The Challenge of Cameras | Game Maker's Toolkit
Choosing a camera for a 3D game is a huge challenge, because cameras can serve gameplay and aesthetic goals at the same time. What happens when these goals clash?
I'm off to Sweden today for a talk and a quick break. But didn't want to go without giving you a new video! Enjoy!
Mark
Comments (5)
Major hard disagree on the criticism of God of War's camera. Forcing the close-up view is almost a mechanic of the combat, and having to make sure you're not caught unaware is as much a skill you have to learn as, say, figuring out the best move for each situation or learning to parry. It felt an intentional design decision and the game's combat felt designed around it.
I loved the camera control in Nier Automata (shown briefly in this video). Lots of auto-camera changing the context between a 3rd person fighter to a side scrolling fighter. Also complemented in part by the context-switching to bullet hell sequences.
A lot of top-down multiplayer games where you have to share the screen does this terribly, especially twin-stick shooters like Helldivers, etc. This sometimes causes you to get stuck in the environment because the camera has zoomed out to the max while the rest of your party has gone off somewhere else. Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 solved this beautifully by turning it into split-screen whenever you went too far away from your companions and then merging the screens back together again when you closed the distance. Thanks for another great video, Mark!
The Lego games used to have that problem but eventually added a split screen, plus the split would rotate to try to accommodate things rather than just be completely vertical or horizontal. It wasn't always executed well, but for the most part it was helpful.
Yes! good topic! Can't wait to watch it after work