f13.net

Actually, I was pretty skeptical about it up until last week. I'm not sure what's come over me.

I give you this without explaining it at all. Needless to say, we at f13 are excited.

Who said we white man?

I'm positively erect with the excitement

I'm positively erect with the excitement.

The only trepidations I have about the whole thing are about the ease of importing sound files and effects, and the portability of the movies after they are made.

I can only assume (hope) that the first mods for the game will allow nudity and humping. I look forward to the Hot Coffee-esque screeching that will ensue when Jack Thompson finds out about it. I can also be quite afraid of the lawsuits and copyright infringement bullshit that will come when people start making music videos with their favorite songs.

Yeah, you liked Fable, too, chicken chaser.

I'll be buying it if I can make a Zombie movie.

I was already planning on asking for this for Christmas.  And I was already planning on asking that friend you mentioned if I could use one of his throwaway scripts, so we'll see how offended he is by that.  Maybe the 80's style buddy-cop movie where one of the cops has Downs and the other one is totally hot?  He might let that one go.

A Score? Is that some kind of lap dance or something? I am passing either way, but perhaps some of the distaff members of the community would like more details  :evil:

The Rise and Fall of LtM.net.

Yawn.

Yawn.

I'm stealing the plot to SAW and renaming the movie to Shock. Can you do some voice clips Shockeye?

As The Movies is set over a number of years, will the actors develop from young aspiring actors to movie-making veterans?
Definitely! You will notice them age, and so will your audience. If you want to keep your aging leading lady playing the young love interest, then you can send her to have cosmetic surgery to shore up her sagging looks. Your actors' appearances will also be affected by any drinking or eating habits they may have.

What if a movie star gets too ugly and/or out of shape?
If you have the money you can send your star to get some liposuction or plastic surgery. These procedures will help add a few more years to a star's youthful looks, but they won't be able to beat time forever.

Do the actors specialize in certain film genres?
Yes. Actors carry a rating for each of the game's five genres. Ratings will increase the more they star in a certain type of movie. So, say you cast a star in horror after horror film. You'll soon see their horror movie experience and ability rocketing. However, try to then cast them in a genre that they have little or no experience in e.g. comedy, and you'll find their performance more than a little lacking.

Are there other ways to improve my actors' abilities?
You can drop your actors into an unused set and they will start practicing the genre meant for that set. So if you drop a Star into an alleyway set, he/she will start improving his/her action movie skills. If you then drop another actor into the same set, they'll start rehearsing together.

Often your movie voice track will suddenly shift out of whack, and you'll have to manually go in and move every single line of dialogue back into place. Fixing this bug alone can take anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour for a two-minute movie, so you can imagine that people will have a hard time using The Movies to film any epic masterpieces.

Wait, this game is sim hollywood and movie construction set?

Gamespy (http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-movies/665203p1.html)
Boomtown (http://pc.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=9751)
Telefragged (http://www.telefragged.com/reviews/themovies/)

Worrysome is this quote from the Gamespy review:

One thing that hasn't been clear in the previews: it almost sounds like you need to play the Sim side of the game to unlock things to use in the sandbox mode. Anyone able to shed more light on that?

I do know that the collector's edition comes with more characters and music and shit though.

It comes with 10 extra costumes, not characters.

Characters have bodies, costumes just fit over the bodies.

So, doesn't a finite number of costumes (and characters) somewhat limit the types of films you can make?

Someone better release a Downie patch, s'all I'm sayin'.

Are your movies going to have a touch of the down?

I'll use System of a Down (Syndrome) for the soundtrack. (Sauced calls them Syndrome of a Down)

Hey. That's my turn of words you just used there, kemo sabe.

It comes with 10 extra costumes, not characters.

Someone needs to make a "Get A Life" feature film. I bet Chris Elliott would even do the voice work for ya at a reasonable price  :-D

That's funny, because I call them shit.

I think Sauced made a good point (to me, last night) when he said it'll be like NeverWinter Nights and a lot of people will abandon it once they find out actual work is involved.

It's worth mentioning, though, that despite the relatively modest system requirements listed by the publisher, The Movies can really test the upper limits of your machine, and the frame rate can chug on even a high-end PC when you max out all the quality settings.

How many gamers own a legit copy of 3DMax. .01%?

You also do not own any of the content you create out of the Movies. Fuckers.

How the fuck does that work? 

I eagerly await the day Softdesk decides nobody owns any of the stuff they create with AutoCAD or 3dStudio.. oh wait, they can't do that.  The fuck?

Can I sell my movies either on eBay or anywhere else?
No. The assets/content supplied with the game and which are used in each movie created using the game belong to Lionhead and commercial use of these assets/content or use for any form of financial gain is strictly prohibited. Lionhead does not permit use of the game, and any assets / content supplied with it, other than in accordance with (i) the End User Licence Agreement which you agreed to when installing the game and (ii) the TOUs.

