[project1dev] Re: Action Camera!
- From: Matthew Freeland <mattthefiend@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: project1dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 21:08:58 -0700
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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