Director's Camera in FTB Evolution 2

Director's Camera is part of this pack. Version 1.1.0 ships it as version 26.1.2-1.0.1 (the file is directorscamera-26.1.2-1.0.1.jar). It has been in the pack since 1.0.2 or earlier, so it is not a recent addition.^[1]

Director's Camera is a cutscene tool, so there is no long progression to follow. You work with the Director's Camera and the Cutscene Anchor block.^[2]

Step 1: get the camera

The camera is the item you record with. A fresh one shows the tooltip "Empty. Right-click to record a keyframe." So your first move is to hold it and right-click wherever you want your shot to begin.^[2]

Once you have recorded something, the tooltip shows the recording name, how many keyframes you have, and the duration. The duration can show as a fixed number of seconds or as "auto". It also shows what the camera is anchored to, if anything.^[2]

Step 2: add a Cutscene Anchor if you want a trigger

The Cutscene Anchor block is what you anchor a recording to. Its info readout shows the anchor and the direction it faces. It can also show a trigger: a player within a set number of blocks, whether it plays only once, and a cooldown in ticks.^[2]

Server setting to know about

On a server, the pack uses server.startTimeoutTicks set to 40 ticks, which is also the mod default, so the pack has not changed it. It is how long the server waits for a client to confirm that a cutscene started before the session is dropped. The allowed range is 1 to 1,200.^[3]

Unverified How to obtain the Director's Camera or the Cutscene Anchor is not shown in the sources here: no recipe in them produces the mod's items, and no quest in this pack involves the mod. That is why this section has no recipe block.

Director's Camera is a cutscene tool, so there are no machines, multiblocks, power or fluid systems to worry about. The sources here only show how the camera item, the anchor block and one server setting fit together, so this section stays short.^[2][3]

Recording with the camera

A fresh Director's Camera starts out empty, and its tooltip tells you to right-click to record a keyframe. Once you have recorded some, the tooltip shows a recording name and how many keyframes it holds.^[2]

The tooltip also shows the recording's duration. It is either a set number of seconds or "auto", with the calculated seconds in brackets. If the camera is linked to an anchor, the tooltip says which one it is anchored to.^[2]

Cutscene Anchors

The Cutscene Anchor block is called the Cutscene Anchor. Its info readout gives the anchor's name and the direction it is facing.^[2]

An anchor can also carry a trigger. The readout for it lists what triggers the cutscene, a distance in blocks, whether it plays only once, and a cooldown in ticks. The sources do not say what the individual trigger types are or how you change these values.^[2]

Playback

While a cutscene plays, the mod uses a dedicated Camera entity on the client. There is a hold-to-skip hint, and a client option controls whether that hint is shown while you are not holding the skip key.^[2]

On the server side, the session waits for the client to confirm that the cutscene has started. server.startTimeoutTicks sets how many ticks it waits before dropping the session. The pack sets it to 40, which is also the mod default, and the allowed range is 1 to 1,200.^[3]

Director's Camera only has one config option in the sources for this pack, and it is on the server side. It is worth knowing about if cutscenes ever fail to start for a player.^[3]

Start timeout

server.startTimeoutTicks sets how many ticks the server waits for a client to confirm that a cutscene started. If the client does not confirm in that time, the session is dropped.^[3]

This pack sets it to 40, which is the same as the mod default, so nothing has been changed here. The allowed range is 1 to 1,200 ticks.^[3]