Developer Commentary?

(jjpron) #1

A question for the devs…

Would it be possible, once the game ships, to release any sort of a map flyover with commentary?
Something akin to DVD director commentaries, or director podcasts one can listen to while watching a TV show (a-la Gallactica).

I know it’s a dynamic game, but a nice little walkthrough of a certain map with devs explaining the decisions that went into the objectives, terrain, gameplay, what they tried to achieve and such. Everyone can have their say…modelers, artists, coders, level designers, etc

I know it’s wishful thinking, but something like this would certainly be appreciated by all of us hardcore fans, and would give the game something to stand out with over others. (Not that it needs it.)
Especially since we see you guys as Titans, if not Gods themselves, so any words passed down to us would be like shinning beacons of light.

(Joe999) #2

i vote for WMW: Wils’ Mapping Workshop, the series :moo:

but maybe you guys could start before the game ships, those powerpoint slides from quakecon woke the desire for more, much more :slight_smile:

(SniperSteve) #3

There were a few videos that had ‘flyovers’ of the map.

(fattakin) #4

Half Life 2 Ep 1 developer commentary is prety informative and fun, im half way thru playing / listening to it.
So i welcome this idea!

(nUllSkillZ) #5

I think that will be the problem.
It works for SP as you walk along a certain path.
It’s like a movie.

(Isabel Lucas) #6

There are tutorials for the demo maps.

Perhaps there will be for all.

The demo tutorials are here:

GDF:

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/9307/Enemy+Territory:+Quake+Wars+-+GDF+Tutorial

Strogg:

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/9308/Enemy+Territory:+Quake+Wars+-+Strogg+Tutorial

Al.

(ayatollah) #7

I think he knows that, he wants a developer commentary of why such and such was placed here and what they had planned beforehand, etc. I would be all for that, with little vignettes of the devs playing and getting pwned. In fact you must make a SD QW video of all your 1337 moves and failures! I would definately pay extra for that!

(Isabel Lucas) #8

I made one for BF1942 so who knows. Never played QW though so more likely failures than leet moves. My bank account is waiting. :slight_smile:

Al.

PS This is my 1942 video shot on Ghetto Berlin playing against some of the North Americas top clan players, enjoy:

http://files.filefront.com/Youre_no_good_for_me___Highest/;4232010;;/fileinfo.html

PPS Point taken, I misunderstood what he wanted, a developer overview would be nice.

(nUllSkillZ) #9

May be some kind of additional to buy DVD / CD with tutorials for all the maps.
More in depth with additional comments which could be switched on and off…

(BrightSoul) #10

why a video when you can use the game engine?
The tutorial would consist in a recorded demo with a voice mp3 playing on the background. Not only devs, but other people could use this feature for their maps’ tutorial for it is easy to produce and - most important - very lightweight to download along with the map itself.

(Tron-) #11

I’d rather see a development of type feature showing all the early versions of stuff SD tested out when they were just starting with vanilla D3 engine. :smiley:

(Sir. SpungE) #12

Chronicles of Riddick had good commentary.

(JamieL) #13

Going by the number of maps and the large map file sizes which has been previously mentioned at Quakecon, I think it’s quite possible that Splash Damage might be squeezing to fit everything on a single DVD as it is.

If they do have some space to spare, I sure has heck would love commentary features by the team :slight_smile:

(BondyBoy007) #14

If you want an example of good DVD commentary check out “Bubba Ho-Tep”, one of the commentaries is by Bruce Campbell in the character he plays in the film (Elvis)! :clap:

Prehaps SD could do one from the Strogg’s perspective?

(Loffy) #15

I just finished FEAR and it it a great game and it come (atleast my dvd) with a videotrack where the developers and producers talk about the game: They do it while you as a viewer actually see the game being played. I enjoyed this “behind the scenes” video.
I can recommend FEAR. Fun game. Runs on the Doom3 engine.
//L.

PS. In this game I had my first try “the dynamic lighting saved my life”-experience. I was really, really low on health and caught the shadown of an oncoming (silent) enemy in the corner of my eye.

(Bongoboy) #16

F.E.A.R. uses Monolith’s very own LithTech engine, surely? BTW, if you haven’t played Monoliths’ BLOOD (1997), do so immediately.

(jah) #17

i’ve seen this on HL2. This was a pretty cool feature that came with the free level “Lost Coast” of hl2. Valve used some new tech stuff on this level, and to show it, you had an option that you could turn on or off, that would show several hotspots throughout the level (you were actually playing the level while this happened - it wasn’t a video). You could activate these hotspots and they would do a camera animation with background audio from the dev’s where they explained the new features (HDRI, etc). it’s pretty cool because you can walk around through the level and explore things while listening to the dev’s audio speech.

implementing this on et:qw retail game i think that it would be too much (just imagine creating such guides for every level…). but maybe it could be a good idea to be implemented with the release of the dev/mapping/mod tools (i’m assuming that a map source will be available). then again, a developer guide 101 like we had on w:et + ol’good support from SD forums is already enough to get mappers/modders started :slight_smile:

J

(lapa) #18

I think that will be the problem.
It works for SP as you walk along a certain path.
It’s like a movie.[/quote]

Like jah explained, the way it was done by Valve for Half-Life could easily be used in a multiplayer game like QW.

Valve did it for Half-Life 2: episode 1 as well, which is probably comparable to or bigger than the QW maps combined (of course i’m guessing here). I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a hell of al lot of work, but it’s doable. I loved the commentary mode in the Half-Life games and would greatly appreciate seeing it in QW.

This just might be the only thing that could convince me to buy a collectors edition instead of regular.

(SCDS_reyalP) #19

Shogo MAD!

(phray) #20

Shogo MAD![/quote]
shogo was an awesome game!