RUNNING WITH RIFLES
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Free camera rotation
http://www.runningwithrifles.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=544		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Gumbi [ Tue Jun 26, 2012 6:58 am ]
Post subject:  Free camera rotation
Hi

I love the game, but I feel it's hard to see terrain features. You can see the major features but not the finer ones. The result is you run up the hill and hope that where you take a kneel will have line of sight. Because weapon spread is rather large (nothing wrong with that), it's very hard to figure out if it's the terrain that's in the way of a good shot or not. Similarly you can't tell exactly how high a rock is until you start shooting.

The same thing goes for buildings. The way it's set up, you have a 50% chance that any action around buildings will happen in the back side (the greyed out part). When it does, you can hardly tell who belongs to which team, climbing ladders often is a matter of walking along the wall wildly pressing 'space' and things like that (yes, you get better at it but it's still hit and miss, especially on large buildings). From a gameplay perspective, there shouldn't be a 'good' side and a 'bad' side to buildings.

Free camera rotation would fix all this. I read somewhere that it was planned but no priority. If it is planned, I'm happy, but I would point out that it may be more important for a smooth gameplay than may seem obvious. Of course you'd need a compass then too but that's a minor point.
Author:  JackMayol [ Tue Jun 26, 2012 7:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Free camera rotation
Hi Gumbi and welcome to the forum! :)

Yes this has been discussed already, and afaik there aren't plans to implement a free cam rotation. The maps are also designed for the "isoview" so that they are playable without having much troubles with those things you mentioned.
And for myself (as an experienced player) you get around those little things the more you play. Actually I can very well feel if I can shoot over objects (i.e. rocks) or not, you get the feeling after a while.
For the terrain height you can use the isolines to know if the terrain is higher (white isolines) or lower (black isolines) (I don't use them at all but they can be pretty handy).
And try not to climb a hill in an open area, use cover on your way if possible, or just use another path, if you don't want to die.
For the part behind buildings, if you shoot at a soldier which is, like you, in the "hidden" along the wall, you may point your crosshair at the end of the house since if you point at the soldier directly, who is "hidden", you will aim at the roof.
For myself, the only trouble I sometime have is to climb ladder behind buildings, I sometimes indeed have to try it a few times. Maybe enlarging the ladder-climb trigger area could be a nice thing indeed, hmm.
As I said, being able to handle those things makes the difference between skilled and not so skilled players and I don't see them as an issue.
Author:  Gumbi [ Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Free camera rotation
Thanks for your reply!

Indeed, I can see coming to grips with most of it, although I do feel the camera angle (and that it's fixed) doesn't do the fantastic terrain justice. It would give the game less of a browser-game' feel if you yould rotate the camera.

The behind buildings problem is major IMO. Large buildings or strongly built up areas can cover an etire episode of gameplay. You can't see ladders, you can't tell teams apart (or can you? Certainly not well enough for me to notice), you can't see building features on the back. It becomes 80% guesswork and there's no objective reason. It's just the back side of a building, not smoke or anything, and the characters are not remote controlled vehicles, so there's no 'in front' versus 'behind'. Your character should see things just as well as anywhere.

FWIW, it was mentioned here as something that will be added "at some point":

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=328&p=2435&#p2117

I don't mean zooming by the way. Just x/y rotation.
Author:  JackMayol [ Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Free camera rotation
Gumbi wrote:

The behind buildings problem is major IMO. Large buildings or strongly built up areas can cover an etire episode of gameplay. You can't see ladders, you can't tell teams apart (or can you? Certainly not well enough for me to notice), you can't see building features on the back. It becomes 80% guesswork and there's no objective reason. It's just the back side of a building, not smoke or anything, and the characters are not remote controlled vehicles, so there's no 'in front' versus 'behind'. Your character should see things just as well as anywhere.

FWIW, it was mentioned here as something that will be added "at some point":

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=328&p=2435&#p2117

I don't mean zooming by the way. Just x/y rotation.


you can tell teams apart since the opacity of the hidden part of buildings is high enough to see through, and to see if a soldier is either green or grey. And you can see the boundaries of the buildings as well. Maybe raising the contrast as a visual setting would be an option.
You can see the ladders also if you check the top of the building, you can see that they are protruding above the roof.
The fact that you can't rotate the view is a part of the design as well, gives you a bit of nostalgic feeling ;)
I am not sure about cam rotation, especially because the player who turns the cam to his favor has the most chance to win the duel between 2 players, since. I want, when standing still to be sure that noone has (at least with equal weapons, since weapons has different sight-ranges) sight-range advantage.
Author:  pasik [ Tue Jun 26, 2012 10:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Free camera rotation
I certainly can distinguish between greens and greys behind the buildings. The difference isn't huge, but certainly noticeable on my display.

I personally think the game could use a little more aim assistance when shooting at targets behind buildings. I'm not entirely sure of its feasibility, as I haven't really thought it through in all cases that might emerge.

Currently aiming, in such a case that a building is occluding the soldier target, works so that if the soldier is in the crosshair the soldier and its standing level (likely ground, could be another roof as well) will be the shooting target. If the crosshair doesn't touch the soldier, the crosshair is seen pointing at a roof, in which case the position on the roof becomes the target.

