I was wondering if AB would care for having small in-game footage (film) as a new form of screenshots. This way the viewer can get a pretty good idea of both sound and graphics, as well as (hopefully) game play.

It can easily be done using programs like Fraps, only the flicks will have to change format. Fraps creates HUGE snippets.

The snippets can be provided by anyone, of course, who runs the game while recording. For a better idea of what I'm talking about, go to youtube and look at some in-game footage there.

And maybe, in time, every game here have a 30 sec film or two.

That would use a LOT of server space and bandwidth.

While I'm not opposing the idea as such, I think it is a bit of a long shot.


I'm inclined to believe that a less server/bandwidth intense way of doing a similar thing would be using animated GIFs in place of regular screenshots. Each GIF can be used either to display several different screens from the game OR an animated sequence (ie a short video).

If you would put youtube clips (uploaded from abandonians) and those link things that are used in blogd etc. That would work without spending any bandwith, right?

Yes, embedding would definitely be a way to go for that! And youtube, metacafe and such are the perfect medium for it. I will look into that while designing the screenshot adding module! If a need arises, we could also enable such a module for the personal profile so that members can embed their own gameplay videos

Does YouTube and similar portals keep these videos forever? If they don't It can be annoying after some time, when they'll be deleted.
In my opinion if we put movies on our site, let it be under our control.

To my knowledge youtube keeps videos forever, and doesn't delete them even if they are inactive.... of course, best ones could be stored on our servers

Yeah sounds good but the very moment I read the proposal I also heard "bandwidth" wihin my head. Okay we've just been delivered today and the site is working at decent speed again after an incredibly long time, but video is very demanding and problems could arise again in the future. Between clips in a yet again sluggish site and no clips I choose the latter. Plus I think Youtube or similar is perfect, also they don't delete clips that easily as far as I know. Consider that a server is not strained because of having a lot of data stored in disc, but because of the data being transferred simultaneously at a given moment. The bulk of the clips are watched intensely at first, and then when they've lost popularity it's not in Youtube's interest delete them either since they're not spending bandwidth.

Plus Youtube is a huge community with people hunting for clips just for the fun of it. Most won't ever know what abandonware is, but one day they come across a cool clip from Flashback or Transport Tycoon and they think it's too cool for school and end up in Abandonia. That couldn't actually happen if Ab hosted her own clips with her finite resources.

you can create movies with dosbox as well.
Results of that are better then with fraps.

Hi Lindsey,That was
 

Hi Lindsey,That was a great slideshow! Your ltltie boy is just so darling! I was wondering, how do you have video and pictures of the same thing? Are you able to capture a scene in the video as a still frame picture or do you take video, switch to still frame, take video, take still frame, etc.? Therefore, running the chance of missing some action. Thanks for sharing! I am a photographer living vicarously through you.Tricia

As I see images from
 

As I see images from your <a href="http://xattbgob.com">protsets</a>, I remember how things developed in our 1989 Romanian Revolution, how non-violent protestors where shot dead by snippers and how the police was hunting down innocent people. Yet the anti-communist protestors have won and I think you will, too.The Romanian dictator Ceausescu was a very good friend of the Libyan dictator Gaddafi. One is gone, the other one is next.Back in 89, there was no internet and the foreign media could not find information about the <a href="http://xattbgob.com">protsets</a> outside the capital city. Now, it is different. You are doing a great job and I sincerely wish you a lot of strength and faith. The stronger side will prevail and I hope you will be the one.Long live freedom!