Game-sourced home movie

[BogDog]

Well, I think it's finished. I just spent the last month reviewing, spotting error after error and re-shooting the scenes. An example of an error might be using the wrong eyes on a character (I do a lot of character file swapping when shooting a scene). I think I found them all, and even re-wrote and re-shot a few scenes I was never fully happy about.

Over 35 gigs of art and video files created to make a 1-hour and 43 minute movie. 2.2 gigs in size. It's been an interesting year. Fucked that I can't put it on my YT channel.


It's going to go on my Vimeo channel in the next few weeks, but I am having a hell of a time trying to inform my subscribers at my YouTube channel where to find the latest videos. I tried making a post telling them what happened and included an http link to vimeo, and the post vanished.

NOW, get this.......I re-posted the message without the link and instead told them to go to video and search for my "Bogdog's Swamp" channel on Vimeo, ... and again my post vanished (!?). Are they blocking people from saying vimeo over there now? What the fu....? The work of an A.I. bot?


Vimeo is terrible for sharing videos anyway. No way to browse.

[BogDog]

Verified. They block posts with the word vimeo now. THIS is how bad it had become there:

"Both Top comments and Members comments view may not show content that YouTube detects viewers are not likely to value or interact with. This can include comments that are detected as potentially inappropriate, spam, or impersonation, based on a variety of signals, such as the comment text, commenter channel name text or handle text, avatar, and channel moderation settings. When in Top comments view, top comments from channel members may be made more visible in a dedicated section called ‘Comments by members’."


CORRECTION: Seems I can't post anything there now. Every message gets removed. Unbelievable.

The Gestapo has taken over YT. Fucking A.I. bot crap is going to ruin everything.

[BogDog]

My newest creation is up on Vimeo now. Look for "The Angry Tribe". Play time 22 minutes.

https://vimeo.com/channels/1872578

angrytribe3.png

[quagmire_uk]

Wow, that was absolutely fantastic! Loved it.

I was a bit surprised that the whole angry tribe ran into the first bog, as I figured they'd be familiar with the area. And after the first one or two got stuck, you'd expect the others to have the sense not to go the same way. But I guess the whole point is that they were very angry, so they were singular of purpose! Besides, I'm never going to complain about seeing a whole group of sexy amazons all struggling their way through a bog!

Nice subversions of expectations too, there were certain bits where I expected someone to fall in or get stuck somewhere and they didn't.

Anyway, really well done.

[BogDog]

Thank you. I assumed that since the girls got to the other side (though by going around unseen) and the first native got across by luckily being closer to the edge (and thus shallower mud) that the rest assumed they could wade across as well.

Glad you liked it. Happy sinking!

[Kphan0306]

Thank you. I assumed that since the girls got to the other side (though by going around unseen) and the first native got across by luckily being closer to the edge (and thus shallower mud) that the rest assumed they could wade across as well.

Glad you liked it. Happy sinking!

Hi there,
Your animation work in the video is truly impressive. I kinda wonder if you have a tutorial to show how to made custom characters and the scenery in gamemaker and how did you do all the animation in Crackle Cradle and Slack of Descent, since I began to do some experiment after downloaded the game recently.

[BogDog]

I may try to make some tutorials. A lot to learn I must say.

It took me years to find ways of doing things. In the ANGRY TRIBE scene where Danni drops a branch flat on the tangled weeds, it took me 4 years to find the necessary code and figure how to mod them to allow the character to drop something without it spinning in the air first. Very complex game code, and the only programming I know is BASIC .


Some things:

Character body parts are in the game EXE. (head, upper torso, hips, thighs, calves, etc.) All models use the same "doll" model in the .EXE.

Clothes and features that make them unique like hair, mouth and eyes are in the CHARA folder. Most of the files are multi-layer .GIFs basically identical to animated .GIFs except that the game selects one of the image layers of the GIF where needed instead of flipping through them as an animation. EXAMPLE: If the game code wants to make the game character close her eyes then it will select that layer in the EYE.GIF file for that particular character (Nana, Ryoko or Yuki). It also picks from a set of 3 closed eye textures depending on where the character is looking.


