ThinkTanks Madness (World Premiere!)

3 min. Quicktime (23 MB)

Team Scrum Lush Highlight Reel

4 min. Quicktime (26 MB)

Team Scrum Frantic Highlight Reel

4 min. Quicktime (24 MB)

Enjoy! :)

-Reagent X

I'll watch em' when I get back in a week, I'm leaving tomorrow.

Wooot! Those were some good games. :)

Now don't everyone download them at once, or Apple'll shut down Reag's.Mac account for exceeding his bandwidth.

BTW, good job Reag! Love that slo-mo scene! I wish the sounds were more like that in game!

Awesome work! Wish there was a way we could record our own games!

You can Paisan! Though don't ask me because I don't remember how 8o Maybe someone can post the link to the thread where this was discussed, or re-post instructions? XD

@OM

Really? Maybe Regeant X can share how he did all this amazing work? What video editing package did he use?

VideoWave, VideoMaker, Premiere, VideoStudio, ??? How did he record it? Add the titles? Sound?

Can we save/convert it to MPG, MPEG format instead of MOV? How about AVI?

Thanks!

Can you image a greatest goals reel for Bolo or TankGirl?

How about being able to see that historic victory last season of an outnumbered 2-tank Medulla team (Ben and Dementus) over a 5-tank Synaptic team, 97-88?

I've wanted to do something similar but I'm sure I couldn't do better. It's very interesting to see from someone else's perspective. Those slow motion sequences are great.

Here is the thread from the GarageGames forum:

GarageGames thread

Basically you substitute the lines below for the siimilar lines used for a dedicated server.

./ThinkTanks.app/Contents/MacOS/ThinkTanks OSX -jSave filename.txt

./ThinkTanks.app/Contents/MacOS/ThinkTanks OSX -jPlay filename.txt

@Blind Cide- thanks for posting that info again! Time to make some of my own movies!

@pai- I'd say Reagent used iMovie, Apple's standard consumer video editing app (comes free with Macs). I have no doubt about that in fact. What I DON'T know, is how he managed to get the recorded video into a format iMovie understands. That is, if he used the recording procedure Blind Cide listed above.

Maybe he used something like SnapzPro, which can record full screen video at 30 fps. Reag's new G5 would certainly be able to handle that. :)

I posted some instructions here for doing this in Windows. Along the same lines as for mac. I had a picture in the post as a visual aid but it's no longer there. Maybe I'll get around to inserting one, but I think the directions are straightforward enough.

I laughed, I cried, I blew twenty bucks on a tub of popcorn and a bucket of pepsi! Wow! A sure fire summer blockbuster guaranteed to leave you hanging on the edge of your seat! These were all stunt drivers right?

Nice work Reagent!! Love the slo-mo and sound effects!

Baaaaaaa!

Dar, KJ, and Baba were laughing, screaming, hooting and hollering through them all.

Great work.

Now we obviously need a photographer tank for next upgrade.

I can see it now - Psycho Scrum 6 - THE DVD.

Wooot!

Keep 'em coming!

Great stuff RX! What sorta chemicals were you exposed to in the lab when you put that first reel together? XD

If watching these reels doesn't get you amped up for some intense scrum action, I don't know what will...

Thanks guys!!

That was actually quite a lot of work, but a labor of love and very fun.

I had to experiment quite a bit to get it right. Here's what didn't work first. I tried SnapZpro, which has a free demo (it is kind of like Fraps for the PC). These programs capture anything you can see on your screen as a video file. The problem is, if you try to capture a game while you are playing, your CPU will bog down to the point of total ridiculousness (yes even with a G5). Talk about lag! This is actually very intensive because it is writing to the hard drive at the same time as you are playing.

