16:32, 18th Jan 2010
ap0calypse: Approved

Great prologue.
Good terrain, good story and I couldn't detect any typo's.
Congratulations with your first map!
Update: Re-moderating with review and rating!

This is a pretty good cinematic, I like it alot and it has alot of potential. However, there were a few things that bugged me.

1. Dolanar? Seriously? To me this is just way too similiar to Dalaran.
2. When fighting the Demon, I saw that the footmen/knights were engulfed in flames and still fighting, that was a little awkward to me.
3. When the four spellweavers are sealing the Demon and Lina's narrating, you mispelled magic as magc.

Otherwise really good! Looking forward to the next chapter.

Thanks for the response.

-Typo is fixed
-By engulfed in flames do you mean the fire doodad or the Rain of Fire?
-The name originally came from "Dolanaar" a place in WoW. Oh well. It won't be mentioned much later on anyways.

Pretty much all the fire that's going on. You'd figure they'd be burnt to ashes pretty quick.

big filesize :S..
testing now. . .
At first the filesize seemed to be a problem, but then i realized that its a long cinematic, i assume u used UTM for this cinematic?
anyway, this is one of the greatest cinematic here on THW, keep working, I'll be looking forward for your next chapter!
5/5 rate! and +reP!

Very Big File Size....

wow. this kept me excited for 100% of the cinematic
Great Terrain, Great sounduse and a really magnificant story

Big filesize, but it's not like we care in cinematics. Nice story even though i couldn't care less about all the random proper names but i guess RP lovers will appreciate.
Most importantly, Excellent atmosphere creation, and i appreciate how you avoided many bad-looking things that can be seen in many cinematics.

Only bad points for me would be that there's not too much action in this, the footies in the flames like someone alrdy pointed out, and the fact that many times, units wait for the other one to be far away or almost gone already before they start "following them". (Oh and, cpu-intensive many times.)
4/5, +rep.

Dude, this is really awesome, especially for a first cinematic. Only problem I have with it is that it is so long. Otherwise,

i am very happy that you have drawn inspiration from my cinematic =)

i am dowloadeing and i am going to watch it. looks good from the reviews =D

EDit : I have watched both the first part and the second part. You encapture your music quiete well and the introductions are excellent.

-the terrain is very nicvely done. I love the nightly effects.

-The story is so far quiete original, havnt seen anyhting like it. In fact im not sure what to expect in part 3.

-As for typos and stuff of that nature, there are a few. but they do not inturpt much with the quality of the cinematic.

All in all deserves 5/5, you should continue this great installment.

Now, by "cpu-intensive" does that mean that it starts lagging on weaker computers in certain parts? Like when there are a lot of units (eg. fighting the demon)?

Because if that's the case... then ep. 3 is gonna be like "cpu-murder" >_> ...

dts0301 said:

Now, by "cpu-intensive" does that mean that it starts lagging on weaker computers in certain parts? Like when there are a lot of units (eg. fighting the demon)?

Because if that's the case... then ep. 3 is gonna be like "cpu-murder" >_> ...

Click to expand...

Yea that's what i meant basically. It was during the scenes where you can see very far though, like that view from uphill looking down at the valley, with grey fog and trees if i recall correctly.

Awesomelicious 5/5.

I watched the cinematic...

Well it was great, the story was very nice and it left me wondering what happens next.Also, the terrain was excellent.
Finally, there is a point where this phrase is shown '... the end was nigh'.Is that a word or just a typo? anyway I won't hesitate to give your cinematic a 5/5.Good job!
Oh also +rep

how Do i see The Cinematic if the Map Size is to big I allready have 1.24c Patch however i cant see it SomeOne plz...

Termkds said:

how Do i see The Cinematic if the Map Size is to big I allready have 1.24c Patch however i cant see it SomeOne plz...

Click to expand...

Try renaming the map file shorter, especially if there are alot of random numbers in it.

Seas =)

Dude - for me you created the best cinematic I've ever seen here - I like everything - the terrain - the units - the sound - the music - just everything!!
Somehow one or two tears comes up as I saw the dead father and the child wants justice but it's still awesome!!!

ZOMG loved this and the ACII music in the end was awesome i got gosebumps really good cinematic with good choises of music and so on! 5/5

After accidentally removing my initial review, I am going to keep this one a perhaps a bit shorter.

