Movies and monlogue

MrDamage

I know you can do movies in nwn2 because a module I made years ago has cutscenes but I’ve no clue how I did it lol. Too long ago.
Is there any chance this can be added to nwn1. I’d love to be able to make monologued cutscenes to advance a storyline. I’ve checked everywhere and although the expansion packs have movies, nobody seems to know how to do them. If it’s already possible which I doubt, please point me to a tutorial.
Also to be able to add a monologue to the movie is my Wishlist. Thought this was the best place to post this. Also would really like this ability without having to construct a hak.

Proleric

At the moment, you can only play a movie at the end of a module. To have movies at several key points in the story, break it into multiple linked modules. Perhaps EE could allow movies to play during a module, if there were sufficient interest.

You can make your movie in almost any format, then use a third-party tool to convert it to the NWN format.

With a movie, you can set up & record some gameplay without too much scripting, then edit in stills, captions and sound, as in this crude example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnf2aRf1174

However, with the current constraint, most authors find it more convenient to make cutscenes in game. The Gestalt system is highly recommended as it handles many of the tricky timing issues.

You can add voiceover to a cutscene by playing sounds at the appropriate time (both Gestalt and NWScript have functions for this).

Captions for cutscenes are tricky. Many authors use floating text. I prefer to use an in-cutscene conversation, so that players can read at their own pace, and don't have to start over if interrupted.

If you don't want to use cutscenes or movies, you can make a slideshow of captioned images using my Custom GUI or similar.

MrDamage

Proleric said:

At the moment, you can only play a movie at the end of a module. To have movies at several key points in the story, break it into multiple linked modules. Perhaps EE could allow movies to play during a module, if there were sufficient interest.

You can make your movie in almost any format, then use a third-party tool to convert it to the NWN format.

With a movie, you can set up & record some gameplay without too much scripting, then edit in stills, captions and sound, as in this crude example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnf2aRf1174

However, with the current constraint, most authors find it more convenient to make cutscenes in game. The Gestalt system is highly recommended as it handles many of the tricky timing issues.

You can add voiceover to a cutscene by playing sounds at the appropriate time (both Gestalt and NWScript have functions for this).

Captions for cutscenes are tricky. Many authors use floating text. I prefer to use an in-cutscene conversation, so that players can read at their own pace, and don't have to start over if interrupted.

If you don't want to use cutscenes or movies, you can make a slideshow of captioned images using my Custom GUI or similar.

Thankyou very much for that explanation. That makes things a lot clearer. I’m going to have a tinker and see what happens!
Cheers.

DerpCity

Proleric said:

At the moment, you can only play a movie at the end of a module.

I vividly remember the Dreamcatcher modules and even the OC having small "movies" play at the start of each module, including the first one for both. Shouldn't this still be possible?

MrDamage

DerpCity said:

Proleric said:

At the moment, you can only play a movie at the end of a module.

I vividly remember the Dreamcatcher modules and even the OC having small "movies" play at the start of each module, including the first one for both. Shouldn't this still be possible?

I really wish this could be done. I tried back engineering one of the OC mods(prelude) for the very reason you express. There’s nothing there. It appears the movies are seperate and queued by the launcher before starting the mod when they end.
Appears that way anyhow.

DerpCity

I just checked in the Non-EE version of the toolset. The Prelude is set to load the "prelude" starting movie in the non-EE version, and clicking the dropdown loads more movies, which means the EE version isn't properly loading the starting movie list. So, to answer my question: yes it should be possible, but it currently isn't because of a bug. Bummer.

Proleric

To clarify my earlier point, it's only possible to script a movie by ending it with the EndGame function, or, implicitly, by starting a new module with StartNewModule.

Every module can have a starting movie (specified in Module Properties > Advanced).

This does work in EE. However, now, movies have to be in .wbm format, rather than .bik format, and reside in the movies subfolder (in Documents\Neverwinter Nights or the Steam Workshop item).

MrDamage

Proleric said:

To clarify my earlier point, it's only possible to script a movie by ending it with the EndGame function, or, implicitly, by starting a new module with StartNewModule.

Every module can have a starting movie (specified in Module Properties > Advanced).

This does work in EE. However, now, movies have to be in .wbm format, rather than .bik format, and reside in the movies subfolder (in Documents\Neverwinter Nights or the Steam Workshop item).

Ahaaaa, very interesting. Yeah I just opened up prelude and checked events hoping to find an on enter script to trigger a movie which as you know doesn’t exist. Didn’t check the advanced tab. Thankyou so much for the info.