Animating Loading Screens?

Ragnarok_Strike

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Is it possible to make animated loading screens like ones seen in Mass Effect 2? Reason I am asking is I'm trying to create videos of transitions between the planet and am wondering if I could put it in place of a loading screen.
 

Kayliaah

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Videos/cut scenes, I would say no, but Mustafar has one I think so who knows, it would have to be tried. I don't know what the Mustafar cut scene looks like, I remember the newbie tutorial one with Han Solo and Chewie but that's it.

I know the current loading screens are pretty much impossible to animate, and even if you managed to do it, it wouldn't work.

Anyways, you can't replace the loading screen, if possible you could put a cut scene before the loading screen, make the loading screen invisible etc, but not remove it.
 

Tonberry

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If you have 3D experience and render capabilities in terms of hardware like myself, then cinematics are no problem at all. File size is the only down side.

As for animated loading screens, as far as I can tell even recoding the UI would only allow for the most basic of animation if you can even call it that. Certainly nothing to the degree you're looking for.

I'm no expert on UI though, but these are my thoughts at a first glance.
 

Uli

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@Kayliaah & Tonberry - Pre-CU can't handle .bik files.
 
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If I remember correctly, Uli's override.dll allows the calling of other DLLs, so theoretically you could use that to implant a open source video encoder/decoder format to use for the animated screens/cinematics.

Uli said:
This client has been modified to load a DLL called Override.

You can create your own DLL's which will allow for further modifications, you can use this to load a DLL if you don't wish to expand the client's free space or searching for free space.
Of course this all relies on the concept that I'm understanding his post correctly.
 

Kayliaah

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Uli said:
@Kayliaah & Tonberry - Pre-CU can't handle .bik files.
But I know that. :D
I was more thinking along the lines of what MechWarrior posted.
 

Tonberry

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Uli said:
@Kayliaah & Tonberry - Pre-CU can't handle .bik files.
o_O

Wasn't aware of that one. :p

Meh, no point in wasting patch space like that anyway.
 

Uli

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MechWarrior001 said:
If I remember correctly, Uli's override.dll allows the calling of other DLLs, so theoretically you could use that to implant a open source video encoder/decoder format to use for the animated screens/cinematics.

Uli said:
This client has been modified to load a DLL called Override.

You can create your own DLL's which will allow for further modifications, you can use this to load a DLL if you don't wish to expand the client's free space or searching for free space.
Of course this all relies on the concept that I'm understanding his post correctly.
You miss understood it.
Its basicly to load memory patches in a dll rather then external programs.

Okay you can make it load a dll which has video encoding/decoding however how you going to make the game call that? You will need to make additional memory edits but that involves editing the EXE More, its just too complex to edit assembly to add additional things like it, yes its possible but by possible i mean give someone a good year to do it.
 
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Uli said:
Okay you can make it load a dll which has video encoding/decoding however how you going to make the game call that? You will need to make additional memory edits but that involves editing the EXE More, its just too complex to edit assembly to add additional things like it, yes its possible but by possible i mean give someone a good year to do it.
Instead of just making it call that one specific function, why not just make it call a function from a external .lua script, at which point it would make it easier to add functionality by simply editing the function in the lua script rather than Assembly modification.
 

Uli

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MechWarrior001 said:
Uli said:
Okay you can make it load a dll which has video encoding/decoding however how you going to make the game call that? You will need to make additional memory edits but that involves editing the EXE More, its just too complex to edit assembly to add additional things like it, yes its possible but by possible i mean give someone a good year to do it.
Instead of just making it call that one specific function, why not just make it call a function from a external .lua script, at which point it would make it easier to add functionality by simply editing the function in the lua script rather than Assembly modification.
I'm actually unsure how to respond to this.
All I'm going to say is, this is a compiled client executable and think I will leave it at that.
 
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If making a compiled executable call functions from a external dll not originally specified during linking is possible, then how is it not possible to make it do the same with a lua script?
 

Uli

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MechWarrior001 said:
If making a compiled executable call functions from a external dll not originally specified during linking is possible, then how is it not possible to make it do the same with a lua script?
Its just annoying to explain this.

Okay I use kernel load module in Assembly to load the dll, you must manually edit the executable and add this in and pass in the string name of the dll.

Once its loaded its loaded in memories and you can make calls of the dll.

My override.dll is for patching memory as in it gets called when it initializes it overwrites the exe's memory which called it patching certain addresses with certain data lets just get that straight because your confused about that.

Integrating in something as big as LUA will be so annoying to manual do in Assembly, its the same with adding in .bik file formats as I said before, its just unreasonable. Loading LUA Scripts into an exe that doesn't know how to handle it (Even if you integrate the dll in etc you would still be lacking checks EVERYWHERE in the exe).

This is the best I can explain it, its not something which is easy to explain. I still don't see why you pulled LUA Scripting out of the blue.
 
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LUA Scripting was the only language I could think of off the top of my mind. And I've never have tried to modify a exe in Assembly format before, so I don't know how hard it is firsthand. I don't even know how the hell you would go about doing it. What kind of apps do you even use for something like that?
 
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