Hi, I looked up other posts on this topic and none addressed my question so here I go. 3D 3rd person games traditionally have the camera system fixed behind the pc and it rotates with the movement of the character, or the player actually rotates the camera itself. Its a lot of rotating. Other games such as Onimusha and Resident evil use prerendered backgrounds that fix the background and let the character move within it. This makes for great character movement but causes problems when switching views or obscurring areas. Most games are switching to full 3D environments. My question is this, do most players actually like the 3D better (as I hear all the time)? Do you like the full 3D with player controlled camera better than pre-rendered backgrounds? How can the advantages of both be combined? I have some ideas and will get to those once I see what ideas you have.

My question is this, do most players actually like the 3D better (as I hear all the time)?

Yes. 3D offers more potential. That doesn''t mean 2D is dead or prerendered is a bad idea; it simply means that 3D is liked more.

Do you like the full 3D with player controlled camera better than pre-rendered backgrounds?

Personally, it has its pros and cons. The biggest con is that a badly chosen angle or poor camera logic can hamper gameplay and wreck the experience. This is also possible in "follow-cams" that lag behind user action.

How can the advantages of both be combined?

They''re anti-parallel systems. You can find mid-points, but it''s experimental and not formulaic. Good luck.

Let me know what you think of this.

You have one camera system for exploration that follows the character and one for combat (classic RPG style), however once you engage in a battle the camera takes a fixed position at a predetermined position in the battle area. The camera stays in this position and lets the character move around without the environment moving with him. The camera will pan to follow the action but not actually move from this position until one of two things happens.

1) the character moves to an area that the camera position puts him at a visual disadvantage

2) the player wishes to move the camera to a preferred position.

when this happens the camera will rotate to the next predefined position and fix itself there.

The game will be a 3D game but the fixed camera will keep the rotation to a minimum, thus optimizing the action taking place.

The battle areas will need to be set up with this in mind so that the camera isn''t constantly trying to move between areas and should only have to do so once or twice per battle.

What problems can you forsee?

1) the character moves to an area that the camera position puts him at a visual disadvantage

The problem with this utopian design is that it proves rather difficult, in code and other practical terms, to determine "visual disadvantage." I can guarantee you that all authors of previous fubar camera systems didn''t think they were disadvantaging their players...

Here''s a simpler scheme (for battle):

1. If there is a single player and a single enemy, the camera orients itself "over the shoulder" of the player, pointed at the enemy.



2. If there is a single player and multiple enemies, the camera places the player at the center of the screen (to provide a view of all possible attack angles) and locates itself at a distance such that the player occupies half of the screen height.



3. If there are multiple players, the camera points at the center of the battle "arena" and zooms in an out to accomodate all players (so noone is ever off-screen) plus a reasonable allowance for potential of attack. The position chosen is the original direction the party was travelling in when accosted by their opponent(s).

Rotation isn''t a dirty word, especially if the player never has to do it manually (but leave him the option to do so if he wants).

I was afraid that might be hard to implement.

I like the suggestions for a simpler scheme, are there any games that use this?

Also you said:
"If there is a single player and a single enemy, the camera orients itself ''over the shoulder'' of the player, pointed at the enemy."

Can you explain how the camera moves in this set up?

The most intuitive camera system is the First-person camera. You always see what your character sees, and you have the ability to glance around smoothly and easily. The downsides, such as limited peripheral vision and inhibited "body awareness" are not incapacitating.

But first-person view isn''t always the most appropriate system for a game design, especially one which tries to divorce itself from the character or is dependent upon precise movements or has a lot of awesome animations to show off. Besides, this thread is about 3rd-person systems.

I like the freedom that''s associated with a full 3D environment, and I like to be able to look around. Pre-rendered backgrounds made fighting awkward in Resident Evil and made treasure-hunting silly in the later Final Fantasy games. It''s silly that I can''t see what my character is bonking into.

I think that a well-designed chase camera can offer a variety of benefits. Indoors, you will be dealing with a carefully defined world, and some camera nodepathing can keep you out of trouble in tighter areas. Outside, a decent chase algorithm, perhaps with a degree of interactivity with significant objects (enemies, NPCs, items, etc.) would be sufficient. A button that snaps you to first-person "look around" mode is always a good idea.

