Mike has green lighted a short Video to play after selection of a major race by the human player. Here are links to what we saw in BOTF.
Cards
Klingons
Ferengi
Feds
Romulans

Nice but we can do better. I can animate, using blender, a ships like Captain B's high resolution Enterprise but we need some new text for the voice actors to read. Who among us will write something new for the Feds? (That one always seamed whippy for a war game and is that advice even valid anymore?) What should the Dominion say? I think the Romulan intro is rather good as it is. Will anyone offer to rewriting here?

Moe came up with the text to the original intros:

Federation Always remember that expansion is achieved by diplomacy, not by the military. Starfleet's mission is to preserve the peace. Our ships are not intended to start wars, but to end them. We attack only, as a last resort.

Klingons If a Klingon does not fight, he does not breathe! Make allies if you must, but never leave the empire without an enemy. Klingons are born to fight and conquer! A true leader will never forget this.

Romulans Misdirection is the key to survival; never attack when your enemy defends, never behave as your enemy expects, and never reveal your true strength. If knowledge is power, then to be unknown, is to be unconquerable.

Cardassians Control is the only thing that matters. Methods are not important; efficiency is what counts, in the end. Exploit what you conquer, for in the struggle for survival every resource is critical. History is written by the victors.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition number fifty-eight; there is no substitute for success. It does not matter how success is achieved; superior numbers are just as effective as superior technology. When all is said and done, any victory is better than any defeat.


MOE came up with the race descriptions you see as text in Supremacy before you will get to the video:

Federation
The United Federation of Planets is a coalition of worlds bound by a mutual desire for peace, the pursuit of scientific understanding, and trade. By far however, the most numerous of the Federation races is one of the founding members, the Humans of Sol. The people of the Federation live in a society based on the values of liberty and equality. Their strength lies in extremely effective research, which grants them fast access to new technologies. They are also efficient in industry, the mining of raw materials, and the production and supply of energy and vital goods to their planets. Their high-quality products come at the expense of high resource costs, however. Because of their moral convictions, they quickly show weaknesses in the field of espionage, but they make up for this with impressive, well-rounded starships, which function as well individually, as in groups. Federation starships are equally likely to be seen conducting trade, exploration, humanitarian, and diplomatic missions, as they are to be seen conducting military patrols and combat maneuvers.

Klingons
The Klingons are some of the most feared warriors in the Galaxy. Their quest for glory and honor in battle makes them masters in the field of combat; be it on the ground or in space, their weapons arm quickly and strike hard. Some of their battleships possess Cloaking devices, with which the Klingons strike from the shadows at their prey. Their vigorous industrial forges process countless masses of raw materials, keeping their resource-hungry war machine running, whilst gigantic hunting parties guarantee the population's food supply. However, all things that do not directly serve battle are of lower importance to them and thus are less effective. The Klingons consider espionage a cowardly and dishonorable act, but are willing to defend themselves through internal security as necessary.

Romulans
To outsiders, the Romulans are an enigmatic race. To the Romulans, however, other races have hardly any mystery left. For their talented intelligence agency, the Tal'Shiar, respected by all, has solved each of those mysteries. Romulan interests are protected by a veil of secrecy and covertness, just as their ships are hidden from prying eyes by powerful Cloaking technologies. Their ships move undetected in groups until they are close to their unsuspecting victim, before decloaking and destroying their target in the ambush. Reports on Romulan society show it functions on exceptional research achievements; their industry and mining efforts are not quite as effective, however. The basic supply of energy and food for the populace is sufficient to meet day-to-day needs, and is rigorously regulated to be resource-saving, as are their fleet maintenance costs; Romulan fleets expect to decimate the enemy before they have any chance at mounting a defense. There is therefore little need to equip their vessels with expensive armor plating. This should not be seen as a weakness however; Romulan ships are known equally for their maneuverability and heavy weapons, as for their ability to disappear at will.

Cardassians
The Cardassians use any means necessary to ensure the absolute loyalty of their subjects. A national indoctrination, mixed with effective control methods, promotes an unconditional belief in the Cardassian systems and work ethics, which results in exceptional industrial and mining capacity. These state-promoted plants clearly work far more effectively than their food and energy installations however, and their research advances at a slow rate. Their intelligence services, the Obsidian Order, are also very efficient, and are considered to be equally as dangerous as their military, both in the acts of espionage and sabotage. Cardassian ships continue the principle of community-controlled actions in space. Individually not very efficient, they are developed to attack in tight formations.

