Garan

Beta 0.5 is now available.

This version now includes the ability to display a series of .jpg files as a "Movie". As noted in the plugin description above, the feature is limited due to the size of a .jpg series compared to a .mpg file. To limit the size of the .jpg series, I recommend starting with the shortest duration possible to illustrate the point of the chapter it is used in. Additionally, decreasing the resolution of the .mpg will also significantly reduce the size of the resulting .jpg files.

To create the sample included in the tutorial I hijacked the intro to one of my daughters' YouTube videos, "CatQuest". The intro was about 40 seconds in duration but was recorded in significantly better resolution and quality. Just for giggles, I exported the file as a .jpg series and it played really nicely in the Anthology player - except the zipped version of the files would have been over 100 Meg. So, I started experimenting with shrinking that to a more palatable size. The first thing I did was use an application called "Handbrake" to convert the video to a much smaller resolution, 640x360, and set a lower frame rate, in this case 25 FPS. I then opened the resulting .mpg in QuickTime Pro 7 for Windows and exported it as a .jpg series, setting the quality to Medium. The resulting .jpg series was still a little larger than I wanted, about 16 Meg so I re-exported the series at a lower quality and brought it down to about 10.5 Meg - any lower and the video got really ugly.

Unfortunately, Quicktime Pro 7 for Windows is no longer available - I don't know if the Mac version has the "export as .jpg series" feature but I suspect it does. There are a number of other video processing applications that claim to support this feature, just use Google to search for saving an .mpg as a series of .jpg files.

The only complicated part of the Anthology Movie Maintenance window is the File Pattern. I needed to make the Movie definition as simple as possible so authors have to save their series of .jpg files with names that have a numeric value that increments from 1 to the number of files. The File Pattern simply defines how the numeric portion is defined in the file names. The sample used 1015 files named from CatQuest0001.jpg to CatQuest1015.jpg. Since QuickTime put in the leading zeros in the numeric portion of the file name I used the File Pattern, "CatQuest%04d.jpg" which specifies files with the prefix "CatQuest" followed by a number left padded with zeros up to four place and a suffix of ".jpg". Had the file names not had zeros padding the number such as "CatQuest1.jpg" then the File Pattern would have simply been CatQuest%d.jpg.

Rhongar

Hey there,

I've been testing the plugin a little bit and first of all I must say what an amazing job have you done so far! Once you realize what you're doing it's quite easy in use and what you can do with it is incredible.

However I did run into two small issues. You may already be aware of these but I wanted to let you know just in case.

1. When using the 'receive chat' objective through the emote channel, my 'quest' would not update when I was targeting an npc (tried it on Lobelia Sackvile-Baggins). As requirement I entered 'You wave to Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.'. But when I targeted her and did /wave nothing happened. I also tried 'Rhongar waves to...' and '@PlayerName waves to...' but neither worked.
I then changed the requirement to 'You wave to everyone.' and that worked perfectly when I did /wave without targeting anyone. Not sure if this is a bug with emoting npc's or if I'm doing something wrong.

2. When using the 'receive effect' objective the selected effect does not seem to save in chapter maintenance. I tried out the cooked food in the tutorial and that worked fine, but when I select the 'You are quite merry' effect you get from drinking beer, the quest does not update when I get it. I tried it with a couple other effects but all with the same result. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong here yet again. (Edit, I found that it only doesn't work if you select the effect from the list, if you type it out it does in fact work)

I'll let you know if I find other issues. Keep up the good work!

Garan

Thanks for reporting these. I'm glad you are enjoying it - I look forward to seeing what gets created with it - the next update may be the first non-beta release (unless any really, really ugly bugs manifest between now and then) and should be out in a week or two.

The first issue sounds like a game client discrepancy - either a non-printing character in the message or possibly a different channel used when targeting a character/object (there are multiple emote channels and I don't recall off the top of my head how they differ - I thought it had to do with whether there was player text in the emote command but it's been a while since I played with emotes). Either way, the next update will include a Chat Log which will display both the raw text received as well as the channel and should help eliminate any confusion (except the occasional white space character masquerading as a normal space which can be a royal pain to figure out).

The second issue sounds like a bug in the Effect List and will require some testing. Out of curiosity, which client are you using? EN, FR or DE?

Rhongar

I am using the English client. I am also using a custom UI skin so maybe that could have something to do with it?

I ran into another issue today btw. Alongside the objective to get the 'you are quite merry' effect I had an objective to use /sing. Now in another quest the quest only advanced when both objectives were completed, as it should. But somehow I can't get it to work the same this time. The quest already advances when I just have the effect on me and doesn't wait for a /sing. If I use /sing first though it will wait for the effect.
I made sure I set up the transitions exactly the same as with the working quest (only changing chapters ofc). The working quest featured a 'location' and 'receive chat' objective.

