The Movies (PC game)

[Skywatcher]

@DeadlyAccurate

There’s a Movie Player option (I think that’s what it’s called) on the main menu that provides the same functionality as Post-Production.

That sort of worked. The first movie I tried to convert ended up with one scene duplicated, which resulted in the subtitles being off.

[Lady_of_the_Lake]

I bought this last night and have a few questions. I’ve tried to find a walkthrough but no luck yet!

1. Can one delete or rotate buildings? I keep starting over because I’ve placed my building the wrong way. This is the most frustrating thing for me - not that I’m obsessive about layout or anything…but I had my nice shrubbery lined path and then my bathroom is facing towards a wall or I place a building thinking it was a different building.
2. After you hire an actor, can you see their traits again? You know ‘easily bored, can’t turn down a drink’?

Other than that, liking the game - especially the radio giving us the news of the day!

Lady

[Only_Mostly_Dead]

@Lady of the Lake

1. Can one delete or rotate buildings? I keep starting over because I’ve placed my building the wrong way. This is the most frustrating thing for me - not that I’m obsessive about layout or anything…but I had my nice shrubbery lined path and then my bathroom is facing towards a wall or I place a building thinking it was a different building.

Yep. Drag a maintenance worker to the building, and you’ll see two little circles that aren’t there with any other characters: one looks like a bomb, the other like a map compass. Give you two guesses which does what.

2. After you hire an actor, can you see their traits again? You know ‘easily bored, can’t turn down a drink’?

If you notice on the various bars that show their various attributes (right click on the character to see all bars at once), there are two vertical lines through the major ones, and one vertical line through the minor ones. Those are their thresholds. The farther left a threshold, the better, as it means they are more resistent to whatever problem.

Clear as mud?

[Lady_of_the_Lake]

@Only Mostly Dead

Clear as mud?

Yep! Thanks much, that helped!

[lno]

With the accelerated research as of 1930, I’m off to the races. I’ve swept the awards in 1935 and 1940 and have the #1 studio, #1 star, #2 star, #5 star, the top four movies… yeah, this is how we roll at Hacky McSlasherton films.

One of my favorites:

1. Couple meet in the creepy cabin.
2. They kiss.
3. The man proposes to the woman, and she accepts.
4. The man then opens the trapdoor and while he peers down into it, the woman sneaks up behind him and klonks him with a shovel.
5. He falls down the stairs, and she descends after him.
6. THE END.

I think it’s a metaphor or something.

[lno]

@Lady of the Lake

Other than that, liking the game - especially the radio giving us the news of the day!

In the late 1940s, the anticommunist rhetoric on the radio made me laugh so hard I accidentally mis-clicked and dropped a star into the “sell your star” building.

[BraheSilver]

@lno

In the late 1940s, the anticommunist rhetoric on the radio made me laugh so hard I accidentally mis-clicked and dropped a star into the “sell your star” building.

No, no. You blackballed him.

[tanstaafl]

OK, I gave in and bought this one yesterday. Played with it far too long last night and got up to 1935 before I called it quits. (By this point my lot was a mess; I need to do a bit more planning next time.)

I haven’t produced anything worthy of uploading yet, but a couple of questions.

1. Is there any way to tell what a star is upset about? I had a couple who’s moods were dropping like rocks but all of their bars looked to be well to the right of their thresholds.

2. How do you give a star an entourage? The tooltip said to pick someone up from one of the lines and drop them on the bubble next to the star but I couldn’t see where to drop them.

3. Are the initial films your screenwriters come up with random? And, related, is there any way to tell which lots you will need in advance? I built a couple of lots (western desert and battlefield) which never got used. (Yeah, I know you can use them for practice.)

4. Why are all of my extras naked? OK, not really but none of their clothing ever has any textures applied so they are wearing untextured white clothes all the time.

(Speaking of random scripts, the funniest one I have seen so far is “The Sheep Cloners” (in 1928?) which consisted of an actor staggering around the starship bridge set for a while then crawling off. The one that consisted totally of a fully clothed actress was pretty odd too.

[tanstaafl]

[QUOTE=tanstaaflThe one that consisted totally of a fully clothed actress was pretty odd too.[/QUOTE]

:smack: Make that “The one that consisted totally of a fully clothed actress taking a bath was pretty odd too.”

No wonder my scripts all suck.

[DeadlyAccurate]

@tanstaafl

1. Is there any way to tell what a star is upset about? I had a couple who’s moods were dropping like rocks but all of their bars looked to be well to the right of their thresholds.

If you right-click on their image, you can see all their bubbles at once. Maybe it was their stress?

2. How do you give a star an entourage? The tooltip said to pick someone up from one of the lines and drop them on the bubble next to the star but I couldn’t see where to drop them.

Make sure they’re not doing something else at the time. I usually drag my star over to the potential entourage member, drop them, then pick up the employee and look for the circle. I don’t remember what it looks like, though.

3. Are the initial films your screenwriters come up with random? And, related, is there any way to tell which lots you will need in advance? I built a couple of lots (western desert and battlefield) which never got used. (Yeah, I know you can use them for practice.)

I’ve thought so at first, but I’ve seen the same stories several times now (I’ve finished the initial game and I’m just continuing to play to get as many special award items as I can.)

