                         The Artifact 

Well, what can I say.  It's 9:13 in the morning on 5/22/97.  'The
Artifact' is complete.  Making a movie is HARD.  But I think all of
you will agree that the effort was well worth it ;).

                         Instructions 

Copy the file (ARTIFACT.ZIP) into a directory off of your QUAKE(R)
directory.  (Example C:\GAMES\QUAKE\ARTIFACT).  Unzip the .zip in 
that directory.  You should have the following files.

ARTIFACT.TXT - This file
ARTIFACT.BAT - Quick Start
PAK0.PAK - The movie itself
AUTOEXEC.CFG - The Autoexec file to start the movie the way it
should be watched.

Once you've done this, you're all red to go.  Go to your root QUAKE
directory and type

QUAKE -GAME ARTIFACT -NOCDAUDIO

I strongly suggest that you add the parameter -NOCDAUDIO as well. 
Our movie has enough music on it's own, and playing a CD during the
movie playback would probably sound really wierd.

A Batch file called ARTIFACT.BAT is included, so if you want you
can just run that.  I wasn't sure whether to cater to the people
who leave the bat file in the directory it was unzipped in and run
it or the people who know it's good to put a .bat file in your main
QUAKE directory and run it from there if you want it to actually
work, but I decided to go for the former in this case.  The .bat
file, when run from C:\GAMES\QUAKE\ARTIFACT, will back up one
directory to your main and run QUAKE with the following parameters.

QUAKE -NOCDAUDIO -NOJOY -WINMEM 12

You may want to change the WINMEM command to suit your system.

The AUTOEXEC.CFG will start the movie up in VID_MODE 4.  This is a
very nice looking mode (text looks the nicest here out of almost
all of the SVGA modes) and it runs relatively smoothly on my P 133.

Unless you're running QUAKE on a 486 this vid_mode should provide
the best balance of speed and detail.  

I speculated on adding GAMMA and SOUNDVOLUME commands as well, but
I figure good settings for these widely vary among systems, and so
I decided to let you go with what settings you think are
appropriate to your system.

If you've got a gun in front of the camera then you did something
seriously wrong... make sure that the autoexec.cfg included in
ARTIFACT.ZIP is in the \ARTIFACT directory.  If all else fails put
the command R_DRAWVIEWMODEL 0 in your CONFIG.CFG or type it in the
console once playback begins.  You shouldn't have any problems with
this though, the movie is set up to run fullscreen, no crosshair,
no model. 

                          Movie Notes 

This movie was filmed by me and 3 of my Clan Phantasm buds, all of
us UT guys, and we really didn't use much more than a simple
monster Quake-C patch and a camera guy floating around with GOD
mode and NOCLIP on.  Unfortunately we don't have access to awesome
programmers (for example, Wedge and Choryoth) like the Rangers do,
and so we don't have any fancy new Quake-C code to film with or put
in the movie.  Sorry about that ;).  What we do have is a quality
film that I think was done incredibly well considering it is the
first movie I have directed/edited, and it was a learning
experience for all of us.  We've made a movie that I feel will
stand out, and I hope that you enjoy watching it as much as we
enjoyed making it.

                         Other Credits 

ID Software for making Quake

Eric Stern for Film at 11, which this movie was made with

Jeff Epler for designing his Morph Quake-C patch

Those NB guys and those two other guys for filling in the extra
parts

Musical samples done by

NIN (Quake Track 2, Head Like a Hole)
Offspring (All I Want)
311 (Down)
Rammstein (Hierate Mich)
The makers of Scourge of Armagon (BTW, the .wavs are public domain
downloaded off of their server ;)
Beethoven
Fear Factory (Zero Signal from the Mortal Kombat Soundtrack)
Metallica (Battery)
John Williams (JAWS)

                        Troubleshooting 

The only problem I've come across is that sometimes, when running
through Windows, my Quake will lock up after the movie has
completed running.  I have no earthly idea why this happens, and it
only happens once in a blue moon (it happened once out of ten
playings), but if you do experience this problem, don't panic.
Simply hit ALT+TAB to exit QUAKE to Windows and close the MS-DOS
prompt like normal by clicking on it.  No problemo, man.

                         Copyrights 

'The Artifact' movie, voice samples and all other related items
(posters, etc.) are copyrighted by Eric 'StarFury' Bakutis of Clan
Phantasm, as they are all my original work.

The Phantasm Skin is Copyright 1997 by Andy 'Greblaja' Alberg

QUAKE(R) and all related items are copyrighted by ID Software

The musical samples played in this movie are all copyrighted by
their respective composers (we didn't use enough of any of them to
merit a lawsuit--and besides, we're giving this away for free--I
doubt a 10 second sample is pushing it too far).

                          End Note 

If you're curious about how we did anything in this movie, feel
free to load it up in your favorite demo editor and reverse
engineer the thing.  With new editors out like Film at 11 (which I
personally recommend) and the upcoming KeyGrip (which I have yet to
see) Quake moviemaking is really becoming possible for the common
man.  All we used to make this movie was a simple LAN, some guys
with GOD mode on and a Quake-C patch.  The way I see it, the more
Quake movies out, the better!  I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the
release of the Ranger movie RGB 3 and the Apocalypse movie being
put together by Quake Lab as well.  We've been given a powerful new
engine with seemingly engine potential by the guys at ID Software--
let's use it people.  

One warning--don't expect to be able to make a decent movie without
a good deal of work.  Me and my buds spent about 15 hours of
recording time doing all the footage necessary for this movie, and
I put in another 30-40 hours on editing it all together.  The
filming was stretched out over a month and the editing was
stretched out over several weeks, but still, that's alot of work. 

One other thing--the way I used V_CSHIFT in this movie is not the
correct way to use it.  But, for some reason, it worked.  ??? 
Using the GAMMA command is possible for fade-outs, but the V_CSHIFT
command has the advantage because it not only blackens the screen
but also extinguishes R_FULLBRIGHT entities (such as torches) which
GAMMA dropping will leave visible.

In case you were wondering, the way we had multiple levels in the
same movie was simply by calling demos from demos--the first part
of the artifact calls the intermission, the intermission calls the
second part, etc.  We originally divided 'The Artifact' into two
parts because we switched QC codes halfway through filming, and the
two sets of footage (before and after switch) were incompatible. 
A word of advice if you plan on using multiple filming sessions to
record your movie--to avoid problems, do everything the same EVERY
TIME.  Run the server with the same amount of max players.  Have
everyone enter the server in the same order.  Don't switch QC codes
in the middle of filming ;).  There are ways around most of the
problems that result from doing what I mentioned above (which, BTW,
we did during filming.. did I mention making our first movie was a
learning experience for all of us? ;) but they take effort and
time, and if you can avoid them in the first place, do so.

For those of you who want to reverse engineer the thing to see how
we did stuff, here is the breakup of the demos (use a pak editor to
access these)

ARTI1.DEM - The first part of 'The Artifact'
INTER.DEM - Intermission
ARTI2.DEM - The second part of 'The Artifact'
CREDITS.DEM - The Credits Sequence
THISISP.DEM - The 'This is Phantasm' Segment

If you have a particular question about how I did something feel
free to write me and ask.  I'll try to answer when I get some time.

That's it.  StarFury of Clan Phantasm, signing off.
   

