Chaper Cinematic Button on a Custom Campaign

[Azsure]

Chapter Cinematic Button on a Custom Campaign

I had this doubt for many years and never thought about asking. There are two types of chapter buttons in cinematics when we play most of the normal wc3 campaigns: The Missions, and the Cinematics. The Missions are the regular wc3 maps that load after the previous, and Cinematics are the CGI movies that play either at begining or end of a campaign, example below:

I'm aware these movies are exported as .mpq files.

My question is, is this something we're able to re-create? Putting aside the idea of a CGI movie, let's just say we put a X video or a simple recording of a normal wc3 cinematic, simply for the sake of getting that camera icon on your chapter, how would this work out? We put the movie in the campaign's imported resources, turn it into mpq, then call it via trigger editor to play during a certain moment we want? Would this create the camera button chapter on our mission list or is there another condition to do this?

 

[pyf]

Could A Void's Cinematic Movies Tutorial help in any way ?


About FMVs (= the CGI movies)

The files in WC3's Movies folder, are standard avi containers with the mpq file extension.
You may use MediaInfo Lite to know everything about them.

(program description at MajorGeeks)

 

[Azsure]

Could A Void's Cinematic Movies Tutorial help in any way ?


About FMVs (= the CGI movies)

The files in WC3's Movies folder, are standard avi containers with the mpq file extension.
You may use MediaInfo Lite to know everything about them.

(program description at MajorGeeks)

That answers some questions, but still don't see anything about applying this as a separate mission in a campaign. The way I see it, this only lets you play a movie during a mission after the loading screen at any time, but the actual wc3 campaigns had these movies separated as individual movies that you could just click play and it would start without a loading screen, so that's pretty much what I'm wondering if is possible to do.

 

[pyf]

From the very little I am starting to vaguely guess about this, I would suggest you explore the UI\CampaignStrings_exp.txt file.

There, you can find entries labeled "IntroCinematic=", "OpenCinematic=" and "EndCinematic=". That file also allows to define the missions, and where to load the w3x files.

Now it might be interesting to know how far this file can be modified / tweaked / exploited (if ever possible).


Should you want to experiment with that file (and possibly others), I would suggest you ask permission from loktar to toy with his Warcraft III: Complete and its UI\CampaignStrings_exp.txt file.

The reason is, you can put a modified version of this file (and some others) in your WC3 folder, allow local files, and WC3 Complete will take your modified files into account. So no need to fiddle too much with mpq tools. Saves time and makes things easier imho.

 

[Warseeker]

Perhaps he could be changed in the game interface?

 

[Azsure]

So I guess that means you can only mod the existing main campaigns, but not make a custom one separately, unless I'm not reading this much.

 

[Warseeker]

The Campaign's "Game Interface"

 

[pyf]

So I guess that means you can only mod the existing main campaigns, but not make a custom one separately, unless I'm not reading this much.

I lack experience in WC3 modding. I do not know of a document which summarizes what each txt file inside mpqs does and contains. But it is worth investigating and experimenting.

Regarding the Chapter Cinematic button, its icon display might be controlled by a txt file, and not by the exe / dlls. In which case it might indeed be possible to make the camera icon appear next to Chapter missions.

More experienced Hive members may help on that one.

Keeping it on the back of my head, if I stumble upon something myself...