Opening Cutscene

[Text zooms in at a hard-to-read angle] "Long, long ago, in a galaxy very similar to our own..." [the rest is blurred because it's flying away into the distance so fast.]

Care must be taken with text. And narration - say something stupid, or with an accent that makes someone think it sounds like another word, and we have a problem in houston. Text would need to be very dramatic to compete with some of the other ideas here. Also, the cutscene being our first impression, we really want people to be "sold" (yeah, I know it's free, but people have to want it too) from about 10 seconds in.

I can tell you this: In regards to openers, I skip the one for the Sims every time and always watch the one for myst. Why? Because the Myst one is important to the rest of the game (and has epic music, narration, and visual, especially considering the age of some of the first few games,) and the sims one is a badly-done machinima with a jangly tune.

Sorry, but... I've never seen either of those so I actually have no idea what you're talking about.

And how will the formation of the universe look? Light was just... There. Everywhere. White, throughout the entire universe (admittedly small at the time). And within a millisecond the big bang had entered a state of rapid growth and stuff was being rapidly created and destroyed and was hurtling around randomly and subatomic particles were dividing into groups which joined into protons and neutrons and then all of the anti-matter was annihilated and I don't think the average guy can take all that in in under a second. Not saying they're too dumb, it's just too fast for the average human brain to perceive. So some sort of cool slo-mo, maybe? Although, not much to see. The light will still just be white throughout all of this, the energies will just stop light working for vision. So what do we put on the screen? White? And for how long? And once all that is over? Black? We really would need some commentary to explain what's happening to make all the waiting bearable, or else show it on the uber-microscopic level, with all the tiny particles whizzing around.

I wonder what it would sound like, though... Impossibly loud? Or do quarks not have enough mass for any sort of sound-making... Hmm... Maybe we can stick with music.

If we want epic music to go along with it, Adagio For Strings was great for epic atmosphere in Homeworld. I'm not sure what getting rights to use it involve, though, but probably money. But still... If we make our own music, it'll have to be a rival to that in epicness, and that's a challenge.

On the other hand we could have the formation of the universe to 'Friday'. I have to put ROFL at the thought of that.

Dudeman wrote:

Quote :

At first you can see nothing... Only blackness. Then, as your camera moves forward–which you can't tell it's doing since there is nothing to base your movements on–and which must start quickly for the player to not think his game just died–a small, bright light begins to appear, in the center of your screen. Gradually, it enlarges, until you finally realize that it is all of the universe, crumpled into a tiny ball of light. Sparks are orbiting it at extreme speeds, and rays of light seem to light up the world around them. The bright source of light, seemingly so harmless, suddenly explodes in a light so bright that the screen turns white... And then blackens. Like going blind, your can't see a thing. Then, like gaining your vision back, you begin to see clouds of gasses... Just floating there...

At the very end...

Quote :

Suddenly your camera plunges into the newborn planet's atmosphere, straight toward the ground...
Until the moment in which the camera looks like it'll hit. Then the screen suddenly turns black. The Thrive logo flickers to life, like an old light turning on, and a vertical beam of light passes along it. It fades into the blackness and you begin the game.

I actually quite like this. I am beginning to learn how to do cgi animations and stuff Once i get better i could help out with making this

@Mysterious Calligrapher- i didn't know anyone else actually still played Myst but me!

The Uteen wrote:

On the other hand we could have the formation of the universe to 'Friday'. I have to put ROFL at the thought of that.

specialk2121 wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

On the other hand we could have the formation of the universe to 'Friday'. I have to put ROFL at the thought of that.

I think we may have discovered an Easter egg (with Rebbecca Black's permission). But on the other hand, we've agreed on panspermia theory for populating the planet? On the other other hand, I think Stephen Fry could be a great voiceover guy. Or Stephen Merchant. The English accent gives me shivers...

Maybe we can put in Two Steps From Hell music? I think some of them would fit, don't know the names right now though...
Great ideas here!!!

2creator wrote:

specialk2121 wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

On the other hand we could have the formation of the universe to 'Friday'. I have to put ROFL at the thought of that.

I think we may have discovered an Easter egg (with Rebbecca Black's permission). But on the other hand, we've agreed on panspermia theory for populating the planet? On the other other hand, I think Stephen Fry could be a great voiceover guy. Or Stephen Merchant. The English accent gives me shivers...

Maybe we can just have one of our English people voice it. If not, oh well.

Friday. Creation of universe.

For the thing where it would be all white, it would be all white. For like two seconds. Then it would gradually go back to black, but suddenly with gasses... Which you can't se for a few seconds. So it'd be all black. Then there would be some protostars, and you'd be able to see the gasses.

Why do we need an English accent? Plus, if his will be worldwide, then you'd need to say everything in many different languages. That's the problem with voiceovers.

Dudeman wrote:

Why do we need an English accent? Plus, if his will be worldwide, then you'd need to say everything in many different languages. That's the problem with voiceovers.