For the looking around thing, it might be worthwhile to consider putting that into your idle animations. I like it when my character''s head turns to look at objects of interest, and even better than stopping and investigating it might be a feature that lets the character look at things. You stop walking while your character is glacing at an item or person, and he might take a good look at that significant object. The camera could be incorporated into the operation. Perhaps it would be even better to actually have a button, like the "speak" button, that lets your character examine something, like in a text adventure.

It''s all dependent on gameplay, though. Don''t try to build a game around a camera system. Design the experience, and then match your presentation system to that.

The reason for this thread is so I can figure out the best camera system to fit the game I am working on.

The ideal camera system would accomplish the same thing as movie cameras do: to disappear from the experience. However because games are interactive this makes the camera that much more difficult to work with.

The best camera example I can think of is in MGS2. The camera rarely presented problems to the gameplay and thus kept the player immersed in the action and movement of the character. It also employed the first person mode to investigate which worked well.

I am trying to find the best camera system for an action/adventure game. MGS2 is confined to small areas with no elevation changes (Snake cannot jump around from level to level but rather climbs ladders from one stage to the next). All of the maps in MGS2 seem to be designed with the camera in mind. It operated on what I like the call a "fixed rail system" where the camera stayed on a specific rail at a predetermined height, distance and perspective in relationship to the character.

I would like to combine the rail system with one that fixes the camera for the fighting parts of the game.

Also I was thinking about using the "speak" or "interact" button that Iron Chef wrote about to move the player to a first person screen with interactive menus for investigation and conversation.

Thoughts?

The reason MGS2 had such a great camera was because every room, every scenario, and every action was part of a fairly limited selection. MGS2 wa essentially a really complex, super-awesome puzzle game. You just have to set camera positions in each room that are selected by the machine based on the hero''s location, the location of the enemy, and the obvious direction of the task at hand.

When you get to the room with the laser across the hall, there''s no way to walk toward those lasers without the camera pointing at them. That''s because the game designers basically built that room and its camera to serve as a medium in which Snake can deal with those lasers.

If you are using that sort of design, then by all means use that kind of camera system, but if you''re going to be revisiting areas with unpredictable motives, then you might want to come up with a more free-form camera system.

You seem to have a solid grasp of what you want to do with this, and I am sure you''ll come up with the right system with a little work.

Your completely right about MGS2.

So I guess the question in this post becomes....

Can you develop a large, free roaming world with lots of interaction and random elements where the camera is designed more with relationship to the map rather than being designed based mainly on the movement of the character. What problems would this present?

Character looks and movement are created and 3d maps are created and then the two are merged together, correct? When is the camera system typically designed?, is it when the character is being designed? after both the character and the world are created?

Maybe bad camera design comes from creating a scheme and then trying to merge it with the environment, thus causing the collision, invisibility and obstruction problems we all see. I am showing my lack of programming knowledge here but it is what it is.

I prefer 3D 3rd person Camera systems to both 1st person and prerendered backgrounds, and for good reasons.

1st persons I don''t like because I always take on the disposition that I''m the main playable character''s guardian angel of sorts. I''m never totally immersed into a role, just not the way I am. You can''t see the playable character in 1st person view, so its hard figuring out how to protect him.

Prerendereds I don''t exactly hate, just that more often then not they lack the same graphic consistancy that the realtime renderer has. They look too good if you know what I mean. Like having a cartoon character animated at 60 frames a second. Too animated. Everything else lacks the same detail, so it feels detached.

As for thje 3rd person cameras, I''m fine with the various styles (fixed track, shoulder cam, free motion). Just that as a word of advice, it''s sometimes better to design the renderer to skip objects that would appear infront of the player, and just let the camera float through walls. I''m thinking xenogears here. I''m really only concerned with the hallway I''m standing in, and I''m used to the camera having some decent distance between it and the playable character, so really, the camera should keep that distance and only show me what I need to see.