How can Lionhead use my movie when I upload it to the website? Am I entitled to a fee or royalty if Lionhead uses my movie?
No. By uploading a movie to the website you grant Lionhead a non-exclusive licence to use your movie without charge or payment. Lionhead will generally only use your movie for promotional and marketing activities connected with the website, the game and possibly other products developed by Lionhead / Activision; for advertising purposes; for competitions; etc.

AH.... "Because we say so."

I can understand not selling things using their art or 'scripts'.  But if you don't use their assets or scripts, and just use the tools then you should be golden.

Latest get-rick-quick scheme trashed.  You stay in the trailer park for now.

As it is now, you can't just use their tools alone. It doesn't work like that. Their tools are so intrinsically tied to their content (costumes, sets, props, etc..) that they may as well be considered one and the same.

Even "scripts" aren't totally one's own --- You don't "write" a script per se. You use the various built in cues, scene templates, and other options to approximate what you're trying to communicate.

The more I hear about it the less like a sandbox it sounds.

Did you expect any less from EA?

They can't own someone's ideas, can they?

They own the movie you produced, not the idea behind it. If you were to take that idea and make say a REAL movie of it, I doubt they could claim anything on it. You just couldn't use the original Movie from The Movies somewhere else.

How can Lionhead use my movie when I upload it to the website? Am I entitled to a fee or royalty if Lionhead uses my movie?
No. By uploading a movie to the website you grant Lionhead a non-exclusive licence to use your movie without charge or payment. Lionhead will generally only use your movie for promotional and marketing activities connected with the website, the game and possibly other products developed by Lionhead / Activision; for advertising purposes; for competitions; etc.

Goddamn this game is robust. I think there's a lot to be done there, but I'm having issues actually writing a script. There doesn't seem to be a script mode. Or an import sound mode. I'd read that there was. Am I retarded? Has anyone figured out how to do this? If Molyneux didn't put in this shit and fed us YET ANOTHER LINE, I swear to holy god I'll cut him. Cut him deep.

I meant that the ACTUAL movie (the .wmv file) made with The Movies is pretty much owned by them, but the IP as you rightly stated is not. They can't necessarily make money with the .wmv file you create, but they can use it for promotional purposes without your explicit permission. I'm assuming this means if you want to take your Movies and sell a DVD of them, you can't.

The Story mode is good. I ended up with the Advanced Script Writing office sometime around 1930, I think, after I'd made 4 movies, 2 of them by my own script writers.

- However, with respect to any game movies you create using the in-Program movie making feature ("Game Movies"), you will retain ownership of your Game Movies, excluding any and all content within your Game Movies that was either supplied with the Program or otherwise made available to you by Activision or its licensors, and such content shall remain the exclusive property of Activision and its licensors subject only to the limited license granted herein. 

Do you own my movie when I upload it to your website?
No. You have created your movie by combining the various assets/content supplied with the game (and perhaps adding your own content) and as such you are the ‘author’ of your movie and own it as a ‘work’. However, you do not own the assets/content supplied with the game, which belong to Lionhead.

-   You agree that, as a condition to your using the Program Utilities, you will not use or allow third parties to use the Program Utilities and the New Game Materials created by you for any commercial purposes, including but not limited to selling, renting, leasing, licensing, distributing, or otherwise transferring the ownership of such New Game Materials, whether on a stand alone basis or packaged in combination with the New Game Materials created by others, through any and all distribution channels, including, without limitation, retail sales and on-line electronic distribution. You agree not to solicit, initiate or encourage any proposal or offer from any person or entity to create any New Game Materials for commercial distribution. You agree to promptly inform Activision in writing of any instances of your receipt of any such proposal or offer.

Mmm, I want to unlock the last two things (top two mogul-certs) before getting seriously into the sandbox, since they provide some nice extra sets.

Unfortunately, it appears there's some sort of extremely poorly balanced (or poorly exposed) relationship system; in order to achieve a 5-star star rating, it appears you need to max-out all the sub-items. I've currently got a 4-&-3/5ths-star star with everything maxed except relationships.. which all my stars have 0/8 in, since it seems to decay away almost as fast as I can build it up. (Press is the same way, but I can max-out Press short-term with 2-3 stints in the PR building.) I've only ever seen my stars' relationships go up to 2/8, and that was with a star and director who worked together for 40 years.

Very frustrating. :(

But is it fun?

As a game.

There seems to be quite a bit of that sort of thing.

But is it fun?

As a game.

