Camera Control

As Alpha no doubt is getting nearer I was wondering if you could shed some light on Camera Control. I have been wondering for a while now how easy it will be to control an RTS on a ball lets face it all RTS games have flat maps so up is up down is down Etc. If I understand there is no top or bottom to the map. I would like to hear about or see Camera Control. Also will map scrolling go in any direction / angle. (Sorry to say but this alone could put many people of a very polished good looking game).

Go download google earth.

Now imagine a bit more constraint in how the camera moves around to keep north / south more oriented.

does this mean you won't allow the user to center the northpole?

In Google Earth you hold down the left mouse button to drag around the planet. Since dragging in an RTS game typically selects units, I assume that the controls won't be quite the same?

Or will the controls be closer to the Civilization stage of Spore? (which, as far as I know, is the only other RTS to take place on a round planet)

you could drag with middle mouse or right mouse. Or you could zoom in and out, as the fanmade-PA-thingy demonstrates.

Neutrino's approach sounds logical. Google earth style controls with more constrained north-south axis will greatly remove confusion of orienting yourself on the battlefield between multiple planets, and any more "advanced" controls probably won't be much work to mod in, right?

nice quick keys be nice .... you hit (c) it zooms too your commander .then set up macros for bases ,, so you can zoom to the bases you have .. then a key for the planet zoom .. and one for the solar system be nice too ...

or a zoom macro you set up the camera and it saves the spot you want and the altitude you want

so you use the (ctrl) key for the units then you use the (shift) for camera
so you can have up to 10 unit and 10 camera quick controls

The controls are not mapped the same as Google Earth. Middle mouse button is click/drag for example.

I for one would like free rotation that actually sticks and never "resets" like it very annoyingly did in both supcoms. Emphasizing that there is no one right way to look at the map. Freeing the player to look at the game whichever way they want.

I would like to point out my discussion about watching a game and ability to zoom and rotate:

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=44892

Summary: with eSports game, zoom and rotate camera are almost disabled in the game because they confuse the spectators.

For example in Starcraft 2 you can hardly rotate the camera and you can zoom in a very limited way.

This is done to allows spectators to better understand the game. If the casters start to move the camera the game will become hard to follow. Please neutrino keep it in mind.

This doesn't mean the player should be limited in this way however.

It may be an argument for casters not to rotate the view for the sake of the spectator, but if bmb wants to play while 'upside down' that could still be a player option.

I can see his point certainly!

I think the important part is that if you move around the planet's surface doing things, you should come back to your base and have it at exactly the same orientation. I'm pretty sure that's what a north/south orientation means.

Pattern recognition is important for the brain to form actions and strategy, and rotating a pattern makes it very hard for a lot of people to recognize quickly.

That simply means that the camera "orbit" code should respect cardinal directions, not necessarily that the camera should only point in any one cardinal direction.

I totally agree though, if you leave the base and don't rotate the camera, then come back you should have the exact orientation you left with.

Yes, lets punish everyone because there are in-experienced casters out there. IMO the Replay/spectator camera should have FEWER restrictions compared to the gameplay camera for movie makers or just players that was to mess around and check things out.

Mike

Best of both worlds Knight would be a camera that allows for some kind of XML configuration that sets limits - camera height, the speed at which the camera moves, etc. The caster doesn't need to be ultra careful about moving around, noob casters do a better job, and regular players aren't affected at all.

Whether that is practical or not to develop (configurable is always more work than non) is up to Uber.

I'm always amazed when people talk about customisation in config files and xml and console commands and whatnot completely neglecting where any meaningful customisation should take place: in the GUI options menu.

gui interfaces are designed for the layman, it has the most basic stuff and it works properly all the time.

XML changes and such allow you to do anything but you can break all the things.

That's completely false. If it's worth doing at all it's worth doing in the GUI.

What i meant was that either you get a gui that is ussentialy a ui mod someone has made (in XML) or you use the basic controls that the devs put as much time as necessary into and then went on to normal things. Or you can make your own.

In short, I bet a mod could do that.

You sound like someone who has never configured Linux before.