Fixing the bleedin' obvious

I have quite a lot of computers in my life, and they all run Linux. In fact, the only time I leave the confines of my beloved Linux is when I'm at work (where my machine at Moviestorm Towers is a Macbook Pro). Most of my machines run a variant of Linux called Ubuntu. Last year, the Ubuntu development team announced a new project which they called 100 Papercuts. The idea was that they would identify 100 little irritations which were reasonably trivial to fix. Most of the issues identified were minor and really not too significant, but as they all pile up they start to become a serious problem. One papercut, after all, is only an irritant, but if you get enough papercuts all at once you just might bleed to death.

I was quite taken with this idea (the papercuts concept, not the bleeding to death), and spent some time talking about it with Dave and Andrew. As a consequence, we recently launched our own "papercuts" project for Moviestorm. Whilst Ubuntu's Papercuts project attracted over 1600 recorded bugs within a few weeks, our initial brainstorm generated a slightly less ambitious 200(ish) issues. We're going to be tackling these "papercuts" a few at a time, aiming to fix between 10 and 20 papercuts each time we have a code release.

Let's take a look at some of the papercuts for the forthcoming 1.3.1 release.

MS-3277 Keep window positions and sizes after the user has adjusted them

Wouldn't it be nice if, when you moved a customisation window over to the left, it appeared in the same place when you next reopened it? Now it does. We haven't implemented this behaviour for every window yet, but it's in place for all of the "adjust something" windows (what we call Activity Customizers).

MS-4887 Improve transitions between major mode views

This one's not so easy to spot, but the load time required to switch Views - to move from Set Workshop View to Director's View, for example - has been much improved. A lot of clever process threading and Clever Engineering Hacking in the background has allowed us to make these transitions faster and smoother.

MS-4826 Can't remove user images

I'm going to be totally honest with you here: this is one of those bugs that represents a lack of functionality not through deliberate choice but just because we forgot to put it in. Once you add a custom image to a set object, there's no way of actually removing that image if you change your mind later. The ring menu for such objects now features a "clear image" option, which removes the image. It also works for held props and bodyparts.

MS-4815 File overwrite message is confusing

This one was ridiculously easy to fix, but had still been sat in our bug database for a long time. Being such a small team, it's easy for small things like this to never actually make it onto anybody's "to do list", simply because there are so many other, bigger things that need to be done. That's exactly what the papercuts project is good for: making sure that issues like this do eventually get addressed. Here's the dialog as it appears in the current released version of Moviestorm:

And here's the new version:

A lot clearer, I think you'll agree.

MS- 4809 Can't find the movie I last worked on

My Moviestorm "movies" directory currently holds about a hundred different movies, in various states of completion. When you spend a lot of your working day testing Moviestorm you tend to accrue a lot of test movies. The load screen will now allow you to sort those movies, either by name or by modification date. That means that the movie you last worked on can be quickly brought to the top of the list.

MS-4806 Typo on first page of Help

Yes, well. The less said about this the better. Let's just move on, shall we?

MS-4786 Warn me if I'm not placing a character at time 0

Ever had a character appear halfway through a scene because the timeline wasn't at the start of the scene when you issued the "place here" command? Yeah, me too. Not any more:

MS-3690 Autosave

Matt has already blogged about this one.

There are about half a dozen other papercut issues in various stages of completion, but this should give you some idea of what we're hoping to achieve for 1.3.1. This is an experiment, so the choice of which of our 200 papercut issues to address first has been almost arbitrary. What about you? What little annoying niggle would you like us to fix? Comment with your papercuts, and I'll add them to our issues database.

Moviestorm 1.1.7 leaked

Among the many interesting people that Dave and I spoke to at the HCI2009 Conference was machinima stalwart Michael Nitsche (seen here milking an invisible cow).

Michael had already seen Moviestorm 1.1.6 (which was the version we were showing off at the conference) so I booted up the development environment on my laptop and gave him a quick tour of version 1.1.7 - well, I did promise, after all. He seemed impressed. Sufficiently impressed, in fact, that he took some sneaky snapshots of my screen and posted them on his blog.

So that just proves it: if you want the scoop on what's coming soon for Moviestorm, bump into me in a corridor somewhere and have your camera at the ready.

The FreePixel blog, incidentally (to which Michael posts, along with Erik Champion and Friedrich Kirschner) is a great read. If you're interested in studying machinima as an artform and as an emergent movement, add it to your reading list.

