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[EvilTwin]

...YogTrailers...

I remember Simon mentioning DF a few times on the yogcast. Maybe you can get him to lend his dwarfy voice to your cause or something!

...our cause! Let's do this all together

Well, we need to have a text for it scripted so we can decide who speaks it best.

Does somebody have any ideas for the layout? If you do, please post them, I'm currently preparing some schematics for my ideas to post them

Btw: MrQuantumFlux on Steam is a me

[EmperorJon]

Thought it was you. XD

Yes well, I'll type out some ideas... I agree with the Our Cause thing, which is why I was suggesting we make a joint YT channel, so we can make MORE videos and such later and share the team effort and praise.

[OMGTANGERINES]

I can help if you need a second dubber. No good at cutting or illustrating, though. If you give me a few days I can probably post a video of my magma cannon, too (almost got it completed).

[EvilTwin]

Well before we make a Youtube channel, we def. need something to upload there, so that's for later.

I think the best way to do this is to show the features as they are in ascii but have a slightly faded illustrated image of whats going on on the screen

I quickly put this together to show how I understood this suggestion:

Warning, might cause eyebleeding due to my crude drawing skills.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[EmperorJon]

Warning, might cause eyebleeding due to my crude drawing skills broken link.

EDIT: Hehe...

[ img]url[/img] IIRC.


EDIT2:

, for example.

EDIT3: Or not... wut the...

http://imgur.com/VpP84 <- this anyway. Probably too big for the forum to handle?

EDIT4: I will be talking to the creator of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqPG8AHiiPQ

[EvilTwin]

Fixed it now, as it seems i copypasted the wrong URL.

Perhaps the guy who does the music for DF talk could help out as well. (I think his name was Ollieh, though not sure about the spelling.)

[EmperorJon]

Ah yes. I was also considering the guy who does those Noise things on YT, did one for Bronzemurder and Boatmurdered?

Ok, I'll keep a lsit and see if I can contact them...

EDIT: Says he was last active on the forums over a year ago... do they just use one track all the time or is he still around?

[EvilTwin]

Ok, cool!

Um, should we better do it in the style of telling a story ("But one day, the dwarves dug to deep... From that day onward, no one ever entered the ruins, until some bearded wizard fell off a ledge.") or in the style of "Dig deeper and deeper!" "See if you can cope with the consequences!" and so on?

Depending on that decision we can then lay the base for our script.

[EmperorJon]

I was thinking more the second. It doesn't have to be the same for we show, as long was we narrate what's going on.

Coming to think of it, the same fort would provide consistency.

So, you know,

"Generate a persistent, huge fantasy world with geography, history, and much much more!"
"Choose a place to found the next outpost of Dwarven strenght!"
"Customize your starting items and Dwarves!"
"Get your Dwarves underground, it's safer down there!"

etc, etc. with sped up gameplay and such. And, you know "Make sure there's plenty of booze!" and "Don't forget to hold a lot of parties!" and "OH SHIT, CARP!".

[EmperorJon]

Sort of script I had in mind, it's a start:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress.
It's a game where you create a huge procedurally generated world and help your Dwarves to survived.
Programmed only by Toady One (Tarn Adams), with some assistance from ThreeToe (Zach Adams, his brother)
It's awesome, it's ASCII, and it's ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Create a world, and watch as forests grow, seas spring, rivers run, and civilisations rise and fall.
Years of history run through, and all historical figures are tracked by the game.
Choose to take part in the great story, as one of the Dwarven civilisations!

Choose where to embark!
What items to take, and the skill of your seven individual Dwarves...
Strike The Earth!

Get your Dwarves inside quick! They like it down there!
Dig through the dirt in search of stone and ores, in a highly realistic geologically simulated world!
Dig stockpiles, build workshops, carve out bedrooms, diningrooms, offices, and tombs for your Dwarves.
On the surface, hunt wildlife, fish, chop wood for necessary fuel or beds, pasture the animals...

Watch as industry flourishes. Metal smithing, crafts including pottery, stonecrafts and woodcrafts, farming, cooking and brewing, clothes making, stone masonry, carpentry...
If you can think of it, your Dwarves can probably do it!
More and more migrants will arrive the richer your fortress becomes, until you have hundreds of Dwarves!
Caravans from the Elves, or the Humans, or Dwarves will arrive and trade for your renowned craftsdwarfship!

