Ex-dev
I exited the gaming biz and run my own company now, but I'm keeping tabs on the games biz and I'll be at E3.
I agree about masking load time, and an intro movie would be fine for that. The first boot of the game is the most brutal for load so I'm fine with using fmw to mask that, or at least to make it more bearable. I don't believe in in game fmv though. It's interesting that you bring up the elevator ride because in that particular example using fmw would only increase load time compared to doing it in game. Let's use Mass Effect 1 as the example, which I presume is what you are referring to. You and your crew run into the elevator, hit a button then wait for loading while the elevator ride happens. Compare an in engine elevator scene to an fmv one:
1) All the assets to display the elevator are already loaded. You walked into it in game so all data related to your characters and the elevator are already in memory. So once the elevator doors close you can you the optical discs full bandwidth to load up all the new assets while the engine takes care of displaying the elevator with assets already sitting in memory. Now contrast this with an fmw solution. You walk into the elevator and an fmv starts to play. That fmw is now eating up a portion of the optical disc bandwidth to stream itself off disc. It's not a large amount, but it's still a measurable amount. So now while it goes on to load up the assets for the next area it will have less disc bandwidth to do so. In the elevator case, an fmw solution would actually load the next area a touch slower.
2) What happens when you are in the elevator? Well, Mass Effect 1 does it in engine so they have many options. For one they display your custom character exactly as you designed him since they can do that, the engine is rendering everything anyways. In addition they have the character say random things. They can also do that since the engine will make their lips match whatever random things they are saying. So how about an fmw solution? Well for one we can't have your character look as you designed him as there are infinite possibilities there, so we'd have to have him put on a generic looking helmet as he went into the elevator. The elevator would probably be converted into an airlock type situation so we could explain why people area always putting on their helmets before walking in the elevator. Oh yeah, and your crew can't follow you into the elevator. We don't know who your crew mates will be, again there are many permutations there and we're not about to render dozens of airlock movies. So your crew will have to remain outside. Of course your character can be male or female, so we'd need to make two fmw's of everything as well.
In either case, fmv loses in both load speed and flexibility. You can see how if one went with fmv that parts of the game would have to be redesigned to accommodate it, most likely just replacing the whole sequence with a stock canned movie that actually would take longer to load compared to if it was done in engine in the first place.
Only if you have a game with everything fixed in the same scenario, which more and more is becoming looked at as old gen. Things will vary now, even more so next gen, so fmv won't cut it. Look at Mass Effect 2. Your dude has scars on his face that either progressively heal as you go more paragon, or get worse (or stay the same, can't recall since I'm paragon
) if you go renegade. How would that game element be possible to replicate with fmv? Have him always put on a helmet before entering a cutscene?
Oblivion is a great example of why not to go fmv. The game has 24 hour lighting so the way people look will vary depending on when you talk with them. How would you do that with fmv? It's impossible, instead you'd have to go with a stock cheesy fmv. It might be a 1920x1080 30mbps fmv, but an incorrect and jarring one that would say always be in daylight when you talked to that guy even if it was sunset when you initiated the conversation. Regarding people standing around, if you are about to talk to someone and there are three people behind him mulling about, wouldn't it look strange if it suddently went to an fmv where there was no one behind him? Or what about items behind the person you are talking to, they are all dynamic in Oblivion. What if I knock all the items off the shelf behind him and then talk to him, wouldn't it look bizarre if suddenly an fmv kicks in with a nice and neat shelf behind him even though I decimated all of that stuff moments before?
Regarding varied faces, that is not a disc space but a time issue. Oblivion was a launch game so they could only do so much. It takes some time to make a random face generator + art that works convincingly. If they went fmv you probably would have seen the exact same faces as the in game version.
Yeah that does happen, but those are technical issues that need to be resolved eventually one way or the other. A lot of that happened on early games when physics engines weren't as common. That will also be corrected more and more as time goes on, it will become a relic of "old gen" games.
That's a developers choice mostly. It is easier to play back movies of course compared to playing back an in-game cutscene, but both can be done. Now if you could play them back, wouldn't you prefer to watch them in the exact way they were in your particular world, complete with how your character looked, what he was wearing, how much he was injured at that time, and exactly how the level around him looked? Or having the ability to choose the time of day?
Yeah I remember Wing Commander, I loved that game and I told Chris Roberts that when I met him at CES way back then. Still have his business card actually
But back then there was no choice. Now we have a choice, and continuity can be much better preserved with in game engine compared to fmv, without having to compromise game design to accommodate it. I think next gen will be strong enough to always stick with engine for cutscenes except perhaps for some launch titles when time is short, and perhaps for boot up movies.
