Cut-scene Theatre

The discussion going on over in the Religion in Vana'diel thread has got me interested in going back to watch all of the old CoP cut-scenes again. The only thing holding me back is that they're spread out across the whole dang world, and in no particular order. Re-watching them all in order would be a huge pain.

Towards that end, I'm curious how many other people would be interested in a unified place you could go to in order to re-watch all your previous cut-scenes. Missions, quests, you name it. FFXI has told some pretty epic stories throughout the years, and I think its a shame that there's a ton of effort required in order to go relive some of those memories.

Maybe if we get enough interest, the Dev Team will take a look at implementing it for us. Or at the very least, we can get a very nicely-worded yet definitive, "Sorry, but no," and I'll know to tell my LS mates not to expect me for anything for the next week and a half while I wander the world reliving my past. :p

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Originally Posted by Mokeil

The only thing holding me back is that they're spread out across the whole dang world, and in no particular order. Re-watching them all in order would be a huge pain.

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Sacrificial Chamber gets (dis)honorable mention.

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Towards that end, I'm curious how many other people would be interested in a unified place you could go to in order to re-watch all your previous cut-scenes.

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Maybe if there were a way to rewatch events from the comfort of our inn rooms Mog Houses, like a certain other MMO...

i have to give this one a hardy third >.>/

Final Fantasy XIV has a great feature where you can do this in your house..
Just sayin'..*

(* That's not me saying that XIV is better or anything - just that it's implementing some good stuff that the XI team should pay attention to. I'm not even going to leave for XIV. XI and DQX keep me busy enough thanks!)

I so want this, maybe make it a room or an actual theatre in Adoulin or something...

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Originally Posted by Teraniku

I so want this, maybe make it a room or an actual theatre in Adoulin or something...

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Exactly what I figured! While they're adding all sorts of new areas, it wouldn't be hard to tuck something into an unused corner. Even given that I think cut-scene data is stored on a by-zone basis, there are still a few options that will work, if the programers are willing to get creative.

Including the opening FMV. Make it like Luca :P

I got a suspicion all cutscene scripts are tied to their respective zone, which if that's a case, it means it wouldn't be possible to do what you're requesting without a whole load of manual work and testing to ensure it doesn't bust the cutscenes as they already are.

On the other hand, there are already several cutscenes that move the player to a different area for the duration of the cutscene.

I would like to extend this idea to include the battlefields linked to cutscenes. One of my most glorious moments was soloing Promathia. I should like to relive it.

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Originally Posted by Ziyyigo-Tipyigo

On the other hand, there are already several cutscenes that move the player to a different area for the duration of the cutscene.

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Which only started with WoTG, which to me spelled out the scripts were tied to zones, and a given cutscene was required to warp a player to another zone to continue said script, probably for memory-management reasons given how much crap goes on behind the scenes in WoTG zones courtesy of Campaign.

If they gave us access to cutscenes from one source, they'd have to manually script in all these warps for every single cutscene. That's a whole lot of testing to ensure something doesn't bug up, or you end up remaining in the zone after the cutscene ends.

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Originally Posted by Kaisha

If they gave us access to cutscenes from one source, they'd have to manually script in all these warps for every single cutscene. That's a whole lot of testing to ensure something doesn't bug up, or you end up remaining in the zone after the cutscene ends.

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The hard part is already done, though - i.e. setting up the code to move a player to X,Y,Z co-ordinate, flagging the CS to play on zoning, then moving that player back again. The rest - setting it up for all cut-scenes - is mostly just going to be time consuming. If they limited the theatre to only mission story lines (plus the WotG nation quest story lines) then it wouldn't even be all that bad.

Alternatively, they could develop a handful of new areas which consist of nothing but a small room and a big pile of cut-scenes. A sort of private viewing room for each mission line. Then, they'd just need to alter those cut-scenes to be accessible via a menu prompt. This would also have the benefit have less server load than the other idea, as PCs wouldn't be zoning back and forth across lines in short succession.

I'm not saying these things would be super-quick to implement, but it still wouldn't be hard to do, if they put their minds to it.