True. If people ask for voicings we can patch them in the languages that we have available to us. Do we have anything planned right now that requires voicings?

No. We don't have a script yet.

I think we should wait until specialk2121 makes it and it gets polished before we worry about voiceovers.

Im starting on it now
but i am going to need like a layout for what the video is going to look like

blame my dad. Scio and I inherited the nerd gene from him. I've only completely beaten one out of those games (Uru) because we keep having to reinstall. And I'm stuck in the spaceship in Myst, likewise stuck in unlocking the island with the observatory domes in Riven. Barely started revelations before I left for college...
/calli is a secret gamer ot

A suddenly white background (representing the big bang) actually could do something for the drama of it all, especially if the music suddenly kicks in to epicness. We might have to play on it to make sure that no one's screen settings are on high enough to burn their retinas, though...

I beat riven and Myst and am stuck on Exile

But back to topic
/i think it should start with a black screen slowly zooming in on a white spec of light
Then all of a sudden the spec explodes into a white screen it then fades to see stars and galaxies and gasses all zooming past the camera
Then the camera will pan around and zoom in on one of these galaxies. It will then see a bunch of stars with disks of rocks and gasses floating around them
We then see these rocks collide with each other to for planets
after all the chaos the camera will zoom in a planet and almost hit the ground, then the screen goes black and the thrive logo slowly appears with the main theme in the background.


I wanna make sure to get this okayed by everybody before i start

specialk2121 wrote:

I beat riven and Myst and am stuck on Exile

Awesome

I wanna make sure to get this okayed by everybody before i start

It's okay by me.

Something I've been thinking is having the camera start in void, just a black background, and then seeing a small flash slightly off center, followed by a rapidly expanding wall of light like you guys have been saying. Then you are in the universe. Maybe we could have a brief matter vs anti-matter thing going on with some white flashes on a black background (this would all have subtitles explaining what is going on) until finally one side wins and stars begin to form, and then we go to the usual planets, supernovae, etc.

Dudeman wrote:

Whoa. Everything has been switched around

I wasn't hare on the old forums, so sorry for that...
Alright, we'll do the formation of the universe. But we need some sort of script for what actually happens. Anybody want to do that? I'm not writing a new one. Like, for instance...

Quote :

At first you can see nothing... Only blackness. Then, as your camera moves forward–which you can't tell it's doing since there is nothing to base your movements on–and which must start quickly for the player to not think his game just died–a small, bright light begins to appear, in the center of your screen. Gradually, it enlarges, until you finally realize that it is all of the universe, crumpled into a tiny ball of light. Sparks are orbiting it at extreme speeds, and rays of light seem to light up the world around them. The bright source of light, seemingly so harmless, suddenly explodes in a light so bright that the screen turns white... And then blackens. Like going blind, your can't see a thing. Then, like gaining your vision back, you begin to see clouds of gasses... Just floating there...

At the very end...

Quote :

Suddenly your camera plunges into the newborn planet's atmosphere, straight toward the ground... Until the moment in which the camera looks like it'll hit. Then the screen suddenly turns black. The Thrive logo flickers to life, like an old light turning on, and a vertical beam of light passes along it. It fades into the blackness and you begin the game.

I'm not too keen on narrations. It feels to me that videos with only sound effects that show you what happened are epicer than ones where you are told what happens...

If we're doing anything like narrations, then I think should be text.

IMO, I think something like this is the best way to go. We just need to iron out what's in the middle, which shouldn't be much as it's only a cutscene.

By the way, don't you think we should just have some sort of placeholder storyboard before actually working out all that CGI to get a good idea of what it's going to be like? After all there are more important things to work on as well.

I am going to start with a storyboard because it would help me get an idea of how the animation will go

specialk2121 wrote:

I am going to start with a storyboard because it would help me get an idea of how the animation will go

Go for it. It would help a good deal.

Matter vs. Antimatter... Oh, dear, hauling out my astrophysics. Not certain you'd be able to see it, though. And the scale would be so small... though if someone knows enough about it to represent it, I say go for a few seconds. It could be epic.

Oh, by the way, the Big Bang explosion will look like an explosion (The kind with spikes or that are perfect spheres), so the screen will not go immediately from black to white. A second of transition. It won't be vey bright, either. Simply white.

Dudeman wrote:

Oh, by the way, the Big Bang explosion will look like an explosion (The kind with spikes or that are perfect spheres), so the screen will not go immediately from black to white. A second of transition. It won't be vey bright, either. Simply white.

I think a smoke and flame explosion would be a bad choice, but maybe sort of a ball of energy expanding instead?

I didn't mean smoky explosions, I meant these kinds:

I'm thinking we should base this game's small amount of speculative nature on the Holographic Universe theory. works excellently for a game.

I didn't understand that, but I'm sure you guys will, so good luck.