Moviestorm is Number 1 at HCI2009 conference

Alright, it's a bit of a cheeky strapline, but it's technically true. Look:

When Dave and I arrived at the HCI2009 Festival Of Interactive Technology yesterday, we were delighted to find that we'd been allocated table #1 on which to run our demo. Arbitrary? Perhaps, but we'll take the kudos anyway. Altogether now: "We're number one! We're number one!"

Moviestorm at the HCI2009 Festival of Interactive Technology

At the moment, we've got almost two hundred active issues in our bug-tracking database which are relevant to version 1.1.7. I don't want you to panic, though - that total is not insurmountable. The entire team is working on turning the nasty red Open bugs into lovely calming green Closed bugs.

Dave #1 and I are leading the charge. What that basically means is that we stand behind the front-line troops, shouting encouragement and not doing any real work. We like to feel that we contribute, though, so it's sometimes frustrating when we have to occasionally leave the office to do other things. Today's procrastination excuse - erm, I mean, important business strategy occasion - is the HCI2009 Festival Of Interactive Technology Open House. Dave and I will be in attendance, demonstrating Moviestorm in all its glory. We've spruced ourselves up as best we can. Dave has even had a haircut.

We're in prestigious company at the HCI conference. Some of the best research labs and startup companies in our local area will be showing off their latest shinies. When you bear in mind that "our local area" is Cambridge, UK, one of the tech innovation capitals of the world, you'll understand what I mean.



So, if you happen to be going along to the conference, give us a wave, a hug, or even a big sloppy kiss. We'll be showing Moviestorm version 1.1.6.2, but if you ask me nicely I might even give you a personal tour of the in-development 1.1.7. We'll be in the William Gates building. Demonstrating a piece of Java software. On two Apple Macs. With a Linux-powered netbook for note-taking, and Open Rights Group stickers on our laptop bags. 'Cos we're rebels. Booyah.

Johnnie's boots have never looked so clean

We're lucky enough to have found yet another deluded student who, for some unfathomable reason, wanted to do some work experience with us. Chris Heppell has been in the trenches with the QA team for the past fortnight. In what's now become a Short Fuze tradition, we asked him to write a short summary of his time with us.

‘1.1.6’, ‘Release candidate’, ‘Bug’, ‘Oh, #*%@!!!’ and ‘ARRGHH!!’ are all some of the phrases I’ve been constantly hearing at the Short Fuze office. That doesn’t come as a surprise though, as 1.1.6 is due for release very soon and everyone wants to get it out with the minimal amount of fuss and zero problems. This is where I come in … I’ve been breaking Moviestorm.

As soon as I started my Work Experience at Short Fuze, I was shoved into a chair by Johnnie who told me to "Break Moviestorm! And tell us what we did wrong!" ... Well, not really: I was shown around the establishment and introduced to the team first (who are all a bunch of great people!) and then shoved into a chair by Johnnie.

It wasn't too long until I found a bug. My first was noticing some problems with thumbnails. Johnnie was happy. But later on I found another bug which was originally marked as fixed, which meant it had to be reopened. Johnnie was no longer happy.

During the first week, I got a chance to see what was happening in the development of Moviestorm, and I have to say, it looks really good. The new Modders Workshop, Pyro Pack, Hairstyles and a couple of other things I’m not sure I’m allowed to mention are all looking fantastic.

The next week I was set on making some textures, and it wasn’t long before I got into the flow of texture creation, and made all sorts of different textures. The best thing? They’re going to be put into a free addon pack for anyone to use in Moviestorm.

These 2 weeks of work experience have been full of enjoyment and hard work. I’m going to miss it after I’ve left, but I know It's been one of the most productive things I've ever done. I now know what it's like to work in the software/computer industry, and I'm sure that this experience will definitely benefit me for my future, but most importantly of all: Unit Tests are a pain in the ____.

Moviestorm at University Campus Suffolk

The students on the BA(Hons) Computer Games Design course at University Campus Suffolk have been studying (and creating) machinima during one of the modules on their course. We were delighted that they chose to use Moviestorm as one of the machinima engines, and we've been keeping an eye on their progress for a while.

Yesterday, I hopped on a train to Ipswich and headed over to UCS to chat to some of the students on the course. I took Rhys with me, in an attempt to stop him attacking his own eyes with selected cutlery.

It was a very worthwhile trip. Chatting with the students on the course, and with Eddie Duggan the course tutor, gave us a lot of very honest and constructive feedback. We'll be adding all of their comments to our issues database.

