watch all the crappy quality movies on the page, but I think it's still worth it.

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Post by Marc » Sun Nov 12, 2006 1:47 pm

I didn't want to say that the people are not motivated. I think it's exactly vice versa :-) nor do I believe that the red line is a dream or unreachable, technically wise.

The point I actually meant was: There are currently no gameplay elements defined. There are ideas and a red line, but ideas do not make an interesting and addictive gameplay. This part is far harder to achieve than creating tech demos. Especially with the planned "unstatic" world (which is highly uncommon for this type of game because it is hard to balance), this part will be more challenging than most other things added so far.


But it might as well just be, that I perhaps assume that something "playable" is needed to form a "community" around it and that's currently not present. (unless the tech demos are counted)
On the other side, commercial games often build community around nothing but ideas, so why shouldn't we do the same? ;-)

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Post by beni » Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:41 pm

You are probably right that we give a lot of free choices and not many limits in some projects. We wanted to give you as much space for creative ideas as possible. We ourselves have a lot of ideas though. So if it should happen, that a concept is not working out, we should be able to guide this group better. I don't worry that much about it, but I can see your concern in that point. If we see that something is too challenging we have a plan already.

We work for something playable to form this community. The PPS is a good way to kind of "force" a community, but we would like it a lot better when people came to us for just fun and not only to get PPS points.

Addicting gameplay: I play this crazy game Ikaruga right now. It's not that we want to make Orxonox become another Ikaruga, but in my long career as addicted gamer I think I figured out what concepts can or cannot make it to a big community.

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Post by patrick » Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:49 pm

First of all: thanks for all the inputs. Promotion will be a very fundamental part of Orxonox once we have a playable demo.

Of course, it is important to not rush into this topic. Orxonox is now 2.5 years old and was not yet announced in any forum or portal (expect some libraries db's we are using for this project). We have done this out of a very clear idea: to have a greater impact when Orxonox really is playable. And this idea doesn't change. I'm sure Beni was clear about this point, when he started this thread.

For my part, it is very important to have such ideas (like community forming, commercials, etc) because it is the fuel for our work. We are motivated by the idea to make a game worth playing and to finally form a community around it. So I would say we should really talk much about such things. With motivation comes great work.
Marc wrote:Might be that it is only me, but this semesters project is highly "undefined" currently
As Beni already mentioned: The project must be open for the student's ideas and wishes. We are an open source project and do not intend to force anyone working on any topics he/she doesn't like. The consequence of our conviction is that we have 100% motivated students. We want smart and dedicated students, no brain-less slaves :D But don't be afraid, every development team will get enough input to do it's work.
Marc wrote: I've got a some experience in "unexperienced game devs and higher targeted projects", which for some reason especially includes shooter and thus most of the time badly fail)
I have spent enough time in many different open source projects to know one thing: every project is different. Each project forms its own development and communication style. So does Orxonox. Don't underestimate the Orxonox developer community unless you know it!

Marc wrote: The point I actually meant was: There are currently no gameplay elements defined.
Only because we didn't tell you until now doesn't mean we do not have an idea of what we are doing. :D But there is truth in your words: many ideas are still floating and some old ideas (still on the webpage I'm afraid) have been discarded long ago (like the highly dynamic mission plot). So you are starting a discussion about a very fundamental topic in our development.

Marc wrote: And so far there hasn't been any general talk on the ideas and inputs (although I'm surely going to start that soon on the PPS board with the thoughts I had so far)
Yes, you are very welcome to start this discussion. I am eager to hear your ideas and I'm hoping to see your experiences from your projects merge with Orxonox. This Wednesday you will be able to choose a project that goes in this direction, if you like.
The most important point: have fun! You can never expect a perfect project plan and we are not able to tell you if our plan is going to work out, but you can always have fun with it :P

gg hf!

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Post by Marc » Mon Nov 13, 2006 2:34 pm

I agree, a community is the fuel of a project, if the project is able to give the community something back (at best something playable).
Thats mainly why I posted, as a community around something that does not give anything back currently can be the end of a project.
But you made clear, that it is the idea to have something to form it around :-)

Sorry if it sounded like I assume Orxonox to be like "other projects".
Each project is as individual and different as the individuals behind it are.
It might be that I forgot, that there are "more experienced" people within the project that can be of help. (wasn't the case in other PPS, perhaps that was a part of my thoughts)

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Post by hofzge » Wed Nov 15, 2006 12:11 pm

I think we can for now close this thread. If Beni keeps track of the things done in the PPS and if at the end of the semester we begin to advertise, this will be early enough.

We all agree that it makes no sense to promote Orxonox, if the people get diappointed once they want to install or play it. It's much better to go the "Blizzard" way and only show anything once it is already playable beta.

It's good that Marc talked about the organization of Orxonox: In the beginning it may be quite confusing, as you don't know any of the "older" people involved. There are quite a few developers which are "hardened" by years of programming :D

In that regard it might be good to somehow give a short overview of who contributed what ideas to Orxonox (like in the old presentations with the screenshots on the homepage).

I will close this thread, but I hope that everyone keeps thinking about ways to bring a finished version of Orxonox to the gamers (this is by far not as easy as it may sound).
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
-- William Gibson, Neuromancer

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