Getting Ready for Head Start, Working with Demos and the G+ Foundry Community

Neverwinter Head Start 

Neverwinter Head Start kicks off in just 2 more days, as a foundry beta tester with a published foundry quest, I get to join in with the other head starters and this pleases me greatly! I will not only get a head start in the game but in the foundry as well meaning I do not have to reach the mandatory level 15 to jump into the  foundry and start editing my quests or starting new ones. This also pleases me greatly.

Instead of trying to push my second campaign, Circle of the Living Flame, into a working state by the 30th (open beta launch) I am going to be creating and working with foundry demos to put together a OB Launch promo video for Dungeons of Dread for maximum exposure.

I suppose I should explain what that means exactly. In Neverwinter, you can type in the chat box /demo_record filename and it will start recording whatever you are doing, typing /demo_record_stop will end the demo recording. Each time you change maps you have to type the command again as well. Then you can create a shortcut to your game client and add -demo_play filename to the command line and it will play the demo you recorded in the client. You can pause, speed up and slow down the demo at any time.

Here are a few action shots I took in my demo I made last week:

Also, you can press F2 and detach the camera to get some really nice action shots. But this is where the sexy comes rolling in, It also has a camera manipulation tool built in so you can edit where the camera is for that awesome action video feel. You can edit the paths after you created them to get it just right.

Oh, it gets even better...I know that's tough to believe at this point, but it does. You can also save your camera manipulation and change the command line in the short cut to RECORD the camera adjustments into screenshots, load them into a video editor that imports sequence shots and export it into a video.

Here, allow me to show you an example:

This is an amazing tool and thought I would share in this update. I will spend the next few days playing around with it and hopefully master it enough to have a decent video to present at OB launch to showcase my campaign.

For more information and links on demos, check out the G+ Neverwinter Foundry Community, join in and chat with foundry authors and even some devs from Cryptic.

Until next time, peace!

-chili