Quake 3 Movie Maker Edition (Q3MME) and Multiview Demos

Date: Tuesday, 2010-05-11, 8:03 PM | Message # 1

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Since early in the Quake 3 life, some people wanted to enhance the movie making process by modifying the demo playback, adding some features, keys and controls to facilitate the job of movie makers.

In the past, there were Seismovision to play demos, and Q3 Server Demo Center (small description here) to record a server-side demo, containing all the informations about all players and objects in the match, to reproduce them faithfully during playback. The problem with the latter is that you needed a special server mod and binary so the server demo recording could work.

Now time has passed, and new tools are available.

With CPMA and Excessive Plus, you've got the option to record what we call a "multi-view demo" (or MVD), directly while you watch the match yourself as a spectator. With these demos, all players and objects infos are recorded, and you can replay the demo just like the match is happening before your eyes !

But what about recording a movie ?

Here you've got the Quake 3 Moviemaker's edition (or q3mme), a great tool that is similar to the old Seismovision, with many more features ! Amongst them, the possibility to watch MVD and cycle through all players, and you can go back in time if you miss a superb shot !

An interesting discussion about this tool on Excessive Plus forums :
http://www.excessiveplus.net/forums....layback

If you are interested into making movies, this can be a really nice tool !

Only potential problem : I don't know if it's possible yet to use it for OpenArena, but if some of you are really interested, we could ask the Q3MME authors to make one, or I could take a look if I can hack it to make it compatible with OA.

It's up to you guys ! Post here if you ARE interested !

supergrism

Date: Tuesday, 2010-05-11, 8:37 PM | Message # 2

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Ok tested, it works, all you have to do is :

1- Modify the file "start q3mme.cmd" :

from :
start quake3mme -nosplash +set fs_game mme +set fs_extraGames "osp defrag" +set r_picmip 0

to :
start quake3mme -nosplash +set fs_game mme +set fs_extraGames "baseoa excessiveplus oacl2010xp osp defrag" +set r_picmip 0

2- Rename your demos extension from .dm_71 to .dm_68

3- Done, run "start q3mme.cmd" and select your demo smile It works nicely for OA vanilla, for MVD it works too, but ExcessivePlus names aren't displayed and there are some problems with scoreboard, but the time control (and timeback) work quite good smile

If you test, please feedback your problems here !

dots

Date: Tuesday, 2010-05-11, 10:38 PM | Message # 3

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I've seen it done another way to work with OpenArena. This method is for vanilla OA though.

http://rainbow.furver.se/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1779

See the last post on that page. Gerbil showed me that guide last year and that is the guide i used to get it to work.

supergrism

Date: Wednesday, 2010-05-12, 4:44 PM | Message # 4

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Bah, my guide is much more simple and short XD

Using ioquake3 can be good if you plan to use demos with Q3 id software's maps, but else if you focus on OpenArena and third-party maps, you simply have to modify the fs_extraGames parameter in the batch, by adding your mod's name (can be baseoa, cpma, excessiveplus...) and it will tell to Q3MME to look in those folders too for ressources and demos (so maps that resides in baseoa works directly).

About the fact that it works only on Windows, that's true, because this is not a mod but a modified binary, and they did it only for the Win32 one. But maybe you can try Wine on Linux, it could work...

supergrism

Date: Friday, 2010-07-30, 7:53 PM | Message # 5

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Update : fixed the link to the ExcessivePlus forums.

Here are some quotes from this thread, about how to use Q3MME to rewind demos, and to switch players in multiview demos (tested and approved by me) :

Quote

How to use Q3MME to play MVD (multi-view demos)

no problem either >_>

press x until chase

press 2

space+e/q to cycle through players.

Quote

C : pause / resume demo playback

Hold Shift + move the mouse : control demo time

Hold Shift + D : move 4 seconds forward in time (you can hold this down)

Hold Shift + A : move 4 seconds back in time (you can hold this down too)

btw, it also works if u dont have a mvd, however mouse will look a bit fucked up.
X, Z = Cycle views [Camera, Chase, Follow(1st person)]

SHIFT + move the mouse = Time control

Hold Space + E : follow next player

Hold Space + Q : follow last player

Another thing : you can use /set com_cameraMode 1 in vanilla OA to activate the camera mode, which avoid quitting the game when you press a key, so you can bind some actions to your keys to help you in demo making (Q3MME activates this mode by default, as well as ExcessivePlus).