16 replies to this topic

[Mish]

Hello.

 

Am I the only one who finds the camera weird? I guess I could get used to it, but I'd much rather have WASD for movement and mouse for camere and actions. Maybe something like FlyFF, where you can chose your own style - Eitehr WASD for movement with a camera that rotates with your character, or mouse for movement where you are the one that rotates the camera. If certain users find it annoying while others don't, it might be a good idea to add it as a configurable option.

 

I'd also love to see if when you come near a building and the camera goes up, it will go back to the same angle as it used to be.

 

Do you agree? Disagree? Please discuss

 

 

Thanks in advance,

Mish

[Squishie]

I quite like what they have done with the camera.  Took me a little while to get used to it but I much prefer it.

[Chelsea]

Viewing angle has a dramatic affect on performance. Every degree of viewing angle added gives an exponential increase of polygons in view, which slows the game down. What we have now is pretty much a "tipping point" with significant performance loss for adding more angle, for little added benefit. Until we add hardware support later down the line the viewing angle will have to remain the same for now.

 

Zooming out a bit more will give everyone a slight performance hit too, but nowhere near as much as changing viewing angle. It's something we could definitely increase, I'll look into it for you guys.

 

Please also remember this game was built as a top-down point-and-click RPG, so our 3d content was designed and created with this in mind. The game will likely never have an over-the-shoulder 3rd person view with WASD movement. Like I said before though, this may change once we add hardware support.

 

This is what the lead artist said about this issue. Since then the HCS have added zooming out and improved the viewing angle (although if you tilt your camera too far, you sometimes end up seeing black edges of the map until it loads - this didn't happen before, but maybe it's just me), so they may also add WASD movement as an option in the future.

[Mish]

I quite like what they have done with the camera.  Took me a little while to get used to it but I much prefer it.

 

Well what can I say, whatever floats your boat. Maybe I will like it more once I get used to it.

 

 

This is what the lead artist said about this issue. Since then the HCS have added zooming out and improved the viewing angle (although if you tilt your camera too far, you sometimes end up seeing black edges of the map until it loads - this didn't happen before, but maybe it's just me), so they may also add WASD movement as an option in the future.

 

I think what they did with zooming/camera angle is just fine. It looks good and it works good. As about movement - here's a video(which I removed because I'm scared) to demonstrate what I mean(At about 1:45). I know the angle is low at the video, so imagine maybe a higher angle(like what we have in Eldevin) with FlyFF movement mechanics.

 

And whether they implement this or not I still really want my viewing angle to resume to what it used to be whenever I walk near a tall building and it becomes top-down. This is because I set it to what I find comfortable and then the building ruins it. Maybe if they fix the angle ruining issue it will be ok to play with the current camera.

[Chelsea]

Not sure if that video violates Eldevin's terms of use or not.. but I know what you mean. I've played flyff for four years.

As for the camera angle, I think it switches to top-down when exiting buildings to avoid having the camera cut through the building (because then it would look like you can see through the wall of the building). If the viewing angle stays the same when you exit then it would look awkward when a portion of the wall is missing.

I don't really think it's that big of a deal. After awhile, you'll get used to fiddling with the camera angle anyway (especially when you're running up slopes).

 

In regards to the black edges of the map that I mentioned before, I took some screenshots if any staff members see this thread:

[Mish]

Yeah I guess you two were right, I did get used to the camera. I forgot that you can use the right mouse button to rotate it. It's a lot more comfortable now

 

I have another issue though. Sometimes when I right click the cursor goes out of the game area and enters the web page, and when I let it go it opens the right-click menu. It would be very useful to disable right click at the game page so that if I mis-click no menu will open

[Chelsea]

Hmm, not sure about that problem.

I always use wasd to rotate my camera.

Sorry ;(

[Mish]

It's ok maybe others have noticed that.

