Hello. I was hoping to be able to show the CS system to you at its finest, but it's still in a state where I don't know if it will really turn out. So instead, I'm going to show you the CS System at its worst!

Massive progress has been made since last time I made a post, when he could barely do anything. Now I have at least one clip of him working surprisingly well, and it can be fun to watch. This is an ambitious idea, and if he truly becomes a master, he will impress you with what he can do. But let's go back to the start.

You may wonder who "he" is. Well you see, I am training a simple, prehistoric caveman named Grugga in the art of cinematography. I've watched every episode of Every Frame A Painting, so I'm basically an auteur and I can teach him. In my last post, Grugga was shaking the camera around like a maniac. He wasn't ready yet, he didn't know what a camera was, and being thrust into the director's seat frightened him. So he acted out.

Grugga's Journey

The Cinematic Spectate system--or Cinespec as I call it--or Grugga--is based off of different types of shots, each with their own rulesets to gauge the quality of the current shot, all of which I teach through code. This was the very beginning; once I had gotten Grugga to hold a camera properly, all he really seemed to care about was the Rule Of Thirds. And all he knew was the static shot.

Grugga at this point was like an amateur art-house film director. Somehow he slavishly followed all the basic principles I taught him while still going for the craziest angles whenever he possibly could. He also wasn't able to take into account any other subjects other than the player he was watching. I did eventually make it better by emphasizing that he should try to look where the player is looking or moving towards, and that's about where he was at when we recorded this playtest:

Action follow cam

In this video you also see another shot type, the following action shot. It's inspired by The Shining.

At least until recently, it's been much less steady. But it was so funny that I just ran with that for a while, considering it like a shaky cam.

I made this specific type of shot so early because I was really focused on trying to make it look good when the subject is running around a series of tight, winding tunnels. Following a subject like that is harder to film than I expected, especially when it's happening live and you don't know where the subject will turn next.

Recent Developments

Then I refined Grugga's abilities for about the next week, teaching him new shot types. The most significant of these was what I call the Scenic Shot, which uses a low field of view and distances the camera as far as it can from the subject, panning to follow the subject. This panning element made the scenic shot so versatile that I'm able to use it indoors as well as outdoors, and it really helps where Grugga is still too dumb to use the static shot correctly.

Now, sometimes, rarely, I would actually prefer this over the current spectate system. (But Grugga still has a heart of gold, and if there is a Manticoil or some flying bugs in his range of awareness, he will include them in the shot at all times no matter where they are. He can't help it.)

Besides that, I've been putting loads of work into a "Shot Reverse Shot" shot for the camera, which reacts to players who are talking and looking at each other. It reacts to voice chat by cutting to each player's face like in a movie. I haven't seen it work well yet, and I think it will be somewhat niche. But it will be worth it when it works, because you'll really feel as if you're watching a Lethal Company machinima on Youtube. And after that, I'll probably work on a dramatic zoom or dolly-zoom camera which reacts to dramatic moments by zooming in on the subject... but this requires adding in some new variables which can be used universally and give Grugga more intelligence on what's happening in the game.

Will It Work?

Part of why I still don't know if this will work is because it requires so much touching up for small, specific situations. The way I've set it up, it's quite easy to make changes (and adding new shot types is kind of addicting), but it still requires a lot of testing and work, and I don't know how much more work it will take. I know that it will always be far from perfect, and I have some very, very good ideas for new creatures which I'm about ready to get to modelling. So my goal right now is to get Cinespec to the point where it's not completely distracting and annoying at least 50% of the time. Part of what makes me think this is not a total pipe dream is that it has some fundamental things going for it: 1. It intuits which player is the most interesting to watch at any given time and automatically switches to them so you don't miss anything (unless, potentially, it would be more cinematic if you didn't see something). And 2. It will display the exact same for all players, so all spectating players are watching the same thing together like a movie. (And of course if it gets annoying, you can simply click to swap to the old spectate system.)

The next post might be delayed by a week. But by then, I ought to be able to tell you if Grugga is actually going to make it, or if we are going to shoot him...and not with a camera.