Each dwarf has his or her own unique thoughts, preferences, personality, and mental and physical attributes!
Watch as your Dwarves make friends, get married, have children, or make grudges and argue...
Watch as Dwarves perform great feats of artwork...
Watch as Dwarves go insane... killing themselves, or those closest to them...

An ambush! Curse them! Those Goblins have found out where we are!
Send out the brave militia with only basic training and weapons.
Trap the entrance, close the front gate!
Begin arming and training of a full time military before huge sieges come!

Attract nobles who demand high quality rooms and items to be made!
Follow their requests or watch as they punish those who disobeyed!
Aim to attract the Dwarven King, or Queen!

Dig deeper into the harsh caverns to find more metal and stone... be attacked by creatures from the deep, unseen since the creation of the world.
Go down still, beyond them, to reach the edge of the crust, where rock is semi molten and magma flows freely still
Dig deeper yet... and disturb a force beyond all reckoning...

Too greedily.
Too deep.
Too soon.

Eventually you will lose.
Wether by hellish creatures of the deep, attackers from the surface, or floods of water or magma, lack of food or drink, or crazed Dwarves...

You cannot win.

But remember, losing is fun...

[Gatleos]

Well, if you need someone to cut together the video with something - anything - other than Windows Movie Maker, I'm your guy.

I'm not so sure about the animation cutaway thing, though. Perhaps only show a small part of the screen and use tilesets and graphics packs for some of the shots?

[EmperorJon]

Hmmm, I still think consistency would be the best idea... maybe showing images in between footage as opposed to faded on the side, but I'd suggest no texture packs, just because it makes people think that's the game. We want to show what the game ACTUALLY looks like... 

[EvilTwin]

Well, if you need someone to cut together the video with something - anything - other than Windows Movie Maker, I'm your guy.

That would be awesome, I don't know how to use any other video cutting software. And I'm only Dabbling in Movie Maker as well

Perhaps only show a small part of the screen and use tilesets and graphics packs for some of the shots?

Zooming in is probably a good idea, yeah. But I agree with EmperorJon about the consistency, we should def. try and keep it all original graphics. (my opinion)

[EmperorJon]

What do you think about the script style?

[Lord Urist]

(Just posting a suggestion, 'fraid I can't help out with this other than that)

Use the basic ASCII for the trailer, but you should dedicate at least one video/part of video to explaining and showcasing tilesets and graphic sets. That *is* part of the game after all, and many people would prefer playing with one. (Whether it be Mayday-style mega-graphics or simply a different typeface.)

On the script, the lines are too short, you need longer sentences etc. Don't forget that a person looking at what's on the screen will just see a mass of letters and numbers and suchlike, so someone talking is absolutely vital to not only explain what's going on but to keep the viewer interestd.

Also, show some late-game big forts as well. Smoothed walls, floors, dining halls etc. can actually be a lot easier for a person to get their head round (due to their clear boundaries) then when they look at the dwarves+wagon at the very start. Also, avoid engravings at all costs. They're really confusing to look at. (especially if you have the little pictures option turned on)

With regards to layout, I think perhaps have it be DF that takes up the entire space on the screen, but also somewhere show a speed counter (Something to the effect of 1x, 2x, 0.5x in one corner) to indicate when you change speeds. Also have the person speaking at that time explain that 'alright, we're going to speed time up now - see the number in the corner go up - while we wait for our dwarves to scurry around and finish doing <task just set>'. Then, if possible, have it pause every now and again and have the screen fade/transition some other way to a picture of what's happening. Illustrations like that can really help someone understand what's going on, and get into it more. (Having several for different lose conditions would be awesome, at the end of the trailer.)

Due to the scope of DF you'll probably want to create several trailers focusing on different things. (but remember to have some more 'boring' and some more 'exciting' stuff in each. Perhaps each one could end in a different lose condition.) But remember this isn't a tutorial, this is a trailer. So you'd want to leave out some of how it works, 'press c' etc. Similarly, when filming make sure the screen is entirely showing what's happening - having part of it showing the controls/minimap isn't necessary.

Oh, and if you can get a few different people interested in the job, it might be worth holding a poll on these forums for who would be best for the speaking part - because not everyone can speak clearly / in an accent people understand / etc.

Just my 2 dorfbucks.