My honed and trimmed physique, captured in full educational ebullience by Rhys's sneaky camera skills

It's great to see Moviestorm being put to use like this, and it's always great to talk face to face with people in the Moviestorm community - especially when, like the students at UCS, they have a lot of complimentary things to say!

Workin' for the Man

As Matt mentioned earlier this week, Rhys is here at the moment on work experience. That means that I don't have to make my own coffee and my shoes have never looked so polished. In between serving as my valet and personal alarm clock (I make him shout "Johnnie is the king!" on the hour, every hour), he's also been hard at work as the newest co-opted member of Moviestorm's QA department.



We asked him to write a few words about his first week working for Short Fuze.

In my first week at the Moviestorm office, I’ve worked on various things: screenshots, user testing, the dreaded unit testing, making templates for videos and tests. I even attended a design meeting.

Working for Moviestorm is very changeable. Parts of it have been fun (making shorts etc.) and parts have been so dull I wanted to gouge my eye out with a wooden spoon just to have something more interesting to do. All-in-all it’s been enjoyable, though, and a lot more interesting (at times!) than school.

On the Wednesday, and half of Thursday, my entire view on Moviestorm changed. I was switching constantly between Moviestorm and Excel, testing every single aspect of the soon-to-be-released version 1.1.6 to see if it all worked. It destroyed my brain, and made me want to, as I previously mentioned, gouge my eye out with a wooden spoon.

The Meeting was enjoyable. It was focused around proposed improvements to the Cutting Room View. I decided to add my two cents where it could apply, which included discussing what effects, if any, should be added to make it easier to work entirely in Moviestorm, without the need to export to movie maker or Vegas. It made me feel slightly more important than I actually am. Sitting among people debating whether to go with “A” or “2” (which gives some idea of the contrast), was both daunting and fun.

I will admit, I have been learning a lot about Moviestorm as a user and understanding the way its developers see it, which makes being a lackey for Johnnie, Ben and Andrew bearable. I do sometimes feel intimidated being surrounded by what seems like accomplished individuals, who have their own fortés, be it programming, developing, or whatever – whereas I am average Joe Public on work experience. On the upside, I feel that an adequate amount of responsibility and pressure is placed on me, which I think makes me work better.
I don’t know what I’ll be doing next week, and frankly, I don’t mind: work experience is shaping up to be quite enjoyable.

Bring on Week 2.

SF in SF

If you're going to GDC09 in San Francisco (March 23-27), the Game Developer's Conference, keep an eye out for Dave, who'll be wandering the halls, searching for interesting people to share a beer with and chat about anything and everything.

Meanwhile, Johnnie and Matt get to go to the annual OCR AS/A Level Media Studies conference in London on March 20, where they will be presenting Moviestorm. You can find out more here and book a place here.

Which means we'll get home in time for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, while Dave has to spend hours on a plane and hanging around in airports. Oh, the glamour of international travel!

It's falling from the sky!

All good film noir, cop shows, and action movies have at least one scene in the rain. As if the story wasn't dark and depressing enough, the whole atmosphere changes when you know that everyone is cold and soggy. Like this.



Or this.



And no, this is not a post effect. This is 100% pure Moviestorm. It does more than one type of precipitation too. Try these.



It's still fairly early days for this code, like yesterday's fireworks, so don't expect anything to be released too soon. But it's definitely on its way. OK, who's going to be the first to use the upcoming buildings and street dressing packs to do Singin' In the Rain? Look, we even have the little plant you need for this sequence...

Droidstorm

Following on from the earlier post about Chris running Moviestorm movies on his PSP, here's Johnnie's T-Mobile Android G1 running Moviestorm tutorials, as written by, erm, Johnnie. Now when he's at high-flying Hollywood parties and people ask him what he does for a living, he just whips out his phone and shows them. Never fails to impress, apparently.


Come on, who's gonna show us their iPhone with a Moviestorm movie on, then?

Of all the Views in all the Moviestorms, he had to make changes to mine.

It was a Tuesday, just like any other Tuesday in rain-soaked Cambridge. I'd just returned from the 2008 Machinima Film Festival in New York. Crazy city. I was jetlagged, but anxious to get back to work. Before I left for New York, I'd completely rewritten and expanded the internal help pages for Moviestorm's Set Workshop View. It was a big job, but I'd got it finished and submitted to QA for testing just before I left. I was feeling proud of my work. I was ready to make a start on the Director's View section.

