WC1/WC2 Cartoonish animations

[Maj.Striker]

Does anyone know what program/process was used to make all the cutscenes and animations in WC 1 & 2 and probably Privateer and Strike Commander as well. By this, I mean the scenes where you talked to your wingmen and such. I'm not familar with the creative process behind these games so I'm curious if they used any program to make these scenes or whether they just drew them by hand and put them into the game. I ask this because it would seem to me that if it were a program it should be simple to generate new cutscenes and just put them into a new mod ala Standoff or WC saga. That would be a pretty neat touch I would enjoy having that cartoonish talking scenes again (except with higher resolution). Any thoughts or ideas?

 

[Ripper]

Such a program would also be helpful to the Privateer 3 project.

 

[Lynx]

It's not really a cutscene in the traditional sense. The background and the personas faces are totally separate, thus allowing the use of the face animation to be reused in almost any cutscene, since it's only the background that changes. But I dunno how to solve the problem of lip synching(Since with voice files, it shows that you have the same speaking animation in every cutscene )

 

[Quarto]

All the people animations were drawn frame-by-frame, with the end results being saved in files similar (in structure and graphical compression type) to ship files and other WC1/2/Priv graphics files in general. The cutscenes were then scripted, but the scripting isn't generally too complex - just basic info about which character should use which animation at which point, etc..

Extracting the relevant graphics is dead simple for WC1/2, and only slightly less simple for SC and Priv (because you have to get the palette separately). It may even be possible for Pacific Strike and Wings of Glory, although it has never really been tried.

There is, however, no program or anything like that that would allow you to script and/or display such cutscenes - you'd have to find a programmer to take care of that for you.

 

[Dyret]

It's not really a cutscene in the traditional sense. The background and the personas faces are totally separate, thus allowing the use of the face animation to be reused in almost any cutscene, since it's only the background that changes. But I dunno how to solve the problem of lip synching(Since with voice files, it shows that you have the same speaking animation in every cutscene )

Isnt the chest and the head seperate as well? I remember a bug in WC2 KS where prince Trakhats head would float in mid air.

 

[Maj.Striker]

Hmm, here's a thought...there has got to be something to use for this I'm going to do some research and see what I can find out.

 

[K1nG Gr4H4m]

It shouldn't be too difficult to code it all. There are not many movements for each characters and few expressions (mad, happy...) . It's just a few sprites and with the alpha channel it should be easier to do than it was back when the programmers at Origin did it.
If you want lip synching, that's tougher. You need to program something similar to subtitles softwares with key events timed at x milliseconds to fit the sound file.

If you don't want to bother with that, you can try professional software like Retas Pro to make cartoon animations. It's used for Pokemon, Spiderman, Gundam Wings... or I think Character Studio can do it too with a cartoon shader. The bad side is you'll have heavier file size and the programs cost a lot.

 

[Dyret]

It shouldn't be too difficult to code it all. There are not many movements for each characters and few expressions (mad, happy...) . It's just a few sprites and with the alpha channel it should be easier to do than it was back when the programmers at Origin did it.
If you want lip synching, that's tougher. You need to program something similar to subtitles softwares with key events timed at x milliseconds to fit the sound file.

If you don't want to bother with that, you can try professional software like Retas Pro to make cartoon animations. It's used for Pokemon, Spiderman, Gundam Wings... or I think Character Studio can do it too with a cartoon shader. The bad side is you'll have heavier file size and the programs cost a lot.

There's always virus infected warez.