[3/06/2008 BLOG UPDATE]
[2/28/2008 BLOG UPDATE]
Before you watch it, MAKE SURE THE QUALITY IS SET TO LOW. If it isn't put it on low, the blur effects will look really crappy if the movie is set on medium or high. Plus some of the backgrounds have animations, and they could cause some serious choppy or laggy animation.
Seems like another year has passed doesn't it? Anyway, episode 7 is here. I wanted to release this episode last month, but I couldn't sadly. I did finish the actual animation of the episode on the 30th of September, though. The sound integration phase took place on the first week of October. The second week I spent doing the menus, adding the buttons, tweaking animation, proofreading all the text several times over, and altering text so that it makes more sense; essentially the finishing touches.
The episode would have been released a couple days earlier but there were several problems present when I made the swf. The problem I found was that the text for the first half of the episode was completely invisible. I found that odd since I could read it just fine when actually making the episode. The text properties were odd, though, because I couldn't alter it in any way. Every option was greyed out. So I couldn't bold it, italicize it, fade it, animate it, etc. For the second half of the episode, I could alter the text and that text actually showed up in the swf. I remember making that possible with a-xir's preloader. The text in his preloader was the type of text I normally use when making ludas animans so I copy pasted the text for that into my episode halfway into its production. So I don't know what was up with the text in the beginning half.
Either way I had to go back and change every text object in the first half of the episode to the text I used in the second half. That took about two days...
Another weird glitch I found in the episode is that in certain scene transitions, the mega buster sound effect plays for absolutely no reason. I tried to locate the problem but couldn't really find it, so I tried to muffle those
instances a bit. You still hear it occassionally, but it cuts off quickly. When you watch the whole episode through, you don't hear it much, but if skip around using the scene select you'll hear it a lot more... *sighs*
This isn't really a problem per say, but I think I kind of dropped the ball on the final action sequence. For a scene like that to work, you need multiple camera angles. Since that's an impossiblity with sprites, it isn't as good as I wanted it to be. I'm kinda disappointed in it, actually. Bah!
I think that's all I have to say. I really wanted to release this episode before Tales of the Abyss came out,
because I know I would be playing that game non stop (immensely enjoyed the JPN version) and neglect the release of this episode, but I somehow managed to finish it anyways. Hope you like the episode...
P.S. Thanks for the preloader, a-xir!
#12
Approximately 19 minutes 5 seconds (depends on your reading speed)
20 FPS
12545 total frames
Frame Size 619 x 362
108 Sounds
Made with Swish Max