AN EXAMPLE would be the eye file for Ryoko. There are eye textures for closed eyes, squinting, wide-eye shocked, etc., all in sets of three for the doll's 3 possible views (side, angle or forward). Here are some of the eye textures for Ryoko. These are 3 sets for closed eyes, squinting and normal open eyes.

ryoko.eyeS.gif

The multiple .gif files are all separate in Ryoko's EYE.GIF file, but I combined 3 sets here (9 images in total) into one image for display reasons.

I use an old copy of Photoshop to make my art files (version 5.5). Use your graphics or photo editing program of choice.


I use the old and abandoned "Animagic Gif Animator" program to assemble and disassemble multi-layered .gifs for the game, but any animated GIF-making program would probably do. Adobe Imageready might be better but I am not familiar enough with it.

ryoko.eyes2.gif

These .GIF files are all found in the game folder. I access the files in the .EXE by using a Gamemaker 8.1 game disassembler to break down Crackle Cradle Plus Extended or Slack Of Descent to it's basic files and then work from there with Gamemaker 8.1. It has it's own graphics editor, animation making utility and more built in. Comes with help files and tutorials but I was never able to get them to open on my PC.




WHAT I MAY DO is put all the disassembled (unmodified) game files and gamemaker 8.1 in a package for people to toy with to make their own scenes. I need to take out the basic Crackle Cradle levels so that people do not use it to make game cheats, but I will leave in the level with the swamps and quicksands and tar pits that MrBlackGoo originally gave us and MudBait opened up even further. That level was never in Crackle Cradle and is the only one I use to make my movies.

You will be able to see how the level is put together, the invisible blocks that the characters "walk" upon, the quicksand and tar pit and other details. It's all graphics-based, almost like building blocks (but not like roblox). Then you just hit the RUN button and gamemaker compiles what you have into a working .EXE so that you can try it out. I think I sat at the thing for 24 hours straight, totally fascinated.





By the away, I do not make games. I don't know how. I use the game maker program as a movie studio to build sets, use the game characters as actors and a video screen capture program as the movie camera to capture it for later editing.

The potential is there to make actual full game levels if you wish. I just never needed to go there.




So give me some time to put something together. Currently I am in the process of moving so it may be a little while. It would be so cool to see other people learn to make videos with this.

[BogDog]

NOTE THAT my early movies for the first couple of years were all just shot in the game using the original mud and tar pits and monsters. All I could modify were the clothes and hair/eyes/mouth of the game characters. It was after I was given the decomplier (with a promise to never share it) so I could get to the rest of the game files for full freedom.

Here is a screen capture of gamemaker 8.1 and the tar pit set I made for TarWurm. All graphics-based assembly for the most part. The opaque squares are blocks the character walk upon but cannot be seen in the game. They allow me to give the illusion of the character walking on visible features of the 2D background image.

The semi-transparent squares are similar but you can pass through them from the sides or bottom but not the top. The vertical grey bars are for Tar. Quicksand, Mud, Sand and Marsh are also available, each with it's own characteristics and limitations.

gamemaker8.1.cradle.gif

The white circle is where an "enemy" will appear (my tarwurm in this case) when the game begins and the yellow dot is where your game character will appear.


SCENERY
The backdrop for my tarpit is a screen capture from some animal survival games that use large 3D terrain maps. I cruise around in them trying to keep from getting eaten while scouting out potentially useful scenery and then taking screen shots of them. This scene was of a small pond but I used Photoshop to create some tar scenery taken from a pic of a real tar pit and grafted it over the water. Some Photoshop or any decent photo or graphics editing skills is a plus here.


For easier construction the game also has it's own "objects" like grass-covered dirt blocks and bushes and more for building sets as I did with "QUICKSAND CREEK". The Crackle Cradle Plus Extended game scenery is all made up of the same. I was mainly using the game's files for building scenes at first. Later I looked online for backdrop scene GIFs and JPGs made by other artists and available on the internet. scenes of tar pits and such before I starting making my own scenery. You see a lot of those artist-made backdrops in my videos like "The Huntress". I often modified them in some manner to suit my needs.