Heh, I'm doing it the hard way. So far, I've made it into the 60's...Researched and unlocked a decent amount of sets and stuff so far. I have the number 1 actor in the industry, a good deal of cash, multiple 4 star films....So all of these help unlock little bonuses and whatnot too.

If you've found a way to get them friendlier than 'acquaintance', I'd love to know.

Did all the VA myself, so the voices sound very alike.

. If you've found a way to get them friendlier than 'acquaintance', I'd love to know.

Noty bad Youra, not bad at all. How long did it take you? (Though I'd get someone else to do the screams next time :) )

Hmm.....How good has Lionhead been in the past about patching? Few and far between or the opposite?

Recording Dialogue in Post-Production

The Movies is currently limited to 98 custom audio tracks in game. In order to not overwrite your custom audio tracks by another film, we recommend that you archive your tracks in a folder within the "My Documents\The Movies\Sounds\Dialogue" folder. To do this, you can create a folder with the name of your film and select the custom audio tracks that are associated with your film and move them to the folder you have just created. Once this is done, you can continue creating custom audio tracks for other movies. If the movie with the archived tracks is reloaded in game it will appear that the movie is using sound from another movie. To fix this, move the archived tracks from your archive folder to the main "My Documents\The Movies\Sounds\Dialogue" folder. Please look for this to be resolved in a future release.

Heck there isn't even a store setting. No Clerks remakes for you.

I've been reading the Lionhead boards. Yes, there is modding and seems to be a community of modders starting up. They've already provided tutorials on making your own custom backdrops, I suppose for both the stage set and for titles. Some have already uploaded a movie of their own custom costumes. Most of the textures/models are in .pak files, which are really just renamed .zip files and someone already has a Pak Poker, which allows you to extract the .pak files, add your own stuff and repak it. You can also use 3dsmax to create your own models.

Humping mod in 5...4...3...2...1

I'm just running out of reasons not to pick this up. All that's left is my girlfriend's glare...(it's not a wargame)

Hey, there's another setting: WAR!

I'm just running out of reasons not to pick this up. All that's left is my girlfriend's glare...(it's not a wargame)

Hey, there's another setting: WAR!

The might have learned a lesson from The Sims where it was discovered if you put your ten-thousand floor tile files into a single .far file, no compression or anything, performance was significantly enhanced. Or the being-a-dick thing. Could go either way.

Great job man. How long did that one take you?

I had a weird story I jotted up a few years ago involving meat...As well as plastic surgery clinics and infomercial hosts. I never fleshed out (pardon the pun) the main character who was investigating the whole deal though.....Damn...Wish I thought of the USDA  :wink:. Sounds like a perfect job for Earl.

Anyways, I'm done with story mode.....And I take back what I said about micromanaging: It gets pretty tedious post 1970. It was fun while it lasted, but I wouldn't do it again.

As for custom movies, I started writing some music yesterday (spaghetti western/guitar score), but I'm afraid that putting together the little film I want to do is going to take a long time. I've got some other riffs and pieces I can recycle, but add all of that with the actual animating process seems like a lot more work than I realized it'd be before I bought the game.

As for micromanaging, yeah, I agree; what I've been doing for my custom 'for-show' films is creating sandbox lots with almost everything turned off, picking up just enough stars to get a director and the leading roles (2 in this case) and then creating a mess of extras. It's an approach I was working towards in the story mode; focusing on 1-2 genres and working hard to keep the few stars I had on hand at the ecstatic levels of happiness.

I think I'll buy a Cry Baby instead :P

Actually, this makes me to want to do it again. Just to see how well I do. Already around 1960, I was having a hard time finding lot space because I diversified too much....Add on that with having probably 3 or 4 too many stars and it gets a little overwhelming....And sloppy.

Not being able to spread across genres is pretty lame. What major studio (which is what we're supposed to be playing as) doesn't have a whole variety of set types? None.

Back to sandbox lots: Are you saying that you're making specialized sandboxes as well?

As long as you like sim games, that is. If you liked the Sims and Tropico, then you'll like this. If not, well....Whatever. It never billed itself as being anything other than a sim game, so there's no reason to condemn it for being something it's not (Well, it does bill itself as being a sort of Kid Pix version of a Movie Maker as well....And in that, it also delivers. Better than you may think.)

The star age reversal is in the Cosmetic surgery unit. It's the nip-tuck routine. I think that's the only way you can young-up a star.

The star age reversal is in the Cosmetic surgery unit. It's the nip-tuck routine. I think that's the only way you can young-up a star.

So what we're doing is making available one of the medical facilities a rejuvenation chamber where they can be rejuvenated at an enormous cost and we're effectively cheating about death. If you leave them they will die, but if you rejuvenate them they will go back to being younger. You could even take them all the way back to being 16 again, but it would cost you unbelievable amounts of money. If we really had that invention, I believe Hollywood would be very, very keen to talk to us.

