Last Updated: 6.17.09
Breaking ground with gaming related content specifically relating to WoW has been my goal lately. It initially began with the Progression Cloud and moved on to a few more expansive ideas that can be viewed on our Development Page. The concept that I expect to stir up the most talk is without a doubt going to be the RBV.
The Goal
When I first began laying the idea out it was becoming more and more awesome purely because of the massive amount of potential the RBV has. There are so many issues with boss and arena videos today that need to be addressed. The most notables being the fact that a large amount of videos are plagued with terrible or overplayed music. You can only listen to Remember the Name and Let the Bodies Hit the Floor so many times before you want to remember to let your own body hit the floor with a revolver to the dome. There's also the fact that simply finding an interesting view for a fight is a challenge in itself. Reasons could be purely because it because it's not your class or simply that the guy flat out sucks and/or doesn't know how to record a video for a VIEWING audience. Shitty camera angles, dying 50 times, etc.
There's also the issue of pacing. Multi-view videos are without a doubt the most interesting type of boss video to watch but there's always that one perspective that really has no business being there. Simply because of positiong and viewing issues or flat out because that class does little to nothing on the boss. Not only that, I can't name the number of times a multi-view video has swapped perspectives at midly interesting point in the fight to something completely worthless or less important. Pacing is the key to multi-view videos and the RVB allows the viewer to control the pacing at his/her own desire. Don't feel like watching a Warrior tank a Yogg-saron Crusher? Swap to a Melee tearing through the brain phase, or a caster burning the tentacles.
What's been accomplished thus far
I've logged well over 70 hours into this project so far and have made a huge amount of progress. This is a huge deal specifically due to the complete drought of information relating to flash player controls inside of another SWF. Simply figuring out how to embed the player into my concept took hours of research and trial and error. However, through all the stress and tear endused sleep I've managed to come out where I wanted to be for a BETA release.
RBV Features
- New: Awareness Panel implemented with the Global view as an option for viewing of key elements in the fight. (More to come.)
- New: Keynote Panel to point out key moments in the video across all profiles
- Both Standard and Low Quality Streaming Options
- Audio overlay for Ventrilo Conversations or boss walk-throughs
- Streamlined intro to the main stage of the RBV
- Streaming video where the user can seek to any given point
- Swapping respectives on demand within seconds of the previous clips time.
- Music overlay that is is controlled by the player but not disturbed during switches.
Recently Added
- New: Awareness Panel implemented with the Global view as an option for viewing of key elements in the fight. (More to come.)
- New: Optimized a few code relating things and updated a few graphical errors.
- Possible fullscreen fix (Much more testing required to be 100% confirmed.)
- XML Code for the keynote panel is a working BETA for the auto-pilot and expression features
- Recoded the profiles to prepare for the scroller and expressions
- Keynote Panel to point out key moments in the video across all profiles
- Audio Control of the Intro Video
- Low Quality Streaming Feature
- New boss video with 4 perspectives and the Ventrilo recording to go with it.
- Many, many bug fixes.
- New Skin for the JW Player
- Ability to seek with the ventrilo overlay syncing
- Added a "Syncing Audio..." message for when the Ventrilo Overlay is syncing.
- Ventrilo Overlay (Currently Music)
- Options Panel
- Introduction that flows perfectly into the main stage
- Volume is stable between pause/play and there is no longer a sound conflict when the player is restarted through the profile.
- Music information panel
- First boss video intergrated
- Musical Overlay Playlist Intergration
- Mute Feature
Under Construction (Roughly in order)
- New: Individual Awareness Profiles to get a more clear picture on precisely what's going on for each individiual regardless of viewing space.
- Implementing the profile scroller so more than 4 profiles may be active on a video.
- Recoding fullscreen functionality so that the controls are activated during fullscreen
- Database intergration
- New: Adding a large amount of extractable information via tooltips and pop-ups to give the instructional version of the RBV the most power it could possibly have. i.e. You mouse over "Static Disruption" and it tells you everything you need to know about it and what sort of real-world impact it has on the current raid composition with pro's and con's. (SD hates melee, for example.)
- Auto-pilot
- Recoding everything to simplify customization
- Graphical overhaul
- Individual Music Tracks for each Profile
- Manually configuring the FLV metadata injector to force keyframes every 1 second instead of every few %'s. (Bug Fix)
Goals
- New: Turning the RBV into a massively configurable player that works for any gaming related video function from instructional videos, to tournament replays or just typical game matches.
- Using the auto-pilot and music overlay, creating a tutorial-esque feel to everything. Allowing the viewer to learn as much about the encounter as humanly possible.
- Information about each perspective displayed on load.
- Simplistic boss implementation that takes literally seconds to setup and post for viewing.
- Music playlist and/or individual music identities based on each players favorite or style of music. Optional.
- An auto-pilot feature that will play the video at the pace created by the developer. Can be turned off for manual pacing and reactivated at any time.
- Low, Standard and High Definition quality of the perspectives to fit different bandwidth types.
- Ability to overlay and sync a Ventrilo recording of the boss fight while maintaining the music, abliet at a more respective volume.
- Database intergration to allow voting on more important or interesting moments so that future viewers can have a decent idea on what view they should be watching at any given moment.
- Combining my guild slider project with the RBV to create a seamless sort through all available perspectives. Yes, if 25 people recorded the fight there could be 25 different perspectives of the fight.
- Have working examples for a variety of games. Warcraft 3 FPVods, CounterStrike, TF2, L4D, and WoW Arena.
Known Bugs
- Fullscreen does not fullscreen the controlling perspectives
- Sound related issues when videos end.
- Swapping to a video will sometimes be a second or two behind the previous clip. This is a keyframe injection bug that I'm working on fixing.
- A few video related issues when the video completes.
This project has been a blast for me to work on and I will be continuing to work on it trying to bring it to a level where I feel it to be acceptable. The ultimate goal is to push this out to major guilds and arena teams bringing the WoW community a tool that will change the way we view videos entirely. If nothing else, this site will have the most unique boss viewing expierence available, which is still good enough for me.