:twisted: I have a few questions about MovieStorm that others might also find useful. 1. I stopped making machinima movies and started using Virtual Stage and Moho because whatever I make I own. So my question: is this going to be like other game engines and the movies we create are not owned by us? 2. I read that MovieStorm is going to be Moddable, just how easy will modding be. 

A great deal indeed...and I'm sure gToon is right, it will be a big attraction to the program. Hi gToon, good ta see you again :lol: ginger (aka Shygirl) :D  

I was wondering if you will be setting up your marketplace to allow modelers and modders to sell through the site? It would be nice to be able to recoup a little for time spent... plus it would help you build up content- and nothing will help you grow faster than a large (and growing) selection of characters, locations and objects. Since there will be a lot of people wanting to create machinima who don't have an affinity for creating the models, a catalog of thousands of items would be invaluable. The fastest way to get that large catalog is to let the community build a good portion of it... and you would take a (reasonable) cut of the transaction of course. 

....started using Virtual Stage and Moho because whatever I make.... 

cyber_faust69 wrote:

....started using Virtual Stage and Moho because whatever I make.... 

Can you tell us about these 2 bits of software? I have never heard of them. 

I played with moho back around 1999. If I remember correctly it was a free 2D vector animation program that let you make character animations for Flash. I guess it may be totally different by now. I found this review of virtual stage on Overman's Blog: http://z-studios.com/blog/2006/02/18/review-virtual-stage-3/ 

Thanks Fleef. I found moho this time around and it looks OK, but not great. Overman mentioned 'limited space' for VirtualStage, and that was enough to chase me off. Gonna be hard having an entire city getting et by little demons if all I can't encompass a goodly part of a city. :) 

steelblade wrote:

Thanks Fleef. I found moho this time around and it looks OK, but not great. Overman mentioned 'limited space' for VirtualStage, and that was enough to chase me off. Gonna be hard having an entire city getting et by little demons if all I can't encompass a goodly part of a city. :) 

That's why I love using GTA:SA for machinima! I've got the whole Green Acres theme song right at my fingertips. I just finished downloading MS. It's time to tinker. 

:lol: So in GTA:SA you can have Arnold the pig eaten by monsters? :)  

I think you might have taken my comment a little too seriously. Or it could be that I am still thinking of this as 'a game', rather than a commercial venture (for me it's a hobby). 

(Re: Biggstrek's question, my problem is it seems if we buy a 3rd party model/set/whatever, we run the risk of not owning our movie? I'm happy to pay for something I like (and respect the creator by not sharing the item), but if it negates a reason that drew me to this venture, I wonder how wise it would be for me to buy something in the first place? Or are we talking about things bought from Moviestorm (not 3rd party), that you are letting us use freely? (for our use)) 

I wonder if, for smaller transactions it might be possible to build up moviestorm credit. So say I made a magnolia tree, and uploaded it for sale at say 10(virtual) c a download, and ten people thought it was cool and were prepared to pay that exhorbitant amount..I would have 1 dollar in my account....and then I see some fabulous shoes that someone made, say, which are 90(virtual)c...I could buy those without troubling paypal or the taxman, and have 10(virtual)c to splash around later. There could be some rule about withdrawals, the account only available in units of $20 (except when someone is closing their acount) This would also give the team the opportunity to offer smaller incentives, and prizes in virtual dollars. Experience from second life suggests that most people are happy to pay a reasonable amount for creations, especially when it saves time, but that many of the creations are made by people who are self financing their hobby.  

kkffoo wrote:

I wonder if, for smaller transactions it might be possible to build up moviestorm credit. So say I made a magnolia tree, and uploaded it for sale at say 10(virtual) c a download, and ten people thought it was cool and were prepared to pay that exhorbitant amount..I would have 1 dollar in my account....and then I see some fabulous shoes that someone made, say, which are 90(virtual)c...I could buy those without troubling paypal or the taxman, and have 10(virtual)c to splash around later. There could be some rule about withdrawals, the account only available in units of $20 (except when someone is closing their acount) This would also give the team the opportunity to offer smaller incentives, and prizes in virtual dollars. Experience from second life suggests that most people are happy to pay a reasonable amount for creations, especially when it saves time, but that many of the creations are made by people who are self financing their hobby.  

That is an excellent suggestion. I do believe that they are looking into implementing something like that. I would like to note that some people are actually making money and living off of it in Second Life. There was some tv coverage on the news about this woman who designs clothes in there and she has 3 or 4 stores and makes about $500 real life dollars a month. Like I said in another thread, I think that microtransactions will eventually overthrow subscription models and MS should go that way. 

Although I'm new here and have barely had time for the briefest try out of the beta so feel loathe to spout too much, I personally am a bit wary of Moviestorm getting too deep into the whole community trading thing... I don't know much about how much programming and support would go into creating and maintaining a 'virtual economy' for users, but it seems like it would be a big effort and potentially take resources and man hours away from the all-important core aspects of the software, which is movie making. The economy also smacks somewhat of gaming or sim communties, which Moviestorm doesn't appear to be about.. I'm wondering if perhaps all buying/selling of art assets should be done externally, say people just use their paypal accounts or whatever to purchase 3ds files from each other for example, while all assets created within Moviestorm would simply be exchanged internally, say swapped or exchanged for services at users' discretion etc, rather than involving the whole economy thing... E.g. a modder could have some simple choices about keeping their item, giving it away 'locked' to one user only, or giving it away freely for unrestricted distribution/modification...?