Cutscenes, Music, and More

[Tony Knightcrawler]

So it looks like XWAU is really approaching completion after so long. JeremyaFr, Blue Max, Justagai and I am sure others I am unaware of have hacked this game to the point where it's hard to believe it was made in 1999. I can't believe I live in a world where I don't have to wonder which was better: the 3D cockpits from XWA or the interactive cockpits from the earlier games. Obviously with how much the community's new hackers have opened up possibilities for us, a lot of models will probably end up being updated. The game not only looks better than ever, but even plays better. I cannot say I have helped XWAU get to where it is, but I wonder if it's time to start thinking about loose ends that have become apparent, and what we can do about them.


1) Cutscenes - Most of the game's cutscenes haven't aged well. The Zaarin cutscene especially comes to mind. While I would normally I would throw my hands up and say this is a lost cause... have you guys seen Howard Day's YouTube channel? https://www.youtube.com/user/HowieDay82 This guy clearly loves the X-Wing series and he's an amazing 3D artist and animator. It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that he would take up the challenge. Obviously we would want to ask him a bit later (he IS working on his own animation right now, for instance), but I mean the guy has already made his own Mon Calamari and stuff. I know EC Henry allows his Patrons to download the 3D models he has made, and I think he would be okay with his assets being used for this reason.


2) Music - This is a big one, and not exclusively a problem for us. No, there's nothing wrong with the music that's in the game... except that nobody can stream or put up YouTube videos of the game with that music! This might not have seemed like a big deal 10 years ago, but now, Twitch and YouTube can potentially be enormous audiences for spreading XWAU to hundreds or thousands of times more people. Captain Shack is a YouTuber who would definitely play a completed XWA. He's popular and his channel is devoted to gaming, modding, and Star Wars. Kind of a perfect fit. He has never played an X-Wing game before, but he did express excitement to play XWVM when that finishes. I think once he tries it, it wouldn't be unthinkable that Eckhart's Ladder and other big channels would stream it as well. But the experience would be less enjoyable for these people if they couldn't play the game with Star Wars music.

Maybe they'd still play and get a kick out of it, but the Star Wars community probably needs to address this sooner or later, so I'm gonna just come out and say it: If the Star Wars community asked LucasFilm if we could create fan orchestrations of classic Star Wars music, I am pretty sure they'd say yes. Right now, they need all the positive press they can get, and the work this community has done could potentially lead to a spike in sales of retro Star Wars games, just as EaW modding has led to a spike in sales. This move could also generate good will, which could lead to increased sales generally. Finally, it's possible Disney could sell these fan orchestrations on iTunes or something without adding them to the usually YouTube/Twitch/etc content flagging systems, and while allowing fans unfettered use. Basically, what I'm saying is the Star Wars community as a whole could get together to kickstart funds, the musicians and composers who want to participate can come forward, and an epic recording process could begin. Not just stuff from the movies, but also music from games, back when original music was being composed for Star Wars games.

Something like this is way bigger than me. This is bigger than our community, even. I have zero musical chops, community influence, and no more money than the average Star Wars fan, but I just want to put the idea out there and see what other people think about it. But I can tell you that there are a million Star Wars fans out there who want to create all kinds of content, from YouTube lore videos to podcasts to game mods to fan films, and all of them would REALLY want this to happen.


3) Audio and Voiceovers - A lot of the voiceovers in the X-Wing series are highly compressed and could use some cleaning up. There's gotta be someone out there who can do it, right? The sounds effect could possibly use it, too, and we might possible want to re-create some common ones (laser cannons, for instance) to avoid content flags; it probably wouldn't be a big deal if we left them as-is, but if there's an audio artist who wants to do this, I think that'd be great. The original sound designers for Star Wars did tell everyone how they made a lot of their sound effects, after all. For blasters, I know they struck a power line support cable. This all probably isn't necessary, but clean audio would be nice. XWVM could probably use cleaned-up audio, as well.


4) UI - Probably not a big deal, but some UI elements in XWA do not scale well with modern monitors. Maybe something can be done about that.


