#3112 - Link - Tue Feb 18, 2003 3:59 pm
Like a beginning movie in the commercial game of GBA before the game or during?!
#3113 - tepples - Tue Feb 18, 2003 4:22 pm
So you want to put an opening movie into your game.
Are you talking about the movies they had on Super NES games? Those are easy. Write some code that can move the backgrounds and sprites and change the palettes and tiles based on a script.
Or are you talking about the fmv movies they had on PlayStation games? Those are a bit harder to pull off on the GBA. You'll probably need to license a commercial codec for those.
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Last edited by tepples on Tue Feb 18, 2003 8:01 pm; edited 1 time in total
#3121 - Link - Tue Feb 18, 2003 5:39 pm
Do u thing at the begginning movie of Castlevania or Ryman or inside whatever other game, before the game starts!
We can see also others tipe of movies especially in RPG games when the player walk without i move it and appear the scenes with texts or mountains crashs!
#3127 - ampz - Tue Feb 18, 2003 7:54 pm
Most intro "movies" are just scripted animated sprites and backgrounds.
Sprite animation is very easy.
A full screen resolution "movie" is also very easy (just use a bitmap mode and uncompressed graphics), the hard part is to fit in into a GBA cart.
You'll get a few seconds of movie from a standard sized cart, if uncompressed... :-)
There are some built BIOS decompression routines... you might be able to use thoose to extend the movie to about ten seconds... :)
For more than that you'll need a full featured video codec.
#3164 - Link - Wed Feb 19, 2003 10:50 am
Where is this full featured video codec?
#3174 - ampz - Wed Feb 19, 2003 12:45 pm
You buy it.
#3176 - Link - Wed Feb 19, 2003 1:00 pm
ok but what is its name?
#3180 - Splam - Wed Feb 19, 2003 1:43 pm
Mytik Movie http://www.mystik-edge.co.uk/ hehe little plug for a friend ;) Don't expect it to be cheap though...
#4142 - J-Rod - Thu Mar 20, 2003 7:48 pm
There's also the 4X codec that the Matrix video was used with.
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#5461 - joemmac - Mon Apr 28, 2003 8:15 pm
Where can I find more info on the 4X codec, or how to use it? Can I get a copy to make my own GBA videos?
#5641 - J-Rod - Sun May 04, 2003 4:35 pm
It appears that the main site, www.4xtechnologies.com is no longer in existance. I dug up this page on the format, maybe it'll help provide some clues. http://www.pcisys.net/~melanson/codecs/4xm-format.txt Google is your friend.
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#5772 - Link - Thu May 08, 2003 11:59 am
however in game intro (presentation for example in castlevania when there is an eclipse and bats flying and is showed the logo of castlevania) it is a series of 256*160 Bitmaps or what?
#5779 - niltsair - Thu May 08, 2003 2:38 pm
No,
To achieve all those effect, they're using mode 0,1,2. Those mode allow to you to use 4 layers on top of each others. Those 4 layer can be moved independantly of each other, making it easy to create some effects. So the rear most layer could be clouds moving slowly, then in front, some forest, moving at a slow pace, based on the character walking, then in front of that, some others object, like fence, houses, .... And top layer coudl be a logo, with the dialog text, or whatever. Finally, you'd just use some sprites for the characters moving around.
The limit of this method is that you need to use Tiles(8x8squares) combined with a Map(tell which square to use where on the screen). Using this you can easily display a screen size of 256x256, 256x512, 512x256, 512x512 pixels (of course, only 240x160 is visible at anytime, you need to scroll to see the rest) but only ~900Tiles(in 256colors) or ~1800Tiles(in 16 colors) can be displayed at once (you can change them at any time though). So this could cover about 57600 square pixels, or a 240x240pixels areas that you have to share between 4 layers of 256x256 surface. The trick is to re-use the same tiles at many places.
#5811 - Link - Thu May 08, 2003 11:39 pm
| niltsair wrote: |
No,
To achieve all those effect, they're using mode 0,1,2. Those mode allow to you to use 4 layers on top of each others. Those 4 layer can be moved independantly of each other, making it easy to create some effects. So the rear most layer could be clouds moving slowly, then in front, some forest, moving at a slow pace, based on the character walking, then in front of that, some others object, like fence, houses, .... And top layer coudl be a logo, with the dialog text, or whatever. Finally, you'd just use some sprites for the characters moving around.
