[video] Games with commentary

[eyerouge]

After failing to sell this idea to two - three players I now post my thoughts in here instead:

I believe the multiplayer community as a whole would benefit if good players, who have skills, been around for a while and that know the game, would recorded their games and added audio comments to them.

The idea is that the end result would be a movie that people can download and watch, while at the same time listening to what you have to say about he game. You could discuss your own game play, the opponents, or whatever comes to mind. There are many tings to be said about a lot of stuff in a game. Exactly how you do it and what you comment on would be up to you of course. With that said, please keep it polite and use an adult english language - we're not interested in flamewars and cocky comments

Easiest way of achieving these movies would probably be to save the replay of the game and then view the replay while you record it using third party software like for instance fraps for windows or recordmydesktop for linux, while at the same commenting in your own pace.

For veteran players it's usually and more often obvious why a player acts as he does. For a new player or medium skilled player it's another story - they could greatly benefit from such videos. I also think that such videos would benefit Wesnoth as a game, both in terms of community feeling and in reaching out to new players. Motion picture is a medium that sadly isn't used well enough when it comes to Wesnoth. Hopefully this can change soon enough.

So, this is where you come in: If you believe you have something to share with the community and are up for the task, please record a video of a game and add audio commentary to it, then post a link to it in here. We could then use it as an example and encourage other good players who might be interested to do the same. Eventually we'd have a library with plenty of Wesnoth videos that the community could watch, helping it to get a deeper understanding of the game not only by reading and playing, but also by watching and listening.

If you have any questions or thoughts about this, or want to help out, please post in here and be as specific as possible. Reason for why I haven't done this myself is that I'm a newcomer to the game and would probably do more damage then good by releasing a video

[anakayub]

I like it, but it needs the very good players and a lot of time (think about JW's How to Play)...I hope somebody will take this up, as it will be very useful. Stuff I see beneficial include 1) proper recruiting pattern and deployment, 2) proper attacking sequences (when taking into account terrain and alternative options), and 3) making good defensive/offensive lines. I think these are already included in Thrawn's Common Sense guide, but an illustrated/animated guide can definitely help other players.

[ylmson]

Just figured I should share something I found a while ago:

http://www.dailymotion.com/bert1fegg

This does sound like a really good idea, if people want to do it. You don't really have to have very good players doing commenting all the work. One idea is to have something like a volunteer commentator group doing real-time recording of videos for e.g. matches in the tournaments, and occasionally invite good players as observers and narrate their comments in-game.

[eyerouge]

It suffices to say that there are many ways to do this and that different ones could be targeting different viewers and/or have different goals. If people want to create Wesnoth video tutorials - great. If they want to comment a real game, a casual or finale or whatever, also great. There are plenty of things to choose from

The most important thing here is perhaps not to agree on exactly what should be recorded or in what order - on the contrary: I believe we should leave it up to the individuals actually doing it. That said, it's still useful to gather some ideas and thoughts on the subject, so keep it coming.. or even better - start recording

Edit: The linked video is a nice examplek, even if the low resolution renders it almost useless from my personal perspective. Maybe people could actually use larger resolutions and then put the videos on piratebay or whatever other tracker to distribute them? Again, many ways to solve it.

[rwar]

This kinda thing is quite popular for RTS's, although they're usually just done as audio files. The listeners can then play while watching a replay. Audio only probably won't work for Wesnoth though, with it being an TBS and all.

I think some more support for it is needed to be made for it to work well. Right now, you can at best display a players whole turn at once, with no rewind, which makes it a bit tricky to comment on I reckon, so something like a "show next move button", with rewind, would be nice.

As for resolution and such, Vimeo has ok resolution, and I've seen FileFront being used for usermade downloadable movies. There are also other free filehosts, but the ones I've seen were more annoying to use than FileFront, at least from a downloader perspective.

[eyerouge]

I think some more support for it is needed to be made for it to work well. Right now, you can at best display a players whole turn at once, with no rewind, which makes it a bit tricky to comment on I reckon, so something like a "show next move button", with rewind, would be nice.

It would be nice to have more replay features, indeed.

That said, it can be done pretty well already. Being able to comment something exactly when it happens isn't of huge importance in Wesnoth. Doesn't matter much if you comment x and x then happens, or if x happens and you directly after comment on it. My point being that super precision doesn't really bring anything to it. Compare it with the directors commentaries of a movie: Usually it doesn't matter, especially since the viewer would understand it anyhow (unless of course there were huge chunks of time in between and the commentaries have no relation to what is seen on the screen, in which case there was no point in making the video in the first place)

I think all this will be pretty apparent once somebody decides to give it a try. Come on people. I can't be the only one seeing the value of it...

[Sangel]

Hmmmmm.

What would be really great would be the ability to annotate replays with both "chat" messages and labels. That way an expert player could take a replay, and add annotations as they go.

For instance, a message could be added to Turn 1: "As we are playing with the Fog of War on, I'm going to be recruiting a balanced force consisting of a mage, a scout, two fighters, an archer and a merman. If there were less water on this map, I'd replace the merman with something else."

Two map labels could also be added. "A scout recruited here..." "...can reach this village in one turn."

As the game goes on, new messages and map labels could be added, explaining the flow of the game.