What is everyone's thoughts about these topics? Anyone got anything else?

[Ace Antilles]

It's amazing how much has been done in a very short amount of time really.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that can be worked on now. Really opened the scope of the project.
What we mainly need I think is people that are good with grpahics, drawing and photo editors.
Can't talk more now sadly as it's late/early

[Ace Antilles]

I think Tony you bring up great points. XWA has changed so much now that nearly anything is possible!
When I look at the video comparing the too and the older pics of XW and TIE etc it's crazy how things change.

1) Cutscenes - I really don't know what the limitations on this are but I know they have been able to be shown better haven't they?
Has anyone released any fan cutscenes yet? Wow that guys stuff does look good. Making new videos would be brilliant if possible.
It really depends on how big the file sizes go to and are there still size or playback limits the EXE can't handle

2) Music - Well music can be changed but not sure most of it needs altering, unless it's a higher quality.
Yes Disney is getting crazy on copyrights, even for fan made films. Someone is remastering the films and put up a trailer and someone claimed the Disco music. Crazy.
Would Disney even notice or cared if we put new music into the game itself? I mean we aren't selling it or making money from it.
I suppose there can always be fan downloads that aren't part of the XWAUP. I suppose it's how "naughty" LucasFilm thinks we are for editing this game at all.
Would argue though that without the talented people of XWAU and others making new stuff the games would have stopped selling years ago.

3) Audio and Voiceovers - Not really looked at the voice over files. I wonder how far they can be cleaned up but yes any talented audio guy can easily play with those
Sound upgrades are part of the XWAUCP now and there's lots of cool sci-fi film options. So plenty of room to change stuff.
I don't think we are likely to get any Ben Burtts though making new ones

4) UI - Well there are lots of UI stuff that can now be replaced. Trouble is most still won't scale well.
Even though you can add new pics there is still the limit of the screen in the game. I think 640x480 is the biggest. Some elements have to be smaller to work with others.
So even if you had 1920 x 1080 it's stretching out a smaller size image.

Still there is loads that can be changed and improved. I've actually been messing around with several recently
I think XWAU really needs people who know how to edit pictures or draw stuff, graphics designers. There's lots of elements that can be improved in that area.
Could be a large group thing too, not just for one person. Here's an example of something I was messing with, so anything is possible

It would be great to see this game completely overhauled for 2020 on. Even if it's for new people playing and not just us oldies

[Tuskin]

Speaking of voice over, I wonder if it would be possible to rip some of the lines from ROTJ to replace the lines from the final missions. At least Lando's VO.

But there might be too much background audio/music for that to sound good.

[JeremyaFr]

1) Cutscenes - I really don't know what the limitations on this are but I know they have been able to be shown better haven't they?
Has anyone released any fan cutscenes yet? Wow that guys stuff does look good. Making new videos would be brilliant if possible.
It really depends on how big the file sizes go to and are there still size or playback limits the EXE can't handle

See the Following pages:

• A new TgSmush.dll
• xwa_TgSmush
• swe1r_Smush

The size of the cutscenes in no more limited.

The new dll supports .snm and .avi files.
If needed I can add support for .mp4 files.

[Ace Antilles]

Speaking of voice over, I wonder if it would be possible to rip some of the lines from ROTJ to replace the lines from the final missions. At least Lando's VO.

But there might be too much background audio/music for that to sound good.

That's what my Battle of Endor update did. Added Lando and Wedge sounds. There is a lot of background noise and music but could be improved today I bet.
The other issue is timing. It has to be split up into 17 files and so can be disjointed.

1) Cutscenes - I really don't know what the limitations on this are but I know they have been able to be shown better haven't they?
Has anyone released any fan cutscenes yet? Wow that guys stuff does look good. Making new videos would be brilliant if possible.
It really depends on how big the file sizes go to and are there still size or playback limits the EXE can't handle

See the Following pages:

• A new TgSmush.dll
• xwa_TgSmush
• swe1r_Smush

The size of the cutscenes in no more limited.

