[project1dev] Re: Action Camera!

  • From: Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: project1dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 21:16:57 -0700

I kinda think we shouldnt do anything pre-rendered in the middle of a level
cause the art won't match the art of the level and that will make it look
bad.  If the art DOES match the art of the level, why did we pre-render it?
:P

On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Matthew Freeland <mattthefiend@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Well in games like half-life where the game never interrupts your input the
> way they handle it is key lighting and directional sound to make you look a
> direction. That's really smart and fairly easy to do with good QA... the
> problem with this particular case of the boss dying is that you have to
> rapidly reorient yourself after the battle and shift back into exploring
> mode. As the quake effect happens so quickly it's undoubtedly going to be
> missed 99% of the time so I think it's going to be requisite that the game
> pause for a sec after the battle and goes to either a scripted cinematic or
> even a pre-rendered event just so people get a feel for whats going on.
>
> My problem with the active sound/key lighting approach is that it CAN be
> good, but frequently when you have lots of colors and sounds floating around
> it's difficult to keep track of what is 'key' lighting. An example would be
> F.E.A.R., i don't know if many of you have seen/played it, but it does the
> whole ambient horror effects really well, but alot of times you get these
> annoying visions of ghosts or demons or whatever they are that try and scare
> the crap out of you. Sounds good in theory, but you walk into a room full of
> blood stains and weird noises and all the sudden loud scraping noise
> indicating one of the ghosts is popping up happens and while you're
> scrambling to try and find them and make sure ones not going to shank you
> when you're not looking you either fall off a cliff or end up missing them
> entirely because as it was being developed it was assumed you would be
> looking at THAT pool of blood on the left side of the room with the shiny
> light on it, instead of the one on the right side of the room with the 2
> shiny lights on it.
>
> /end rant
>
> God I hated F.E.A.R..
>
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Yeah, we could definitely do things like that.
>>
>> I think the only thing stopping us from doing that right now is the lack
>> of the ability to ignore player input for a period of time.
>>
>> We currently have the ability to offset the camera (its how we shake the
>> screen) so we could offset it along a specified path as events happened.
>>
>> If we were going to go this route wed eventually want a system were you
>> can specify points of interest as a point and a camera looking vector, and
>> have splines interpolate between the points but if you guys and Eric wants
>> to go this route we might have to hold off on advanced features for now (:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 8:54 PM, Matthew Freeland <mattthefiend@xxxxxxxxx
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> Alternatively we can make it super cinematic and go to a flying third
>>> person camera that we can script like of like it were actually a scene in a
>>> movie. Think about it this way... The big scary cave monster at the end
>>> dies, after combat ends it goes to a quick cinematic that is just the camera
>>> moving on its own free-flying that pans and zooms out all hollywood-esque
>>> and shows the big scary monster falling to the ground briefly followed by
>>> lots of little rocks and debris falling down on its body followed by some
>>> big pieces of the catwalk above and the rocks that block your passage. Then
>>> the camera sweeps back into the position it was in prior to whipping the big
>>> scary cave monsters ass. Could be sweet.
>>>
>>> -Wurmz
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 8:04 PM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think panning the camera would work better than zooming out because if
>>>> you zoom out, you have no clue if the event is on screen or not.
>>>>
>>>> If you move the camera, you know for sure what the player is looking at
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Kent Petersen <kentkmp@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I kinda like wurmz idea of taking control of the camera and making a
>>>>> cut scene. We could lock player control and fly the camera over. Or even
>>>>> simpler then that would be locking the camera and zooming out. Then 
>>>>> zooming
>>>>> back in after the boss dies.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:41 PM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Wurmz i am in complete agreement.  It's an issue that the game does
>>>>>> neat stuff like bridge collapsing and cave in rocks blocking tunnels and 
>>>>>> yet
>>>>>> they mostly happen off screen!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> From a code POV I'm up for coding just about anything but if we come
>>>>>> up with a cool feature that would take too long to code, we can always 
>>>>>> do a
>>>>>> temp solution now and do the real solution in a later milestone.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Matthew Freeland <
>>>>>> mattthefiend@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ahoy folks, got a mini technical question as to how we plan on
>>>>>>> directing peoples attention to particular details in their 
>>>>>>> surroundings...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I bring this up because in light of the awesome script which Kent has
>>>>>>> been so wonderful to write... No one will really look up to see the
>>>>>>> platforms going squish. So how do we want to present it? Would it 
>>>>>>> possible
>>>>>>> to make mini cutscenes where the engine takes over to force the camera 
>>>>>>> where
>>>>>>> we want it to be? There are a few other alternatives I can think of as 
>>>>>>> well,
>>>>>>> but in terms of the boss dying and then the little micro-quake occurring
>>>>>>> immediately after. Even if there is a small pause after combat ends 
>>>>>>> before
>>>>>>> the earthquake appears there is still the ultimate problem that all 3d 
>>>>>>> game
>>>>>>> development companies have had: making the player look UP. There are
>>>>>>> multitudinous other ways to doing so that don't involve taking over the
>>>>>>> players control of the camera which should also be addressed. If you've 
>>>>>>> got
>>>>>>> an idea I recommend you make it as difficult as possible just to make 
>>>>>>> those
>>>>>>> silly code monkeys work. :P
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> For consistant presentation of the game I think we should probably
>>>>>>> hash this out with some immediacy and might even be worthy of a 
>>>>>>> milestone
>>>>>>> entry. Those are my thoughts. Feel free to leave some input!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -Wurmz
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>

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