The -jSave and -jPlay commands are truly an amazing feature of the game. It amazingly captures all the game information in a text file that is really small. You can capture an entire 15 minute game in only a ~10 MB file! Then you can play it back from within the game engine to view a high quality capture of your game. I have had a fair amount of hard crashes though when doing this (mostly during playback). Part of the problem may be that I like to play in fullscreen mode at fairly high resolution. It probably works better in a windowed mode. Would be interested to hear how this works for others. I have also tried sharing these text files with other computers, but would get crashes all the time. I think the screen resolutions have to be identical for both record and playback. Another weird thing about this is that the playback speed can be like 1.5x normal, which is OK, but not what I wanted.

The next issue as OM pointed out is importing that video into a video editing program. When I used SnapZpro to capture the -jPlay movie, it again bogged down the CPU so that the video speed I got was way too slow. Here your CPU is re-creating the gameplay in Torque and capturing a firehose of video capture at the same time.

Well then I got my new video card (an ATI Radeon 9800) - which by the way solved the older problems I was having with game freezes. This card I noticed one day has an S-video out. This is when I got the idea to just hook up my digital camcorder (Sony miniDV) to the S-video port. This way I could control when to turn capture on and off. And I could capture without bogging down the computer in any way (so I can still have fun while I play). The only issue here is that you are in essence hooking up a 2nd monitor, and in order for it to see exactly what you see on your screen you have to put it in "mirroring" mode. This means you have to lower your screen resolution to normal video, which is 800 x 600. This is still very playable, even though my preferred TT resolution is 1024 x 640 (I have an Apple 20" flat screen! XD). The only disadvantage is that I can't toggle to windowed mode with this set-up, which is only an issue if I am hosting (to be able to boot morons for example). For the audio I had to get a splitter cable so I could send sound into my camera as well as out to my regular computer speakers.

So with this set-up, I can capture an hour of footage on a miniDV tape. Then when the tape is full I imported it into iMovie where I had to review all the footage to find the best plays. There were several tapes where I knew my playing sucked or where I didn't witness any good stuff so I didn't bother importing them. IMovie is fantastic and easy to trim the clips down to short snippets, add titles, transitions, effects, soundtracks, etc. (BTW this is one of the best reasons to get a Mac, since iMovie can bring in photos from iPhoto and music from iTunes). The rest is up to your imagination!

The final step is compressing the movie down to a size that is viewable on the web. Here I had to muck around a lot. Having a G5 for this really helps. Anyone familiar with this please chime in. These movies are all 10 - 12 frames/second, medium quality Sorenson 3 compression codec, at 480 x 360 pixels, and mpeg4 mono audio (compressed from within iMovie's expert settings).

Anyway, it was well worth the effort, because I knew you all would enjoy it, and because the action in this game is so GD amazing!! It is just begging to be recorded. What we need now is the ability to record from -z-'s observer UFO that floats in the sky above a game.

WOOOOOT!

-RX

Last edited: Monday, May 10, 2004 at 1:49:12 PM

I have been wanting to get an ATI Radeon 9800 to be able to capture from the S-Video port as you did.

I also experienced the 1.5X playback effect. I discovered that if I held down the spacebar it slowed the pace to normal. The weird thing about the 1.5X is that I experienced it on the Barnyard server (I think) in a team scrum game yesterday also. The server was on a 866 MHZ Mac with 132 ms ping. It was hard to recalibrate myself for that pace!

Yes, that first movie has a very psychodelic flavor to it. Far out!

In general when compressing video you want to use fractions of the original dimension. So 10 FPS down from 30 FPS should be good. Since your source files in iMovie are DV (720 X 480) you might try 360 X 240 to see if that helps quality. The Quicktime Visual Quickstart Guide suggests starting at 10 for the keyframe rate when using Sorenson 3.

As Nathan pointed out on another thread:

This may account for the crashes.

Again, excellent stuff Reagent. I can't wait to do a highlight reel.

Thanks for all the excellent info! That jsave/jplay stuff works great!