The new dll supports .snm and .avi files.
If needed I can add support for .mp4 files.

Thanks Jeremy. I will check those out sometime I knew there had been lots of improvements but not the details.
I think if it wasn't difficult the addition of MP4 would be a great choice.
There are lots of simple editors now and that can look good and be a smaller file size.

[keiranhalcyon7]

That's what my Battle of Endor update did. Added Lando and Wedge sounds. There is a lot of background noise and music but could be improved today I bet.
The other issue is timing. It has to be split up into 17 files and so can be disjointed.

Someone with ML expertise, along with high-quality recordings of the movie audio and the OST, could probably strip out the underlying music nearly flawlessly.

Regarding music - a fan recording is a no-go. Music is copyrighted twice - once for the composition, and again for the performance. Even if a new performance were created, Disney has the copyright on the composition, and can use it to suppress distribution of the new performance. I suppose you could try to get a licence to make & distribute the new performance, but I doubt Disney would OK it.

It might be more feasible to convince Disney to liberalize their Content ID agreement with YouTube, so that instead of getting takedowns or muted audio on gameplay videos that include original music, Disney+ ads would play.

[Trevor]

Really? Disney are clamping down on game videos because of music?
Well, what about the IP itself - that now belongs to Disney?
What about EA and youtube vids of battlefront, wont they be complaining their assets are on the net? kinda silly if you ask me....

The music in XWA is fine and since you cant get round the above issue even if you have a different performance as mentioned above then whats the point?

XWA with non-star wars music might as well be muted.

Trev

[DTM]

I've uploaded some XWA videos on Youtube, using original LucasFilm music. Youtube recognized the music and the artist, who are automatically mentioned in the detail section of the video. The restriction is that views of the video cannot be monetized. Since I never intended to make money with xwa, this restriction is fine with me.

[keiranhalcyon7]

Thanks for that report, DTM. I don't have experience with uploading gameplay videos, so I was answering a bit blindly.

[Ace Antilles]

See the Following pages:

• A new TgSmush.dll
• xwa_TgSmush
• swe1r_Smush

The size of the cutscenes in no more limited.

The new dll supports .snm and .avi files.
If needed I can add support for .mp4 files.

Just tried a really fast and dirty video file but something must have been wrong. I blame only me for not reading more.
But I had to convert it from MP4 to AVI and then trying to get into the game.
So whenever you can add MP4 support to the Convertor would really help speed things up

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[Tony Knightcrawler]

Sorry for taking a bit to get back.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should contact Howard Day now. He's not that big yet, but I am sure once he releases his video, he'll get a ton of E-mails. Better to let him know about this sooner and just say to think about it, since it'll be a while.


One issue with the UI I am wondering about is whether the game switching resolutions will mess with streaming/recording setups. When XWA was released, CRTs were common, and they are completely flexible. But now that CRTs are common, and they like to stick to a single resolution with square pixels, a lot of streaming services and video sites were built around that. In a while, I can try streaming XWA and see what happens if it goes from widescreen 2k to the 320x240 (or whatever) loading screen/menu.


Replacing copyrighted, official Star Wars music with other copyrighted, official Star Wars music wouldn't help us at all. It'd still throw up the copyright flags. And honestly, this isn't Disney's fault. I got copyright claims on my uploaded Star Wars many years ago, long before the purchase. Back then, I think it was Sony that was making the claim, because Sony distributed the Star Wars soundtracks for LFL. This is one problem with using official recordings. Disney owns the rights to the compositions (that is, the order of the notes), but while the orchestrated recordings belong to Disney, they license that out to other companies, and they sublicense that out to other companies. Right now, the flags on my 11-year old videos are UMG, but before it was Sony. And any company that is licensed to sell Disney music anywhere around the world can make a claim. It gets pretty crazy. And Disney has to stand up for all these companies they have deals on the recording with. But for a fan recording, Disney doesn't have to think about any legal requirements at all. Having a orchestral recording that is never licensed to anyone should prevent most automated copyright claims, especially if there are some slight changes, like the size of the woodwind section, or the acostics of the recording hall, or if different instruments are used to play sections of the piece. Disney could technically own the rights to the recording as long as they don't try to stop people from using it for typical use, license that recording out to other companies, or add it to autoflagging systems like YouTube/etc has (unless YouTube/etc add systems to autoflag audio for protection). The recording could even by done at one of their orchestra halls in Anaheim, so they get most of any Kickstarter-raised money back.

