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Convicted Galaxy

A Third Person 2.5D Action Roguelike in Space. · By Mind Grown Software

Camera controls

A topic by mluck984 created Aug 21, 2016 Views: 317 Replies: 1
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Camera controls can be really tricky to perfect in any game, and I have a few suggestions on how to improve the camera controls for Convicted Galaxy.

Presently, the camera is locked to the orientation of the ship and is at a low, near horizontal angle. Everyone's preferences will differ here, but I'd like the option of having the camera further back and at a more downward angle. This would help make distances easier to judge and give the player a wider field of view. Even better, it would be neat to have zoom in/zoom out functionality tied to the mouse wheel so it would be easy to zoom in and out as needed.

I would also suggest detaching the camera from the ship orientation and have it lag just slightly behind player rotation. This would make the camera feel much smoother and help relieve some dizziness or motion sickness during combat while the player is constantly turning. I'd suggest turning the camera on a scale (i.e., calculate the distance between player orientation and camera orientation, and then have the camera cover 1/2 of the distance in one frame, or 1/4th of the distance, etc.). This creates the effect of turning the camera quickly when there is a lot of distance to cover, and then smoothly slowing down as the distance decreases.

An additional observation about the camera, the "snap to target" feature immediately points the camera at the target with no transition. This can be disorienting and doesn't really help figure out where a target is. I'd suggest adding a .25-.5 second transition so the player has a better idea of where the target is relative to them.

Here's a link to a short animation I threw together in 3dsMax to demonstrate some of the camera behavior I've described above:

https://youtu.be/1T5QRMbG15Q

It shows zoom-in/zoom-out behavior, target snap behavior, and then a combination of aim and zoom behavior. It's obviously a lot easier to animate something than program it, but if this looks like a good idea I hope the video provides a good reference!

-Matthew

Developer

Matthew,

Thanks for the feedback and AWESOME video describing your points, it really means a lot to us!

I've tried a few camera angles and distances back from the spaceship myself, and it does really depend on the player's preference. I think adding a scroll wheel (or maybe even a menu slider?) might be a great solution.

We have also tried a following camera (so it lags behind the player's movements), and I really don't remember why we ever stopped using that method. I think it may have had something to do with trying to keep the aiming lined up correctly, but we will try and figure out a solution as it did make it seem much easier to cope with quick movements.

Targeting is something that we have added very recently and the idea to add an animation between the normal view and targeting is a great one!

I will add all of these to the trello board! Anyone else have any additional feedback on these topic?

Thanks!

-Ryan