Dave Lloyd, co-founder of the company and Chief Bit Shoveller, looked up as I walked into the room. He seemed nervous; sheepish. Perhaps even guilty. I stared him down. I knew he'd crack eventually.

"Ingram," he gulped, "good to see ya! I, er ... I didn't know you were back in town. I'd love to stay and chat, but I got things to do, you know? Gotta run!"

I wasn't buying. This schmuck knew something, and I was going to find out what. I grabbed him by the lapels of his smart checkered suit.

"Spill it, Lloyd," I growled, "whadya know?"

A single bead of perspiration rolled down his craggy cheek, glinting in the moonlight, and then dropped to impact on the top of his trusty MacBook like a gunshot.

"I made some changes." he whispered, "I'm sorry! I didn't know it would go this far!"

I might have guessed. Lloyd was always pulling crazy stunts like this. They didn't call him "The Workaholic" for nothing. I pulled out my copy of The Ruby Way from inside my trenchcoat and pressed it to his throat. Violence is the only thing these engineers understand.

"Show me," I muttered between clenched teeth, "or I'll cut you a new programming language."

I felt sick. All my hard work had been for nothing. My documentation was now as useless as a J2EE engineer on an OpenGL project. This job gets to you sometimes. It eats away at your soul like a World Of Warcraft addiction. Still, as I walked down the smoke-filled alleyway towards my office, I had to admit: Lloyd's changes were good. Crazy, but good. Maybe I could document them after all ...

Moviestorm in New York

In a couple of weeks, Short Fuze is despatching an elite squad of ninja machinima evangelists to take Gotham by 'storm. Armed only with laptops, beer and charisma, they'll sneak into Times Square during the Halloween celebrations. Their mission is to infiltrate the Machinima Film Festival, brainwash the attendees into abandoning Second Life, and hold Overman hostage until he agrees to rename the Overcast The Moviestorm Show.

Well, when we say "elite", we mean Matt & Johnnie. Look for the guy in the hat or his tubby bitch and they'll buy you a beer (or other tasty beverage if you're not a beer-drinking type). Chances are if you're reading this, you're already a convert to the True Faith, so they won't preach at you and threaten you with disembowelment if you don't download Moviestorm immediately. Instead, they'll listen to your endless suggestions for improvements and new content packs, and relay them back through the interweb to the Moviestorm Command Centre (Europe), where, um, something may happen as a result.

Matt will also be sharing a stage with John Martin of Reallusion championing the cause of non-game machinima tools in a panel on Interfacing Virtual Actors. They will be joined by Ken Perlin of the NYU Media Lab and Michael Nitsche of Georgia Tech.

Come along if you can. It'll be a blast!

The forbidden love of one man for his microphone

If you've been using Moviestorm for any length of time, you'll have begun to realise that there's a lot of functionality there. Teaching people how to use Moviestorm fully and effectively is a difficult job. Unfortunately, it's also my job. It's made even harder by the fact that, no sooner have I finished a bit of documentation or a video tutorial than the blasted dev team selfishly releases a new update to Moviestorm with lots of extra whizzy bits and improvements, and I have to start all over again.

Nonetheless, I proceed undeterred. I've just put the finishing touches to a brand new (and up-to-date) set of video tutorials. They'll be going live on the moviestorm website any day now, and they'll replace the existing tutorials. As well as the four tutorials we had before ('Moving Around', 'Giving Instructions', 'Creating Characters' and 'Changing Your Set'), I've also managed to squeeze in a fifth - an introduction to the camerawork system. Each tutorial is between 5 and 10 minutes long, and designed to give you the basics of Moviestorm as quickly and simply as possible.

I've been using Camtasia Studio to produce these videos, and I've been very impressed with the package. Although it's practically unusable on anything but the beefiest powerhouse of a machine, it has a lot of incredibly useful options for video tutorials and the like. I'm also loving - and I do mean that in a slightly obsessive, scaring-your-friends-and-family kind of way - my Samson CO1U USB condenser microphone. Technically, it's Short Fuze's property, but if anyone tries to take it back, they'll have to get through me. I'm prepared to defend my precious mic with physical violence if needs be. I use Skype for voice chats fairly regularly. Since I've started using the CO1U, every single conversation now starts with the phrase "Wow, the audio quality is crystal clear - what mic are you using?".

