Newest trailer for my game

Posted by carritohmc on Feb. 20, 2017, 2:12 p.m.

Finally got enough cobbled up to make a trailer. Although I upgraded to a more powerful PC a couple of years ago, the framerate stuttered while trying to capture HD video for the trailer, but at least it's not as choppy as the first video. Game plays much smoother than what's shown in the trailer. Hopefully I can get enough done to get a demo in the summertime, but I'm honestly not in any rush. I'll probably just take some vacation time in a few months and toil away. Hope you all enjoy, at the very least it looks wayyy better than the first two versions of the game.

Comments

Kenon 7 years, 9 months ago

That gameplay looks crazy legit, especially the parts with the robotic boss dudes, but it takes a while to get to the good stuff in it in my opinion. (Oh, aside from the run speeds, it feels kinda funny watching people sprint that slow). People will overlook your game due to a bad trailer, though, so you should be wary.

A few things that I think can help, don't keep it static. The start of the trailer shows two single shots, just straight on, one not of the game, for 10 seconds. That's really static, and the big thing is you want your trailer to reflect your game immediately. If you can cut those parts back some or put some gameplay on it with some post-process in between. it'll help get into the meat of your game some.

In terms of recording gameplay, you may want to make a temporary build that operates on a "demo system" or something. This is assuming you're not using delta time for everything, but if you are, well whatever, there's workarounds. Just set up some timeline thing, have it trigger keypresses or whatnot for what you want to do in your shot, and screenshot every frame if you're running at like, 60fps. I'm not that big on the technicals on this, but it'll do two things: 1. Take up a crapton of space, and 2. Give you raw files to filter together for seamless whatever resolution + fps. It's a really solid way to make good quality video.

You don't need to explicitly tell the watcher that you have multiple weapons, they should be able to figure it out themselves from the trailer and it's not gameplay!

Use sounds! Sound is good, it'd probably breathe a lot more of the gameplay stuff and make it feel better if you had a lot of the game's atmosphere in it, and you're entirely missing out on the sound of the game with this trailer.

Seriously though, that game looks really nice, but the trailer could use some love.

EDIT: I think a good trailer example is Hotline Miami 2's "Dial Tone" trailer. It's pretty simple, gives you immediate feel for game, and hits pretty much everything an indie game should have in its trailer. Though it has a lot of luxury in that it's a sequel, so you don't need to watch to the end to have the name pop up in your head. It's got great sound work, mostly game footage, it's iconic for the game, and it plays well with the music that it uses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqr0yUuSiTs

carritohmc 7 years, 9 months ago

@Kenon, glad you liked the gameplay parts. I'll definitely add sound and show gameplay quicker next trailer, although right now I'm more focused on getting more of my game done so that I can get a demo done in the next 4 months or so. I've realized at this point a trailer is pretty much useless to me, most gaming sites, indie blogs etc have just straight up refused to to even acknowledge my game without a playable demo. And to be honest it makes sense from their point of view, they've probably covered so many games that end up not getting completed, so why bother. Once I get a good build, I'll release a trailer with sound effects, and more gameplay although I do like your suggestions for recording at 60fps, I was also thinking of getting my friend a build later on, since he has a beast of a PC and just having him record the gameplay for me to edit.