!POLL!: Interface/Camera Perspective

Discussions about the look and feel of Orxonox.

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what interface do you prefer?

interface a)
7
78%
interface b) v2
2
22%
 
Total votes: 9

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Michel
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!POLL!: Interface/Camera Perspective

Post by Michel » Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:09 pm

Hlo fellas..

I'm about to make some basic decision and since it is quite crucial for the gameplay of Orxonox i found you should be able to participate in this decision. After implementing the camera perspective and movements of the ship (read more about it in my Developer's Journal) it appeared that there are also some inconveniences about the 3d- perspective in a vertical scroller. namely the ship looks a bit turned- aside when it's at the screen-border because of the perspective view of the camera. this is completely normal for a shooter for instance but in a vertical scroller it leads to an effect that the player may not be used to. here some Screenshot
to illustrate the problem.
I discussed this with patrick and the only solution we came up so far is to limit the movement space to evite the most extreme perspective effect at the borders. the interface would then be implemented somehow like this:
Interface b)
While the approach until now would feature a semi-transparent HUD layed over the action, illustrated by the following picture (thanks alot to nico!):
Interface a)


Also I would be very glad on some input, how I could also solve this problem. Especially I wonder, whether I couldn't just tweak the camera settings a bit to avoid this effect... any OGL-cracks around here? The other solution would be to let the player move on a curved surface.. but there I would see also a lot of problems, regarding the leveldesign. Imagine you move on a curved surface and arrive at the non-curved space-station.. Well... I guess that would look a bit strange. Or if there will be ground- levels implemented: It will get quite difficult for the level designer if they-re not just making a background but a level that actually interacts with the player (most simple example: collision).
Any thoughts on this?

UPDATE:
Interface POLL Revision 2:

Interface a) v2
Explanation: the player's movement is restricted to about one half of the width in the center of the screen. At the right- and left- side of the screen there are semi-transparent interface- elements.
Advantage: This perspective allows to zoom out more and lets the player see more of what lies ahead.
Disadvantage: The player may feel a bit restricted in his movement.

Interface b)
Explanation: the player can use the whole screen for his movement. the HUD is split over the whole screen and has to be kept small and with highly transparent colors so as not to interfere with the sight on the enemies.
Last edited by Michel on Tue Dec 12, 2006 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

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patrick
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Post by patrick » Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:20 pm

thx for this poll and the nice documentation! I agree, that it's somehow looking very strange at first sight. But I think we should keep this "extra-realism" instead of cutting down our ideas.

I therefore suggest to keep on going, ignoring this strange look and see how players will react to this.

What do the others think about this? (you are also able to download the playability branche and check out the control for yourself)

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Post by nicolasc » Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:58 pm

My HUD concept was primary for shoot'em up... I think, some improvement can be done, just by minimizing (flatten them towards the edge) the elements and moving all important stuff to the bottom (or top if you like)... I'll post another draft this weekend.

cheers
nico

PS. I haven't voted yet...
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lieni
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Post by lieni » Sat Dec 09, 2006 5:08 pm

hey, i think the problem could be solved (if i understood everything right) by using orthogonal projection instead of perspective projection (see http://wiki.delphigl.com/index.php/Tuto ... Projektion). Perhaps changing the projection should also be done by the camera class.

Like like both huds, nicolas' hud for the shoot em up part and the other is more old school style (as it was usually in vertical scrollers). I just wonder if it'd be confusing it we used style b for the 2d part and style a for the 3d view? But how to realize the changing? (fade out the hud and fade in a new one after the camera changed the perspective?)

i hope i could help a lil bit
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x3n
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Post by x3n » Sat Dec 09, 2006 5:46 pm

well, there are two things i have to say:

1) the strange perspective can be avoided by increasing the distance between ship and camera (zooming out) and decreasing the fov (field of view, the viewing angle) to something < 90 degree. the effect is like viewing trough a spy-glass: you are far away, but you have the same field of view as if you are close to the szene.
it's a bit like orthogonal projection, but much less drastic.

2) but anyway, the hud should be more like interface b, because in a vertical scroller its important to see the enemies early, otherwise you have no chance to react. if you choose interface a, you should tilt the camera, so we have a bigger area on the screen.


remark on point 1: the fov is much to high anyway, this should be changed before doing basic things like hardcoding the borders of the area.
Last edited by x3n on Sat Dec 09, 2006 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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lieni
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Post by lieni » Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:03 pm

ok, yes, thats a better solution. if we useed the orthogonal projection the consequences would be that you couldnt make asteroids or other space ships look farer away (without scaling them down in the xml file or somewhere else).
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Post by Marc » Sat Dec 09, 2006 9:59 pm

Actually I don't see why interface a should prevent anyone from seeing the enemy early. If a nice alpha based graphic is used, thats not that much of a problem.

My main problem with interface b is that it really looks like one of those 20 year old shoot'em ups that needed to work like this because the pure processing and drawing power did not allow alpha based interfaces which prevented that those were simple overlays.

One thing I thought of was "Drop shield from UI" to make interface a a little more light weight as well as more intuitive.