However, I wish there was a way to stop playback whenever you wanted. As it is, it has to play all the way thru in order to stop.

Also, how can this file get imported or converted to a video format? Can it be?

Thanks!

@Regeant

Where can I get that skin!!! I like that chrome look!

@ paisano. Try here, it's the Scrum Steeler. Great skins!

HankstaTanksta's Skins

@BC: Thanks for the pointers on compression. I'll check out the Quicktime guide too. Yes, psychadelic is good!

@paisano: Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest downsides of the -jPlay is that you can't stop playback without a hard restart. To convert that to DV format I still think you will need either a camcorder to capture it on film, or a 2nd computer and a camcorder in passthrough mode (analog video in --> firewire out).

@BABA: I just burned the movies to a DVD so I can see them at full quality. FUN!!!

I'm curious to hear how everyone's experiments go. Please post your results!

-RX

Well, I don't have the Radeon 9800 and I'm not about to go get it just to record vids of me playing TT.

What we really need is for BraveTree to open up the playback capabilities of TT in a (hopefully nearby) future update. Many games have replay ability. Since the function is essentially there, it shouldn't be too hard for them to give us a nice GUI way of doing this. And of course for the video to be saved in a common format (avi, mpg, mov, etc.)

Think about it! What better way to promote this game than to send a small video clip to a friend showing them some of the intense action that awaits them for a mere 20 smackeroos! :)

@ Joe and company? Comments on that?

@paisano: That is the classic Scrum Steeler from #1 Tankster/Hanksta Tanksta himself.

It is my preferred skin too.

Tanksta's skin site link is as follows......ahhh I see KBC posted the link already.

Last edited: Monday, May 10, 2004 at 2:08:49 PM

Wow, RX, awesome job! 2 thumbs up man, way up! I laughed, I cried! A cinematic masterpiece. Is it too early to say Oscar? No, I think not!

LC₅₀

@LC50: Thanks!! XD I think I can see it now: Best Online Cartoon Tank Video Game Documentary!

@OM: I noticed that several Powerbooks and laptops come standard with S-video out ports. Maybe you can record games with -jSave and than borrow a laptop to replay it into a camcorder. I agree though that some tools to do this within the game would rock (but we know they are busy...).

-RX

Acky sacky, I cant view em, me and me dum slow pc :( :[

Thanks to KBC and others for the link to the skin!!!

Hollywood's calling, Reg.

Excellent job RX. I had the same idea but I dont have a digital video camera (yet)

Glad to see my suggested video card upgrade is working good for you. In case anybody missed it, ATI makes the best cards. NVIDIA makes good hardware but HORRIBLE drivers. As soon as this job starts my nvidia is getting replaced with an ATI.

Just for kicks I played with different drivers as 56K suggested. Not much difference. What I DID find interesting....i just did a reload of everything because I went from 2 hdd's to a raid array. B4 I loaded the nvidia drivers my commit charge after booting was about 85MB. Just by installing the latest nvidia drivers it now starts at 180mb!! 100 mb of memory all the time??? Video drivers are TOO aggressive....

B

@Bolo: This is the version I use , in case you didn't try them....

Tx 56....connection issue, video issue and ram issue are all contributing...

BTW does anyone know the format that the.txt video files follow?? If there is a format then it can be played and converted in a video program. I cant seem to find any info on the internet.

Any of you TGE owners could probably look it up in the documentation..

B

The second video is hard evidence that RX picks on bolo.....

That was fun with baba, -z-, roshoq on my team. Fun stuff...would have been better if someone on my team helped me score....lol.....:)

That swpie of mine and pass to tally for the goal was kinda cool :)

B

@Bolo: All my secrets revealed! The TT Police are are now reviewing these videos to look for signs of abuse. "I was only defending the goal, Sir" is what I told them... ;)

Yeah that last Lush play was mighty fine :[

-RX

Last edited: Monday, May 10, 2004 at 8:12:12 PM

Wow, the first one was DOPE! I'll watch the rest later...