Obviously, that's not wanted if there's no one on the roof, and highly possibly even the target position on the roof is anyway unreachable.

Based on this, there are at least two possible ways to help the shooting here.

1) When checking the ray from the crosshair into the screen for collisions with objects, like buildings, check the closest intersection point (on roof, side or front wall) whether it can be shot at from the current player position
- essentially we need to cast another ray from the soldier towards the found intersection point if it gets obstructed earlier by another side of the object
- if it doesn't, it means the intersection point can be reached, so that sounds like it's the very target where the player wanted to shoot at
- if it does get obstructed, the player most likely didn't want to shoot there, so the player probably meant a target behind that object, so continue checking for objects behind that object (might mean ground as well)
- the roof edges might be a problem here: the player intends to shoot at an enemy standing on the roof edge, but doesn't get his crosshair quite there at the soldier and points at the roof instead, so with this logic the player would continue to shoot on the ground instead; with some edge specific handling there might a good middle road somewhere.

2) Analyze bigger area around the crosshair for potential enemy targets, some of them could be on the roof, some of them behind a building
- check if the targets are reachable from the current firing position, by casting rays (that's what AI does anyway, not a big deal)
- if there are multiple reachable targets, pick the one closest to crosshair ray
- it sounds a little like auto aim -- is that what we want?

On the topic about occluded ladders, that's a problem and will be fixed in one way or another for sure.

Camera rotation was thought to be added at some point, because it's possible and it would help with the line of sight issue despite bringing more complexity to controls (RMB hold + swing mouse around to rotate camera? Two keys to rotate camera clockwise/anticlockwise?). JackMayol has a point though that it might bring an advantage to players that learn how to use it, while a lot of players wouldn't want to touch it at all to keep things simple.
Author:  Gumbi [ Tue Jun 26, 2012 6:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Free camera rotation
Yeah, depending on ambient light at home I see the colors fine or I don't. My post was based on my experience from last Sunday. I also agree with your idea of a bit more aim assist. Although currently there is so much weapon spread that spraying and praying works as well.

I'd just like to add that some things appear to be non-issues when you pause to look at them (like the building wireframes), but in the scrolling and moving environment of an actual game, those building wireframes for example simply disappear.

RMB rotate has been around since the dawn of 'true-3d' RTS gaming ten years ago or so. I'm no fan of adding '733t' features, but it's an established control scheme and would hardly add to the learning curve. Certainly not as much as the sometimes false 'flat' terrain appearance and the confusion from building occlusion currently does. And besides, if you say it gives an advantage to the experienced player because mastering it removes the tactical inhibition of building occlusion from gameplay for him, you're also saying the current scheme hampers the game for everyone. That may be more fair, but not necessarily better. :mrgreen:


Just to be clear, I like the way the 'leeward' side on buildings is done. I don't like that I can't decide based on my tactical plan which side will actually be the leeward side from where I'm standing/attacking. And it's completely arbitrary to have a less clear idea of the situation just because it's the north side of a building. I'll bet statistics would show that players on average prefer to move along the south side of buildings, where they can see their troops clearly, rather than north, where they can't.
Author:  pasik [ Tue Jun 26, 2012 7:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Free camera rotation
Fair enough. I agree about the hampering, and it's not an ideal choice either. The building contours, that were introduced only while working with map2 actively, helped with the issue a lot to start with. I can mostly do pretty fine job while occluded, I'm hardly thinking about it as such, only gripes being about the aiming that it needs to be extra accurately on target on even ground too as the bullets get spread towards the occluding building too easily.

Anyway, the main point about non-rotating camera is of course simplicity and I want it to stay simple. In such a fast paced action game RWR is, I think rotating camera with RMB would be way too much to ask; you'd find yourself changing it all the time, and that's hardly something I want the players to be focused on. While that may work in an RTS where you click around and watch things happen, or even better in a turn based game, I don't feel it's the right call for RWR. Obviously, there are even automatic ways to handle the camera rotation, at which point RWR would become a 3rd person shooter with odd far away camera.. doesn't sound that great either, right?

I would primarily solve the issue with something else while holding on to the 2d'ey feel. I personally don't mind about taking the issue into consideration when making maps, e.g. north side of tall buildings should always have the lower floors elongated in steps towards north to avoid large pieces of walls where a lot of fighting ground becomes occluded.

The fact that it's the north side is of course arbitrary, but it's a game with certain simplified mechanics so the world might need to adapt to it, I'm fine with that. Too tall buildings could be avoided altogether, I think e.g. Jagged Alliance 2 did very well without huge multistory buildings, it's not like the world absolutely needs them.

Another alternative to free camera rotation could be one key switch between southside and northside camera, e.g. some sports games use that kind of thing, not due to view obstruction but for easier controls, many times it's easier to execute shots when attacking "upwards". However, I do feel that using this kind of mechanic it would take several seconds to get back on track after making the switch, which makes it not that good solution.

There could be better ways to render the occluded view too.
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