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Is there a place to discuss fixed cam 3d games? (Eg. Resident Evil 1 etc)

A topic by Reverend Speed created Feb 06, 2021 Views: 590 Replies: 10

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Hey folks. Does anybody know if there's a Discord or a website or a forum where folks discuss Fixed Cam 3D games in detail? I'm really not into Facebook, so ideally I'm not looking for a FB page, etc.

Resident Evil's obviously a key reference, but I'm also looking to talk about stuff like Alone in the Dark, Obscure, Life is Strange, Telltale's Walking Dead, White Night, Tormented Souls, Heavy Rain, Fear the Dark Unknown, City of Lost Children, Summerford, Simulacrum, some of the Puppetcombo games etc...?

I'm just really curious to know if there's somewhere people discuss or debate those games - they're not exactly common and they're often made in the survival horror genre, but I think they offer some interesting challenges in both cinematography and interaction design, while also offering a particular visual language for creators.

Ehh - just think they're cool. =) Any thoughts?

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No Time To PlayModerator moved this topic to General Development 3 years ago

No Time To PlayModerator3 years ago(+1)

Unfortunately I haven't heard of anything like that. Friend of mine studied this flavor of game for a while, but little came of it. You'd think there should be more, seeing how one of the most famous games ever was made in this exact technique, but people seem more interested in what cool tricks the latest and greatest OpenGL version can do than in aesthetics and modes of expression.

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Reverend Speed3 years ago (1 edit)

Well... like, there's loads of reasons to be for or against the fixed cam 3d approach. It's one of the reasons why I'm looking for somewhere to talk about it! =D

Like, against it, in a medium where so much emphasis is put on smooth controls and player orientation, the fixed cam approach is usually anything but! On the other hand - isn't that an interesting design problem? And you could try solving it from a cinematographical or pure input perspective, or both...

Not to say I have anything in particular against pushing the limits of technology and artistry through more common visual approaches - say what you like about photorealism, at least there's a semi-objective standard you can measure your work against.

I guess a major block to doing stuff with Fixed Cam 3D is the amount of work and iteration involved in creating an attractive environment you'll be looking at all the time, then doing the same with characters etc - unlike in first person, you need to build a main character model and animate it to a standard that you think will be acceptable for a wide audience. And THEN: you need to set up tons of camera angles and triggers, etc, iterate on 'em...

But when it pays off - it does look great! And there's some market out there - the Resident Evil Remake sold 1m copies in three months, which made it Capcom's "fastest selling digital title in history across Europe and North America". Heavy Rain and Detroit sold gangbusters and Telltale's The Walking Dead completely revitalised the company (and set it on the path to its ultimate destruction, unfortunately)...

...There's a ton to blather about! Lots to experiment with. But aside from yourself, No Time To Play, I can't seem to find anybody interested in talking about this stuff. I've looked! It's kinda frustrating.

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Reverend Speed3 years ago

Hi @Ohmygiggles! Just saw your response...!

Eyy, good to hear from somebody else who likes this approach. It's definitely tricky to get right - and there's a surprising amount that's down to sound design and character animation, also. But I don't think 'good' interactive camera angles are impossible to analyze and, hopefully, deploy - they're a solvable problem. I've been doing some practical and academic research on this...

Fatal Frame 2 and a lot of the RE games make me feel uncomfortable in just the way that the cameras are set up, even if there is no danger.

Absolutely. There's a ton of useful information that can be conveyed to the player just through framing, and the history of cinema offers a rich language to subtly pass gameplay state, etc.

Visual quality - the frame as a work of art - is... useful, no question, but in a way, you might be better trying to prove this out using rudimentary geometry, in order to validate the root approach.

And then there's areas of personal taste - locked position fixed cameras that just swivel to track the player character really bother me! There's some points where they're useful, but usually they're just godawful and lazy...! =D Much prefer some kind of limited truck based on player position...

Ach, there's a ton to talk about! But trying to find a natural place to have the discussion has been a serious pain in the ass...!

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Deleted account3 years ago

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Reverend Speed3 years ago

Yeah, sorry, I could have been clearer here.

I'd suggest that each fixed camera has to do three things (in order of importance, with 1 being most important):

1) Provide readable environments with clear paths of traversal and affordance opportunities for players. This, I think, can be proven by using rudimentary geometry as seen in the Parasite Eve screenshots posted above. Like greyboxing, your level should be fun to navigate and play at this stage.

