Proposal: Official construct Showreel

lol yeah and probably today I will get stuff done too but back to topic shall we?

http://www.box.net/shared/dsd43anbtd

had nothing to do so i compiled a whole bunch of my stuff for this.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/666516/MRT_SEZ.exe

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/666516/Hopabout.exe

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/666516/drippydemo.exe

Wow Quazi... You've been spending quite a lot of time with construct huh? Some really awsome stuff in there.

There's the submission thread for everyone.

scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php

There's the submission thread for everyone.

Cool.

Can anyone recommend an open source or free alternative to Fraps. I had vidcapped a two games I made, but they have that awful "Fraps" watermark on each vid.

There was one called CamStudio (or something similar to that) but it acted wonky when I tried recording 720P video a few months ago. That said, since it doesn't need audio maybe the recording would look better.

Anyone?

I assume that the show reel will be one of those montage-set-to-music deals, so you probably won't need any audio at all. If that's the case then yeah, CamStudio should be fine. I tested it out recently and it captured video just fine, but when I tried capturing audio too it went bonkers on me.

box.net/shared/dsd43anbtd

had nothing to do so i compiled a whole bunch of my stuff for this.

You have some really cool looking stuff there Quazi, but none of it is really in any sort of finished state. It's all a bunch of tech demo stuff that is neat to play with, but I don't think it'd be that impressive as a five second clip. Out of all of that I would recommend that the evolution and the blobber demos go into the reel because they're the most polished and finished-looking. Perhaps Mr Winch, if you want to add some graphics to it (it looks like a lot of placeholders). Likewise with the IK Robot... the robot itself looks really nice but just having a robot walking on a plain black background won't look all that impressive on video.

Just my two cents. I think the reel should showcase more finished-looking things, is all.

Hi.

I like the idea too! But have a few questions:

�Record at 25fps at 720p HD resolution� � what should be the screen resolution? 1280x720 (16:9) ? And what if the original game is 640x480 (4:3)? Capture it in 640x480 (4:3) or remake the game in 1280x720 (16:9)? Or simply run the application in the fullscreen mode and capture as it is (4:3)?

�Use the standard MPEG format� � MPEG 1 or MPEG 2? May I use MPEG 4?

�Don't include the audio� � I would advise to leave the sound without music, i.e. original game sounds (sound of jumping, shooting, etc. ) + main musical theme which you will select for the showreel. I think it will keep the atmosphere and make the video more fun.

Will only one person create and edit the video? Or everyone can try to make his own version of the showreel?

I've previously worked in an advertising agency, made video ads and presentation films. And I have some ideas about what the final video should be. <img src="http://i987.photobucket.com/albums/ae352/constructgame/ge.gif">

Can we use h.264? It's a standard, and a much better one than mpeg1.

Yeah, I was going to ask similar questions about the submissions...

Why 25 FPS? Why not 30, or any FPS? Any decent video editing software should be able to handle it all.

And why MPEG 1? That standard is about 20 years old now. And same thing as above, any decent video editing software should be able to handle any common codec that you throw at it.

I think the best would be to ask for videos in the best quality possible: a balance of resolution, smoothness, and codec quality. And with sound effects, but no music.

Just an outsider's opinion though, I don't have anything to submit, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I do want to see Construct continue to succeed and expand its user base though, so I'm trying to help.

Instead of worrying about codecs, why not submit EXEs or .caps to an editor who takes videos?

i was just submitting a whole bunch of things i'd done in the past, none of them were ever really "meant" to look finished, but whatever you guys finds look cool but could do with some improving on i could always flesh out some more for this, i submitted this stuff way early so it's no problem

Instead of worrying about codecs, why not submit EXEs or .caps to an editor who takes videos?

yea exactly, then they'll be able to better put it in context with the rest of the stuff in the video anyways, and they wont have to download giant HD video files that might not even make the cut.

Wouldn't this be better to do after Construct is at 1.0 and bug-free? I realize many of the examples would not change but still, I think this "showcase" is still premature.

Well, recording videos would ensure that the person recording videos doesn't miss anything cool.

If we're doing such small clips, I don't think it's a big deal file size wise. We could also submit smaller preview videos for voting. Also, video would make it easier for voting as well, since we'd all be voting on the exact same thing, whereas if we play a game we wouldn't know exactly what was going to be in the video.