4. Why are all of my extras naked? OK, not really but none of their clothing ever has any textures applied so they are wearing untextured white clothes all the time.

I haven’t seen this. Graphics problem maybe?

Part I of my epic, The Murder of John Woodley, is now 90% complete. I actually bought sound effects from a site called Sound Rangers. Oh, and if you’re looking for a better audio recorder, I found a free Open Source one called Audacity that has quite a few options for fixing audio.

[aleong]

Tinkered around some more with The Movies and put together this music video for “Nun-chuks”, a song by Taiwanese rapper Jay Chou. Once again, I ended up editing in Windows Movie Maker because of problems with the %@# *& in-game editing and exporting tools.

It’s a little more action-oriented and fun this time around. And given that the game doesn’t actually include animations of people singing/rapping, I had to find a creative way to make it look as though Jay was ‘rapping’ in the video.

A streaming version can be viewed at my space in Putfile.com: http://www.putfile.com/mediacircus (you can also view my first video “Cannot Speak” here). Best viewed under ‘Wide’ (you can select this option at the bottom of the screen)

Enjoy!

[DeadlyAccurate]

That was very well done, aleong. Awesome work!

[aleong]

@DeadlyAccurate

That was very well done, aleong. Awesome work!

Thanks DeadlyAccurate! I took a look at your movies on the Lionhead site… Six Inches looked like it was something you’d see on “Desperate Housewives”!

[aleong]

@Dewey Cheatem Undhow

N.B. There’s some speculation that going to RANKPRIZE_38 may unlock more.

I tried this and didn’t notice anything new being unlocked. Has anyone had a different experience?

@Dewey Cheatem Undhow

3. I knew this wasn’t going to be in the game, but it still merits a “WTF” – no kids? No short or tall people? Yeah, I know it makes lining up kisses and such very hard, but why not just prevent height mismatches in those types of scenes?

In terms of having no kids as characters, I think Lionhead didn’t want people making movies with kids being killed, in ‘romantic’ situations, etc. I think the developer did the same thing with “Fable”.

@Dewey Cheatem Undhow

5. Why can’t I directly import MP3 files for soundtracks without first converting them to WAVs or OGGs? And why a 40 second limit? How on earth can I film “2112” with that kind of restriction?

You can import music for your soundtracks for whatever length you like (it worked for me after converting a 4 min. song to ogg format, though I ended up with video/audio sync issues due to the limitations of my hardware). I think it’s only the dialogue that is limited to 40 seconds.

[DeadlyAccurate]

Well, it’s finally done. http://media.putfile.com/The-Murder-of-John-Woodley-Part-I

Try not to laugh too hard, and I’m always up for constructive criticism.

[aleong]

@DeadlyAccurate

Well, it’s finally done. http://media.putfile.com/The-Murder-of-John-Woodley-Part-I

Try not to laugh too hard, and I’m always up for constructive criticism.

Hi Deadly,

You edited it outside of The Movies, right?

Before you exported the video from the game, were the lips moving more overtly when the characters spoke? I noticed on my Nun-chuks music video that I lost some of the lip movements after exporting.

Anyways, the voice acting is good (despite the lip-syncing issues) and it’s good how you restrained from using some of the cheesier animations in the game.

Can’t wait to see Part II!

[DeadlyAccurate]

I didn’t even bother to use the lip syncing option, since I did edit it outside the game. I was afraid it would end up looking like the lip syncing (god, that’s a funny word) was separate from the voice, like a badly dubbed kung fu movie.

Thank you.

[Menocchio]

This looks interesting, but I’ve bveen burned by Lionshead’s games before. Would anyone be nice enough to give the technical requirements?

Thanks.

[Skywatcher]

@Menocchio

Would anyone be nice enough to give the technical requirements?

• A version of Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 98SE/ME/2000/XP
• Pentium(R) III 800 MHz or Athlon™ 800MHz processor or higher
• 256MB RAM
• 8x Speed CD-ROM drive and latest drivers
• 2.4 GB of uncompressed free hard disk space (plus 500MB for Windows(R) swap file)
• 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers
• 100% Windows(R) 98SE/ME/2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers
• DirectX(R) 9.0c (included)
• Updated Windows Media(R) Player 9 Codecs (included)
• 800 x 600 Monitor Resolution
• 3D Hardware Accelerator Card required - 100% DirectX(R) 9.0c compatible 32MB Hardware T&L-capable video card and latest drivers*

Supported Graphics Cards:
ATI™ Radeon(R) series (7000 or better).
7000, 7200, 7500
8500
9000, 9200, 9250, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800
x300, x600, x700, x800, x850

NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) series (GeForce 3 or better).
GeForce 3, 3 Ti
GeForce 4, MX, Ti
GeForce FX 5200, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, PCX 5300, 5750, 5950
GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800

Important Note: *Some 3D accelerator cards with the chipsets listed here may not be compatible with the 3D acceleration features utilized by The Movies™. Please refer to your hardware manufacturer for 100% DirectX 9.0c compatibility.

[Skywatcher]

I’m running on an Athlon 1800+ with a GeForce 6800 and 512Meg. Only problems I’m experiencing are that the sound occasionally drops out (after which the game won’t close properly) and duplicated scenes when exporting movies for upload.