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Steam Greenlight: TDM is ranked #1 atm.


Bikerdude

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Excellent video!

 

Are we really available on Mac?

 

We were at one point.

 

Video is terrific, and the VO is excellent. This is exactly the kind of thing we should have released with.

 

A few suggestions for consideration:

 

1. The safe sequence is not very interesting to watch (and is slightly spoilerish)--I'd replace that with a short clip of gameplay, like shooting a rope-arrow, leaning around a corner, or pickpocketing a passing guard. The video does a great job of showing environments but is a bit light on showing actual gameplay.

 

2. The clip of DR drags a bit...a lot of watching someone select folders. Seeing the models appear is the more interesting part.

 

3. Personally, I felt the video went on too long after the VO had signed off. The last 30 seconds doesn't really add anything new, just a few different environments that are fairly similar to what we've already seen. I don't think anything is lost by trimming them or cutting altogether.

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We were at one point.

 

Video is terrific, and the VO is excellent. This is exactly the kind of thing we should have released with.

 

A few suggestions for consideration:

 

1. The safe sequence is not very interesting to watch (and is slightly spoilerish)--I'd replace that with a short clip of gameplay, like shooting a rope-arrow, leaning around a corner, or pickpocketing a passing guard. The video does a great job of showing environments but is a bit light on showing actual gameplay.

 

2. The clip of DR drags a bit...a lot of watching someone select folders. Seeing the models appear is the more interesting part.

 

3. Personally, I felt the video went on too long after the VO had signed off. The last 30 seconds doesn't really add anything new, just a few different environments that are fairly similar to what we've already seen. I don't think anything is lost by trimming them or cutting altogether.

 

These are some good suggestions! I'll keep these in mind for the second cut of the trailer, i'll wait on some other community comments before I get stuck into editing the next part.

 

One thing though I liked the end part because it allowed the video to breath a bit because there is quite a lot being shown off in a small amount of time... but maybe after seeing a version cut with a trimmed ending will be more impressive

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Fresh from the cutting room floor... here is the first cut of my TDM greenlight trailer:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK4xJ_Lx9-U

 

I would love to hear some thoughts and opinions on this bad or good and if you have any recommendations for improvements please feel free to speak up.

 

My hope is that this trailer represents the dark mod community as a whole and can be used as promotional material for the steam greenlight page!

 

Awesome awesomeness! Great job, man! :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub:

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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for us veterans of '90s gaming and '90s trance scene

 

Hey, brother. :D (ok, not really a veteran of the 90's trance scene, rather in it since the early/mid 2000's :))

 

Great video. Which mission is that @ 0:51? The one with the watchman's horn. Looks interesting.

Edited by chakkman
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Hey, brother. :D (ok, not really a veteran of the 90's trance scene, rather in it since the early/mid 2000's :))

 

Great video. Which mission is that @ 0:51? The one with the watchman's horn. Looks interesting.

 

That's Kingsal's mission, Volta and the Stone

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The trailer looks awesome, but I'm with Springheel on this one. If you could condense it to 2 minutes, or even one minute, that would be great. There are a few things that are a bit jarring:

 

I. Voiceover speed and tone: you start slow, and then get faster. The slower tempo is more comprehensible IMO. Also, switching between a character voice and your casual voice is noticeable. I'd choose one option (a bit more casual tone is good) and stick with it.

 

II. Camera and mouselook shots: that difference very noticeable as well. You could lower DPI/sensitivity in your mouse for less erratic camera movement (btw. does TDM support X360 or Steam controller? That would be awesome for promo movies alone.)

 

III. The information in the VO has pretty solid structure, but sometimes it's repeated. Right now it's something like this:

 

1.Welcome, what is TDM
2. History
3. No Doom3 required, free
4. Training mission
5. Over 100 FMs to download
6. DR Editor (and no editor is easy to use, I'd rather say how versatile it is ;) )
7. Inspired by Thief, not Thief.
8. It's free, join our community.
(long pause)
9. See you in the shadows.

 

And you can probably see that 7 would look better right after 2 :)

 

All in all it's a pretty good start, keep it up :)

Edited by Judith
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The trailer looks awesome, but I'm with Springheel on this one. If you could condense it to 2 minutes, or even one minute, that would be great. There are a few things that are a bit jarring:

 

I. Voiceover speed and tone: you start slow, and then get faster. The slower tempo is more comprehensible IMO. Also, switching between a character voice and your casual voice is noticeable. I'd choose one option (a bit more casual tone is good) and stick with it.

 

II. Camera and mouselook shots: that difference very noticeable as well. You could lower DPI/sensitivity in your mouse for less erratic camera movement (btw. does TDM support X360 or Steam controller? That would be awesome for promo movies alone.)

 

III. The information in the VO has pretty solid structure, but sometimes it's repeated. Right now it's something like this:

 

1.Welcome, what is TDM

2. History

3. No Doom3 required, free

4. Training mission

5. Over 100 FMs to download

6. DR Editor (and no editor is easy to use, I'd rather say how versatile it is ;) )

7. Inspired by Thief, not Thief.

8. It's free, join our community.

(long pause)

9. See you in the shadows.

 

And you can probably see that 7 would look better right after 2 :)

 

All in all it's a pretty good start, keep it up :)

 

You raise some good points there!

 

I'll add these to the notes for the second cut, thank you!

