Making a movie that is pure AGS...

[Hollister Man]

I needed the movie for my logo and the beginning of my game, but I couldn't get the fli/flc to work right, and AVIs won't work at all on my PC.  So I tiled the frames into a neat room about 320x1600 and used SetViewport in a loop until it finished.  It looks GREAT and it is very much smoother than the flc animation I replaced.  

I can only test on two computers, and wondered what any problems with this could arise.  Any suggestions?  

[scotch]

no, that sounds like a good idea too, as it just uses a normal AGS room there's less likely to be any compatability problems I would guess.

[Andail]

As a general rule it's good to try to "program" your movies instead of recording them in AVI or FLC or whatever.
It will save loads of memory and will give you better control of the movies, as you can change details and such afterwards. Of course, some effects may be hard to imitate.

[Jimi]

Andail is right. It saves you having to switch back and forth, and is a lot "neater".

[Hollister Man]

Thanks for the great feedback!  I thoughtit was a good idea.  The only problem I see is that the larger the animation, the larger the file.  AGS dows not compress the rooms as much as, say, AVI.  

Whenever I use the flc player, I get these stray pixels of odd colors, even playing a blank movie, I get these stupid looking bixels cutting halfway across the screen.  They don't animate either!  

Maybe I will post code for newbies or something, as I said, it is the most professional looking part of my game.  It is really great that Chris is including AVI support and such, but if you can do it better "in-house,"  so much better.

Maybe I'll post a demo of it soon, since I have almost got Daventry coded.

[Pumaman]

Thanks for the great feedback!  I thoughtit was a good idea.  The only problem I see is that the larger the animation, the larger the file.  AGS dows not compress the rooms as much as, say, AVI.  

That's true, but remember it's just one background image that you have, so that should be a lot smaller than a movie of any kind as movies tend to be encoded at around 25 fps.

[Hollister Man]

Well, I use animation shop, which allows you to specfy the duration of each frame individually.   If AGS it runs around 5-10 fps.  It only lasts a second or two.  My "company" logo background is 7120x200.  I have not implemented this portion yet though, since the code will be heck

EDIT  

I just checked the size.  AVI is 2 megs, Fli is 56k, PCX is 76K.  Not too much increase in size for the improved animation quality.  It might not be good for, say... KQ2:RTS's Kolyma flyover movie.  But great for what I need.  I wonder if that is how they did it in SCI days?