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Decline Does full camera control add any benefit to "isometric"-style cRPGs?

santino27

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
One of the strange things I saw touted as a feature in the new Pathfinder game is full camera control. Does it really add anything? I generally find games with a fixed camera to be easier to navigate and don't have to spend any time fiddling around with the camera. I tend not to lose track of things like in similar games with full camera control. From a developer's perspective, the designers never have to worry about the game being looked at from any viewpoint except the one the camera is fixed to.

The developers themselves admit having a rotating camera introduces issues for the player
Next on our list is the camera. In Pathfinder: Kingmaker camera was static, so there were no issues related to positioning and pivoting it, while in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous you will be able to rotate the camera. We had plans to add a button to return a camera into its default position. After discussing the feedback we decided to add sensitivity sliders, so you can set up the rotation speed of your camera. We are also planning to add a compass — which was one of the most requested features — to make it easier to navigate levels and local maps.

Exactly who is this feature appealing to and what's the reason you like it? It seems like nothing more than a gimmick.
Obligatory NWN2 camera reference
It's my least favorite thing about the Pathfinder alpha, so no.

Also: Your game view never matching up with the overhead map after you rotate is really fucking annoying.
 
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Thac0

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For me full camera control is a bit like full voiceacting.
It doesn't subtract from the game, and I never feel like I want it to be gone if it's there, but it is not worth the horrendous cost it adds to development. Stuff like this balloons budgets way out of proportion and makes true incline on a system level way harder to achieve.
 

Lord of Riva

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Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath
Reverse highlighting doesn't make characters/big enemies invisible.
No, it makes characters behind them visible by showing their outline, with regular and reverse highlighting for selection.
qYnt7N8.png
That is a clusterfuck. Alone the "free" rotation of the camera by 90° would solve this problem of searching for the right pixel to hit the right enemy or to enter the right field.

This looks more like a Clusterfuck than it actually is. Underrail manages this pretty ccompetently, at least as far as i know at this point as I have not finished it yet.
 

NJClaw

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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
For me full camera control is a bit like full voiceacting.
It doesn't subtract from the game, and I never feel like I want it to be gone if it's there, but it is not worth the horrendous cost it adds to development. Stuff like this balloons budgets way out of proportion and makes true incline on a system level way harder to achieve.
Truth be told, if the game already is fully 3D, camera control can't impact that much on the budget. For example, in Kingmaker it's free.
 

Harthwain

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For me full camera control is a bit like full voiceacting.
It doesn't subtract from the game, and I never feel like I want it to be gone if it's there, but it is not worth the horrendous cost it adds to development. Stuff like this balloons budgets way out of proportion and makes true incline on a system level way harder to achieve.
Full voiceacting can be absolutely amazing, if it's done very well. Sadly, pitifully few games manage to do really good voice acting and the games I could name from the top of my head aren't even RPGs.
 

Tyranicon

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For me full camera control is a bit like full voiceacting.
It doesn't subtract from the game, and I never feel like I want it to be gone if it's there, but it is not worth the horrendous cost it adds to development. Stuff like this balloons budgets way out of proportion and makes true incline on a system level way harder to achieve.
Full voiceacting can be absolutely amazing, if it's done very well. Sadly, pitifully few games manage to do really good voice acting and the games I could name from the top of my head aren't even RPGs.

RPGs, especially cRPGs are a nightmare for full voicing because there is so much dialogue.

For me full camera control is a bit like full voiceacting.
It doesn't subtract from the game, and I never feel like I want it to be gone if it's there, but it is not worth the horrendous cost it adds to development. Stuff like this balloons budgets way out of proportion and makes true incline on a system level way harder to achieve.

This really is a thread ender statement. Although from a RPG dev perspective, full voicing is so much gigantically more work than full camera control, it's not even funny. Especially for games like Pathfinder Kingmaker which are already designed in native 3d on Unity... you just have to decorate some extra walls, make camera controls intuitive, etc.
 

InD_ImaginE

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Pathfinder: Wrath
While full camera control doesn't add anything per se, what it adds to WoR alpha that I layed is different approach to area design.

Now this might not be important for true old style isometric games with pre-rendered backgorund like, say, PoE.

For Pathfinder games, they are really just a panned out camera in area build by various 3D assets. In this case what is added by rotating camera is designing area that is "fully" 3D and incorporates them to the game.

It doesn't subtract from the game, and I never feel like I want it to be gone if it's there, but it is not worth the horrendous cost it adds to development. Stuff like this balloons budgets way out of proportion and makes true incline on a system level way harder to achieve.

It depends on the engine. PfK has mod literally for unlocking the camera. It means that the way the game was made, it was simply made by panning the camera in such a way to a completely normal map. The engine in on itself already supports rotating camera.
 

Catacombs

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Full voiceacting can be absolutely amazing, if it's done very well. Sadly, pitifully few games manage to do really good voice acting and the games I could name from the top of my head aren't even RPGs.

First thing I do when I fire up an isometric crpg is turn off voices because, most of the time, I read the text faster than the voice acting.
 
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Thac0

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
This really is a thread ender statement. Although from a RPG dev perspective, full voicing is so much gigantically more work than full camera control, it's not even funny. Especially for games like Pathfinder Kingmaker which are already designed in native 3d on Unity... you just have to decorate some extra walls, make camera controls intuitive, etc.

I am low on tech knowledge but doesn't unity load like ass precisely because it loads everything in 3D? I thought if you designed from the ground up with fixed camera in mind on a fitting engine you can get away with much slimmer and faster, and also cheaper games.
 

Tyranicon

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This really is a thread ender statement. Although from a RPG dev perspective, full voicing is so much gigantically more work than full camera control, it's not even funny. Especially for games like Pathfinder Kingmaker which are already designed in native 3d on Unity... you just have to decorate some extra walls, make camera controls intuitive, etc.