Keiran, as far as Disney's willingness to let people use their Star Wars compositions, the only way to know how they'd feel about it is if we asked them. I think they just might allow it. As I said, they might want the good press, they might want the money it could generate for them indirectly and even directly, and they might just want to raise awareness of how IP protection for their stuff works, and offering an alternative would do just that.

DTM, yeah my videos aren't currently muted. I think they have been in the past. However, Twitch will automatically mute any VODs that have copyrighted music, and popular YouTube content creators are not gonna spend the time to record, edit, and upload videos of our game if they can't monetize the videos. As I mentioned, they can mute the music (except in cutscenes) and overlay other music, but that's not really the full experience, ya know? Personally, I think it'd be nice to generate interest in XWA with half a million people instead of thousand.

Now, another option is to synthesize this music. That could be cheap-to-free, but I haven't heard synth music that can compete with orchestrated yet. Maybe Laserschwert, Retro Dan, or Kusi81 will know more about the current state of synth. All of them have done synth versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter music a long time ago. There's another guy I know who's done synth stuff, but not Star Wars. Maybe I can contact him, too.

[Trevor]

they can't monetize the videos

Im sorry but I have to say to this -

[Driftwood]

Frankly if we were to start the "lets bring attention to the game to a wider audience" I would hazard it'd be best to finish the project first and foremost in case Disney or EA gets all panty-twisted like they are want to do unlike LA itself historically and get heavy handed as they seem to do these days since "we're not licensed to do shit" even though it's all Star Wars IP for a Star Wars licensed IP and no money from donations, ads, nothing has been made or used outside of the Star Wars IP/license, I don't think EA/Disney give a shit if there's even the perception of competition with their current endeavors game wise.

And equally as frank I'd almost rather we didn't get a wider audience since usually when that happens, like Star Wars in general, the good thing gets ruined to please more people; now I'm not saying we'd intentionally water down or cater to anybody but things seem to get a bit crazy here every time we get new people until they get bored and things calm down. I don't think we'd be able to handle a mass influx even sans any corporate driven "issues".

[keiranhalcyon7]

Trevor, you beat me to it.

[Ace Antilles]

Honestly I don't think anyone is going to replace all the XWA music. It's not necessary and would be a lot of work.
Tuning it or improving it that's a possibility if someone knows what they are doing.
New cutscenes would be great if they use the same ship designs etc.

Anyway those are the dreams. There's still plenty that can be edited very simply...

[keiranhalcyon7]

Keiran, as far as Disney's willingness to let people use their Star Wars compositions, the only way to know how they'd feel about it is if we asked them.

They'd say no. The free availability of a fan-recorded soundtrack would undercut their own profits on soundtrack sales, it would undercut their licencees' profits on soundtrack sales and create bad blood with those parties, and it's likely that the current licensees have exclusivity clauses in their contracts that the authorization of such a fan recording would be in breach of (along the same lines as EA's exclusive license for games).

[Tuskin]

When Star Wars Theory's Vader fanfilm was hit because of the Music, LucasFilm stepped in and fixed it.

The Claim wasn't even from Disney or LucasFilm, it was a third party company that was licensed to distribute the music.

[Ace Antilles]

Regarding cutscenes. The new additions by Jeremy allowing MP4's have been brilliant.
I've already created 4 nice new cutscenes which I'm using in game.

Quick question on Cutscenes. I know that you can add extra ones to the list to go with missions.
Also you can have a custscene play before or after a Mission I believe.

What I would like to know is can you play 2 cutscenes in a row?
Example Battle1 then Battle 1a. Then the mission starts.

I tried a quick edit and it didn't work so I thought I would check it out.
Cheers