PlaneShift

Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Thedrish on May 22, 2006, 03:25:20 pm

Title: Webcam feature
Post by: Thedrish on May 22, 2006, 03:25:20 pm
Wouldn't it be nice if there would be one or perhaps more webcams?

People not in the game can see what goes around in our great world.
You could think of a webcam in Hydlaa, Ojaveda and the Arena.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Kymizer on May 22, 2006, 04:12:33 pm
hahahahaha....that would be funnnny....and then you could listen to convo's too...and maybe install one into one of Harnquist's eyes.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: DaveG on May 22, 2006, 05:23:14 pm
Why?
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Baldur on May 22, 2006, 05:25:05 pm
Lol, hope you're kiddin'.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Karyuu on May 22, 2006, 08:25:35 pm
Everything in-game is in-game. That's why there are no messengers that allow you to contact people in-game when you're out-of-game - because if you want to know what's going on, you fire up your client and get in there.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Thedrish on May 22, 2006, 09:58:07 pm
... because if you want to know what's going on, you fire up your client and get in there.

If you can fire it up of course  ;)
Some might be at work and not have the ability to join in. Having some sort of "webcam" would allow them to see what goes on (just a overview, no interaction or listening in whatsoever).
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Karyuu on May 22, 2006, 10:04:24 pm
That seems rather silly to me. If you're at work, I'm sure you can find other more entertaining ways to spend your time than gaze upon the slow and silent figures of characters wandering through Yliakum. There is no need for an out-of-game "webcam" for those who are bored - at least, no argument has been made here to warrant spending time and effort into such a thing.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Alfonso Knaf on May 22, 2006, 10:10:28 pm
I think the idea is nice, but well thats it: nice...
I tink there is no really reason for this feature, too.
The only thing that might really be usefull is an ingame-recorder, or something like this, to fil events, etc....
But thats another story.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: DaveG on May 22, 2006, 10:30:53 pm
I think CS has a movie recorder in there somewhere, actually.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Alfonso Knaf on May 22, 2006, 10:35:56 pm
Well I found a Textfile with a shortcut mentioned to start the recorder (alt+R)... but this does not work.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: DaveG on May 22, 2006, 10:37:44 pm
The DLL would need to be included in the package.  I'll give it a shot on my build.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: zanzibar on May 23, 2006, 06:49:45 am
Just have familiars that can fly around and be your eyes.  It would be functionally similar.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Kymizer on May 24, 2006, 03:02:56 pm
hahahahaha....that would be funnnny....and then you could listen to convo's too...and maybe install one into one of Harnquist's eyes.

lol...i was just throwing crazy ideas about it..i wasn't being that serious, but it would be intresting to have that recorder work.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Wired_Crawler on May 24, 2006, 07:23:10 pm
Look there for -> Movie recording in CS (http://crystalspace3d.org/docs/online/manual/cs_4.22.3.php#4.22.3). It do works well (I used it successfully on Linux). Remember to prepare a lot of free space on disk before recording.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Alfonso Knaf on May 24, 2006, 08:22:13 pm
How did you get it working?
I tried it too, but it didn't load the plugin.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: zanzibar on May 24, 2006, 11:25:25 pm
Look there for -> Movie recording in CS (http://crystalspace3d.org/docs/online/manual/cs_4.22.3.php#4.22.3). It do works well (I used it successfully on Linux). Remember to prepare a lot of free space on disk before recording.


Cool.  I'll have to try it out later.  This could be ~very~ useful.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: ThomPhoenix on May 25, 2006, 12:04:13 am
I don't think the right dll is packed with PS. But the tutorial says that if you just copy it into the right folder, it should work. I searched a bit and PS already includes the movie recorder config file. This is it's content:
; Key bindings
MovieRecorder.Keys.Record = alt-r
MovieRecorder.Keys.Pause = alt-p

; format of the screenshot filename
; the rightmost string of digits is automatically replaced with a number
MovieRecorder.Capture.FilenameFormat = /this/crystal000.nuv

; Frames per second of the captured movie
MovieRecorder.Capture.FPS = 33.33
; Keep 'real' time in sync with fake time.
; If disabled, everything is rendered at maximum speed - tho the app only
; sees the 'faked' time. Thus everything appears sped up. Useful if you want
; to render a self-running demo to a movie.
MovieRecorder.Capture.Throttle = true

; Quality factor for RTJpeg compression (from 0 to 1)
MovieRecorder.Capture.RTJpegQuality = 1.0

; Size of the captured video, 0x0 to disable rescaling
MovieRecorder.Capture.Width = 0
MovieRecorder.Capture.Height = 0

