Request to the Powers that Be for more animated background and leaders art.

I agree.  Static paintings of worlds is so ... "Civilization", made worse by being reused for many colonies way too often!

I really hope that this is one area that is wide open for mods by artists willing to animate their submissions.  For example, to show the water city with actual movements in the falls.  To show the suspended city with actual trams or trains moving along the elevated causeways.

It's so limiting for modders to make video background and foreground because of the use of Bink 2.  Bink 1 would have been fine, but because of the transparency, there wasn't a choice and instead they had to use bink 2.  And bink 2 is a licensed so that would cost money.

I wonder, how much is bink 2 to license.  

I can see why foreground would need transparency, but does the background need it?  Wonder if bink 1 can be used for background and just a static image for foreground.

Anyone verse in bink that can shed some light on this? 

As mentioned in one of the dev streams, they are looking at alternatives to Bink 2, though with the need to support transparency there aren't many options available to them.

Regardless, I'm sure there are some more to come - one of the dev streams mentioned that they wanted Jenna out for release, but her animated portrait wasn't completed, so they decided to wait for an Expansion. Expansions and DLC might also contain new races, and any new (major) races will definitely have the full animations.

Wonder, if i can get a Bink license, would I be able to charge people to convert their video to bink for use with the game?  Would that be a violation of any kind?

I'd probably be willing to shell $ for DLC packs that added animated races/portraits. One of those things that is perfect for DLC. Not critical to the game, just a pack of animated cosmetic stuff that people can drop money on if they want.

Can't we just have non-transparent animated FG pictures?

I would love to see more of these and agree Bink 2 while great performance wise and while transparency allow mixing and matching backgrounds and foreground is aggressive modder unfriendly and it's makers seem fairly hostile to allowing some sort of free modders license and tool, afraid it might dilute their income I guess.

I'm currently starting to develop some new race art in blender which I'm learning as I go along, but assuming I manage to come up with something worth while I'll have to static render to png at the moment. Hope they manage to come up with modder friendly video format alternative.

I'm pleased in the meantime they do allow static images though.

I really would like all the base races to get their own science adviser like the humans though, the robots are an ok substitute for custom races, but this little touch makes the humans more fun somehow. If anyone from Stardock is listening could you maybe start adding these, please.

On this note, is it just me or is the terrain pic buged when you start a game. He is using the angry face animation instead of something else?

I hadn't noticed but I will look at his expression next time I start a Terran game.

I would pay for a dlc animated pack as well.  Wish they would allow bink 1 as well.  Wouldn't need the transparency if we make the whole animation as the foreground, right?

I actually think the issue they have with bink 1 may be more around it's relative inefficiency and load given the multithreading nature of GC3 it's possible it would lock things up a bit and not run so smoothly. That said they did mention on a dev stream they had looked at the possibility of allowing bink 1 too, although it wasn't clear if they'd reached the conclusion it was a dead end or where still looking at it.

Totally agree with this request. I also wish they could add a way for us to animate custom leaders we make. For example, if we put in a picture of someone, be able to make them do a blinking animation (it can`t be that hard) and perhaps even add a little head movement. Allow some kind of `lasso` around the eyes so the program knows where to flicker the eyes and around the head or body for a slight movement effect.

How about allowing it to use Animated Gifs as a stop gap?

Probably because gifs are limited to 256 colours and would look like arse. I can imagine people complaining when the workshop come out saying how bad it looked. Besides I'm sure stardock don't want there game tainted by low quality stuff. But who knows, I'm sure they will work something out by 1.1.

true, isn't there another animated image format though that supports true color, I'm going to look it up sure I happened across it a while ago.

In fact there is an animated PNG format isn't there with full color support, of course Stardock would have to build support for it you can get an APNG plugin for GIMP.

There are alot of formats that support Alpha. BUT most have limitations, Size being the biggest one. Then some even have color limitations such as only being 16 bit instead of 32 bit color.. which i guess isnt as bad as 256 colors xD.

Then i remember Stardock talking in a steam that getting an alpha video format itself wasn't so much of the issue as it was more that they had a hard time playing a video playing over the top of another video smoothly. And as i said before, size is a consideration as most of the other formats don't have great compression that's why bink is so popular when it comes to games. Not only do they have to be able to quickly load a video but there are multiply videos for each state of the AI, happy, angry etc. Another thing with size is there are limits to the max size a mod can be in the worskshop so that's anther thing to consider. Sure one AVI file with alpha might not be so bad but you know people are going to want to add like.. 50 of them to a race mod so the size adds up, not the mention the memory usage needed to have to loaded in the background.

And the the issue, which they are facing atm is the Licensing issues, Quicktime for example has alpha channel options. but im sure Apple (i think apple still owns it) wouldn't want to give it for free to Stardock for everyone to use. even know there are free Quicktime versions. And then of course the whole compression issue again.

Now im no expect most of this is just second hand knowledge i have picked up so maybe im completely wrong, but ill be curious how stardock goes about tacking this issue

OH one thing i forgot to add, Piracy.. sure they could add full support for even Bink2 right now if they wanted, in fact im sure there are ways to already get it working if you know how. But if they officially support a format that they know people will have to pay for to use, most people honestly will just pirate a Bink2 converter. Then the people who make bink, or any other format they might use, wouldn't be very happy having Stardock indirectly incentivise to there customers to pirate something.

EDIT: one idea that came to mind.. im  not sure how much a Bink2 license is.. but maybe stardock could have a small DLC for like $2 or something that basically lets you convert your own videos within GalCiv3 to bink2 format or something. that way people who make mods dont have to pay full price, its still money that the company who owns bink is getting. And Stardock wont have to fork out a small fortune to have the option for EVERYONE to use it, cos really not everyone is going to be making videos just a small handful.

also an interesting read on why Bink2 is so good for games is on there site, maybe check it out if you interested
http://www.radgametools.com/bnkmain.htm

I can't actually see why RAD Game Tools are so stubborn about not producing an encoder for no commercial use to support game modding communities. Commercial Developers would still have to pay a license fee and it would only make their tool more popular. Commercial developers using the no commercial version would not be an issue as RAD could easily check their license status and tell if video in a game where bink2 encoded.

It could only make their format more popular I really don't see the downside for them. 

Maybe make a petition to bink !

NO actually dont do that xD might make them more stubbon and scare stardock LOL

Actually I think lobbying RAD Tools who make bink is a good idea, they can only say no , (and from what stardock say probably will).

Maybe ask stardock first, if they are making leeway this might put Bink into a corner and make it harder for stardock. Anyway, make a post with a petition when your done I'll sign :p

Oh btw, did u end up checking to see if your terrane also had the angry face.. I think its there eyes, they look evil.  Lol

 That's what I asked in the dev stream.  Hopefully we hear something soon on an alternate format.