Dominion
The Founders, also known as "Changelings" to the outside world, see themselves as the legitimate power that will bring the chaotic Universe to order and control it with themselves at the top of their new hierarchical system. For this purpose, the Founders routinely genetically re-engineer races to perform particular roles within their Dominion. These races include the mighty Jem'Hadar, perfect soldiers who are controlled by psychotropically addictive drugs that only the Founders know how to make; and the Vorta, the "face and voice" of the Founders, their Diplomats, and the race that permits the Jem'Hadar access to Ketracel White supplies in exchange for their loyalty. The Dominion regularly use their superior genetic manipulation techniques to "improve" all the races under their control, and this policy has allowed the Dominion to make astonishing achievements in many areas, including construction, mining, and energy production. The many races under the Dominion now worship the Founders as near-mythical gods, although the Founders themselves rarely leave the homeworld. The shapeshifting abilities of the Founders are very useful in gathering intelligence and performing acts of sabotage, whilst the excellent Jem'Hadar ships and troops carry their will to the far reaches of the Galaxy.

1 st post

Finally we're getting to the really cool stuff (little things that give life an quality to a game)

The new text looks really good. One problem however, "Romulan fleets expect to decimate the enemy before they have any chance at mounting a defense." To decimate means to kill 10%, so I think this sentence needs a different verb there.

Thanks Kirktitude
We will look for better lines in the video. Correcting that text I will have to leave to the people working in the area.

Damon Lindelof is a mover and shaker for the new Star Trek. Here he give his take on breaking into the business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpXGxJeX ... r_embedded
I do not want to move in with them but I am shooting for 10K hours on CGI. If you want to learn a new skill and help build the game here is a good place to start.
Ken

I just love it.

Instead of "decimate" how about just "cripple".


As for the intro voice-overs, I think the original text (and voice acting) is superb and would work well for Supremacy. THe only question is what to do about the Dominion. What short blurb summarizes the Dominion's attitude that doesn't overlap the others.

Something like:


Dominion: Before the Founders, we were weak and seperated. They found us, they remade us, they set us onto the path of glory. It is our duty to enact the Founders will upon the galaxy. Let the believers join us and the heretics be crushed beneath us.


Thoughts? I view them as a blend betwen Cardassian efficiency and Klingon brutality, but with a very thick layer of religious zealot layed on top. This isn't war, this is a holy crusade to bring the light of truth to the darkness of the galaxy. The heretics and nonbelievers may oppose us, but in the end the Founder's call (song? word?) will echo from one corner of the galaxy to the other and we shall all be joined as one.

We had to shorten the text on those videos. The YouTube Channel for the intro videos is StarTrekSupremacy1.
The alpha version of the Klingon, Federation and Romulan videos are up on YouTube while we are working on
the Cards and Dominion.

Awesome videos:

Romulans: The massive decloaked warbird was epic. I like the text read although I'm a huge fan of the original BotF line "to be unknown is to be unconquerable". I understand that's a tough one to follow as the BotF Romulan was pretty awesome.


Federation: Nice, although the camera seems a bit "sticky" at times, but this is made up for by the inclusion of minor race ships and the awesome ending where the disappearing ships become the "star flares" of the emblem.

Klingon: It's klingons. Talk about fighting and blow stuff up, excellent work!

Cardassian: I like the intro, especially the focus on the signature space station.



I don't know if you guys have your text written out, but a bit of an adjustment on the above:


"We have come from the distant corners of the galaxy to spread the Founders holy word. Before we were Found, we were lost, weak, divided. But now we are unified in purpose. Now we have strength and power. Now we are Found. Let our crusade sweep across the galaxy, and crush all those that oppose the might of the Dominion."

Thanks

That jerky camera motion in the Federation intro is a thorn in my side for sure. I will be looking at ways to make it better in the beta version. I also want to get a 1701 E, or the like, for the ship close-up.

That Romulan line, "to be unknown is to be unconquerable," is classic. I do not know how others would feel about using an element so clearly from the original BOTF. We will see.

/meh. I think giving a shout out line to the classic wouldn't impugn on anything.

The romulan intro isn't bad and I wouldn't worry about re-doing it just to shoe horn in that line. You can always work it into the techpedia...

I've done some messing with 3D in games, but not in animation programs like 3Ds max (I have it, just never animated with it). Is it possible to use parabolas or just simple curves for defining camera positions and angles in these 3D modelling progs? If I was programming it I'd have a for next loop on the camera move but do it as an angle definition and use sin cos etc. That at least would strip out the jerkiness, though without true parabolic blending of the arcs it might still look noticably odd between each arc move unless the camera came to a stop between them (either the focus coming to a stop or the camera position coming to a stop)

Lightwave has a few added tools to let you graph and isolate all the features of movement. It is not currently possible to do this as accurately in blender. The next round of videos will have smooth camera movement.

I kinda figured you'd be on top of this, just thought I'd add my two cents... pennies... whatever.