The limit of this method is that you need to use Tiles(8x8squares) combined with a Map(tell which square to use where on the screen). Using this you can easily display a screen size of 256x256, 256x512, 512x256, 512x512 pixels (of course, only 240x160 is visible at anytime, you need to scroll to see the rest) but only ~900Tiles(in 256colors) or ~1800Tiles(in 16 colors) can be displayed at once (you can change them at any time though). So this could cover about 57600 square pixels, or a 240x240pixels areas that you have to share between 4 layers of 256x256 surface. The trick is to re-use the same tiles at many places. |
Perfect you are been very exhaustive, i thanx u! :)
Now i would ask you same suggestions about a graphic program to use to make the bitmap, or sprite and so on...
i used Gimp, Photoshop but the first is bad, really, the second one when i export the image in pcx format i get an error when compile the bin file (usually i make graphics with Firework save it in gif 256 color and open it with photoshop, finally export the image in pcx file...)
I would a Graphic Program that support the exportation of all the format and all th colour...
Firework permit the only 256 color image at gif, no for Bmp or Tiff or Png!
#5824 - tepples - Fri May 09, 2003 5:51 am
| Link wrote: |
| i used Gimp, Photoshop but the first is bad, really |
What did you not like about GIMP?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#5958 - Hallis - Tue May 13, 2003 9:42 pm
I would prefer something like the matrix trailer, just a stand alone movie. I emailed the address in that text file linked a few posts ago but wanted to know if any of you had any experience in doing such things.
#5984 - Ghostlight - Wed May 14, 2003 6:48 pm
I just posted in the other thread about this same issue. There used to be a free, but watermarked codec available, but the company went out of buisness I believe. The file sizes from that arent too bad at all, video is a bit pixely (10-12fps) but you can have sound as well.
Here's a sample - it looks way better on hardware then emu though
http://www.nuclearjet.com/images/roadtrip2.gba
Just right click and save
#5991 - joemmac - Wed May 14, 2003 8:40 pm
You're right, the resolution and frame rate are less than perfect, but it is a neat codec. Did you make this video yourself with it? And do you know where one could find a copy of the codec?
#6031 - Ghostlight - Thu May 15, 2003 6:20 pm
I did make that video myself. The techno pipeline is as follows -
Shot on a Hi8 Camcorder - digitized at 320x240 (iirc) - rendered as a series of .bmp stills - then put through the pred vid codec - which is then put into a simple GBA file.
I might have the original .zip from predvid somewhere - let me poke around a bit.
#6037 - Hallis - Thu May 15, 2003 6:50 pm
Id love a copy of it as well.
#6082 - Ghostlight - Fri May 16, 2003 5:14 pm
Hey Hey,
found an old disc with the .zip on it that was the original download. Got it from gbadev.org back in the day from that old pred dev link that used to be up.
Ive got it online if you would like it just send me a PM and I can give you the link.
#6098 - Hallis - Sat May 17, 2003 3:02 am
I cant find a good program to seperate an AVI frame by frame to BMP files, ive tried AVI2BMP and a few others. nothing seems to have any kind of automation.
#6099 - Daikath - Sat May 17, 2003 3:11 am
virtuadub works great http://download.com.com/3000-2194-10198363.html?tag=lst-0-1
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#6104 - Ghostlight - Sat May 17, 2003 4:51 am
I use AVI2BMP as the indexing is easy to set up with the pred vid codec - Make sure your AVI is the right size and fps - then it should work fine. The filing system buries the files a bit, but I havent had any trouble with it.
#6180 - Daedro - Mon May 19, 2003 3:34 am
Heres a 5 minute video from the Ice Age movie, great graphics most of the time accept when they needed 258 colors ;)
http://www.gbanow.net/gba/demos/Ice%20Age%20Video%20Demo%20(PD).zip
Keep note, such high quality that is it 7.3mb, and the normal gba cartridge is only 8.0mb .. just noting for link that these kinds of things cant be used very long in his game.
Funny video! :)