Posts: 122
From:Bronx, New York, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 02-08-2001 06:47 PM               

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The game I'm making now starts with Lara in Peru, and then discovering a hidden shipyard with a boat about to set sail for Egypt (long trip, huh?). Of course, she has to board the ship eventually, but I didn't want an entire level on the ship. So, rather than triggering the end of the level when she reaches the ship at the end of the shipyard, I show the boat sailing across the ocean for a few seconds, and then end the level.

It's done with a trick use of the fly-by cam. When Lara reaches the ship, I trigger a fly-by cam in a room she can't normally access. This room has the model of the ship (simply made by sculpting the floor and applying appropriate textures), and the fly-by camera slides past it, giving the illusion of the boat moving out towards the front of the screen (essentially, it's the same technique Lucas used to animate the Tie-Fighters in the first Star Wars, but on a far more primitive scale.) Of course, I had to eliminate everything else in the room, or the illusion would be lost (because the background scenery would be moving with the boat.) So it sails at night (I textured the walls and ceiling in all black). It looks pretty crude right now, but it's workable. With a bit of playing around, who knows?

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Posts: 24
From:Rohnert Park, California, USA
Registered: Jan 2001

posted 02-08-2001 07:07 PM               

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Too bad the manual doesn't tell us how the game engine-driven cutscenes are made...they're generated on-the-fly (You can tell because objects you might or might not have picked up are clearly shown if they weren't picked up, and not shown if they were.)

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