On anothet topic, did you notice that you have to press enter over and over every time you want to enter something to chat? I think they should make it work like in Maple(lol I bring up lots of dirrerent games) or even Windows in fact where the text box stays "selected" until you click something else. That way if you and a friend just chat, you don't have to press enter every time you want to say something.

[Chelsea]

I think it's a good idea to have it the way it is. If you're in an instance and you need to tell your party members something while trying to kill a mob, it wouldn't cause problems. For example, if you are trying to press "A" to rotate the camera or press "2" to heal and the chat box was still "selected" then if would just type those in the box.

Granted you can just deselect the chat box by clicking on something else but I think it's just more convenient the way it is.

 

You'd probably get used to pressing enter repeatedly, eventually. Perhaps they will add that as an option instead of a permanent change in the future. 

[Mish]

Yeah I hope they will either add this or add this as an option... I suppose it's a matter of personal taste. I think having less enter presses overall makes larger in-game conversations a lot more enjoyable.

[Lutrafs]

It would be nice to have a 1st person view as well, but make it so its required to zoom in to get to it, this way it does not cause performance issues. But as for viewing angle i would say making it another 10 degrees would be good for user friendly gameplay, although i have no idea the effect it would have on the games performance. Another way around this though could be to make a download pack for the game, that way part of it loads from the users pc instead of from the servers.

[Mish]

It would be nice to have a 1st person view as well, but make it so its required to zoom in to get to it, this way it does not cause performance issues. But as for viewing angle i would say making it another 10 degrees would be good for user friendly gameplay, although i have no idea the effect it would have on the games performance. Another way around this though could be to make a download pack for the game, that way part of it loads from the users pc instead of from the servers.

 

1st person would have great impact on performance, as well as adding 10 degrees more. You can tell that because the higher the camera goes the fewer elements appear on the screen, and the lower it goes the more elements appear on the screen(ex, if there is a tree that is far away from you you will not be able to see it from top-down but you will be able to see it if you lower the camera). This would cause the computer to render more objects in every frame and therefore load your processor and graphics card more.

 

The developers did say something about adding hardware support though, so let's just wait and see.

[Lutrafs]

1st person would have great impact on performance, as well as adding 10 degrees more. You can tell that because the higher the camera goes the fewer elements appear on the screen, and the lower it goes the more elements appear on the screen(ex, if there is a tree that is far away from you you will not be able to see it from top-down but you will be able to see it if you lower the camera). This would cause the computer to render more objects in every frame and therefore load your processor and graphics card more.

 

The developers did say something about adding hardware support though, so let's just wait and see.

This is exactly why I brought up the subject of a download package that the game could load from the users computer instead of from the servers, which would lighten the load on them dramatically.

[Zezima]

I think the camera is set up perfect, the only thing is i wish i could zoom out a little more and that instead of the up and down arrow zooming in and out, they would move the view angle up and down

[livingtarget]

This is exactly why I brought up the subject of a download package that the game could load from the users computer instead of from the servers, which would lighten the load on them dramatically.

This would make no difference at all, we are rendering in software which is the bottleneck. The partitioning and view distance are purely there to keep the polycount in check. In the future if we get around to implementing hardware through something like OpenGL we can look at giving you more camera control and maybe increasing the view distance.

 

First person and AWSD movement are definitely not easily done and would take a significant amount of time. We deliberately chose the Diablo style movement and camera and I think it does suit the game even if it is a little different from most MMOs.

 

We're adding the ability to increase your resolution soon, so hopefully that will add to the immersion and being able to see things more easily.

[livingtarget]

I'd also love to see if when you come near a building and the camera goes up, it will go back to the same angle as it used to be.

Hopefully we can add this soon, it's definitely something we want to add.

[Zurion]

 In the future if we get around to implementing hardware through something like OpenGL we can look at giving you more camera control and maybe increasing the view distance.

Hope you can do that I don't know a lot about game programming or use of OpenGL, but I found this  http://jogamp.org/jogl/www/