What needs to happen to speedball to keep it relevant?

[cockerpunk]

Sorry going to disagree. Ever try to watch a football game where the offense runs the triple option. You have no idea what is going on. To many possible focal point. Hell even the camera man sometimes has no idea who to follow. It is boring as hell to watch(This is coming from a Georgia Tech fan). There might be 3-4 plays all game that is worth watching. This is also why I stopped going to the games.

Hockey is different because people converge on the action (the puck).

Want something really fun to watch in paintball? put the 1 flag one on near the A, you don't have to hang the flag on the other teams' base, just take it back to your own base(or from snake side of the A to the 50 yard Dorito). Watch how the action changes.

triangular field?

[Laku]

Also guncam footage is rarely compelling, players are playing paintball, not operating a camera. In a perfect world, each player would have a steadicam operator following them around so you have a sense of what the player is seeing and where he is in the environment.

Talk about unreasonable though.

Ok, first please dont share outside of these forums, even though its public and all, its unfinished, ungraded, no audio, flat raw footage. This was ALSO the first time I have really used a steadicam system ever, so it swings all over the place, the headroom changes all the time, etc. But this is what we are doing to try to get people "in the game" with our player, it will be intercut with the drone and the head cam.

I think you're on to something here.

As for the getting more popularity. I don't think it's even necessary to be live footage. Stuff like this even if it isn't live gives so much better idea on what's happening with individual players it's instantly more interesting and easier to follow for people that aren't so familiar with the game.

[Laku]

i dont buy the focal point argument. hockey's focal point is so small you cant even see it unless you have HD, and its very watchable.

Not true, it's totally watchable and you can see the puck even with SD broadcast.

[cockerpunk]

Not true, it's totally watchable and you can see the puck even with SD broadcast.

i said hockey is very watchable.

i love watching hockey, but try watching it with someone who has never watched it before. as a seasoned hockey viewer you do it without even thinking. you know where to look for the puck because of how the players are moving, not because you can see the puck well.

[Laku]

i said hockey is very watchable.

i love watching hockey, but try watching it with someone who has never watched it before. as a seasoned hockey viewer you do it without even thinking. you know where to look for the puck because of how the players are moving, not because you can see the puck well.

Fair enough. Not sure if I totally buy it, since people that aren't familiar with the game seem to follow it quite well pretty fast. But.. that's not really relevant to the topic.

(and I did misread your point on hockey, dyslexia in practice for you )

[noclue119]

triangular field?

Sure I am ok with that. I was more thinking of a conventional field.
But either way make it 1 objective where the point isn't to eliminate players.
Having 5 people engage in 5 1-on-1s is hard to capture with limited camera

[skibbo]

Shakiness could be mitigated by a small stradycam type system set up on.the marker. Electronic control vs just gravity? A bearing inside a round inception style mount w/ a weighted bottom would work and wouldn't interfere much. Have to test placement though.

Otherwise, what about stringing a camera across the width of the field, similar to football. High enough up to not worry much about stray paint, but gives you the ability to see the center of the field, heck you could potentially even allow it to lower to an almost over the shoulder level behind a player. Then youre not limited to fixed viewpoints.

In that dane vein you could possibly even have autonomous following drones set at say, 5' above and 5' behind every player. Instead of one picture you have 10, or possibly even allow the viewer to pick a side as "home" and only follow those guys.

[PBSteve]

Little HD cams up on poles overlooking the field from each deadbox and a projector screen somewhere seems like a much better idea.

[Ydna]

I think boosting the quantity of cameras would yield better results compared to developing an elaborate engineering feat to attempt focusing on the right viewpoint. The drawback with bajillions of cameras is always the editing though. As said it doesn't need to be live, but the people doing the video production would need to know how to capture the interest of the game. Not a lot of sitting around, but then again it can't be constant nonstop running. Couldn't show just one marker laning ropes next to one bunker, but alternately following a marker in "black hawk down mode mode" shooting at 15 different targets at once would also be bad.

But it brings up the issue of realism to the game. Even if every player had two helmet cameras and one on the marker/loader, it might get some very usable footage but the people playing the game would be altered a bit by the level of crazy equipment floating around. The game would be fundamentally different from everybody just going out for weekend play, that's for sure.

I keep thinking back to that arena-ball show from like 2006-2007. They did some things right (small field, low number of players that were easy to follow, lots of cameras from the outskirts) but of course some other things were wrong (distracting lighting effects and lots of cheating). It leads into one of the biggest issues of them all, which is that even a very interesting broadcast would be RUINED if there was inconsistency between the footage and what actually takes place. It's like watching a show or movie and being interested in the happenings only to have the production stop during the final act. Or for a more paintball-related example, if you're having fun and roaming around the field getting good footage of watchable action, only to get longballed. It makes the entirety of the footage worthless...

[Pump Scout]

UAPL 3-man. There's still a few of those games floating around on YouTube. When you get past the fact that it was so early in paintball production, it was really, really good stuff. I've heard the players found it brutal to play, but hey, it's 3-man.