Happy New Year!

I am happy to announce that I will be appearing on the Machinima LIVE podcast (Episode 3) on Monday, January 2, 2006, with Digital Phil and Dr. Nemesis. That should make for some good banter. Give it a listen, and let us know what you think.

The Quest for the Right Machinima Engine / API

I’ve been playing with the Q2 sources over this holiday week for the first time, and so far I’ve managed to recompile the gamex86.dll, ref_gl.dll, and main executable with some significant changes. The first step in this project will be to combine the better elements of Quake2Max and EGL (while maintaining Keygrip2 compatibility - something which Q2Max lacks). I’ve made some decent progress in that direction already, thanks to the abundance of mod code already out there.

After that, I’ll move on to “new” features for machinima-making, some of which - if I pull it off - have never been seen in any Quake engine. [Lazarus got close, but the development emphasis for that mod was for interesting single-player experiences, not machinima actors… we’ll see if we can’t remedy that.]

One new feature which has found its way into my build is working support for MP3 sound files. I have yet to see whether this will play friendly with the Sound List in Keygrip2, but at least in the game itself it does work. So worst case scenario, I could modify the code to strip the extension from entries in the sound list, look for MP3s of the same name, and if not found, then use the wav. That would enable one to do their production with the heavier wav files, and then before distribution, compress and release.

In all likelihood, the final release of this package will instead focus on OGG format instead of MP3, because of the shenanigans that are turning us ALL away from mp3, even for non-commercial endeavors.

Why bother, you may ask? I mean, in light of the recent slew of The Movies and The Sims 2 movies, the new “standard” seems to be the one that Joe Goss prophesied many years ago… standard video formats. But let’s think about why that’s the case? If you only distribute your film as true machinima (i.e. the game is required, it plays through your OpenGL renderer), then your audience is limited because not everyone has the same game.

However… what if machinima could be legally distributed WITH the engine required to run it? That changes everything. You of course would always want to offer the standard video option if you can legally do so (i.e. no illegal assets), but if viewers had the choice to actually make use of that $400 OpenGL video card to see it in the kind of resolutions that make HDTV so jaw-dropping… don’t you think some people would still choose to see it rendered live in hi-res? I do. IF they are presented that option.