Various Questions

[MattE]

I'm creating a few missions which will hopefully become apart of a campaing or series.

1. Is it possible to have the screen in black and white? And also blend from black and white into colour? This is not vital but would help create atmosphere.

2. How can I get a guy to start on top or in a building? I've tried this setpos [(getpos this select 0), (getpos this select 1), 50] <- big building in Modova, Nogova. When I start the cutsceen the guy falls through the building and dies.

3. Scripting the cameras. Fade in. I need the camera to at first go slowly the town. Then I need a close of a guy's feet walking slowly - I can't figure out how to get a camera to target a guy's feet (zoomed in close and is in sync with the walking. The camera is right-hand side of the guy's feet. Then I want the camera to move through the court area while people are walking around. Then a close up of a snipers eye looking down the scope. After 2 seconds or so of this shot the camera slowly moves down following the barrel of his silenced rifle (dkmm PSG1 SD). Then I would like a low shot of the target to make it look like the target is powerful and towering over everything. Then the camera cuts to a view over the snipers shoulder targeting the soon to be dead man (in this view I would also like to have the camera do a "weird" type of zoom. A slight, slow zoom closer towards the sniper while the background moves really fast. I've seen this done before in ofp but not sure how they do it). Next view is a scope view with the crosshairs placed on the target. Then I need a view front on of the sniper - looking down the barrel from a distance basically. While in this view the gun fires. The camera cuts to the courtyard and targets some birds flying off. And finally Fade out.

Sounds like a lot I know but no matter how much I practice and read tutorials I can't for the life of me script stuff. All help would be appreciated.

Cheers

[Kaliyuga]

 1) don't think so....  but to me sometimes if it's late at night and the only light to see by is a streetlamp OPF kinda looks B&Wish to me...

 2)should work.. if you're using 50 I'd just say it was too large a number... it's 50 meters..  which is about 150 feet.. at about 10 feet per story of a building that would be a 15 story building.. try a lower number

3) Hit the editors depot http://www.ofpec.com/editors/index.php

and look for a tutorial called  camera.sqs by Messiah ..  you'll love it and it can solve most of your cam scripting problems..

[PsyWarrior]

Greetings MattE/ Kaliyuga,

1. Kali, you realise you'll damage your eyes playing OFP at midnight by the light of a streetlamp?

j/k, I know what you mean...  

Indeed, when playing missions in late night, the colour does appear to drain out. Knowing BIS, this is probably a deliberate atmospheric feature.

Does this help you in any way MattE? I don't know if it's possible to have a smooth, rapid transition from night- day without speeding up time, or if that would achieve the effect you wanted. It's worth experimenting with, though.

2. The command is correct, so just experiment with that 50 until it works.

3. *loading standard scripting encouragment program*

Scripting can be difficult to get into - it was for me, anyway. Camera scripting in particular, I found daunting. It was about 2 months after I learned to script (and by this time, I had reached the obligotory 'creating an 'advanced' HALO script' stage) before I learned how to camara script. One day, after playing the original NPD, which showed me how effective cameras can be, I sat down with a camera scripting tutorial, gritted my teeth, and resigned myself to learn to cam script. 10 mins later, I said "This is really easy", finished the tutorial, and instantly mastered the art of camera scripting.

Camera scripting is very very easy when you get into it. It's basically just a sequence of moving a camera to a certain place, pointing it at something and waiting for a certain amount of time. It's like operating a camera that doesn't have any problems violating the laws of gravity, or time. Or physics.

The 'weird zoom' you spoke of is actually used in real life videography. Basically, you zoom in to something while physically moving the camera in the opposite direction. I.E. You zoom in while tracking back.

That's a complicated cutscene you have planned there, but it is perfectly possible within the OFP engine.

Good luck :thumbsup:

-Supreme Commander PsyWarrior
-Psychic Productions