Creating these tutorials is quite an involved process. As well as having to constantly work to tone down my usually gravel-strewn North-of-England accent, I also have to deal with the fact that sometimes I simply forget how to speak [1]:



Once the script has been written and the screen recording done, I edit the video down to the shortest length I can make it, and then add in all the overlays that show mouse button presses, screen highlights and zoom and pan. Finally, I tag the video with bookmarks at suitable points and then render it out as a streaming Flash video.

Somehow, despite my best efforts, QA always manage to get hold of these vids before they make it to the website. I live in fear of Ben_S wandering over to my desk and muttering, "Johnnie, that last video tutorial you recorded ... are you aware that you didn't mention [insert crucial bit of information]?".When that happens, there's nothing for it but to dry my tears, release Ben_S from the headlock, and re-record.

It's usually around this time that the next version of Moviestorm is released.

[1] Listen carefully at the end and you'll hear another thing that forced me to retake - the Squeakiest Chair In The Universe.

Cheap sunglasses

Why's Johnnie wearing shades in the office?

1. He's got a hangover?
2. He's on the run from Swedish hit men and is in disguise?
3. He's not really Johnnie?
4. He's so damn cool?
5. He thinks he's so damn cool?
   
6. He's modelling for the new Moviestorm accessories pack?
7. He's sponsored by cheapasssunglasses.com ?
8. He has to wear them to protect us from the laser beams in his skull?
9. His breed don't normally go out in daylight?
   
10. The sun's in his eyes? (Yeah, right. Can you see any sun in this picture?)
    

For the obligatory cheesy ZZ Top references, go here. Or here. Or here.

Ultra ultra ultra high priority

One of the problems inherent in a small team like the Moviestorm crew is that everybody has two or three things that only they can do, and on which entire production schedules can sometimes hinge. New tasks arrive in my in-tray every morning, and I rarely get anything that isn't absolutely essential drop-what-you're-doing top priority. I've started classifying them privately as "ultra high priority", "ultra ultra high priority", "ultra ultra ultra high priority", etc. At the moment I'm working on my Ultra-8 task list, although I can sense Andrew, our COO, brewing up an Ultra-9 as I type this.

So. Busy, busy, busy. I thought it might be interesting to give you a sort-of snapshot of what everyone in the team is working on right now. To that end, I sent out a polite but insistent email this morning asking everyone to give me a short summary of their task list for the day. Here are the results, broken down by department as best I could:

Website
bengarrett1971: Rolling out an update to the website, including a new featured director. I'm also investigating a number of potential flash movie players to incorporate into the site in the near future.




QA
Ben_S: Working on the testing for the 1.0.3 release which hopefully happens today unless testing shows up glaring faults.
(Ben emailed me an update a few hours later: "You remember I said '... unless testing shows up glaring faults'? Well, it has.")



Synnah: As you might have guessed, my focus at the moment is on testing the new build that's going out. As usual, there are a number of last-minute issues that crop up before we release, and those need testing and re-testing to make sure they're ironed out.



Dick Swayze: I've been supervising my team of minion(s) in an attempt to get patch 1.0.3 ready for release. It hasn't been going too well so far, but I do have a new can of compressed air, so it's not all bad.




Art
Chris Ollis: I'm currently constructing a large <censored>/<censored>/<censored> multi-use building. Actually, all of that should probably be censored to "building future release assets".


Mitch: Co-ordinating the creation of art assets and visuals for Moviestorm, from design concept to finished article.

layla: Erm ... encoding! We're trying to get a streaming version online for every single movie our users have ever uploaded, and I'm the lucky person who's been assigned the task of converting them all. Also, I'm building stock sets and doing the odd bit of prop modelling if/when I'm lucky.

Engineering
twak: I've been trying to work up the bravery to record a screencast of our dev environment as a follow-up to this post. Until then, I've been occupying my time by trying to get to the bottom of WMV encoding with www.humatic.de's DSJ library - been a bit of bashing-my-head-against-a-hard-surface excercise. I've also been fixing tinting bugs, and getting to the bottom of Moviestorm's memory usage (QA have been shown how to use Netbean's memory analyser, and have produced some rather worrying graphs)


Mark: (Mark didn't respond to my initial email, so I wandered over to his desk, and asked: What have you been working on today, Mark?" The following is his response, almost verbatim) Fixing the <expletive> <expletive> walk cycles, after <a colleague from the engineering team> butchered my beautiful code. This morning, they were all walking backwards. Now they're not walking at all. <expletive> this <expletive>ing thing.


julian_gold: Most of my time today has been spent working on the problems that Moviestorm's been having with ATI graphics cards and drivers. I've contacted ATI directly about this, but I'm still waiting for a response.






