What if you could visibly see the intro movie install, it would run the movie, and the rest of the game would install while you were watching it. This would make the installation appear much shorter(?) ------------------ Stupid Morons- my current projects

Probably much easier said than done. It would slow down the install a lot Im sure. It would be nice though.

Or mabye play a cut-scene while loading the next map...

I remember during the installation of mechwarrior 4, it actually displayed a series of stills while it was installing, and under each still was about 1-2 paragraphs breifly detailing the history of the inner sphere as it related to the story of mechwarrior 4. That was interesting, and actually made me sit there and read while it was installing instead of going and watching tv for 5 mins.
So, if you want to keep a persons attention during installation, you could do the same thing. Have a series of stills from the game, or artwork, and give an introduction to the story of your game. It might even have the effect that people will enjoy your game more, because they will understand the story better. (I''m sure there are many people who don''t take the time to read the intro to the story in the game manual.) Displaying stills would hardly slow the installation at all.

Genewars did this. It had a high wow-factor, but the game itself sucked.

Anyone remember the installer to C&C 1? It didn´t give you any information, but there were a lot of little embedded videos, sounds and so on - I really liked the high-tech look of it, and it was interesting to watch.

And how the heck does Diablo install so fast? You click ''Install'' and it opens the game.

------------------
Stupid Morons- my current projects

That one is easy... Diablo I installs so quick because it only copies approx 5 meg worth of files to your computer... all the data resides on the CD.

IMHO C&C RA2 does this quite nicely. You don''t see a movie, but a series of stills, with a voice over, telling the background story.

Soldier of fortune also did a little "intro story" while the game was installing.
i read something a while back about a streaming install from the
net. it was used to intice dialup users to try out the HUGE demo
games before buying them.
i think it was either Baldurs Gate 1 or 2's demo.. anyway it
streamed files from the net and you could play it while
other parts of it were downloading. i have no idea how it
worked, i just know that it's been done, and you could use
whatever method they used to do that to stream from a
CD (which is much much faster).
it's all very practical.. be nice to see someone actually do it though.

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

[edited by - eldee on April 15, 2002 5:08:02 PM]

C&C1 Install had indeed a very awesome WOW factor.