New packs for 1.5

A very harried Amos told me earlier today that testing on 1.5 is going well, and we're aiming for a release date "very early in December".  He wouldn't commit himself any further than that, and there's only so much threatening I can do on your behalf from 5000 miles away.

He did, however, let slip that the long awaited sword fighting pack will be released "in time for Christmas", and that before that, there will be an "Indian pack" that's been ready to go for a while, just waiting on some code that's in the new release.  That will include some interior and exterior sets, plus a few costumes - acha hai!

I'll try to get the guys to snap a couple of screenshots of the new stuff when they're not so busy, and we'll post them for you here.

Skeletons Update

Just a quick note to update you keen modders on the release of the Moviestorm skeletons...

For the people that have registered their interest in joining the Beta program for the skeletons (for want of a better phrase), we sent out a short email explaining why the release has been slightly delayed. Basically, we've recorded a few tutorials using Camtasia screen grab software that show how we use the data here at Moviestorm, to try and give you guys as much of a head start as possible. We're now at the stage where all this stuff has been recorded (with nice voice-overs, explaining the processes), but the file sizes for the videos are huge (many gigabytes)! So, a little re-packing is required, then we'll get the pack put together and ready to go out, in a more manageable bundle.

For our first group of users, we already have more than enough requests. But don't let that stop you, just drop us an email at art.team@moviestorm.co.uk if you are interested in getting hold of the skeletons, and we'll keep your contact details on record for the next round of releases, which will hopefully become more and more user-friendly as the pioneers point out the flaws in the export processes.

We do wear suits. Sometimes.

We sent the A-team (Andrew, Amos and Alex) to London last week for BETT, the largest educational technology show in Europe. It was a huge venue, and our little stand felt a bit lost in the middle of it all.

However, as you can see, people did manage to find us. Here's Andrew being interviewed by Martin Stanford of Sky News. So it was worth wearing the suit after all.

It was a tiring week, as these things usually are, but it was good to meet with so many people working in all parts of the educational system, particularly longtime Moviestormer Iain "Iceaxe" Friar.

We were actually taken aback by how much attention we got amidst everything else that was going on. Alex and Amos gave back to back demos from start to finish, and ended up hoarse partway through the second day. All the software trials were taken, and we had to rush out half-way through the show and print more fliers. Alex summed up the event perfectly in his message back to the team afterwards: "I was astonished about the response almost as much as the potential clients were about the software." Andrew, meanwhile, excitedly texted back that he'd just been told we were the "best solution at the show".

We're looking forward to BETT 2012.

More tantalizing hints

You can glean a lot about what's going on from the feed of the updates committed to the main Moviestorm codebase: here's just a few entries from today:

• Revision 23995 Committed by amos_willbond: - Updated icons for morph regions (character shop).
• Revision 23996 Committed by amos_willbond: - Further changes to morph area icons (character shop)
• Revision 24001 Committed by chris_ollis: - Extra face textures for morph male
• Revision 24012 Committed by ben_sanders: - Mouth height separated, and full morphs added
• Revision 24013 Committed by ben_sanders: - Added blood and blemishes to the skin detail
• Revision 24014 Committed by ben_sanders: - Beards added
• Revision 24015 Committed by ben_sanders: - Copied beard thumbs from core

The new character workshop is definitely taking shape!

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.