Richer Media with Dynamically Loading Cut Scenes

Just days away now, Tactica is about to launch a first person game exploring the town of Rabbit Fall. Set as a straight-forward rpg, the story is driven by a series of cut scenes. While more common to see movieTextures within Unity used on models, applying dynamically loaded WWW driven textures into a GUITexture provides an efficient way to increase the content of an online game, without adding download time.

The exciting part of pulling videos from a server, is that the game itself can be used to hide the preloading process. As the user walks through and explores the environment, possible upcoming videos are preloaded. What this means is no interruptive download pauses.

I remember an author stating years ago, that a good writer doesn’t allow the reader to realize they’re reading, and as soon as you shatter that immersion within the text, you’ve failed as an author. In the context of a video game, immersion is extremely important, and in the same way text in a book can be transformed into a feeling of being there and experiencing the novel, a video game, if done well, can utilise the user’s imagination to fill in the gaps. What this means, in my opinion, is that mood and context is more important than graphic quality. Think back to years ago, your heart racing as you entered a room full of Doom goat-monsters. Looking at it today, you wonder how this was anything other than humorous. But what really happened, was that the game effectively immersed you in that reality, and suspended your disbelief, and for a period of time you felt concern about the consequences of a charging wave of goat-headed creatures.