Archive: 8 posts

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There are levels out there that use moving magic mouths to make some pretty good cutscenes. I've used 'em a bit, but with mixed results. Sometimes, if the mouth/camera is far away from the player, the camera will zoom over to it, but then almost immediately the speech bubble and camera will close. It's not that the mouth has become un-triggered: it's being activated by a sensor switch or mag switch, or even a p-switch set to on/off; it's like the mouth just decides it doesn't want to work. The thing is, I've seen it work fine in community levels before and sometimes I'll have them work fine. Has anybody worked out the specifics of what works and what won't work when it comes to cutscene cameras?

2010-01-30 01:21:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Its possible to use a sensor switch connected to a PERM switch and then to the mouth where you want the cutscene, but i don't know how to make a multipul cutscene camera. Checkout Warzone 2 trailer by Johnee to see what he does with his cameras, i love his work.

2010-01-30 01:50:00 Author: Emogotsaone Posts: 1030

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That happens when you activate a magic mouth with a one-shot signal and the mouth's sensor range doesn't reach the player.

2010-01-30 02:05:00 Author: Shadowheaven Posts: 378

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I think an even worse problem with the magic mouth camera (well anything you can tweak such as sound effetcs) is that you can spend ages getting it just right and then when you go to do something else or test it out in play mode the stupid thing has reset itself.

2010-01-30 02:29:00 Author: cthulhu82 Posts: 211

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Hi Sehven, There are a few rules to keep in mind when working with magic mouths. Generally, I'll use switches set to on/off for controlling them. If you use on/off and turn the switch off, the mouth will deactivate on its own. If you're making complex cutscenes, know that you will have the problem of queued speech bubbles disappearing when reading is slow under the circumstance where the camera window does not include the queued mouths. What I mean by this is, if you turn on a bunch of mouths with a single switch, every mouth's camera needs to include the area where all the downstream mouths are placed. Mouths off camera will disappear. The easy way around this is to activate/deactivate mouths sequentially, using the mine cart strategy, or moving mag key-on-piston strategy. If your cameras are located all over the place, then turning off one mouth before activating the next will prevent you from losing speech bubbles due to slow reading. If the one-shot settings aren't working for you, its either because they are too far away (and you should use on/off) or because there are preceding mouths off camera that are causing them to dequeue.

2010-01-30 03:17:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465

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I appreciate all the replies. I thought I had been quite clear, but let me try again. I'm not using a one-shot setting: that would just turn the mouth on and right back off again. I'm not talking about having mouths queued up and losing the later ones: that's a different problem. I'm talking about triggering one magic mouth with one on/off switch that stays on (the player doesn't move away from the sensor or anything). It seems that if the player isn't on screen, it can have problems.... but not always. What I'm trying to figure out is what's different about the times it works and the times it doesn't. There are plenty of levels out there with cutscenes that work, but I still get problems sometimes, seemingly randomly. As for Johnee's future warzone II trailer, the first mouth is active before the player spawns, so the game doesn't seem to care whether he's on camera. I use the same technique for the tutorial at the beginning of my latest mech level "Sehven's Mech VT-04b: Dire Wolf." It works fine since the player isn't there to screw it up. It's also nice because the player won't spawn until they push the circle button, which is how you skip/end the tutorial (a sensor switch at the start checkpoint disables the rest of the tutorial).

2010-01-30 04:38:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Hi Sehven. The thing with magic mouths is that they will disapper after about 2 seconds unless they are on screen. What i mean by this is that they have to be actually in sight, as in 'on your Tv screen'. Regardless of the visibility ( in the tweak menu) or the range or type of switch. What Jhonee did was amazing, as the mouths moved they brought into sight other mouths (even though they were set to invisible). However he made it look like they were all over the level. Another thing is that you have about a 2 second change inbetween each magic mouth. if they switch to another mouth in the same instant, the camera will zoom back to to player and then zoom back to the next mouth - which doesnt look very good. I think what you need to do is activate the next mouth while the previous one is on and then the camera will just switch instantly without the zoom. In my experience its really hard to pull something like this off but entirely posssible. Sorry if ive confused you, im knackered and have a little bit of a headachce. P.S love your work - epecially the mechs

2010-01-30 19:27:00 Author: theamilien Posts: 485

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Yup, that's gotta' be it. I'd have to go back and check, but I'm sure the problem has been that I've been setting the camera up with the mouth off-screen. Thanks for the help.

2010-01-30 20:03:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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