Garan

The custom UI skin won't impact Anthology. I haven't had a chance to look into the issue but it is almost certainly a bug in the Effect List code - I was just wondering if it was specific to the FR or DE language specific strings (but since you use EN I have to dig deeper).

The quest advancing prematurely sounds like you accidentally set the "Next Chapter" setting on the Objectives tab for the effect objective to a chapter instead of "Use Transition". The premature advancement is exactly what happens when a multi-part transition is defined on the Transition tab but one or more objectives also have a Next Chapter defined on the Objectives tab. If not, then I can give you an email address to send the story definition to so that I can replicate the situation and determine the root cause.

Rhongar

Ah yeah that was exactly what happened. All working now, much obliged! Still learning haha.

Garan

I was able to replicate this behavior (it was indeed a bug) and it will be fixed in the next release. Thanks for reporting this.

Rhongar

Still playing with the plugin, I have a small suggestion.

When I create objectives for a chapter and minimize the reader, you get the small transparant objectives tracker. This is great in itself but I was wondering if completing all objectives required to go to the next chapter could maybe trigger the reader to come up again, so the player can see the new quest text before they see the new objectives. Personally that's how I'd like people to play my quests. Also maybe the tracker could show the chapter name.

Keep up the amazing work!

Garan

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I like both suggestions so they will definitely make it to the ToDo list.

EDIT: They will both most likely be in the first non-beta release - due out... soon.

Garan

The first non-beta release has been uploaded and is now available. There have been a significant number of changes to the story file structure but if you are updating from a prior Beta release, Anthology will automatically backup your existing stories and migrate them to the new structure. This may take a couple of minutes depending on the size and complexity of your stories, please be patient. Also, to see the latest version of the tutorial, remember to use the Story Selection dialog to delete the prior version of the Tutorial and then use the Import/Export window to import the new version of the Tutorial (the new version will not show in the Import/Export until the prior version is deleted). If you have any problems updating your tutorial or existing stories, please let me know (as noted, the prior versions are automatically backed up just in case and can be found in the PluginData/AllServers folder).

The Animation Studio sample Animation in the Tutorial is designed to be viewed at a 1920x1080 resolution or higher. If you watch it at a lower resolution, it should still function but you will have to scroll the display to see parts of the animation.

Rhongar

Good job on the official release, but unfortunately I ran into some issues already.

First of all the plugin wouldn't update well so I did a clean reinstall of it, backing up the old parts and my story. I then loaded my story and I could work on it like before.

But when I wanted to add a new objective, the text I wrote in 'Name' spammed my chat with the following line:

...s Online\Plugins\GaranStuff\Anthology\Storyboard.lua :106: attempt to index local 'self' (a nil value)

After I typed what I wanted, I saved and reopened. The new name was saved and typing in the box no longer spammed my chatbox. However,
typing in the 'Text' field started spamming me with the following line:

...Online\Plugins\GaranStuff\Anthology\ChapterMain t.lua:1166: attempt to index field 'Text' (a nil value)

In this case I was not able to save my text and on every attempt my chatbox was spammed with every key I hit.

Also, deleting an objective gave this:

...Online\Plugins\GaranStuff\Anthology\ChapterMain t.lua:849: attempt to index field 'ObjectivesDependsOn' (a nil value)

Please do look into this when you find the time, it's rather annoying. I tried a clean reinstall several times but it just keeps happening.

Garan

Thanks for reporting these. I've replicated and fixed them and will get an update out as soon as I can finish testing the fixes.

Garan

Ver 1.1 fixes a number of issues in the initial release.

If anyone continues to have errors from Beta stories that were not automatically migrated, please let me know.

Master_Yeti

Hi. I have been helping Rhongar by playtesting through his quest creations and had a random thought.

Is there any way to integrate Waypoint into this?

I am not sure if it is possible with the limitations of the lua but if it is it would add a huge bonus to what is already a fantastic plugin!

My thoughts revolve around maybe a button that grabs co-ordinates either from the quest text or a manual text entry box, merges them with the "/way target" command and punches them into the text chat to initiate a custom quest marker.

Garan

I've been experimenting with ways to integrate not only Waypoint but any plugin that responds to chat commands such as MoorMap and TerrainMap. It probably won't be available for some time as I'm currently engaged by other projects (non-game related, unfortunatey Lua takes a back seat to RL at times) but it's definitely on the ToDo list.