Active Camera Version 1 - 28th April 2021 - Development Notes

That's what they called it in Spyro, and that's what I'll call it here. 

So I enjoyed my birthday, and now I am back to 'Days With Dino'.  I had a talk with Jo last week about what the focus should be for the game going forward. From that the main things we decided needed to be worked on for the next public demo is, get the camera working better, focusing on the big dino and to start getting some better models for the cast!

Yesterday I started on the first task, the new camera, seen in the video above. The aim is to get it to actively follow you while also trying to get the best angle to show where you're going, alongside some nice bonus features, like shifting the view to the side when you turn at high speeds and so on. 

The manual aiming code needs to be cleaned up a bit, especially the transition from the manual camera angle to the auto view angle, but it's getting there.

28th April 2021 Development Notes: 

• Made camera that can keep track of target movement direction, speed and change in direction in comparison to move direction.
• New Camera can shift view to look partially to the side when player is running.
• Camera will reset if it get's no manual input and the player is moving quickly for a certain period of time.
• Attempted view block avoidance... doesn't work to well.

Future Task:

• Improve orbiting and view reset movement code.
• Look up best methods to avoid view blocking obstacles.
• Make camera zoom in if view is blocked where player is trying to move the camera too.
• Make camera move if view is being blocked!