ILLUSION OF SINKING
The game allows me to use multiple layers for scenery and sprites at different levels like sheets of paper on a desktop, so by placing some scenery graphics above the characters I can create the illusion of walking behind trees and bushes or sinking into some medium. For example I may place the full screen background at level -100 and the foreground at level -10000. The game characters are rendered around level -1000. The greater the negative number the higher on the "stack" the level will be and so closer to the viewer.

By duplicating and cutting the background scene in half horizontally across the bog and discarding the upper portion and then placing this duplicate at a higher level than the game character I can make it look like the character is sinking into a pit. This graphic may explain that clearer.

how2.png

[Kphan0306]

NOTE THAT my early movies for the first couple of years were all just shot in the game using the original mud and tar pits and monsters. All I could modify were the clothes and hair/eyes/mouth of the game characters. It was after I was given the decomplier (with a promise to never share it) so I could get to the rest of the game files for full freedom.

Here is a screen capture of gamemaker 8.1 and the tar pit set I made for TarWurm. All graphics-based assembly for the most part. The opaque squares are blocks the character walk upon but cannot be seen in the game. They allow me to give the illusion of the character walking on visible features of the 2D background image.

The semi-transparent squares are similar but you can pass through them from the sides or bottom but not the top. The vertical grey bars are for Tar. Quicksand, Mud, Sand and Marsh are also available, each with it's own characteristics and limitations.

gamemaker8.1.cradle.gif



The white circle is where an "enemy" will appear (my tarwurm in this case) when the game begins and the yellow dot is where your game character will appear.


SCENERY
The backdrop for my tarpit is a screen capture from some animal survival games that use large 3D terrain maps. I cruise around in them trying to keep from getting eaten while scouting out potentially useful scenery and then taking screen shots of them. This scene was of a small pond but I used Photoshop to create some tar scenery taken from a pic of a real tar pit and grafted it over the water. Some Photoshop or any decent photo or graphics editing skills is a plus here.


For easier construction the game also has it's own "objects" like grass-covered dirt blocks and bushes and more for building sets as I did with "QUICKSAND CREEK". The Crackle Cradle Plus Extended game scenery is all made up of the same. I was mainly using the game's files for building scenes at first. Later I looked online for backdrop scene GIFs and JPGs made by other artists and available on the internet. scenes of tar pits and such before I starting making my own scenery. You see a lot of those artist-made backdrops in my videos like "The Huntress". I often modified them in some manner to suit my needs.


ILLUSION OF SINKING
The game allows me to use multiple layers for scenery and sprites at different levels like sheets of paper on a desktop, so by placing some scenery graphics above the characters I can create the illusion of walking behind trees and bushes or sinking into some medium. For example I may place the full screen background at level -100 and the foreground at level -10000. The game characters are rendered around level -1000. The greater the negative number the higher on the "stack" the level will be and so closer to the viewer.

By duplicating and cutting the background scene in half horizontally across the bog and discarding the upper portion and then placing this duplicate at a higher level than the game character I can make it look like the character is sinking into a pit. This graphic may explain that clearer.

how2.png

Do you have folders of your OCs that was uses for the movie. Like all of them in different videos from your Vimeo and YT as well.

[BogDog]

I do indeed. Dozens and dozens of gigabytes of files.

These are just in my NANA folder. I use her the most because she is the only character who can pick up and drop things and can also move her arm around.

props1.png

Set-building is another step. I experiment a lot with various scene arrangements. These are just the ones I toyed with recently.

scenery1.png

Shooting scenes may require take after take until it comes out just right. I've shot up to 30 takes or more at times trying to get a single scene right. I've also gone back and re-shot scenes I was not fully happy about. That's how important little details are to me, but the results tell me it was all worth doing.

scenes1.png

The scenes are all spliced together in Nero Video 2014 movie maker to make one full movie.

moviemaker1.png

These files art will probably be included in any package I put out so people can experiment with them and learn faster.