But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

Height is important. More precisely, differences in height. You can use height to create drama, contrast, emotion, interest, beauty, menace - a clever director can do almost anything with a good, varied set. Up until now, Moviestorm didn't handle height very well. Characters could only really move around on a single level plain, which meant it was very hard to get shots like this:



Woo-hoo! There's no cheating in that shot. It's just plain ol' Moviestorm. That tower really is as tall as it seems to be.



We're using some brand new development code, which Mark has been quietly working on for the past few months, allowing characters to walk on surfaces at different heights. The tower is Amos's work (and, incidentally, his first official art asset for us).

Just in case you don't believe that it really works, here's a clip from the movie Alex is working on at the moment. He's asked me to stress that this is a really, really rough first draft, but it is all rendered directly from Moviestorm in one single scene.



Coming soon. As always: When It's Ready.

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Back in the olden days, when Moviestorm was still a young whipper-snapper of a movie-making tool with very few of the cool features it has today, we made a series of short parody movies to show what Moviestorm was capable of. The movies were made by Michelle Pettit-Mee (a leading light of the machinima community, now working as part of Bioware's cinematic design team but back then the Machinimator-in-residence for Moviestorm) and were parodies of well-known scenes from film and television. We had a Pulp Fiction scene, a Phoebe-like Friends song ... and a short sequence that looked suspiciously like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.



We released the Romeo and Juliet costumes as part of a very early Content Pack, and they're still kicking around. We've learned a lot since then, though, and we've also improved what Moviestorm is capable of. Since it's Valentine's Day very soon, we thought it was about time that these two old favourites got an upgrade.



As you'd expect, both of these costumes are tintable.

We'll be making these available to you (along with a handful of other new assets) very soon. Stay tuned for some more sneak previews over the next few days!