Custom script maker....Thanks man.

I had a 4 for a brief time, but soon collapsed under the weight of multiple stressed and bitchy stars. I haven't played the story mode again, but I was thinking that Yoru's plan to just to go niche and limit the amount of stars to the smallest possible number would make a 5 easy enough (among other things).

I keep people next to each other and they never budge from "aquietance". If I put them in the bar, they don't know each other well enough.

How often do you need them to talk to each other on the street to get to the next level?

Just to make sure: You're drag and dropping on to other actors, right? Doing that brings up a little "chat" icon, which then proceeds to progress their friendship status.

Just drag and drop chat for 15 minutes or so, and that should get them to Friends status. From there, go to the Bar and seat them next to each other.

The other is extras' costumes; like actor costumes, you can set a 'global costume' for your extras from the 'movie set-up screen' (where you select your title, genre, main actors). Using the staff sidebar on the left, drag an extra onto the costuming icon and you can set up the costume they'll wear by default in the movie. Granted, this doesn't help when using an extra for multiple different roles; for that, I save off the costumes as custom costumes and use the custom-makeovers group to quickly apply it.

Good review, I'll get it. I didn't know they implemented AI "mood", which interests me. I wonder if it's a faction/respect-like mechanism or something more. I shall play to discover. Thx.

The Movies 1.1 patch will allow owners of the game to access the PropShop, which will feature a variety of new, downloadable content for the game, including additional costumes, sets, & props. This patch is only for the US, UK, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch localized version of the game. For additional fixes, please view the Readme support file.

The Propshop itself will launch in a few days (like mentioned in earlier news) but apart from enabling the Propshop it also fixes a few issues listed below.

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The Movies(TM) - Patch v1.1 Readme file
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Minimum System Requirements
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 98SE/ME/2000/XP

- Pentium(R) III 800 MHz or Athlon(TM) 800MHz processor or higher

- 256MB RAM

- 2x Speed DVD-ROM drive, or 8x Speed CD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) depending on
the version of The Movies(TM) that you own, and latest drivers.

- 2.4 GB of uncompressed free hard disk space (plus 500MB for Windows(R) swap file) for the original
installation of The Movies(TM)

- A further 60MB is required to install Patch v1.1

- 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers

- 100% Windows(R) 98SE/ME/2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers

- 800 x 600 Monitor Resolution

- 3D Hardware Accelerator Card required - 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c compatible 32MB Hardware T&L-capable
video card and latest drivers*

ATI(TM) Radeon(R) series (7000 or better).
7000, 7200, 7500
8500
9000, 9200, 9250, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800
x300, x600, x700, x800, x850

NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) series (GeForce 3 or better).
GeForce 3, 3 Ti
GeForce 4, MX, Ti
GeForce FX 5200, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, PCX 5300, 5750, 5950
GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800

Important Note: *Some 3D accelerator cards with the chipsets listed here may not be compatible with
the 3D acceleration features utilized by The Movies(TM). Please refer to your hardware manufacturer
for 100% DirectX 9.0c compatibility.

Online Requirements: Internet (TCP/IP) supported Online content requires broadband connection and the
latest drivers.

NOTICE: This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some disc and
virtual drives.

NOTE FOR MOD USERS: It is recommended that any user modifications that have been installed to the
The Movies(TM) directory be removed. These modifications are not supported by Activision(R) and may
not be compatible with some of the fixes that are included with this patch.


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Fixes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Performance issues on Minimum Specification machines have been resolved.

- Stability on low end Athlon(TM) processors has been improved.

- Post Production had a number of issues fixed to aid user interaction and avoid player confusion.

- Audio echo during Post Production has been removed, and general stability of this screen is improved.

- Stars retirement ages now work as intended when saving and loading a game while shooting a film.

- Some scenes have been updated to address issues with clipping, props and set objects.

- Some movie scenes have been updated to ensure they would finish filming in the lot.

- Placeholder text has been changed to final text.

- Saving StarMaker(TM) and The Movies(TM) on Non-English Operating Systems has been improved.

- Saving a game while a Star is in surgery now functions as intended.

- Overall stabilty has been improved.

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Changes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Players can now record more pieces of custom audio in Post Production.

- The game will now check the space available in the users My Documents directory to ensure there is
enough space to run the game.

- Online connectivity now correctly handles situations where players had no internet connection.

Now if someone would just release a 1.1 No CD patch, I'd be just dandy.

The movies are later ftp'ed to the Farrelly brothers' big hard drive of ideas.

And yes, uploading your movies gives up all rights to the created movie (not necessarily the idea, just the particular movie down with the Movies game engine). BLEARG.