Hmmm... You know, looking back over my second idea, I think I now also want an overlay option, where you can meet up with your NPC friends from those mission lines, who would then provide humorous commentary on all the shenanigans you all got up to...

I would love for something like this. I've always wanted to be able to watch a storyline start to finish to follow what is going on. When I started, was doing city, Zilart, and CoP all at the same time, so I was getting confused on occasion. I'd pay a little extra if I could download all the CS from a completed storyline using my char model and a armor set of my choosing.

We certainly understand that this would be quite convenient, but unfortunately implementing such a feature is not possible at this time.

Could a system of teleports between Goblin Footprints/Cutscene Bards be a possibility?

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Originally Posted by Matty

Could a system of teleports between Goblin Footprints/Cutscene Bards be a possibility?

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I like this idea, but the teleport would have to have a permanent Bind effect around the Footprint/Bard and the player wouldn't be able to access any menu commands. (Only allowed to type /item on the footprint and target the Bard to talk to.) Otherwise we would have a teleport to literally every single zone lol.

If they did decide to go with this, it would be nice if they added a follow-up command after the cutscene stating where the next cutscene is and an option of teleporting there right away. So for example if you finish watching the cutscene for CoP 1-3 at one of the Spires, you would receive a prompt indicating the next cutscene is in Lufaise Meadows and asking if you'd like to go there.

There would also have to be a generic spot for the NPC who starts the teleporting process and a spot for you to return to after viewing the cutscenes. I suppose one spot would be where the storylines begin (Lower Jeuno for a Crystalline Prophecy, Lower Delkfutts Tower for CoP, etc.). Another spot could be Chocobo's Circuit. Just place an NPC in there with a list of places to teleport to.

Or if they wanted to take it a step further, they could make use of the Colosseum in WG. Make the Colosseum be the place where this teleport NPC stands and allow it so that event battles take place again. (Hence the name Colosseum.)

I SO WANT TO GO TO HERE! I want to visit all past memories of the game and storylines I have forgotten.

It would be really nice if I could watch the storylines I forgot or did not understand fully when I first saw them.

Can small steps be taken to make viewing them at least a little less inconvenient? For example, could the Goblin Footprint in Sacrificial Chamber be moved to Den of Rancor? Or could there perhaps be an expansion of Domenic's services?

I have little need or interest in this personally, however a compromise might provided through the SE account system. Perhaps add an option on site, where you can select a character, and it brings up a list of cutscenes the character has experienced. From there they could get super-lazy with it, and display the cutscene with your character replaced by a featureless fomor, so, you can review the cutscene,but with absense of your character's details. In short, its still a huge hastle, but less so because they would only need 8 versions of the cutscenes, and could have a GM run through it somehow to get them, and just recoard/youtube em up. More or less.

I'm sorry but the biggest issue between the story being spread over several months is that you have trouble remembering everything that happened. Having to find all the foot prints to rewatch cut scenes is extremely asinine.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

We certainly understand that this would be quite convenient, but unfortunately implementing such a feature is not possible at this time.

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Could you at least explain in technical detail as to why?
It's not just a matter of convenience by the way, it's a matter of loving the game and wanting to relive those memories.

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Originally Posted by RagingAvatar

Could you at least explain in technical detail as to why?
It's not just a matter of convenience by the way, it's a matter of loving the game and wanting to relive those memories.

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Likely that the data for cutscenes, including NPC models are all stored in the zone where the cutscenes take place. Which is why cutscenes start without needing to load first, as they are included in the loading process for the zone itself. To create a single zone that can load and display all cutscenes in the game --- every NPC, Monster, and character model included in a cutscene would have to be added to a single zone in addition to all of the data related to the the choreography for that zone, not to mention replications of the original zone in which the scene takes place itself. The amount of load of not only duplicating all of this superfluous data into a single, new area as well as the process of loading it each time a character enters this zone would be massive.

Just my theory.

If you consider the fact that all of the cutscenes run in the game's in-game engine, using in-game character models that are just choreographed it's not a bad suspicion as to how they put the system together to be workable on a PS2. Maximizes pre-loading in a big way.

