Bases, cargo and inventory

Thanks Shane, but I already figured it out, and have started building avi's to translate into bink files. Now I just need to figure out a good program to build nice avi's with...something that can show images and text sliding around, fading in and out, overlapping with in-flight video images...I was thinking Flash, but I don't know much about it..yet.

Do you Shane? Or do you know of any program that might accomplish what I am thinking?

This would be a really nice change. So many space games start with the player knowing nothing about the place he/she lives.

So what should the movies contain? One movie for each major area? With descriptive text?

Or should it be one of history. One of trade. One of modern geography. One of dangerous areas (Discovery Channel: Sharks!)

GrandpaTrout: or all of the above!
Cose all those (except perhaps the sharks) sound like grand things for the player to be able to read to increase the immersion.

Originally posted by Cambragol
Or do you know of any program that might accomplish what I am thinking?

I was offering to handle the animations using Lightwave. But if you've already got them in the works... cool.

Photoshop and a good video editing program would give you much of what you need. I believe Wax is a freeware video editor which can splice frames and scenes into avi's. I've not tried it yet, but heard good things about it over at CG Talk forums. Wax is located at: www.debugmode.com/wax/

I ran into something of a snag...It seems that the place the .bik movie is placed is surrounded by a 400 by 400 'frame' that fades the edges in and out. I have no idea how to remove it, and without removing it any movie is limited to 400 by 400. Making a larger movie results in a huge and ugly black edge covering parts of it. Because most of us are running the game at above 800 by 600 resolution now, the resulting display area (400 by 400) is also very very confined. I wonder if anyone has worked on this before or found a way around it...

My plan thus far in terms of what to display, is pictures of a few homeplantes, spinning. Then, if I can figure out how to get a text.html file to play upon loading (like Buda5s mod did) I could run a description of the planet and the empire it is the head of (anyone know how to do this?). The limitations of the display area seem to favor a 'spinning' object of some kind. The fading of the frame makes movies of more complex scenes almost unworkable.

ps thanks for the offer and info on Wax Shane. I will look into it. I am using painstshops animation program currently, but it is fairly limited.

...I could run a description of the planet and the empire it is the head of (anyone know how to do this?).

Yes and no. Text that is incorporated into the 400x400 movie can be displayed. However, since the resolution is so limited, it cannot be a detailed description... more like a planet name and the empire it belongs to.