The Terminal: Reimagined

[Crater Creator]

I'd like to share an animation I did last year, for those of you that visit the Pfhorums but not the Marathon Story forums. I wanted to create a proof of concept for how one might do a new Marathon-like game, where the story is presented textually, and bring it up to modern standards.

I took the text of the first terminal in Blaspheme Quarantine, made a voice recording of the text, and then modeled and animated a talking Durandal head to the voice. My reference was what is, to my knowledge, the only canon rendition of an A.I. in Marathon, which is the green figure in this chapter screen. I did a lot of post-production to make the terminal look like it was presented on a damaged, poor-quality video screen. There's also a part where the video cuts out: this was my interpretation of the part of the terminal that was garbled and un-readable.

I envision running around in a modern game, complete with terminals which, instead of displaying text, play movies directly on the surface of the terminal screen. In particular, I would point to Doom 3 for how this all would look and feel, as that game has the dark, claustrophobic, inside-a-spaceship environment and a lot of full-motion video textured onto surfaces.

Without further ado, here it is. The high quality version looks much better than the lower quality, so please view the former if you can.

large version (19.5 MB)
small version (3.8 MB)

Programs used: iChat (for collecting video reference), Audio In, Maya, Photoshop, Sound Studio, iMovie (with 3rd party effects), QuickTime Pro

[treellama]

Oh no, the story forums launched their first salvo, and it is deadly!

Quick, blooregardo, go post stupid HL2 quotes on the story forums!

[The Thug]

Very nice. I loved it! Everything about it, the lighting, the mouth movement, the overall animation, etc was well done! Keep up the good work.

[CryoS]

i totaly agree with Thug. it is awesome. id love to see a short animated movie with this, and some marine shootout. (like not only terminal, but terminal, marine, ship. fighting...)
ah well, very good work.

[Phortiphy]

I'd imagined D to be more... malicious, at that point. But otherwise good job.

EDIT: Isn't it pronounced "Duhr-aaahn-däl"?
aaahn pronounced like "an"
däl pronounced like a New Yorker would say "Doll".

[Dodopod]

That's really good! I don't particularly like the thinness of his lips or the blackness of his eyes (maybe a little greener) though, and sometimes I can hear the saliva in your mouth which probably can't be helped as long as we're not using a TTS program for the voice. Maybe the head should fade from the background instead of black, and like Pfhortipfhy said, maybe he should look/sound. But apart from these small annoyances (and they are small), it's very well done.

EDIT: Isn't it pronounced "Duhr-aaahn-däl"?
aaahn pronounced like "an"
däl pronounced like a New Yorker would say "Doll".

It could be pronounced several ways. I can't accurately pronounce French so I can't say for sure how it was originally pronounced, but in English it could be der-ran-dle or der-ren-dahl or du-ren-dahl (that one sounds like a fantasy wizard name to me) or any number of other ways (like how g-h-o-t-i spells fish)

[MasterYo1]

Great, but little emotionless for a rampant A.I. Maybe make him a little more....ehh....


dark?


Let's go with that...

+3 for the low-res, +8 for the hi-res.

[megabyte]

I remember this over on the ambrosia boards. I joined that specifically for this.
It's pretty good but the voice needs to be deeper and the face doesn't quite look right.

[Shadowbreaker]

Yea, I saw this a year ago on the story forums when you posted it... and I think Durandal should have more of a... my voice. I speak in a fairly low voice with a mutilated british accent, and I think it fits Durandal a bit better than your high voice you've got for him right now.

EDIT:

I also think he needs to have slightly less emotion, especially when he says "If you lose, you die!", I pictured him as saying "If you lose, you die.", in a more frank voice, as if hes not really enjoying saying it that much but still is trying to be comical about the matter.

[Packard20]

I imagined Durandal's voice being kind of evil in M1, but in M2 and MI, I've always imagined him to be really cailm unless hes threatening you. Over all I think the voice should be a few tones deeper.

[Crater Creator]

Hmm. Based on the responses I've gotten here and the other places I've posted it, I'm hearing:A pretty unanimous call for a deeper voice. I could just take the same track and deepen it as a post-processing effect.The overall style and effect may be better suited for TychoThat people pronounce Durandal in different ways. I just did my best when first playing Marathon years and years ago (I probably associated Durandal with the name Randall) and until this project it didn't occur to me it might be pronounced differently.Disagreement on the level of emotion, although I've heard that I should make him more sarcastic several times. When doing the recording, I decided Durandal was most likely in the Melancholia stage of Rampancy, though I now have my doubts about that.It's left ambiguous whether this animation is delivered 'live,' or recorded, so it could work either way.The saliva in my mouth? Hmm, that's a new one; I hadn't noticed. I have concluded, though, that the best candidate for a computer generated voice (TTS) is Leela.

[Phortiphy]

Disagreement on the level of emotion, although I've heard that I should make him more sarcastic several times. When doing the recording, I decided Durandal was most likely in the Melancholia stage of Rampancy, though I now have my doubts about that.

It looks like he's pretty happy in your animation to me! If you were going for melancholia I didn't notice.

[Xevous92]

He sounds a bit happier than I imagined ingame, But other than that, great work

[Shadowbreaker]

http://bighouse.bungie.org/red/wasDurandal.mov

[Xevous92]

http://bighouse.bungie.org/red/wasDurandal.mov

ROFLMAOMFG!!!

[Phortiphy]

http://bighouse.bungie.org/red/wasDurandal.mov

A little late...
http://www.pfhorums.com/index.php?showtopi...7&hl=wasabi

[Mordekai]

Isn't it pronounced "Duhr-aaahn-däl"?
aaahn pronounced like "an"
däl pronounced like a New Yorker would say "Doll".

No.

[Crater Creator]

That was funny, Shadowbreaker! Who made it?

[Shadowbreaker]

Ian McConvile, the creator of Marathon RED.

[Nathan92]

I really like it, I just imagined durandal to sound more..deep i guess, maybe more mysterious, more sinister. Very good animation by the way.

[Alan]

We have talked about this Durandal pronouncing problem before. I think there was a popular poll about it. I think Duhr-aaah-on-duhl and D-er-an-dull tied...I think it is pronounced D-er-an-dull. But Duhr-aaah-on-duhl sounds better.

Duhr-aaah-on-duhl....lol....Duhr-aaah-on....duhl...lol

[MoppyPuppy]

I totally disagree with your voice acting, I couldn't do any better as far as quality, but your motivation was completely off.

[irons]

Here's how I say it:



Just. Kidding. But I've recorded the way "Durandal" is pronounced in French, which is the word's language of origin (although I haven't done it in Old French, because I'm not good enough at it).

[attachment=1683:durandal.mp3]

[Wrkncacnter]

That's interesting, but I say it a little differently.

[irons]

I think you have a problem pronouncing your "a" sound.