The Night Calls

[Moderator]

17:25, 24th May 2009 by bounty hunter2:
Approved (Reviewed) with a 3/5 (Useful) rating.

You can find my full review at post #8.

 

[Zelda.Alex]

The Night Calls made by Bob27 for Cinematic Contest #3 is a story of a man who looses his home and his family...

The terrain was well done. Nothing I can point out was less than good except at one single scene. The scene being just before the last action.

Spoiler

When the Person Jumps then Just before he jumps then when I see him his face the terrain near his feet looked bad. I am referring to the slope made at just the end of path. (Cannot upload image because I just cannot see the screenshot taken)

The camera angle was good. It helped to contribute to the theme.

The one scene which I do not think was well done was

Spoiler

When the house gets burned. The house starting burning at just 2 attacks. Also the fire caught quite fastly seeing that it was raining heavily.

Replayability : I already watched it 3 times. Good work on this.

The last scene

Spoiler

Of jumping spoiled a bit interest. The animation was not very good. Also the person stood for a moment before falling down.

In the last scene I watched a ship walk through a rock. The same may happen again.

You have taken care of Credits properly & have given proper details. A + point.

The music used was a good choice. I liked that.

This is High Quality cinematic. 4/5 & Recommended for Approval

 

[Septimus]

Good to see you finally get it completed.

I have watch it again and here is another few thing you could improve.

1) Creep selection - I am glad you take my suggestion, but I have to said you make a wrong selection for the creep inside the forest. Dog is definitely not a good selection.

From what I seen, it seems like you use dog more than any other critter. The best critter for forest scenery would be stag, rabbits or boar.

It also not complete without a flock of bird. Try use destructible/doodad of bird to enchances the view. If you ever goes to such a forest, tell me which forest does not have bird.

I only seen 1 critter per scene, the most is 2. It was recommend at 3 per scene and try to trigger the creep movement instead of allowing it to wondering cause if you allow it to wander randomly, it won't be same everytime I watch the cinematic and there is a possibility of it to run out of the camera sight.

For example, you can set a stag at the path of the guy walking and make the stag run away upon seeing it to make it more realistic.

2) Sound Effect - Good to see you add sound effect, but it seems like there is no sound effect of raining at the graveyard scene (I could be wrong, but you can try to take a look).

3) Tomb - From what I seen at the image, the tomb doesn't look normal. It just look like a rock that does not engrave the name and the birth/death of the person.

If you change it with a tomb that engrave with name and date of birth/death. It would be even more realistic and cool.

The 1st and 3rd reason I mention is more like a bonus and visual enchances, you can choose to do it or not to do it. If you really enchances this, I really have no reason not to give it 5/5 (Highly Recommend).

My rating at this moment is 4/5 (Recommend), it was a very high quality work that follow all rules guidelines, excellent coding with all basic cinematic setup on it, high detail terrain and follow the exact theme of "Sorrow".

For those who want to watch high quality cinematic, this is definitely a good choice for you.

 

[Bob27]

Ok well as for having the names engraved on the graves, I agree that would look good, it just depends how well I could edit the textures to have names engraved on them. As for the sound effects, there should be a sound playing during the graveyard scene, it just doesn't seem to be that loud. I'll see what I can do about it.

 

[JaysProjex]

Well done! I liked it alot, I only spotted a few things that could use improvement.

Spoiler

1. Walking along the trail I think its the 2nd trail scene he turns looks unrealistic
2. Ok hes guilty so they just burn the house and his family wtf???
3. The lady hanging in Graveyard!?!? and why?
4. Im unsure of why its called "The Night Calls" ?

I loved the music went along well with your cinematic!
Ongoing scenes was descriptive and I clearly understood what was going on was great.
The lighting effects while he was at graveyard was pretty cool how it reflected on his face.

Rate: 5/5 maybe not the best but it deserves a 5 dead on. Nice!

 

[thedeathunterxx]

awww this cinematic was so sad =/

The terrain was well done. Very well done. Of course it could have been better but lol who cares.

The effects were fantastic. The day night model trick added a good feeling to the cinematic. And the house was so sad : / and then he kills.... welll you know

the only thing i have to say is that when he jumps, you should havefaded out before he hit the ground....it would have created a mysterious sort of cliff hangover if we actually didn't see tha actual death. Other than that ...excellent.

5/5 indeed ** very sad cinematic =(

 

[supertoinkz]

remove extra animations. I laugh at the scene where his house burning and he is scratching his head anyways 4/5.

 

[bounty hunter2]

bounty hunter2's Review on The Night Calls

This review contains spoilers, such as environment details and minor story details.

The Night Calls is a cinematic map made by Bob27 that revolves around agony of a man who lost his wife and child, in a unfair way. The man was also banished from his home, being accused of crimes he apparently did not commit.

Now here shall I start. The entire story is nearing, and sometimes crosses the line of a big Cliche. Man loses family. How original is that. That is the biggest problem of the entire cinematic, a idea, a plot isn't present. Those are mostly some scenes, without much to get the interest of the viewer.

There are some, actually one plot hole. When the mages burn down the house, the woman and the child are in. However a mass of people is in front of the house, along with the husband. He knows that they are in, why wouldn't he try to save them? Scream to wake them up? They should hear something atleast and wake up, since there really is a mass of people in front of the house.

The terrain was done decently. Good use of dodoads and tilesets. However the graveyard scene was a bit to monotone, the tombs were all the same. Too symmetrical. I also didn't like the wolf on the road, the racon is fine but the wolf just doesn't fit in.

The cameras are fine, athough I disliked so much static cameras. In my opinion, atleast 80% of the cameras should be fluid. Pan them over 500 seconds, just to make a better feel.

The special effects were fine. However the man falling down the cliff was quite odd. Who falls like that, so perfectly, it would be better if he was lying, but this wasn't that bad, don't get me wrong.

The music used was good, fitted in well. The packaging is good aswell, and the crediting too. The cinematic is almost flawless, but it misses an essence of "special" in it, to make it truly good.

Thanks for participating in the contest, that is most likely to fail. :/

Approved with a 3/5 (Useful) rating.

 

[thedeathunterxx]

umm thats not a flaw in the story.

no one said that his family was in the house. they were probably killed some other way... why else would he visit a grave ? because they were buryed...not burnt >.>

 

[bounty hunter2]

Did you actually watch it? The family was in the house and burnt.

 

[Vuormalainen]

Best WC3 cinematic I've ever watched! Very nice shadows, makes it look so much better!
5/5

 

[thedeathunterxx]

he was stairing at the ashes of his house =_=

and he was standing at the grave of his family...there is no way they were burnt !

 

[bounty hunter2]

Notice the family:

 

[T3rm1n4t0r]

I don't really understand the point of this...

 

[.LsD]

It was a good cinematic. Music made the cinematic more sad and sorrowful. I felt sad at the same time

Camera, fire, hanging woman, jump system, storyline were excellent !!

Pretty nice!! Hope you make more cool Cinematics

 

[clm222]

Ineresting

 

[Cassandra Jones]

A old gem in 2009. The only issue is that the jump system causes the cinematic not to load in 1.21 or above (from line 1150 afterwards - no idea how to fix that one, as seen in my recording), so I have to delete that custom script to make the map playable.