film-@-moddb Thread

Lately I have been wondering about the lot of media popping up in the MOTY contest. Every other time I log on there seems to be new video content and I have been enjoying most, if not all, of it. I have been wondering if the feature for streaming videos could be implemented as a persistent feature of Moddb.
I imagine a lot of mods would start producing media to be featured there and instead of going from mod to mod and downloading trailer material it could all be channeled into a single location: Mod Theater.
On this basis Mod Theater could grow and also show machinima content and animation films.
There isn't a big gap between managing a mod project and producing an animation or even simpler machinima film. I am part of a team that's making a film right now and its all people who came together on Moddb first. So there is clearly some interest for that kind of thing here...

I realise these are two different topics. So please discuss them seperately: 1)Mod Theater(mod trailers) and 2)Machinima and Animation content.

I can only imagine the crazy kind of response I'm gonna get with this one.

It is going to be a persistent feature. Ever since we added it to the MOTM section, we've been changing the way we do articles, and therefore, the way we do the MOTY Awards.

Hence, why we ran the Sumo Omni Competition to find someone who could design the Mod Showcase page that had video embedded inside of it, and finally found our winner.

I love the idea of continuing the mod theater for mod trailers, but i don't think this should be expanded into machima seeing as that isn't really staying on topic with modding.

Machinma generally comes about after performing some mods to the engine. I don't see why it can't be included, especially since we also embrace stand alone games.

i love being on the staff!

ShortCutMan wrote: Machinma generally comes about after performing some mods to the engine. I don't see why it can't be included, especially since we also embrace stand alone games.

If the engine's a Quake derivative, mods aren't even necessary to do machanima

just careful camera control and demo editing/splicing tools.

Most of the great Quake films use plain vanilla unmodified Quake.

Edited by: leilei

And I love being a freelance contributor to Moddb forums!

I understand that Moddb isn't primarily meant to show feature films, but if people from Moddb decide to make a movie it would be cool if they could register it the same way like a mod and get to show their work in Mod Theater when they are finished. I just wonder if its technically possible to show some films here, because they are big in filesize and need to be stored somewhere.
I'm not saying Moddb will become a filmsite, because it will always be more about games than animation, but there is a whole lot of interest in rigging models and texturing and animating them. This could be a practical way tutor people and entertain them at the same time.
Also - I have been looking around for sites that feature animation and machinima films and they are usually quite shabby and got little to offer. Moddb could set the quality standard for a Mod Theater that also shows Machinima and Animation films.

I didn't expect to find much support for the issue, but now I'm kinda convinced it can be done and will add to the variety and scope of Moddb. It wouldn't be an annoying feature you would HAVE to see every time you log on. It would be more of an extra-feature, like Addon DB. I just think that it would become more popular than Addon DB, because there is a bigger (and still growing) public interest in Animation and Machinima films.

I thought I gave off the impression from my post that it already was happening?

No one has yet to really shoot down anything you've said, so don't be defensive about your ideas, either.

The ModCast Theater is just for the MOTY, but when we're done, the videos will be in the profiles themselves, most likely.

Edited by (in order): Karuto, Karuto, Karuto

MachinmaDB

Lol Salohcin - that's exactely what I tried to say in my last post: this isn't supposed to happen.
Or do you think people from all over the world will start stuffing moddb with Machinima Content?
I'm saying it should be allowed to get a moddb profile and start production on a film, instead of a mod. Since we're lacking coders here this might be a nice exercise for all the visual and 3D-artists.

It wouldn't be strangers coming to Moddb to spam the forums, but everyday users who log on already. Some interesting things might be produced after all and giving them a chance to be seen on Mod Theater seems only fair to me...

moddb is for mods, any type of streaming would be for mods to pimp there work, your loosing sight of the fact moddb is mod-db

Agreed!
Ok, so no Mod-TV, only Addon DB. Its all about games and that's what we love about it.

machanima is in a class of its own, and is neither a mod nor a add on, it may use content from both.
naturally there is always expansion after time and perhapse oneday there may be a machanima db!
sinking do you want a machanima site?

I don't really want a machinima site. I'm not even a great fan of machinima films. From the two dozens I have seen there were perhaps two or three good ones among the mass of shallow and ridiculous ones.
I want people to start a mod-like production, showing content to the community to determine what impression it makes. This way the film team will get early oppinions on their work and may change their stuff according to the critics. Of course they can also just keep on developing the film and not listen to te public at all if they want to.
In the end there would be some kind of voting system with which can be determined if a film is liked by the viewers. Like the mod reviews there would be - shorter - reviews of the films. It would be kind of a new thing on Moddb, but its only interesting I think if you don't get confused about the Moddb and CinemaDB and can clearly seperate Mod and Film content.

Anyway, these thoughts mostly get stirred, because I am thinking about where to register our film project "MECHOverride". Since it is a production by people who surf Moddb and have accounts here, we frequently talk through the Moddb messaging system. It would be great if we could find a central place to share models and concepts at. But most probably we will just have a webpage in 2007, without a Moddb-Profile coming with it.

I was kinda sad that The Wind can have a profile, because it is a modfilm/genremix, but we can't register, because we aint producing any playable content. I would so want to share our film with the people on Moddb, all we can do now is post a forum topic when the film is done and hope somebody will see it.

Its understandable - I don't want Moddb to be watered down to a Animation/Mod site. I want it to stay focused on mods. I don't know, I just loved the thought of Moddb as a meeting point for our team (since we are here anyway), but might as well just have a Website...

HOW about this: It would be enough to feature only a link-list to animation and machinima films, produced by Moddb roamers. Just somewhere to show a picture of our film and a short synopsis. I always find it very sad when a Mod gets released and has no players. The same thing may happen to a film, when it has no viewers.

OMG, sorry for the long post. I should have controlled myself, but I just had to let it flow.

Cheers,
SinKing

The next generation of the Mod DB and Addon DB engines will allow a much (much) wider scope of content, most likely including videos.