In-game cutscenes?

[zanzibar]

I was thinking about it, and it seems that in-game cutscenes might be usefull for the game.  Travelling by air from one city to another would definately be more visualy appealing if it was done with a cutscene.  If you just did it right now, then you'd see all the blank sections where maps should be but are not because they aren't in memory yet.  If such travel was "explained" with a cutscene, or experienced as a cutscene, then there would be the opportunity to add some really stunning visuals of your character flying on a bat-thing or pterosaur over all of Hydlaa and the bronze door or ojaveda road maps.  I don't know what the correct terminology is, rendered graphics or whatever, but doing it as a cutscene would give you an opportunity to make things look as nice as possible instead of just using the "natural" aerial view that we presently experience where half of Hydlaa is missing (and so on).

Other possibilities for cutscenes that I can think of off the top of my head:

- coming back to life from the death realm
- dieing
- entering the game for the first time
- certain items could "trigger" cutscenes (crystal balls, perhaps)


This is just a weird idea that I don't remember seeing suggested before.  It would give you guys more control over how people percieve and experience the game visually.

[Idoru]

Sounds a nice idea, it would certainly appear easier than havin your actuall character doing these thing, Also it owuld mean the load was on the client and not the server.

2 points though, 1 is what would you do for all the different races and all the armour combinations? 2 is that it would increase the download size signifigantly,  especially if all those combinations were catered for.

OOOOhhh, ive got a 3 aswell lol, you owuld have to encode the cutscenes in some format or other, DivX springs to mind but that woul cost money id think, maybe Xvid would work but do Macs support it?

[bilbous]

Personally I hate cut scenes. I turn them off whenever I can. If you are going to use this idea I suggest that you make them optional.

I suppose you are talking about functionality (flying) that is not currently available on the public server but I might be missing a very big thing. I do occaisionally see people dropping out of the sky into the plaza and have wondered what that is and how they don't die. I am never close enough to see any landing so it is puzzling.

[zanzibar]

Personally I hate cut scenes. I turn them off whenever I can. If you are going to use this idea I suggest that you make them optional.

I suppose you are talking about functionality (flying) that is not currently available on the public server but I might be missing a very big thing. I do occaisionally see people dropping out of the sky into the plaza and have wondered what that is and how they don't die. I am never close enough to see any landing so it is puzzling.

Eventually, we will be able to travel from city to city by riding giant bats and dinosaurs through the air.


Edit:  Travel will have to take some amount of real life time, so being able to turn off cut scenes might not be such a good idea.