OT: Games on DVD movies?

blacksheep699 wrote on 1/5/2005, 6:46 AM
I remember a long time ago..i rented this dvd from blockbuster, and in the special features section, it said it had games on it. How do they put games on a DVD movie? It had the games Hangman...Tic Tac Toe. How wuld you go about doing something like this? And the computer actually beat me once..it was weird.

ive seen games on other DVD movies like on Shrek..they had like a guessing game which you go thru doors and stuff..but i just figured it was just menu links, linking to other menus with animations playing after you click the buttons.

can you do somethign like that on DVDA 2? cuz im a newbie when it comes to DVDA.

Comments

ScottW wrote on 1/5/2005, 7:10 AM
There's 2 approaches to this - if the game is only available on your computer then they created a hybrid DVD and put an actual executable program on the DVD that would run on the computer (and there's a number of different packages that can help you with this). If the game is playable via a standard DVD player, then it was authored using a DVD authoring package.

Don't even think about trying this with DVDA (well you could do simple things) - it just doesn't have the capabilities. The major thing(s) it's missing are the ability to create a hybrid DVD (for PC based games), a good project layout viewer (since decent authored games typically have very complex layouts in terms of the DVD structure) and the ability to let the DVD author insert low level DVD commands at appropriate points. There's a couple of other things that are important, but those are probably the 2 most important.

I've done a trivia game on DVD and it's a lot of fun to author - the most time consuming part was putting together the content. It was a "proof of concept" deal - 3 questions with responses appropriate to right/wrong answers (plus you had a time limit to answer) and at the end it totalled your score and gave you feedback based on the score.

It was authored with DVD Lab Pro.

If you want to do this yourself, I'd strongly recommend DVD Lab Pro and also pick up a copy of the "Unofficial DVD Specifications Guide" at
www.dvd-replica.com - read it and understand it. IFOEDIT and VOBEDIT are also good tools to use to help understand low-level DVD structures (as well as giving you the ability to modify those structures, though generally you should be able to do everything you need with DVD Lab Pro).

The other alternative is to shell out a couple of thousand and pick up a copy of Scenarist (which is most likely what was used to author the games you mentioned). The learning curve for Scenarist is pretty steep though. And to be honest, the amount of learning you'll need to do to author a game isn't trivial either. The good news is that what you'll learn will apply to a lot of future DVD authoring and will help you create even better looking DVD's in general.

--Scott

bStro wrote on 1/5/2005, 8:26 AM
I've done a trivia game on DVD and it's a lot of fun to author - the most time consuming part was putting together the content. It was a "proof of concept" deal - 3 questions with responses appropriate to right/wrong answers (plus you had a time limit to answer) and at the end it totalled your score and gave you feedback based on the score.

I've thought of doing something like that in DVDA, but haven't gotten around to it. The questions and time limit seem easy enough to do (time consuming, but not too difficult). But how did you accomplish the scoring? Is it something that could be done in DVDA? Seems like, in DVDA, it would require a whole heck of a lot of menus in order to account for every combination of right / wrong answers. Is there something in DVD Lab Pro that made scoring easier?

Rob
ScottW wrote on 1/5/2005, 8:43 AM
As I mentioned, DVD Lab Pro will give you access to the low level DVD command set.

DVD players contain a number of general purpose registers (and a number of specific purpose registers) that can be manipulated, tested and actions can be performed based on the test.

Each right answer caused an action that incremented a particular register (this was really the only low level authoring that needed to be done):

Add 1 to GPRM0

At the end of the game I inserted a series of tests (Lab Pro makes this easy as this is a built-in function that you simply drag, drop and connect) and branched to an appropriate movie based on whether they got 1, 2 or 3 right answers. Kinda like:

If GPRM0 == 1 play poor_movie
else if GPRM0 == 2 play ok_movie
else play great_movie

The only other thing required was to reset the counter in case they went back and played the game again.

And yes, it does require a lot of menus, which is why it really helps to have something that lets you easily via the structure layout so you can make sure your linkages are correct.

In all fairness you could do this in DVDA, but there would be a lot of replication of information. Everything would need to be designed as a branching tree (as I did in Lab Pro). Each menu would be a node in the tree, the branches (connectors) would be done as a transition menu or movie; I'd probably try to limit things to "Excellent", "Fair" and "Poor" as generic responses rather than giving a total count, but you could give a total if you wanted.

If I've still got the game project I'll try and post a picture of the layout from Lab Pro.

--Scott
bStro wrote on 1/5/2005, 9:12 AM
Nifty. I bet the access to the DVD command set lends to some pretty neat easter eggs, too. Always wondered how they made ones where you have to do things no one could possibly guess (like punching in numbers). Now I know. <g>

I've been thinking about getting DVD Lab Pro, but I dunno... I'm already a bit annoyed that I'll probably have to buy one of Sonic's DVD authoring apps to use with the new TiVoToGo feature.

Thanks for the info. I should fiddle around with making a game this weekend.

Rob
richard-courtney wrote on 1/5/2005, 9:17 AM
It allows you to add commands that can modify GPRMs
these are registers or memory slots that can be set to a specific number,
perform some simple math with, and then tested to make conditional branches
to other chapters in your movie.

Your DVD player has many cool functions that are hidden such as time
and random number generators. You can also look at some of the
user preferences such as default language. You could have english and
spanish and start playing in the correct language without having to
press menu buttons.

Your $200 is well spent with Mediachances DVlab Pro version.
Vegas 5 still is a fantastic editor. Some additional tools such as
IFOEDIT VOBEDIT and your photo editor (mine is JASC PSP) round off your
toolkit.