General
Overall I was quite impressed with your first work, your managed to deliver a cinematic that is enjoyable, and even tho it is not something we haven't seen before, it was refreshing in it's own way.

Terrain and Environment
With some parts I was quite enthusiast with other perhaps a little less, it felt a bit as if you did not divide your energy equally over all your terrain, however globally I would say a job well done.
The things I'd say you should keep in mind are is the town you made, even tho it felt like a village, I think you could have worked this out a bit further, make distinct roads.

Camera and Cinematic Handling
Your camera work was neat, keep in mind with emotional scene's to use somewhat more shorter distant clips instead of the camera's that were relatively far off the actual character; I did like the camera from the top and him looking up (very slick).
Try to toy around with with different camera speeds tho, most of the camera motion tween were relative to one another.

I absolute loved your fade white to the air and fading back into the cloudy background where the title appeared, lovely choice.

Other than that, your cinematic dialogue looked quite proper, so that was good, neither too fast or too slow.

Story and Character building
Even tho your story was quite strong, I felt that the introduction was somewhat cliche, with someone being having to escape cause they want to execute him, come back, find out his parents are dead, and wants to seek revenge (Gladiator for example), so I am dire to see the rest of your cinematic, that twist behind the reason of his fathers execution was nicely worked out tho.

The character build was still rather small, I found Lina not exciting at all, trying to be mystique, but which she wasn't again either.
Chase is still a rather blunt guy, neither very explosive, very calm, just basic, try to work on his attributes (what makes him distinct, what makes you say, yes this is chase, without even seeing him or pronouncing his name)

Animation, (inter)action and effects
This is probably a factor that you did not really take into account when you were making this cinematic (might be speculating here), but it's often a forgotten attribute in a cinematic, yet a vital one.

A couple of examples with Animation, and interactions

1. Peasants randomly chopping into a house, is awkward.
2. The priest in town making strange gestures to his crowd, it did not look like he was giving a ceremony of some sort.
3. Chase was not even looking to Lina when he was talking she saved her from the guards at the river (kinda disrespectful).
4. The random animations that characters are making when they are talking to one another (this can be prevented by using the action "Animation - Unit common animation")

Music and Sounds
Overall I liked the music that you used, the switched between one track and the next could have been done better.
Try toying around with making custom fade filters via triggers or use a software device in which you can let them blend into one another if needed.

In conclusion I can definitely say that this stands out with most of the series their first work, nearly gets to the quality of what Zurg and Deamonkillar made, quality wise.

I am going to rate it with a 3.9 and vote a 4.0.
Keep up the spirit.

thank you for your review, Hemlock. I will certainly keep these comments in mind for future parts.

Its good story, good model and good directing, apart from the huge 17 mb space its a good cinematic

There's the odd grammatical error, mostly in punctuation (semicolon where there should have been a colon, etc). Otherwise, the writing is good; the dialogue actually feels like things people might say, as opposed to some cinematics, where people give intricate speeches at every turn.

The terrain was awesome, but I noticed that you could see the flames from the fight with the demon in the closing scene.

When the knights were killed by the river, it seemed odd to me that they decayed. You should add a "suspend corpse decay" action (located either in Unit, or Animation, I think), just for a bit of realism.

Good job! I was thinking 4.5, then remembered it's an integer rating system. So, I'll round up! 5/5

Awesome!!!

Its pretty cool!

5/5

I've just watched part 1
I can find no words to describe how epic, awesome, incredible, marvelous this is

That was outstanding! 5/5! In fact, it's even worth a DC! Can't wait to see the rest of it, it's like a movie! Very well-made!

This is a good cinematic, but i would like to see more effects and action in first chapter, also because its first chapter its impotent to attract people..

Hello,

The only thing it's missing is voice acting. Other than that, I couldn't find anything that's wrong; beatiful terrain, interesting storyline, fitting musics... Oh, and the beginning was just absolutely fantastic!

5/5

I made a picture

I made a picture about this series. I can't wait for VIII. BY the Way here it is! Credits to me!

Very well done 5/5

-a fire? That's like a flare
-not even taking care of the body (father's)?
-no guards at the house just in case the boy would return?
-superb scene with the view of the village from up the mountain
-needs skip

3.5/5.