[project1dev] Re: Action Camera!
- From: Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: project1dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 21:17:52 -0700
letterboxing is what you see when you watch a widescreen movie on your tv
and it doesnt cut off the edges.
it's the black bars
eric was suggesting we use them in our game as an indication that a
cinematic is happening which is a pretty neat way to show the player what's
going on IMO :P
On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Matthew Freeland <mattthefiend@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Okay I have to ask... what is letterboxing?
>
>
> 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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