Movies: StartMovie, MVE, etc

[FredSRichardson]

I saw a very useful tutorial on adding movies to a game, but I tried a simple test and I can't seem to get converted movies to work for me.

 

I'm not completely sure I tested this correctly, but I think the problem may be that the screen size is assumed to be different. IWD1 generally uses 640 x 480 whereas IWD2 uses 800 x 600. I'm not sure that's it though. I essentially added the AVALANCH movie to the key file and added a StartMovie action to some BCS block, but the game just crashed.

[FredSRichardson]

Okay, I think I've figured it out.

 

The IWD1 files are the usual Interplay MVE format packed into BIF files. In IWD2, the movies are in Bink format and are stored under the CD2 directory as <movie>.MVE.

 

I'm trying to see if I can convert one of the MVE's to a BIK and play it in the game. I'm not sure how I'd ever deliver this capability though...

[FredSRichardson]

Okay, I actually got this to work:

1. Extracted an MVE from IWD1 (AVALANCH) using WeiDU
   
2. Ran "mve2avi" (actually called "fsp") and converted it to an AVI file (unfortunately I had to watch a messed up version during the conversion).
   
3. Ran "bink" on it (from RAD Video Tools) and created a BIK file.
   
4. Moved the BIK file into an IWD2 data directory giving it a .MVE extension, and called StartMovie("AVALANCH") from a script.
   

It worked!

[devSin]

Maybe MVE became a contested format after the BioWare/Interplay throwdown (it was always Interplay's, though, so I'm not sure how)?

 

It might be a snag since you'd have to include the movies (yuck) or include the tools to convert the movies (yuck).

[FredSRichardson]

Yes, I think you're right. MVE format probably gave them a lot of nasty problems.

 

I managed to convert almost all the IWD1 MVE's, except for the Introduction (INTRO.MVE). mve2avi creates a 2.6Gig file which is pretty close to 32bit file limit (at least in unix, you can't go over the max value of a signed int unless you have large file support). Anyway, the AVI file that mve2avi creates is corrupted somehow.

 

So instead I used mve2avi to extract each frame as a BMP file and I'm trying to see if I can create a Bink file from these. It might work, but it is taking a while.

 

Anyway, these files are really big and I definitely don't see distributing them as part of the standard package. If someone else wants to server them, then I could make a special add-on for them.

[FredSRichardson]

Well, this is pretty neat. I finally did convert IWD1's INTRO.MVE to BIK format (I had to extract all the frames as BMP's, glue them together using VirtualDub and then run the Bink converter on that). This took a lot of disk space: 3.2Gig for the BMP's, the AVI file was around that size, but the final BIK file was about 180Meg. The funny thing is that the original MVE was about 100Meg.

 

Anyway, I copied INTRO.bik to the IWD2 Override directory as INTRO.MVE, and voila! The IWD1 Intro is played at the beginning of the game. It's kind of nice that you don't have to pack it all back into a BIF file.

 

So I think I can add back in the StartMovie() actions in the BCS files. I don't think they do anything if the BIK (.MVE) file doesn't exist (or I can include a dummy BIK file as a place holder). Then I can put up the MVE's as an add on for this mod in a rar file somewhere (assuming there no legal issues with this).

[maerduin]

Well, this is pretty neat. I finally did convert IWD1's INTRO.MVE to BIK format (I had to extract all the frames as BMP's, glue them together using VirtualDub and then run the Bink converter on that). This took a lot of disk space: 3.2Gig for the BMP's, the AVI file was around that size, but the final BIK file was about 180Meg.

 

And a lot of work, presumably! Wow!

[FredSRichardson]

No it wasn't so bad, very satisfying to get it to work

 

I made a RAR archive which weighs in at a bit over 500Meg, so maybe some people will want to download these instead of generating them.