Walkin' out the door

Demo film by Ben Sanders

"So what?" you might ask. "It's a guy walking out of a house. Gee." Well, this is something you haven't been able to do before in Moviestorm. Look carefully about 5 seconds in. See the fireplace through the window? See the picture through the door?

This is the first composite set, which includes an interior piece and an exterior building model. The lower central portion is a standard Moviestorm set, built and dressed as normal. Then around and above it, we placed some of the new modular customisable buildings, and matched the wall textures, doors, and window styles, so that the set is now located within a larger building.

So now your characters can walk seamlessly out of the set and onto the street, without the need for clever editing or camera angles to make it look as if the interior and exterior sets are actually joined together. It may not look like a big deal, but it completely changes the way you can film many different types of scene.

Mmmm, tracking shots... watching people through the window... doing that whole Citizen Kane number... all this will soon be yours!

Street scene

In the real world, buildings aren't always shiny and new. They get grimy, dusty, and generally deteriorate. So in this test shot of the new town houses, from the upcoming buildings pack, we've added dirt maps to make them look in less than brand new condition.


We also threw in the phone boxes which will be in the upcoming Street Dressing pack. Early Moviestorm users may recognise these from the Pioneer pack, but don't be fooled: these have been re-rigged with new textures so they'll look a whole lot better.

If you build it...

So what's on the drawing board for 2009? First up are the new customisable buildings, which allow you to create almost unlimited street sets. These should be out in a couple of weeks, as soon as QA finish complaining about the bugs. You can have them sooner if we decide to lock Mr Pajak and Mr Thatcher in the cupboard under the stairs and not let them out until they give it the all clear. Hmmm, what do you think? Should we let them finish testing it?

Click for a nice big version.

The next content pack after that... well, let's not spoil the surprise, shall we? Meanwhile, the programming team are working away on version 1.1.4, which is mostly small changes and bug fixes. But there's Big Stuff in the works, oooh, yes, there is!

Crash!

Damned hooligans! Who do they think they are, driving like that?

And in case you hadn't noticed, check out the buildings. No. they're not SketchUp imports. They're new-style Moviestorm customisable buildings. (Which will be ready - as always - when they're ready.)

Video by Chris Ollis.