Why actually use a Shield UI if you could make it far easier to find and understand by avisual represention "ingame". By ingame I mean: Just put the shield around the ship. At first it might be green, the more damaged it is the more it will become red and the smaller it is.
A similar approach could be used for the hull.

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x3n
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Post by x3n » Sat Dec 09, 2006 11:18 pm

Marc wrote:Actually I don't see why interface a should prevent anyone from seeing the enemy early.
it's all relative ;)
if whe have a smaller area, the height is - relatively - higher than with a broad area.

Code: Select all

broad area:
| . . . . |
| . . . . | => 12 game elements on the screen
| . . . . |


small area:
  |::::|
  |::::| => 24 game elements on the screen
  |::::|
wich means: if the area fills only 50% of the screen, the height is relatively 200% and we see more game elements (enemies, meteors, ...)

that's why you never see tetris in wide-screen format ;)

i hope you understand what i mean.

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x3n
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Post by x3n » Sat Dec 09, 2006 11:23 pm

My main problem with interface b is that it really looks like one of those 20 year old shoot'em ups
yes, that's true.

one possibility would be, that we display a broad area, put semitransparent interfaces on both borders and restrict the player to the area between the interfaces. thus we have the whole screen filled AND we have an area with height > width :)

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New draft

Post by nicolasc » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:02 am

I am not quite happy with it... probably because I changed my mind while drawing.

Image

For some reason this doesn't feel right. I don't mind being limited at bottom and top, but the left and right....
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Sam
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Post by Sam » Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:19 pm

I don't think the effect is bad enough that the player is bothered by it. But I think he WOULD be bothered by a half-screen view. In a fast paced vertical scroller, the action should be in the middle, and the HUD either on both sides, which I would prefer because of the aforementioned farsight problem, or on the bottom. But a huge bar on the side like option b would bother me for sure. That's for strategy games where you need lots of options right next to each other.
But again, I think you should leave it as is. I actually sort of like the 3D effect. If we wanted it orthographic, we could just use Gimp for modeling purposes, and forget 3D exept for the background.
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Michel
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Post by Michel » Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:51 pm

Hi all. Thanks alot for all the good input. Sry for not replying, somehow the e-mail notification didn't work.

@x3n: Thanks for this. I thought exactly about a solution like that. i'm going to try this out next week. I agree that orthogonal projection wouldn't make much sense, since we really want a 3d-game and an orthogonal projection in combination with the top-down-view looks exactly like one of these old-school 2d-shoot'em-ups.

@marc: I agree with x3n that interface a) actually lets the player see less of his space ahead. What do you mean by 'alpha based graphic' ? The radar? I also see though, that interface b) looks too much old-schoolish, I thought the same thing when I drew it.

@nicolasc: Thanks again for the nice work. i quite like x3n's idea of a semitransparent interface like you drew it. What I see as a problem though, is to use an imaginative wall to restrict the player's movement. I think that would feel quite artificial. hmm..

While thinking about this I came up with an idea how to 'sell' the restricted area of movement to the player

The scenario of our singleplayer level goes like this: Our hero is on a secret mission deep inside the enemy territory. Everywhere there are huge and hidden battleships (noxons have invented a cloaking-technology for big ships) with deadly long-distance lasers that cause instant death to anyone on their radar screens. What comes in handy: In the area there is an interstellar gas cloud that generates huge interferences with any radar so that who's inside is save from their lasers. Of course the noxons know this and send regular patrols into that cloud (->fresh meat for the player's cannons). The goal will be to get on the other side of the cloud behind the enemies armada or sthg like that. So there are not just invisible walls: it's just that when the player tries to escape the cloud he will face certain death from a laser that hits him from somewhere outside the visible picture.

IMPORTANT: since there has come up quite a new idea about how to implement the interface I guess we have to revote on it. interface b) is obviously not going to win the race (I guess) so I'll put nicolasc's version as the second option instead. Please give your vote there once more.
Last edited by Michel on Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

nicolasc
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Post by nicolasc » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:08 pm

it's just that when the player tries to escape the cloud he will face certain death from a laser that hits him from somewhere outside the visible picture.
Reminds me of G-Nome... when ever you tried to leave the area, you got a 10 sec warning before being shot by an orbit ion gun...
I suggest to give the player some warning (i.e a few seconds, or just mention it in the briefing). But as such, it sound resonable

cheers
nico
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Post by bensch » Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:59 am

Wouldn't it also be possible to let the camera flow with the player for just a bit?
so if you fly to the left, the camera follows half to the left, until a fixed maximum distance is reached??

like this a level can be designed in a way, that is playable more than once, and you can discover more new things...

Many of the old games (incliding starfox) had this, and it really invites to replay the level.

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Post by Marc » Mon Dec 11, 2006 9:52 pm

By alpha based I mean like the current elements just with an even lower alpha: You see whats going on behind the UI element, it is not taking your attention.

Another point is that there is most likely no action at the bottom where the ships would be behind the UI, at least I hope so because there are only few things that are more annoying than ships that kill you without giving you a chance to kill them.
To me it seems more likely that you are attacked at 45 degree (front as 0) than at 135 degree ...

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