Dave: I've spent the day trying to get 1.0.3 out the door. Sorry - can't really talk now. Too busy. QA have just found a whole bundle of new bugs. (If Dave doesn't give me more material next time, I'll post the image of him that's stuck up next to the whiteboard).







Management
matt: Confidential company stuff, mostly, but also ...

Talking to movie-makers of all persuasions all round the world, from first-timers to experienced machinimators and film students, all the way up to seasoned television and Hollywood directors, and finding out what they want from a machinima tool and what films they want to make; then using that information to think of ways to improve Moviestorm. Watching a lot of machinima so I can see what other people are doing and how they're doing it. Promoting Moviestorm via the press and at conferences, shows and other events. And, as a side project, writing my own movie scripts to work out what Moviestorm would have to provide in order to film them in the way I want to see them.



DavidB: I am at SIME 2008.

I spent most of this month working out how to make Moviestorm really huge in 2008. I'm still glowing with pride about the article in this month's EDGE magazine that Matt arranged. When we have leaky toilets I fix those too. And I am the only person who knows how a dishwasher works. When I stop crying with laughter I will tell johnnie, layla and Ben_S how good their last video was ...

Giles: Trying to find out where Johnnie bought his new keyboard so that I can get one myself. Far too much 'confidential company stuff'. A lot of it should come about in six to nine months time but in the interim I need to ensure the salaries are paid on time! Fixing the garage and front doors (okay actually I got someone in to fix them). Changing our bank to RBS so that we can play with the big boys and get ready for international business etc. Being amazed at the quality of films that Moviestorm users as young as 13 can produce. This can also be a little scary at times! Generally feeling completely inept when surrounded by the 'techies' profound skills and production capabilities. Keeping an eye on the purse strings so that petty cash can always buy the milk and biscuits for the office.

books!

I had the sudden realization that I'm the only person on the dev/doc team that hasn't written a book. It makes me feel humble to be in the presence of such great minds as the authors of:

Machinima - Dave Lloyd & Matt Kelland

Machinima for Dummies -Johnnie Ingram & Hugh Hancock (send us your pic Hugh!)

Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques - Mark Watt & his Dad

Object "oriented" Game Development - Julian Gold

3D world (regular contributions) - Chris Ollis

Actually looking at that lot, I'm quite glad I havn't written a book. I think I might even stop writing my diary - just in case ;)

Tutorials

Dearie me, such a range of tutorials. Over the last few months we've just been investigating the time, cost and benefits of each type of tutorial. Here is a brief outline.

First the dreaded online PDF tutorial. The problem is its out of date and tends to just confuse first time users. You can however print it out and flip through it as you're reading it.

We also have the big red arrow tutorial (This started out as a demo graphic, I think this has become it's official name - take that dilbert):
We're having trouble with this because it really clashes with the oru very short (agile) development cycle. It relies upon the interface being the same as it was last time so the system knows which buttons you should be clicking. However we (I) have a habit of ripping the interface up twice daily, meaning that the tutorials have to be re-done with every release. This may be the way go when we have a bigger team and a longer lead time on updates. It also forces us to keep the tutorials up to date as they are marked as show-stopping bugs if the tutorials don't play through.

On top of this we have the static click-through text tutorial.


This is fine and dandy, but it belongs on paper in "Moviestorm, the missing manual". Again this gets out of date fast, but at least it doesn't break & stop us pushing an update. It is also a little less patronizing than the BRA tutorial.

As if that weren't enough, we still have users arriving having bought copies of Machinima For Dummies, complete with a very old version of Moviestorm on the cover disk. If they use that version, they're fine to work through the chapters in Machinima For Dummies that relate to Moviestorm. If they upgrade to the latest version, though, it's all changed and they get very confused.

In the future we have plans for an online tutorial video/flash thingy, which the most excellent johnnie is investigating. Since this seems to be what our competitors are doing, it has been favored by many people as the way to go.

And now I've just played with the most excellent Sketchup - they use a hints and tips window on startup and an "instructor" window I hadn't seen before. Whichever tool you're currently using the instructor window plays a video and gives hints on how it works.

I really like this - you just play with the application, and you're given tips depending on what you're working on. While not really for n00bs, it'd be a great tool for showing intermediate or advanced techniques with Moviestorm tools. The only downside I can see is that it'd be really cramped to use on a small/1024x768 screen.