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Just putting this out there, in regards to Judith's suggestion of changing the easy to use message of the editor to moreso versatile to use... does anyone have any suggestions for a rewrite for the line below incorporating that feedback?

 

"Each mission is produced as a labor of love from the community, for the community using our inhouse game editor called Dark Radiant. It is simple to use and anyone can pick it up and begin making missions right away!"

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Fresh from the cutting room floor... here is the first cut of my TDM greenlight trailer:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK4xJ_Lx9-U

 

I would love to hear some thoughts and opinions on this bad or good and if you have any recommendations for improvements please feel free to speak up.

 

My hope is that this trailer represents the dark mod community as a whole and can be used as promotional material for the steam greenlight page!

 

Wonderful trailer, couldn't have made it better! You should narrate stuff or make voices more often... your voice is perfect for this :)

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Wonderful trailer, couldn't have made it better! You should narrate stuff or make voices more often... your voice is perfect for this :)

 

This was actually voiced by AndrosTheOxen

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The trailer is quite nice to begin with. One thing I want to add is that although the voiceover sounds very cool and thiefy, it is a bit hard to understand everything for a non-native speaker, especially as it is not much louder then the background music. Considering that my english skills are not the worst, this is something probably needs some work on. Making the ambient a bit more silent and the speaker speaking less exaggerated (don't know a better word to describe it) might be a bit better.

 

Besides that, excellent work.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Very nice trailer. The slow rhythm and atmospheric feeling are perfect for TDM. The only criticism I can do is that on the very beginning of the smoke footage, you can clearly see where is the smoke-machine located on the lower left corner. Letters shadow on the smoke are killer though.

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I must confess that I'm not a native speaker either, but it sounds very well and the words are pronounced properly and well rounded. Should be clear enough for foreign speakers IMHO.

 

This is a proper short movie fit not just for Greenlight but any advertisement/presentation to a new audience, on YouTube, main site page or anywhere. Any opportunity to explain TDM without text is good. This is such an opportunity.

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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The trailer is quite nice to begin with. One thing I want to add is that although the voiceover sounds very cool and thiefy, it is a bit hard to understand everything for a non-native speaker, especially as it is not much louder then the background music. Considering that my english skills are not the worst, this is something probably needs some work on. Making the ambient a bit more silent and the speaker speaking less exaggerated (don't know a better word to describe it) might be a bit better.

 

Besides that, excellent work.

 

In the video editor I have already turned the ambient music down quite considerably and boosted the voice actor up quite a lot as well so I think in terms of balance it's fine, perhaps your audio setup is to blame for that issue?

 

I don't think I can improve this much beyond getting the voice actor to re-record his lines (which is currently planned once the script has been updated). I do want to cater for non-native English speakers though so I will work on adding closed captions which should hopefully help... and if you would like to volunteer it would be really handy if you could provide the german translations? as google translator usually does a bit of a poor job

Edited by Goldwell
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"It is pretty easy to get acquainted with the editor. Some authors have shown created small demo missions with less than a week of experience." ?

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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I don't think I can improve this much beyond getting the voice actor to re-record his lines (which is currently planned once the script has been updated). I do want to cater for non-English speakers though so I will work on adding closed captions and if you would like to volunteer it would be really handy if you could provide the german translations?

 

In the video editor I have already turned the ambient music down quite considerably and boosted the voice actor up quite a lot as well so I think in terms of balance it's fine, perhaps your audio setup is to blame for that issue?

Maybe it would just be more productive and cost efficient for everyone's time to just have CC subtitle captions?

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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Maybe it would just be more productive and cost efficient for everyone's time to just have CC subtitle captions?

 

That's what I suggested :P

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"It is pretty easy to get acquainted with the editor. Some authors have shown created small demo missions with less than a week of experience." ?

 

I like where you're going with that, I think it needs to be a bit more fine point though.

 

Something along the lines of, the editor is user friendly, approachable.. and maybe even mention something about the DR help threads available as well? that's certainly a bonus

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I'm an English non-native as well and I think that slower pace in the beginning section is fine. It's not like we're having Zero Punctuation here ;)

 

Btw. speaking about the editor, you can mention the comprehensive knowledge base, i.e. the TDM Wiki.

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"It's pretty user-friendly so folks with no mapping experience can start building after a short learning phase.
The community is always willing to help new authors learn the ropes. We also have a large Wiki database with lots of examples to copy and learn from."

 

?

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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The editor is only of interest to a very tiny percentage of our audience, I would guess. It's nice to mention it, but it's not a big selling point. I don't see anything wrong with the text the way it is now..."easy" is relative, after all.

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I would love to hear some thoughts and opinions on this bad or good and if you have any recommendations for improvements please feel free to speak up.

The shadow of The Dark Mod logo on the smoke was especially cool, and the video starts off really well. The narrator for the most part does a brilliant job, only in a few places does his words trail of or drop in intensity (this is very minor). The only issue and this not a showstopper by any means, is the background track (Its a bit sedate, maybe because we hear it every time we play the game...). My I humbly suggest some others..?

  • deviginti01_loop.ogg - this loops so no issue matching the length of the video (I played it while watch the video and it seems to work well)
  • deviginti02.ogg - this was used in the very first for the mod trailer, but its gets a bit loud in the middle and is over 3mins long (surround monitor video)

In fact you have made a number of very cool engaging medium paced ambients before, that would suit the tone of the video.

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