Nice job Reag!

Those are pretty neat. Good job.

Here is a trailer for a movie I made a while ago. (Completely mockup, of course, I will never make the movie)

This file is on freewebs. If you just click the link below, the download will be very slow. Right Click on the link, and choose "Save As", or "Save to Disk"

Check it out! (Right click here, choose Save to Disk)

If it still downloads slow, just go about your daily internet routine. It will finish sooner or later. ;)

Last edited: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 at 11:16:26 PM

Thanks for all the info Reg, it spawned a few good ideas for the near future. And good job on your part too.

Just FYI, I don't routinely tape games, I just got the bug to make some little movies. I think it's important to have a reasonable expectation of 'privacy' when chatting and so forth during a game. If I am taping I will say so. Or if I am trying to film exclusively and not play I will use the name "Observer (Rx)". That way I hope to be able to get in position to catch the action without interfering. I imagine I will only tape certain league games from here on out.

If anyone has ony other ideas for movies and wants help, please feel free to e-mail me (in profile) or post here.

One idea I had is to have two people tape the same game and then make one movie that shows some of the best plays from two different perspectives - in slow motion! Watch out Monday Night Football!

-RX

It just so happens I got free popcorn

Very cool Reagent. Outstanding work. I hope you don't mind if I download the first one and show it to a few friends of mine. Thay will get a real kick out of it.

And I do hope you plan to make others.

I got the third to download, but can't the second or first. Links jacked?

Finally decided to sit back and watch them, then got bit by the bug and proceeded to play a few rounds of TS with RX! I love the Eagle cry on the cliff jump. Is that KBC's map?

Anyhow, good stuff, RX. That screwball mirroring of the screens in that one movie tells me you've been watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers videos too much (Zeppelin).

This kind of stuff does make me wish the admins had an observer mode.

- BombJames Bomb

@Daim: Thanks. Feel free to share them!

@JJ: Try going to: http://homepage.mac.com/peptoids where you can see the first one. Or you can go to http://dotmac.info/pages/14592 where you can give it a rating!

@JB: I've never seen a Chili Peppers video - I'll have to check it out. Is there one in particular? The cliff jump was on a Mod called "Speedy Island" something I think. Haven't seen it up recently.

-RX

GJ!

Wow... Good job Reag. That's pretty cool :)

I have a digital recorder on my cell phone. I can record 20 second clips and e-mail them in mpeg. Maybe someday they'll come out with a more advanced version of this which will allow us to record and e-mail / save an entire game in mpeg.

W00t! I loved the first one!

BTW, one of the Mods in the first movie (cliff jump, canyon arrow pad, etc) is now called: "As Seen in The Movies"! It's very cool. Anyone know who made that? -RX

That would be me. I'll change the name back to "Speedy Island Scrum" when I put all the maps up again. Glad you liked it! I just couldn't resist the name "As Seen In The Movies" XD

Nice job RX! Just watched your movies. It was fun watching while someone else was driving. I even caught myself leaning in the chair a couple turns and jumps. Hope you have a few more in the works.

MJ

Just watch them for the first time and there sweet. Nice work. B)

Dang.. Can't believe I never got round to watching those RX. Fantastic stuff, I actually still remember playing in some of those games but cant believe how smooth it all is... No flickering lag icon.. No missing shots..

56k Lag Monster sinking into the ground on his way to the goal was just too funny though.

-Z-

Thanks -z-! Fun to see what the game looks like through somone else's eyes eh?

I've been cooking up some ideas for a sequel! Stay tuned. WOOOT!

-Rx

Woot!! Bring it on! Almost wish I had a cam corder or VCR I could hook mine up to so I could show you all what I contend with lol.

Didn't mention it before, but love the added sound effects etc. All three vids have been saved as valuable memorabelia.

Last edited: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 at 8:09:34 PM