2) Convey information to the player through established cinematic language (eg. elevated angles emphasise the weakness of the Player Character, refusing to move the camera with the player shows their lack of power etc). Camera angles need to change with the >30degrees rule, though they will often ignore the 180degree rule.

3) Aethetics - framing, prop design, lighting, camera lens, post processing, particles, colour palette, etc. Some elements here (palette, for example) might be worth figuring out before building the environment (1), but for the most part polishing stuff like this could be left towards the end of the fixed camera design.

... I'll be honest, I'm still thinking this stuff out. I might swap some bits around! But each fixed camera should be humming with intentionality, and so I tend to think of 1 and 2 first. ...Just thinking about process, one might design the camera positioning with 2 in mind at first, refining with 1 then polishing with 3. =/

I figure this'll get mixed up a bit during production!

The swivel camera - it can be nice to maybe imply that somebody's watching the player, but... A key reason to go with fixed cameras in the first place is that you believe an intentional, authored choice of camera angle can impart information about mood, power dynamics, relative knowledge, emotion, irony, goal progression, attitude, stability and more to the player without going right out and just stating it. You tap into the Kuleshov effect by changing the camera when the player moves into a different zone - they *will* infer meaning as they encounter this.

But as soon as you put the camera on a swivel and have it auto-track the PC without vignetting, all that goes out the window. The camera is just a boring slave of the player - the only meaning it can impart is that which the player gives it by moving closer or further from the pivot. It says the developer wants to achieve the tone and atmosphere of an Alone in the Dark 1 or Resi 2 and has technology beyond the dreams of the makers of those games... but has absolutely no understanding of the craft or conventions they're failing to ape.

...

Blah blah blah rant. =D As I say, I've yet to test a lot of my theories. But it's interesting, no? Thanks for taking the time to think and read, Ohmygiggles!

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Deleted account3 years ago

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Reverend Speed3 years ago

Ach, I'd hardly say I'm any expert in the area, but it just seems like something that hasn't been fully explored yet (though we know many of the weaknesses).

I don't think dutching should have any major 'gameplay' influence, as long as the players can orientate themselves in relation to their previous position and angle. Are you suggesting dutching the camera 'live'? There's a great example of that in the intro to Silent Hill...

Relatively easy to program but unsettling as all hell. =D

Another thing to think about is the controls - many people hate 'tank' controls, but at least they stay consistent and player-relative across different camera angles. Camera-relative controls are more 'intuitive', or immediately familiar, but as the angle changes, so does the meaning of 'forward' for the character. There's some ways to get around that -

1) you don't change the axis everything relates to until the player

a. rests the stick or

b. pushes the stick X degrees away from the heading they were on when the camera changed

2) You interpolate the reference axis towards the new camera reference over a few frames - can feel a little loopy, but players can perceive the change progressing and correct, it's not instantaneous.

3) Take a trick from Heavy Rain and assign one button to 'walk forward', while the stick only directs the attention of the character. Ideally, that way you don't feel the change in cam angles if you're just pushing 'walk forward'. It's like a combination of tank and cam-relative controls. It's still not perfect, by any means, but it's pretty interesting.

...

Maaaan, I really want to find a place to talk about all this stuff! =/

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No Time To PlayModerator3 years ago(+1)

Belatedly, I don't have a special interest in fixed-camera games, but I think we should talk more about technique and aesthetics in games. Nowadays it's all lumped under "3D" as if only GPU features mattered. Then "serious" developers wonder why games still aren't taken seriously as an art form. And actually they are, but... only those games whose creators treat them like art, and not glorified tech demos.

Of course, the big problem with fixed-camera games is that you still need a full 3D engine, with all the issues arising from that, including content creation. But then again even so-called pseudo-3D games with limited renderers that take shortcuts are much more 3D than technology snobs realize.

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Reverend Speed3 years ago

Ehh, I can't really complain much about folks who strive for photorealism in games - it's a measurable, objective goal, both as a technician and an artist, and there are honestly scant few of those kinds of achievements in life. I salute those who seek to attain that peak, even as I acknowledge as John Carmack said back in the day, "We're past the knee of the curve in terms of major noticeable graphical improvements."

I'm more of a 'right tool for the right job' kinda guy. TF2 looks great, Monkey Island looks great, Apex Legends looks great, Papers Please looks great, Return of the Obra Dinn looks great. Some aesthetics require GPU grunt.

Isss all coool. =D

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