Soldat trailer?

[Psycho]

Im just thinking, why doesen't soldat have an official video trailer?
Many freeware games have this, and it is a very good way of showing people how the game works. The screenshots alone does not justify the game in my opinion.

As an example I can show THIS.
A trailer for the game starscape. (by the way, if you havent played this game, you are missing out)

There are also many other nice example of trailers. They just help to bring forth the fun and gameplay to an audience that browses trough countless freeware games every day. A trailer could help to make them halt for a minute and look closer.

And if this actually does happen, please dont just embed a youtube script into the site to show it off. Go for some high quality playback.
So what do you think?

[a-4-year-old]

This can only mean one thing.

***COMMUNITY VIDEO CONTEST!!!!!!***

We need one. bad.

[Snow]

This can only mean one thing.

***COMMUNITY VIDEO CONTEST!!!!!!***

We need one. bad.

I second that. I'll have something to look forward to, after I finish this semester. My vid tools have been itching to be used.

[Psycho]

But even though the soldat community has experiences with making soldat movies, does anyone have experience with making trailers? It should actually promote the game instead of showing how many insane barret triple kills you got :P

[a-4-year-old]

It should actually promote the game instead of showing how many insane barret triple kills you got

It wouldn't be that hard. Obviously it would have to be a new movie, with the focus being on showing how awesome the game is, not the player. But have some faith, looking right now at a few trailers it wouldn't be that hard.

[Spacewing]

Great idea. To the bananaserver!

[M.rSnow]

This should wait untill after 1.5. Because 1.5 will have more features so its better that way. I think.

[The Bone Collector]

I'd be willing to help out here. I've been looking for a decent project lately, so why not have a video contest?

[.Long-Range]

I always thought that this was something that would greatly benefit Soldat. Not only would it bring in more people, but it'd help inform others what the game is about without too much effort.
I personally check out a game's trailer after reading it's description to see if I might possibly be interested in it.

[matt]

i would make one if i had enough time... I made a LRS memorial slideshow, it sucked but well, it was my first one so oh well! XD

[Snow]

I always thought that this was something that would greatly benefit Soldat. Not only would it bring in more people, but it'd help inform others what the game is about without too much effort.
I personally check out a game's trailer after reading it's description to see if I might possibly be interested in it.

Which is why sites like gametrailers.com or gamevideos.com is greatly beneficial. I own a few particular games, simply because there was a trailer for them. Not many people get into a game by word of mouth or looking at one tiny picture (yoyogames.com site comes to mind for Game Maker games). In Soldat especially, people cannot see - just from a picture - how the physics alone make the game already so awesome. You can show someone a Soldat movie, but if they've never played the game before, it all depends on the subject matter of the movie whether they see enough to get them interested. Show the physics, the gore, the weapons, the thousands of awesome maps (by many talented mapmakers) and game modes and you've got a weiner. Some rocketing, high speed map crossing, mid-air sploding and splattering would really get the juices flowing. Finish the trailer with a red guy pissing on the corpse of a blue guy. Done.

[The Bone Collector]

Anyone wanting a trailer could surf Youtube for soldat videos... theres thousands.
But still.... Trailer contest For The Win.

[a-4-year-old]

Anyone wanting a trailer could surf Youtube for soldat videos... theres thousands.
But still.... Trailer contest For The Win.

those aren't really trailers, they are "woah look I gots a dobbler kill" we want something professional, something to go on soldat.pl to show people how awesome the game is.

[BondJamesBond]

Yeah well... Maybe for once we try working together.

maybe

[FliesLikeABrick]

Lets make this into a contest.  It will need to be rather long one so people have time to polish their videos and edit them and such. 

I would hope that the entries are at least as good as these two videos:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ov7oNrXTDkc&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9cctyg-4zNk

The prize would be 2 shirts from the newly-opened store (International shipping would be OK, I'd just have to figure it out), or 2 Soldat licenses, or possibly other prizes.  I don't know yet if there would be a 2nd and 3rd place prize, that probably depends on how many entries and how broke I am/how many people want to donate to the prizes (e-mail me at ryan@u13.net if you want to contribute to better/more prizes).

I don't have a date for the end yet, but I will decide one later and post it in a new thread.  Here are the rules that I'm thinking of:
- The winner(s) will be decided by popular vote
- The entry must be between three (3) and ten (10) minutes long
- The entry must be submitted in full-quality to me, I will then post it for judgement in an appropriate format.  Do not post your entries directly on the forums when you are actually submitting your entry to the contest.
- You may submit modifications to me at any time before the beginning of the final vote
- e-mail or PM me to arrange giving me your submission, most likely via FTP.
- When it comes time for the vote, the clips will be posted on Youtube (but I want to have a higher-quality version for future use if yours is selected)
- When you submit your final submission, you acknowledge that it may be used/re-used elsewhere (with proper crediting). 
- Do not add any "by soandso" things at the beginning or end of your clips.  If your video wins, it will be discussed afterwards what form(s) of attribution you feel would be appropriate.  This and the above rule can be discussed otherwise, I'm just interested in preventing videos from being marked up with stuff, because using that as a trailer with "I MADE THIS" tags all over it would look... odd.  These two rules are flexible and should be taken as guidelines for discussion.  I'm not looking to have Soldat steal anyone's work or anything, I promise.
- Do not use any formatting/editing programs that add watermarks or tags to any part of your video.  If you are having problems compressing or transcoding your video, talk to me and I can look into doing this for you given the original (but edited) video.

I'm incredibly anxious to see how this turns out.  I will make a new thread about this shortly but wanted to hash out the idea here first.  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

[The Bone Collector]

And Flies, you just became my hero. I'll work on something soon.
I wouldn't want you to be offering cash prizes though... That would just be stupid. Registrations, T-shirts, hell... thats more than enough
10 minutes is way to long for a trailer.

For those who aren't registered with FRAPS (if your capturing your own clips)... You can hide the watermark with a simple pan/crop to widescreen in your editor (not Windows Movie Maker).

Another thing... I think we should narrow the submissions down, by not allowing users to use Windows Movie Maker to edit their submissions... frankly... coz that program sucks.
Lets see what happens

[Snow]

Fly, those are great suggestions. 2 shirts, or one shirt and one license (to give away in my case, I'm already registered) would be nice.. along with Soldat figurines.. all in a collectable tin.

As for length of a trailer. To show the high points of Soldat.. 10 minutes is not required. That's movie length. Trailers for games are usually 30 seconds to 1 and a half minutes. 3 minutes is too long even. Most people will form an opinion anyway after about 15 seconds into a trailer, so most after about 30 sec to a minute, will stop the trailer and go from there - either downloading the game or going somewhere else.

[EnEsCe]

1.30 - 2 Minutes should suffice for a trailer. More than that is overkill.

[[eZ]DuckHunter]

Woot !

For those who are entering, talk about how many maps, weapons etc. 
Good Luck guys

[bja888]

* bja888 wishes there was a database of soldat clips somewhere

* bja888 wishes I had time to put together something like that