@database Amiga Full Motion Video FAQ @author (c) 1996 Markus Castren @$VER:FmvFAQ.guide V0.1 @font topaz.font 8 @node Main "Amiga FMV FAQ Main" Welcome to the Amiga Full Motion Video FAQ! --------------------------------------------- (C) 1996 By Markus Castren Version: 0.1 - /02/1996 Welcome to the first Amiga Full Motion Video FAQ. This FAQ is fully consentrated on full motion video (from now on known as FMV) on Amiga computers. As the FMV side on Amiga is still very small I will update this FAQ always when something new will pop out! All kinds of comments and information for this FAQ is highly appreciated. See the @{"Contacing the Author" link contact} part for more details. NOTE: At the moment this FAQ is mainly meant for full motion video games and demos. No other software will be included as I don't have time nor the interest to keep track on these. @{"PRESS HERE FOR THE CONTENTS!" link contents} @endnode @node "Contents" @toc Main Contents: --------- @{"Larger Scale Introducton to the Subject" link intro} - Why, how and when? @{"Full Motion Video on Amigas" link amigafmv} - How do we do it on Amiga. @{"Reviews of FMV Games and Demos" link reviews} - Not many of them, yet! @{"FMV FAQ History and Update Information" link history} - Check out what's new! @{"Contacting the Author" link contact} - Support is really needed ;) @endnode @node Intro "Larger Scale Introduction to the Subject" @toc Contents Larger Scale Introduction to the Subject: ----------------------------------------- Full Motion Video games, movies and clips have been already a while in use on the PC market and are finally (but slowly) moving to Amigas too. As everyone probably knows, Amiga is also very capable of doing FMV (and many other things too ;)) very well. The only disadvantages on FMV specially on Amiga computers has been the often very big size of the games as CD-Roms aren't yet very popular and also a lousy playability (Well, it's a question of taste). What is full motion video then? Well, it's basicly pure video picture, animation and sound. One might have a picture already from the name "Full Motion Video". The games that use FMV are usually full of animated video clips and speech (like Phantasmagoria and many others on PC). Everything in the game is made by following the playing animation sequences and that is the reason why the players part usually isn't so great - the games are more like interactive movies. The FMV clips are very often taken from some films or TV programs or even selfmade (if someone has the equipment!). Probably one of the reasons why FMV has become so popular is just that it's more fun to watch and hear real picture and speech instead of some hand-drawn looking cartoon animation stuff. The reason for why I started writing this FAQ is that I think this kind of a new technology, if I may call it so, needs to be supported to become more popular. I'm also a great fan of FMV games (well, fan of everything new on Amiga nowdays) and as I bought a CD-Rom, I realized that there were actually NO cd-rom games only for Amiga (No CD32) and these FMV games usually are on CD's due their big sizes. The next part @{"Full Motion Video on Amigas" link AmigaFMV} will tell more about FMV on Amiga and how is it made etc. In case some FMV programmer is interested in explaining a bit more about the coding of such games, I'm sure to include it in this FAQ. @endnode @node AmigaFMV "Full Motion Video on Amigas" @toc Contents Full Motion Video on Amigas --------------------------- In this section we'll take a look at how can full motion video be done on Amiga computers. I'm still ready to include details from any coder who's willing to tell me some. @{"Kenneth Isley's way" link kifmv} - The way Murder is done! @endnode @node kifmv "Kenneth Isley's way" @toc AmigaFMV Kenneth Isley's (Murder) Way ---------------------------- Probably, the most interesting thing is to see that Murder was made with Amiga 500 equipped with a turbo. This means that the machines speed isn't actually the MOST important thing when talking about full motion video. The speed of the drive where the game is installed to is much more affective The other hardware conserning the making of the digitizing were Vidi Amiga 24bit graphic digitizer, a homemade sampler for the sounds, a Samsung 4 head VCR and a Panasonic CamCorder. The software side of Murder was partly made with C language, DeckBrowser and with CanDo. The video is read into a film making program as individual Ham images in a numbered sequence, and associated with a sound file. This data is then writen out to one long file as a series of picture data, interleaved with sound data for that frame. The films in murder play at 10 Frames/Sec, so each image has 1/10 of a second of sound data that plays while it's on the screen. @endnode @node Reviews "Reviews of FMV Games and Demos" @toc Contents Reviews of FMV Games and Demos: ------------------------------- This is the part where all the reviewed games and demos can be found. I think there's no need to explain the reviewing system - it's kind of a self explainary. Here is the list of the games and demos currently available: @{"Tomcat" link tomcat} @{"Desert Apache" link da} @{"Murder" link murder} @{"Rocko" link rocko} @{"Karate Babe" link kb} (The titles are in order which I got them.) @endnode @node "TomCat" @toc reviews ========================================================================= Name................ TomCat - the Hunt Begins Archive on Aminet... TOMCAT.lha (game/demo) Author.............. John Graham/Dark Unicorn Prods. (virtual@scsn.net) Requirements........ Any Amiga w/ 1MB Chip, 2MB Total, 12MB of HD/CD-Rom Type................ SW Score............... *** ========================================================================= Tomcat was the first FMV game appearing to Amiga. In TomCat you take the part of a pilot of F-14 fighter jet and fly different missions like P.O.W. rescues, escorts and air-to-air combats with enemy Migs. I still don't have the full version of it so I can only review the demo version. The full version promises lots of more (The demo is only about 6MB's and the full game 12MB's). In the demo, there's only one waypoint with its missions which gives a good picture of the game. About the system. The game is seems to be made with AMOS as it can be quitted by pressing CTRL-C. It runs smoothly without any bigger pauses depending on the speed of a harddisk (Well, mine seems to be fast enough ;)). Optimizing ones harddisk will help, if the game is too slow. TomCat plays in a 1/4 screen and the graphics are only black and white which makes it possible to run on an ECS machine. Also voices and sounds are synchronized with the animations. For some reason, the demo crashes on my machine on every second target. Don't know for sure if the bug is also in the final version. The CD-version is said to be available soon. There's also a kind of a sequel to TomCat which is called Desert Apache. It uses the new DVE (Digital Video Engine) system from Dark Unicorn Productions. I'm not sure if it's already used in Tomcat so better be quiet ;). More about the DVE system in @{"Desert Apache" link da}. @endnode @node da "Desert Apache" @toc reviews ========================================================================= Name................ Desert Apache Archive on Aminet... DApacheX(1,2,3).lha (game/demo) Author.............. John Graham/Dark Unicorn Prods. (virtual@scsn.net) Requirements........ Any Amiga w/ 1MB Chip, 2MB Total, 7MB of HD/CD-Rom Rec: 020 or Accl. Amiga w/ 000 & Fast Ram for Full Screen. Type................ SW Score............... **** ========================================================================= @endnode @node "Murder" @toc reviews ========================================================================= Name................ Murder Archive on Aminet... Murder_XXofXX(1-12).lha (game/misc) Author.............. Kenneth Isley (krisley@eos.ncsu.edu) Requirements........ Any Amiga w/ 1MB Chip/Fast or 2MB Chip & 45MB of HD Type................ SW Score............... **** ========================================================================= Now this is some real FMV here ;). In Murder you take the role of a private detective whose case is to solve a murder (Have I seen this before?). The game play happens so that you question the people, make phone calls and go from place to place. There's a time limit left to make the game more difficult. I only have the unregistered version, so I couldn't play it very far. The game itself takes 45mb and consists of lots of animation clips and speech and sound. It would be very nice to have it on a CD, but so far it's not possible unless you do it your self (Zip Disks are available!). There's a CD version coming out on March on some German Amiga magazine. Murder rolls on HAM mode (4096 colors). Despite the fact that the docs say Murder plays on 1/4 screen, the version I have is in NTSC full screen which looks pretty strange (any reason for that??). The frame rate is 10 fps which makes it run smoothly depending of harddrives speed. The lowest transfer rate for Murder is around 140k/sec but that shouldn't be any problem nowdays. Due to the interest of the Amiga community Murder will be ported to Macintosh and if no interest is found after the CD release of Murder, the whole project will be dropped from Amiga ;((.. So, all you people with CD-Roms and big hard disks; order it now! :) @endnode @node "Rocko" @toc reviews ========================================================================= Name................ Rocko Archive on Aminet... rocko.lha (game/misc) Author.............. Daniel Clinton (DM9200@appstate.edu) Requirements........ Any Amiga with 1MB Chip Type................ PD Score............... ** ========================================================================= Rocko isn't actually a "real FMV game". First of all, it's made with AMOS, which as a matter of fact doesn't mean a thing ;). The source code is included in the archive so that anyone can use or edit it. The game is made is made only by viewing digitized screens quickly after each other and that fakes the animation from being full motion. It's only quickly displayed ham6 frames. It doesn't actually even look like FMV but I think I will still include it here as it's near it :). The game rolls pretty smoothly although the small amout of frams makes it look a bit sticky. Rocko itself is a boxing game where you tried to beat the opponent by hitting him untill he loses his energy (OOH!). Fighting is made via key- board and there are some guide arrows in the screen. Despite that, I think the game's pretty hard and messy (might be my skills). It still goes for a "poor-mans-fmv-game" ;) About the future of Rocko. Daniel said he hadn't planned anything yet for sure but there might be some small improvements around like better pictures and digitizations, more frames and even real life boxers. @endnode @node kb "Karate Babe" @toc reviews ========================================================================= Name................ Karate Babe Archive on Aminet... sknight.lha (game/demo) Author.............. Travis Riggs (travis@axsamer.org) Requirements........ An anim player ;) Type................ The anim is PD and the full game will be commercial Score............... - (looks promising) ========================================================================= The demo of Karate Babe is only a short animation which can be viewed by any up-to-date animation viewer. It won't actually give any kind of picture of the full game. This is what the info file says about it: --- The animation sknight.anim was produced by Travis Riggs, the author of Composite Studio Pro, a Video Toaster utility. It requires a 68000 and 1 meg of RAM to play, and although a faster CPU and more RAM are reccomended, they are by no means neccesary. This demo is but a shade of what the complete game, Karate Babes, will be. The full game will have full-screen Full Motion Video, will be in color, with both AGA and non-AGA versions, will have a kicking soundtrack, and will have some of the best gameplay that you've ever seen in a fighting game. Look for the game Karate Babes coming your way soon! --- For me, it seemed like the project would have bemmen dead for a long time now untill I emailed Travis and asked if anything is going to happen to this demo. For my surprise he told me that the project is still running well. The game will be out only on a CD-Rom and is planned also for multiple platforms, such as Sony Playstation. The planned release date is sometimes next summer. He also told that the characters of the game will be the world & national champions in martial arts!! ;) The animations should be nothing compared to the final game. So, let's be on a look out for this one. @endnode @node "History" @toc Contents Amiga Full Motion Video FAQ History and Updates: ------------------------------------------------ 0.1 ( /02/1996) - First release! Reviewed: TomCat, Desert Apache, Murder, Rocko and Karate Babe (animation). @endnode @node Contact "Contacting the Author" @toc Contents How to Contact the Author: -------------------------- Find this FAQ even a little bit nice or useful? Then don't hesitate contacting me, as I really need support because this FAQ is only in such a early state. Send me feedback, comments, new demos, suggestions.. anything is welcome! I just want to see if people have noticed this FAQ and are reading it. Also, if you're planning of doing a new FMV game, I'd really like to know about it and include information about into this FAQ. Here are the best ways of contacing me: Snailmail: (Not prefered)! Markus Castren Bronrinne 3 as 19 02400 Kirkkonummi Finland EMail: slice@xgw.fi (Prefered!) On IRC: Ganja_NVX (Usually on #NvX) More information can also be found by "fingering" my account and from my WWW Home page as soon as it's finished! BTW, this FAQ might look quite much like the Amiga Texture Mapping FAQ (Hi Steffen! Keep up the great work! :)), but does that really matter? Better not.. =) So, in some case mentioned above or for any other reason, contact me! It's probably the only way of keeping this FAQ alive. If I won't get any feedback I think I won't continue writing this FAQ! Ofcoz, also remeber to BUY or REGISTER those games available to keep the programmers happy!! ;) Laters! P.S. Sorry for all those spelling errors there. ;) @endnode