refreshed web site is up (but no video yet)

EnterTheStory.com

Please let me know if you find any broken links or missing images! Thanks.

Edit: I’m still not happy with the very first page, but I’l have to change it again anyway, when the teaser video is done, so I’ll leave it until then.

I’ve also updated a few parts, in particular there’s now a better Linux runtime engine for AGS – which is good.

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The teaser video is turning out to be a bit of a challenge. To recap, my computer isn’t fast enough to capture full screen video at 30 fps while a game is running, so I outputted(sp?) the raw footage to a VHS video recorder. That resulted in a small loss of quality, but it was acceptable. I then captured the video using a software based video capture device, and that’s when it all went pear shaped.

When I did the original video capture tests I used Raiders of the Lost Ark, a movie full of iconic images, color, and not too many pans. Which hid an awkward fact: the captured video quality was not as good as it looked. It was grainy, blurred, distorted color and missed frames. This was not obvious when using an in-your-face, larger than life Hollywood movie. But when capturing my game, which relies on tiny characters, subtle pale colors and slow pans, the result looks frankly awful. Imagine the lowest quality low resolution video camera you’ve ever seen, and pointing it at a screen while missing every fourth frame, you’ll have an idea of what it looked like. No, I will NOT be posting the result.

I spent most of yesterday looking for a better solution based on my very limited budget. Most decent video capture cards (i.e. those that do the capturing in the card and don’t just rely on software like the cheap cards) cost about twice what I can afford. I considered just not using a game video – see the current web site – but really I think it needs a video. So I finally came to what I think is a workable solution. I’ve ordered the cheapest reliable second hand domestic DVD recorder I can find. This is one of those boxes that sits on top of a TV, so its job is to take real time TV signals, produce TV quality images, and do it all onto standard DVD format. This seems like the cheapest way to guarantee a certain quality. Plus as a side benefit I can (hopefully) convert old family videos onto DVD. I think – I’m crossing my fingers that it will work.

The machine should arrive on Wednesday, then I’ll copy the VHS onto DVD, then rip the DVD onto my computer, then edit the video into a YouTube friendly format. Then the game teaser video should be online by this time next week.

I hope!