SkullDive Dev Diary #2 Introducing : movement and camera system.
Today I will introduce the camera and movement system. If you're up to date of SkullDive's info you will know that since it's a mix of Roguelike games and Adventure ones the camera will need to be comfortable to the eye and attuned with the gameplay. Here is a little image explaining how will SkullDive camera system avoid walls and obstacles and will follow the player.
Camera System
Camera System
SkullDive will have a unique camera system.The camera will follow smoothly the player and will rotate with a little damping at the end to give a cool eye candy effect.A big part of the game will happen inside dungeons so this system is very necessary to create a claustrophobic feeling, else the player can see through walls and stuff(thing that is taking me a lot of work to get finished)The camera rotation is a little different from the current roguelike and adventure games, you can't rotate the camera while you're moving, only if you're at a movable platform or if you're idle to check the environment and look for secrets.What about watching the camera system by yourself?
Camera Rotation Preview ( Pre-Alpha Version)
Camera Obstacle Detection ( Pre-Alpha Version)
Movement System
I know some people will hate the movement system because you can't rotate the camera while you're moving, but I always wanted to make feel the player that is playing a 90s game, like the ones that we used to play at PSX or N64.The movement system will be pretty simple, you press WASD to move, I'm thinking to implement Q and E to make the camera rotate around the player, now is bounded at the arrow keys. You can also jump by pressing the space key. Well I'll let you a couple more Gifs showing this mechanics.
Walk ( Pre-Alpha Version)
Walk(Backside) / Rotate ( Pre-Alpha Version)
Jump ( Pre-Alpha Version)
Well with this I'm finishing the second dev diary!Thanks for reading and hope to see you soon! :)
Awesome! I have mixed feelings about obstacles pushing the camera forward, as I had bad experiences with that in the past - sometimes the constraint really gets in your way and you become frustrated when you can't look at something because all you see is your character's face.
Some games do allow you to move freely by clipping/making geometry transparent, which I feel is better in respects to what I just mentioned but takes away some of the immersiveness, as you can sometimes see the game's "back stage" through walls.
Maybe make a compromise and make thin objects (lamp posts, fences etc) transparent and walls collidable? Or make the character himself transparent directly proportional to how close the camera gets?
Great animations by the way!
Thanks a lot for worrying about the constraint system simplysh!
I'm improving the system at this moment and trying to implement alpha 50% shaders at environment objects except characters and walls. I know that not moving the camera can be a pain in the *** sometimes but if you can rotate freely the camera you will spot fastly the traps along the dungeon.
Again my sincere gratitude for helping me to improve SkullDive .
Hope to see you around soon ^^
Ok dummy me, I just read that you can't move the camera around freely! I think it's perfectly legitimate to have the camera contraint play a role in the gameplay as long as it doesn't act against its purpose.
As for the opacity shader, I'm not sure how you'd do it in Unity but I'm guessing you can treshold your z-depth and use it as a mask?
The way I did it before is shoot a ray from camera to player and reduce the opacity of all the objects intersecting, but that's of course slower and might fail in quite a lot of cases (donut shaped stuff it's easiest case I can think of :D)
Oh, thanks for the fast reply.
I got it running and it is very awesome(little buggy too) but it will be fixed over time ^^
I'm anxious to get the pre-alpha demo done!
Any suggestions for the demo? Want to see something specific?
Thank you so much simplysh!
Personally, what I'm interested in (alpha)demos is the gameplay. Everyone tends to showcase their engine capabilities such as god rays and bloom and god knows what but I don't feel that's effective - because pretty much everyone has those nowadays bundled with an off the shelf engine. It's like saying you're special because you wear pants.
Instead, focus on the core concept idea of your game. Why is it different. What makes it special? Why should I play it? And more importantly: is it fun?
Graphics can be added/polished later, but without a good core idea the game will just be a pretty face with no soul.
I'm sorry to reply this late.
Awesome comment simplysh, everyone this days is showing out how amazing are the graphics, but there's one big problem with that as you say, eye-candy graphics are awesome but they usually tend to ... block the game development and that is the worst thing that can happen to a game in dev, when I'm saying this is cause I've started a lot of projects and tried to make them eye-candy since the 1st alpha and they died... but now I'm working hard to polish first the game play and try to get a (not perfect)stable game, because you can show how perfect are the god rays and how beautiful is the sunset at your game, but it will be that, a sunset, the meaning a game is to play, of course if the game is pretty and eye candy is a pro but what if that can wait till you got the basis of the game done?
Btw, One day left till the pre-alpha test, hope to see you in mate!
Thanks!!
Yeah, and professionals always knew this.
For example, the poeple making Mighty No.9 (spiritual sequel to Megaman series) have been play-testing the gameplay for a good while now without even bothering with graphics. That's the first thing they did. Over and over again. Making sure it's prefect. Because that's what keeps you in the game! You can have fancy landscapes and what not but if the game isn't fun people will soon get bored of it all. Sad that so many developers today still fail to see this.
How do I join the alpha test? is it closed or open?
Hi Simplysh ,I FREAKING Love Mighty No9!!! (Megaman too), they are awesome, and I'm very hyped about the game!
Returning to the alpha test, the pre-alpha test will be open, and the alpha test is W.I.P I dont know if i will make it open or closed, but even if it's closed, you're in ^^
Thanks mate!