Please use Camera shake "EVERYWHERE"

It was there, but it was tastefully subtle. It certainly wasn't obnoxious or over the top.

I'm ok with camera shake as long as it's not excessive.
As long as it's tastefully used and won't get in the way of the playability of the game, I'm all for it.


However, other games (like Diablo 3) force camera shake, ginormous bloom effects and cannot be turned off.
That would be a serious problem.



That being said, I think there are things which should have a forced camera shake.
A nuke going off, and a Com exploding should be a serious "oh crap" moment.

The explosion visuals and noise should suffice for that. No need to shake the screen and the "camera" metaphor further.

It's because the other guy said having it as a mechanic is 'retarded' which can be offensive. Read the whole post next time.

That's not what I read into it, and I did read the entire post (including both quotes). Here is a précis of my interpretation of the conversation thus far:

Rabbit9000: Camera shake is handy for deaf people, it should be automatic

Causeless: No it should be optional. Forcing it on people that don't want it, as a "difficulty" like setting that you just have to live with, is stupid.

Rabbit9000: Why you hate disabled people?

I shall blockquote the whole thing below so you can check for yourself:

Fixed it for you

GOD NO.

Camera shake is possible one of the most annoying things, imagine trying to command your army and you can't select units because the damn screen is shaking.

God no.

I don't know about you, but having the camera shaking even when there's no big explosions going on isn't my idea of fun, so I will have to disagree that camera shake should be used "EVERYWHERE".

It should be only used for the biggest explosions, and should be subtle in effect.

Camera shake is good in small doses, but because it can directly interfere with player inputs it needs to be optional.

All that aside, using screen shake liberally only really detracts from it's impact, you want to save that for when say, a KEW hits or nukes go off, basically the less you use it, the more impact it'll have.

Mike

I say use screen shake for only stuff directly attacking the commander. And maybe systemwide events like exploding planets.

Hell no. :shock:

Camera shake only makes sense when you are zoomed all way in into the midst of battle.
It makes impractically 0 sense in strategic zoom-out.
Its a distracting element and it should either be optional or only done in subtle amounts in certain situations.

As far as using as a cue to things occurring, there are better visual cues that do not affect gameplay in annoying ways.
For example you could have areas where heated battle or artillery barrage occurring have red-ish hue to indicate activity.
This is far less distracting ad doesn't cause silly control inhibitions.

I think there should be a camera shake only on really big events, and this shaking should happen system-wide regardless of your camera position. Instead of just being eye-candy, you'd get camera shake to tell the player when, for example, a commander explodes, a nuke explodes, an asteroid hits a planet, and so on - only incredibly big stuff.

I think camera shakes on the UI level of a RTS game seem rather ridiculous.
In first person perspectives or over the shoulder 3rd person views they might make sense, but in the classic birds eye view of a RTS game they are misplaced.
With the UI interface the analogy of a camera monitor or a radar screen is far better and there anyone would wonder why it should shake when something explodes.

I find a stable camera looks cooler than random shaking.

The units, the world, explosions. This is what should be moving.

Hmm, astroid hitting a planet = A good place for some camera shake.

+noshake

Camera shake is more of a dramatic effect thing for when something major happens like a commander getting killed. If it is used everywhere then it kinda waters down the effect a bit. Also, it gets kinda annoying if everything is shaking all the time.

However, what if there was a bit of camera shake whenever your commander took a hit? It would add a bit of realism and would serve as an instant visual warning that your commander was taking damage if your commander was on planet A while you were over doing something on planet B.

This! Antillie also mentioned it in a post above mine. It would be absolutely perfect.

In TA or SC2, don't remember which, but it had a "explosions shake screen" option in the game options, you could turn it off if you wanted. Why complicate things, why not just keep it a player-option?

Just to add to the conversation, I like the screenshakes but definitively not all the time. Asteroid hits a planet... that's a shakin' Nuke goes off... that's a shakin' ACU explodes... that's a sh- you get the point.
Also you can make zooming in have an effect. Zoom in an hear the engines of the robots/tanks rumble and let explosions rumble the screen, zoom out and the effect becomes nullified.

It would be cool if space was mostly silent actually. Just serenely watching explosions going off far below you.