[pythian] Camera Controls
- From: Darryl Long <dlong@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pythian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 14:48:40 -0400
A quote from a GamaSutra article on game design:
"Dave Wilson brought it to my attention that there are some third-person 3D
games that give the player no control over the camera at all. Bad game
designer! That's what 3D environments are for: it costs you nothing, zip,
nada, to provide freedom of perspective. Look: the ordinary human field of
view is about 120 degrees wide. The width of the field of view varies
considerably in games, and will get larger as HDTV becomes commonplace, but
it's nowhere near 120 degrees in any case. In order to compensate for the
fact that the player is effectively trying to play while wearing a box over
her head, she needs decent camera controls. It can be done well. Look at
Spyro the Dragon or Toy Story 2 for the original Playstation, and you'll see
excellent examples of smooth, intuitive, player-controlled cameras."
The full article is here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030523/adams_01.shtml (it's a good
article. I suggest reading it).
We've discussing camera controls at length already, and I'm fairly happy
with the compromise we've come up with, but maybe some other people aren't.
I've been considering (after having it suggested to me multiple times)
making the control-config identical to an FPS (e.g. Quake III) when in
first-person camera, and then the way we have it now for 3rd person cameras.
That is, in FP mode, the mouse would control the heading and look-direction
of the player, and A and D would strafe. You select things by looking right
at them (we'd need a target cross in the middle) and pressing the button.
In 3P mode, the mouse is just the cursor.
What do you think?
Darryl
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