; Enable LZO lossless compression
MovieRecorder.Capture.UseLZO = true

; Disable RTJpeg lossy compression
MovieRecorder.Capture.UseRTJpeg = false

; Disable the nonstandard RGB format
MovieRecorder.Capture.UseRGB = false


Quote
You can also use the movie recorder with an existing binary without any recompilation. Just place the movie recorder plugin in the application's library directory.
So if someone would dive into CS's SVN and compile that dll we could all be happily recording in PS?  ???
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: DaveG on May 25, 2006, 02:54:47 am
I have the DLL and could compile it in optimized mode if anyone wanted it, however I'm having issues getting the bizzare NuppelVideo codec to work on Windows.  MPlayer just wants to yell at me, and I can't seem to find the codec anywhere else.  :/
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: neko kyouran on May 25, 2006, 03:09:48 am
Media Player is just a piece of crap to begin with.  Try, http://www.videolan.org/vlc/  and see it works.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: DaveG on May 25, 2006, 05:09:58 am
Oh, I don't use Windows Media Player.  (the MPlayer I was refering to is the open-source thing listed on the CS site)  Yeah, it's garbage.  ;)  I use Zoom Player, with vitually ever codec I ever need installed.  I checked the features list for VLC, and they don't have NuppelVideo/NUV1 listed either.  It seems to be a rather obscure codec.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: neko kyouran on May 25, 2006, 05:35:24 am
Ah, had me worried for a second there.   :D  Hmm, never came accross a codec it couldn't handle, I'll have to submit something to see if they will work on getting that one to be supported as well. 

Edit:  Checked with VLC, their forums show it being supported as of April last year.  Build number - 0.8.2~20050414.  I got it installed in home if you got a vid to play.  Shoot me an email and we'll see what hapens.  :)
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Wired_Crawler on May 25, 2006, 11:07:51 am
I have the DLL and could compile it in optimized mode if anyone wanted it, however I'm having issues getting the bizzare NuppelVideo codec to work on Windows.  MPlayer just wants to yell at me, and I can't seem to find the codec anywhere else.  :/

Hmm... Mplayer handles NUV internally, You should not need any additional codecs.

Try -> Avidemux2 (http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/) to transcode NuppelVideo to anything else.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: ThomPhoenix on May 25, 2006, 05:25:41 pm
The CS team should change to another format, NuppelVideo is pretty much dead, even the official website doesn't exist anymore.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Bereror on May 27, 2006, 12:34:10 pm
You can download the CrystalSpace movierecorder plugin from here: movierecorder.zip (http://www.vaikene.net/files/movierecorder.zip). Unpack it into the Planeshift directory and also add this line to the end of the psclient.cfg file:
Code: [Select]
System.Plugins.iMovieRecorder = crystalspace.utilities.movierecorder

It does something, but I couldn't get it working properly. The best I got was 3 frames in a 2.6 MB file, but nothing more.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: DaveG on May 28, 2006, 01:00:03 am
Yep, pretty much what happened when I tried it.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Wired_Crawler on May 30, 2006, 10:32:26 am
Maybe you have the same problem, which I have on Linux. It looks like Alt-r combination activates an auto-repeat future with very high rate. The result is like you pressed Alt-r many times very quickly. I end up with several small files on disk. The workaround is to press and hold Alt-r and release it after a second or so, If you are lucky recording will remain active :)

Ah, it was not like this several versions of CS ago, previously alt-r was working corretly.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: ThomPhoenix on May 30, 2006, 04:30:13 pm
I'm going to fiddle with the settings, I just tried this in-game and I got terrible lag. Then I checked the files I had 6 (?) and one was even 309 MB, while I only used it for a few seconds :lol:

Well, none of the small 2 MB like files worked. The 309 MB file did work, but it contained only 5 secs of gamplay, so this has very bad compression.  ::)

Hmm, I just tried some other settings, but that was no good. After only a few secs of filming, I had 46 files consuming 1,2 GB.
Title: Re: Webcam feature
Post by: Wired_Crawler on May 30, 2006, 07:30:52 pm
If You haven't seen that: Recordings from Einnol and Alleri wedding (http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=23492.msg259644#msg259644).

Clip 1 originally had 480MB (~1300 frames), clip 2 - almost 900MB (~1100 frames). The default framerate at playback time is always 331/3 fps (at least on my computer). It was not real, so I arbitrarily changed it to 20fps for clip 1 and 15 fps for clip 2 - I tried to be close to average fps I was getting in game.

Yes, compression is inefficient, but picture can be captured almost in real time. Almost, because during recording your moves are significantly slower (bullet time effect ;)), and some frames are surely lost. Look at tails of fenkis on clip 2 - they are almost motionless (strobe effect ?).