I am low on tech knowledge but doesn't unity load like ass precisely because it loads everything in 3D? I thought if you designed from the ground up with fixed camera in mind on a fitting engine you can get away with much slimmer and faster, and also cheaper games.

I don't work in Unity so I'm not too familiar with the details, but IIRC, yes Unity is primarily built for 3D and even 2D games, like Enter the Gungeon, are merely fixed camera, top-down sprites in a 3D environment.

That being said, Unity is also to my knowledge probably the easiest and most flexible engine for most indies working in 3d, hence why a lot of RPG devs use it. There's godot, which is... interesting, and hobbyist-level engines like gamemaker studio, etc and of course, the now-notorious RPGmaker.
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

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full cam control needs proper controls
I. WASD for scrolling WITHOUT ANY FUCKING de/acceleration on it!
same goes for rotation on QE (these are fine rotation controls)
II. and RMB hold to rotate, tilt (this is the much speedier rotation, viewcone adjustmen)
III. and rapid mouse wheel for zoom
(IV.) optional reset butan

DONE

its not rocket science!

so many brainfucked devs are not capable of these insights!
 

Skdursh

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For me full camera control is a bit like full voiceacting.
It doesn't subtract from the game, and I never feel like I want it to be gone if it's there, but it is not worth the horrendous cost it adds to development. Stuff like this balloons budgets way out of proportion and makes true incline on a system level way harder to achieve.
There is literally a mod that allows full camera rotation and zooming for the original Pathfinder and it changes nothing because the game is already 3D. The difference between full rotation and a fixed angle in games that are already full 3D is only a few lines of code. The "extra development costs" in such a situation are marginal to non-existent. If intended for full rotation it's just developed in a different manner, which doesn't necessarily imply a significantly higher cost.
 

Gastrick

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That's really bizarre that they added that to an isometric game.
At the same time, I've never felt annoyed at having to control a camera.
Needing to show both sides would double the work for unique assets, but be irrelevant for reused ones.
 

Darkzone

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Reverse highlighting doesn't make characters/big enemies invisible.
No, it makes characters behind them visible by showing their outline, with regular and reverse highlighting for selection.
I can comment only about what i see and what is see is that there are two of the six dogs are covered / hidden by other dogs and their tags.
qYnt7N8.png
That is a clusterfuck. Alone the "free" rotation of the camera by 90° would solve this problem of searching for the right pixel to hit the right enemy or to enter the right field.

This looks more like a Clusterfuck than it actually is. Underrail manages this pretty ccompetently, at least as far as i know at this point as I have not finished it yet.
I don't deny this, but i can comment only about what i see. And what is see is that there are two of the six dogs are nearly completely covered / hidden by other dogs and their tags. Add in some few other Mutants (larger figures interfering or partly covering 5 fields) that will cover other Mutants and Mutant Dogs and shit hits the fan. When you have a 90° step rotating camera then at least two rows of enemies in each direction can be reached at ease (without the pixel searching that the current picture implies). But it could be only this picture or there be other mechanism that prevent this kind of clusterfuck in Underrail, that i simply don't know about since i didn't played it despite owning it (example: tags can be turned off or they do not hinder or are ignored by the trace line ).
 
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Controllable camera was THE worst feature of early 2000s 3D RPGs (NWN, Dungeon Siege, etc), but apparently, morons never learn, and are thus doomed to repeat the mistakes of earlier morons.

This feature just makes you fight the camera half the time, instead of focusing on, you know, gameplay.
 

Butter

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Having recently replayed all the IE games, the only time controllable camera would've helped (assuming the games were 3D) was in Beregost where some of the doors are on the backside of the buildings. They never repeated that mistake in any of the subsequent games, and everything was perfectly legible in combat. 3D with controllable camera was an unnecessary addition that caused more problems than it fixed.
 

Darkzone

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(example: tags can be turned off or they do not hinder or are ignored by the trace line ).
Tags are purely informational, they're not counted as hitboxes
Normally there is a line trace from the mouse position on the screen to the world space and what is received are an array of hits with the object references. If this tags are printed on the camera screen or hud (have always the same size) instead of in the 3d world spaces on an plane or widget above the 3d figure (get smaller over distance), than this wouldn't pose a problem at all. But in other cases it can be set as a reference in the trace line array, then you have the option to ignore this objects by the trace line or you can run through the array and remove it from there (like certain walls or etc). There are possibilities to address a target via it's Tag display then naturally you want to have them in the trace line array, but it obscures the targets behind them. Underrail has a orthographic projection (size remains the same over distance in opposite to perspective view) without the depth perspective ( i assume from the presented pictures and seen videos) therefore both possibilities (3d world space and display screen) for handling of the tags are viable.
You are saying that the Tags are only a visual obscurance instead of being addressing Tags. Yes addressing Tags can be called hitboxes, but if it they are not deliberately placed and used in this form than it is rather misleading.
I have used specially also turned off for both cases, since then even the visual obscurance can be eliminated. What i prefer is just a tag display over the trace line hit and not all over the screen as a solution for this, but that may cause that some objects placed in a level missed while on the other hand it prevents clusterfuck by Tags.
 

urmom

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May 28, 2020
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I generally don't like full 3D in isometric RPGs. 2D is so much less bullshit.

A 2D/3D mix like the Shadowruns is fine.

Silent Storm justifies its use of 3D with added gameplay fidelity.

A fully controllable camera in a game like Homeworld adds a ton though. I wouldn't want to get rid of it there. But there are no floors or walls. Plus in this game if the camera intersects a ship it lets you see through the ship, a nice ergonomic touch.
 
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