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Originally Posted by Horadrim

Likely that the data for cutscenes, including NPC models are all stored in the zone where the cutscenes take place. Which is why cutscenes start without needing to load first, as they are included in the loading process for the zone itself. To create a single zone that can load and display all cutscenes in the game --- every NPC, Monster, and character model included in a cutscene would have to be added to a single zone in addition to all of the data related to the the choreography for that zone, not to mention replications of the original zone in which the scene takes place itself. The amount of load of not only duplicating all of this superfluous data into a single, new area as well as the process of loading it each time a character enters this zone would be massive.

Just my theory.

If you consider the fact that all of the cutscenes run in the game's in-game engine, using in-game character models that are just choreographed it's not a bad suspicion as to how they put the system together to be workable on a PS2. Maximizes pre-loading in a big way.

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That is correct. The reason you are temporarily zoned into West Sarutabaruta [S] for many cutscenes that take place in Windurst Waters [S] is because WW[S] already has an excessive amount of data for one zone.

I remember a while back, the update notes stated that some quest CSes were moved to Bhaflau Thickets or Wajaom Woodlands for memory reasons. I believe the CSes were originally at Al Zahbi's Goblin Footprint, which holds no CSes to anyone's knowledge.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

We certainly understand that this would be quite convenient, but unfortunately implementing such a feature is not possible at this time.

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My thanks for taking the time to ask about this for me. I am certainly disappointed, but in this case, I'd rather the solid "no" than to be kept wondering.

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Originally Posted by RagingAvatar

Could you at least explain in technical detail as to why?
It's not just a matter of convenience by the way, it's a matter of loving the game and wanting to relive those memories.

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The "why" of this is pretty easy, unfortunately. It would be time consuming to do, and (as Horadrim pointed out) would add a bunch of extra data to a game that is starting to stretch itself thin with its data limits.

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Originally Posted by Horadrim

Likely that the data for cutscenes, including NPC models are all stored in the zone where the cutscenes take place.

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This is why my first idea involved just teleporting the player to a non-area of the map, triggering the cut-scene, and then popping them back again. The code for this mostly already exists, though I certainly admit it would take time to properly tweak and then apply to the existing cut-scenes.

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Originally Posted by Dekar

I'm sorry but the biggest issue between the story being spread over several months is that you have trouble remembering everything that happened. Having to find all the foot prints to rewatch cut scenes is extremely asinine.

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Originally Posted by Bahamut

I SO WANT TO GO TO HERE! I want to visit all past memories of the game and storylines I have forgotten.

It would be really nice if I could watch the storylines I forgot or did not understand fully when I first saw them.

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I definitely understand how you feel! By the time I got to the CoP story line, the whole thing was out, but the difficulty hadn't been adjusted. It took almost half a year for my static group to clear it all. I definitely forgot a lot of stuff - mostly about Louverance. What was his deal, anyways? Like, he was your bro, had your back and all... But he was also a secret church agent, or something? And there was a real Louverance who wanted to kill our Louverance for stealing his name?

Also, a lot of the old CoP story line has changed in meaning/significance with the revelation of the Dark Divinity's identity, and I was rather interested in re-watching the old story with my new understandings.

Alas, it seems that will not be...

Tangent: I was disappointed to learn that the new character/new allegiance cutscenes can't be replayed at all. Any hope of adding those?

Woo! No theater! Love how people still pay for this kinda crap updates.

Sorry but the technical reasons so far are thin.

It should work like so:
Player initiates cut-scene theatre and chooses a cut-scene.
Player warps to area where cut-scene takes place.
Player watches cut-scene.
Player is warped back to theatre area.

The same memory issues exist as if the cut-scene was taking place.
Yes, you'd have to know which cut-scene goes to which area - shouldn't take that long.
Yes, you'd have to warp the player back to the theatre area afterwards - (*cough* callback *cough*)

I'm a videogame programmer professionally, so I ask for the technical details because I'm intrigued about how hard it is - I expect there is a more complex reason, as this is a 10 year old game and the code-base must be like spaghetti.