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Mini Challenge: Make a trailer for your game.

A topic by JamSnack created Jan 09, 2017 Views: 738 Replies: 9
Viewing posts 1 to 4
Submitted

If you have already finished your game and want to do more (or want to in general), than I have a mini challenge for you. All you have to do is make a generic trailer for the game you created. If you do and you upload it to youtube please tell me because I love trailers for games and stuff :P

Submitted

I might try this.

Any free video editing software you could recommend?

Also any tools to get a good screen capture?

OBS / OBS Studio is pretty solid for (a completely free) screen capture software. It's reliable for a lot of different long-term uses if you want something to keep around after the jam.

OBS is technically intended for live streamers, but I've heard a lot of youtubers and whatnot use it for local recordings (I do as well). You just need to reduce the compression/etc. for a decent quality. (There are / should be plenty of tutorials for this around.)

While they're simpler to use, OBS is also a lot less resource-intensive on your computer than Fraps (free version limits record time), Bandicam (free version has watermarks), and CamStudio (only records to .avi/SWF), which are some free-ish alternatives. (I might be missing some?)

Submitted

I was also going to suggest OBS, however I am also struggling to find a good free video editing software

(1 edit)

There's always Windows Movie Maker (/equivalents) if you're on Windows. It's really not bad for basic editing. I remember hearing that Macs also come with a basic video editor?

There's Lightworks if you want more special effects (free version is limited to mp4 exports & needs to be renewed weekly). I'd recommend Filmora, but the trial version's watermark is just too much to ever recommend for trailer work. Blender (a free 3D modeling software) has some awkward video editing and export tools as well.

There might be better ones out there I'm not aware of. At the very least, there's dozens of miscellaneous freeware junk floating around from old college programming assignments.

If you honestly want to work with a lot of text and get some nice effects, etc. without dishing out money for a video editor, though, you might be best off just working in your game engine of choice. ex: Make a new branch, hard code the trailer effects there with the right timing, then record what happens. (That workflow isn't always an option, I know, but it is fun.)

Submitted(+1)

That's some pretty cool out of the box thinking! :D

Isn't it? I never thought about it until I was looking into cross-system video support in GameMaker:Studio. (I wanted to run a trailer the first time the game launches; it's a nice touch for those who picked it up from bundles / etc. and waited a while to see what it was.)

But it's apparently really hard to get all the right codecs playing nice on multiple systems, so there's not much support for videos in that engine. A lot of users on the forums over there recommended building cutscenes and trailers in-game as a result.

Turns out that's actually a really useful approach sometimes haha. You much have way more control over the scene in an engine than you do in most editing programs.

Submitted(+1)

Maybe for a game jam one day somebody would make a video editor with the main focus of making trailers.

Submitted

oh!

Hello Guys! Personally I can recommend Mirillis Action! game recorder and streaming software that I have been using for 4 years so far. It's a pretty impresive tool with a bunch of recording and streaming settings to configure.  It captures really good, high quality screenshots! Additionally it allows for super fast export/upload as well as smooth and lag free streaming of video recordings to most popular services such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Smashcast, Ustream and more.  Videos can be streamed up to 4K resolution using original video size option! 
You can add real time audio commentary, apply overlay graphics and logo to the recording, authomatic background removal, computer benchmark and many more. Very nice and unique option is possibility of adjusting HUD opacity level. Regarding HUD, it displays useful information during your gameplay record: 

free disk space, FPS, timer indicating the lenght of the recording, live viewer counter that shows how many people watch your gameplay at a moment and a thumbnail of webcam preview if enabled. Some newly added features are: possibility to set both microphone and system sound level to 100% as well as automatic volume normalization to minimize loud sound distortions when mixing microphone/system sound to one audio track. It's easy to use and intuitive. It has pretty nice design as well.  Can't wait the upcoming Action! 3.0 interface with such features as:  live preview of video composition or Streamlabs, Muxy and other alert services support! 

Mirillis Action! 3.0 interface

There is a free trial so you can check  if it works for you. Anyway, it's worth trying. :)