A clear no for prerendered cutscenes. It's a lot more work and does not really show off the capabilities of the engine.

If cutscenes are necessary (I think it needs capacity which will lack the game later), then I think it would be better to do them ingame, so you have a smooth transition between gameplay and movie sequence instead of a hard cut where the video starts playing.

and low-res prerendered cutscenes looks like sh*t. Because your game can't be 4-5gb in size you can't have high resolution high quality prerenedered cutscenes. It also kills the atmosphere. It can be done with great detail in-engine cutscenes. See mgs,dmc4 and wide range of other games using engine for cutscenes. Prerendered cutscene thing died years ago

@DR_Black, I don't think "crude" is the appropriate word. maybe just "incomplete" would be better, crude has an insulting tone to it. it has a lot of possibilities if completely written.

i do like the 3d side scroller idea. i played one called heart of darkness, it was fantastic! it would make it easier to do environment backgrounds and would save time during level design, and the action could be confined to the immediate area. puzzle elements would have to be well thought out though.

forgive me blink. thats true "crude" is not a suitable word. "incomplete" is better. but at the time i didnt remember the word "incomplete" so i used a rare one("crude"). anyway, forgive me. its my fault

i haven't play heart of darkness ever.

four years ago i decided to build such a game. then i tell this to one of my friends who was an artist and programmer.we started writing story and doing storyboard. three month later my friend has moved to a little city 1000 miles away without any internet connectivity. and game project was fail.

i still have codes,arts,etc from that project. they are very poor and pure and simple (i was 15 then) and i think we can use them in this project.

Heart of darkness was great
I don't think we can use the code, though, for we'll be doing this in lite-c I may hope.

i found this great video that may help us keep a bit of perspective. it talks about video games and the storyline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdG2LHair0&feature=related

I like the whole "Let's team up and create a game together!" idea.
In my opinion the best way to finish such a project is to set on simple but good and entertaining gameplay. Some people develop the gameplay and especially the movement in 1-3 weeks and spend a year on the rest. This is not the way to go.
A fresh multiplayer game would be great but (too) hard to create. The better option would be a 3d side scroller, I think, as mentioned above several times.
There should be more A7 side scrollers, too. Competition is good for business!

I could do some scripting too i think. But if we really want to pull this off we should work are little more organized now.
Maybe creating a separete thread where people can say that they participate in the project and a thread for the concept would be a good start?

Flashback was a great game indeed. Oh, and The Lost Vikings has kept me in front of the computer for way too many days
Let's keep the juices flowing for a few more days and then we'll open a separate thread to see who wants to participate and how many hours of their free time they can spare each week.

Lost Vikings indeed is nice. Recently played it using DOS Box. I think it is abandonware now.

Problem for such a game is, that you need a lot and very well thought out levels.
This is an additional time factor which should be considered.
But that is true for many genres, especially jump'n run, RPG, shooter...