Strategic Zoom and the importance of the game camera

I'm giving it its own thread because no RTS has solved this problem satisfactorily yet (not even starcraft).

Supreme commander was really "icon commander" many millions of dollars were spent on graphics that 99% of the time were not view-able from "strategic ORBIT". The team could have saved inordinate amounts of money and effort given that the game camera in Supcom 1 and FA was so zoomed out that the graphics simply didn't matter 99% of the time.

The good thing about Strat zoom was usability. The bad thing about it was it BROKE IMMERSION and took us away from being immersed in the awesome battles we were expecting. Awesome audio/visuals for battles don't matter if you don't have the time or the means (well designed camera/viewport system) to enjoy the carnage.

I suggest a camera system where you can possess the perspective of the battlefield units from first and third person on the ground and/or a virtual camera that acts like one. Many of us would have loved a 'battlefield camera' that acted like a virtual unit to watch the saucer rain death and carnage from above of be at the feet of the monkey lord from first person.

This is what many people thought they were getting with Supcom 1 and what they got was "Icon commander" which lead to a lot of mixed reactions. There was lots of other things wrong with supcom/fa where the majority of the game was spent managing economy and base building and not being on the battlefield. Hence many peoples love/hate relationship with the game.

So the problem ISN'T strategic zoom per se, it's about the implementation of the game camera and the viewport. Having a key to toggle between strategic view and 'battle cam' view is absolutely necessary if PA is not going to repeat all supcom 1's immersion breaking mistakes.

Also, keep the camera system open to modders, it's highly likely the cam/viewport will have rough edges that can be solved by the community.

One of my biggest bet peeves with supcom/FA was the game was GREAT for making machinima videos but most of our time was spent managing icons from orbit. And I felt really bad for the art team on Sup1/FA.

This is the kind of awesomeness many of us were expecting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvaHELA_C0o

But we got Icons from orbit instead 99% of the time.

No.

And do we really need yet another thread on this exact topic?

Yes since supreme commander 1 failed in many areas, and supreme commander 2 was an abortion. Anyone who's hard up on their failures and game design mistakes is why RTS has been pushed to niche status. Many of RTS's ardent fans are blind to the flaws (not intelligent enough to perceive it).

We don't want to see a repeat of wasted potential of Supcom 1 and 2. Many of us spent inordinate amounts of time analyzing why MOBA style RTS game type overtook the traditional RTS design. The reason was the lack of focus on the action and getting bogged down too much in management.

Is that a fact?

We've had the strategic zoom discussion like three times already. Something that will do what you want is already going in the game - multiple windows with independent zoom. Set one up for your close view and the other for your strategic view.

Yes it is, the came camera in Supcom1/FA was poorly implemented, got a lot better with demigod. Remember many of us were badly burned with the demigod abortion many people at GPG (and now uber) worked on. The networking ended up broken so we have our doubts.

Lets not get into the totally broken AI which sorian had to fix on supcom 1.

Oh I get it, you're an idiot. You do realise in supcom you could press space and get your "battlecam"

Anyone that has an informed opinion must be a troll right?

A second a go it was a fact.
Now if we can remove the 'informed', and get you down to just 'opinion', then I think we can close this thread.

Informed opinion based on the fact the game camera was poorly implemented.

Ok,

to solve this problem once and for all, I will state the fact that the camera and the strategic zoom in SC1/FA/SC2 is pure awesome!

At the most all I ask is for the team to enable modding of the camera system and I will be happy.

I think modding will be able in general, they already stated that they want the community to mod the game.

What you do with on your own gameserver and mods will be totally up to you then.

A tidbit... see the science on why creative ideas are rejected

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 142411.htm

If this was a creative idea it wouldn't have been brought up in three threads already

That's not how your brain works sadly, someone could sit you down with all the facts and you'd still reject them.

http://bit.ly/dYaWUc

That means science says your mind doesn't live in reality, it lives in its limited perceptions. Here is a ted video on reconstructed memory and fallibility of the brain in regards to eyewitnesses.

http://www.ted.com/talks/scott_fraser_t ... imony.html

Yeah no. The camera in supcom was a revolution. It's one of the best features in the whole game.

Well duh. However just because your idea was rejected, it doesn't mean its because it was a great one.

They laughed at the Wright brothers! They laughed at Einstein!

They also laughed at Bozo the clown.

So the one game that did the whole RTS but you can go first person every once in a while was "Homeworld Cataclysm" you'd normally be zoomed out but whenever you wanted to you could go into a unit's first person to see stuff from their cockpit.

It was fun to see from inside the ship for a minute or so. HOWEVER it was impossible to play like that. The screen was a constantly moving mess of ships zipping past and the perspective twisting about battlefield. And since you were in the thick of things you'd only ever be seeing about half of the ships involved in the fight on screen at any given time.

So yeah the first person "fancy cam" would be fun to use watching your laser death spiders mop up the ruminants of an enemy base with your hands off the keyboard drinking a beer or something. But I wouldn't use it during any real gameplay.

And as far as the screen full of icons thing goes. That's just a side effect of having a massive scale. Supreme Commander, Eve Online, even Homeworld I just mentioned. Once the fight gets big enough you just can't see individual units.

The only games without icons are games like Star Craft or Dawn of War where a space marine is 1/4 the size of the building he just came out of. And the camera is zoomed in just waaaaay too close.

Honestly the strategic zoom is the absolute best solution I can think of. It was so easy to zoom in and out. I'd find myself giving orders zoomed out, zooming in to make sure all my dudes were doing what they were supposed to, and zooming out again. Zoom out macro, zoom in micro, back and forth. I saw plenty of laser death spiders, and plenty of icons too.