Our game Vye King is a third person survival-action game set on an island several hundred years ago. In it your character must explore the island and search for resources to help you survive. Along the way, you will receive additional objectives and find new perils which you must overcome. Our camera will be in the third person perspective, similar to the style God of War or Prince of Persia uses.
The camera will loosely follow your character as you traverse the island. When you can change direction, the camera will follow a spline and rotate around your character to make sure you always see ahead of your character, in whatever direction he is going. Our camera movement will utilize the traditional catmull-rom splines. We plan to make the interpolation as smooth as possible to provide a very fluid and agile feel to the camera movement.
Any indoor sections of our game will feature a similar camera system, but more zoomed in to almost an 'over the shoulder' distance. This will be more effective in areas such as narrow hallways or tunnels, so you can see further ahead of your character. Optionally we are considering an option to switch to first-person perspective in cramped areas. This will be a standard first person camera which points toward where your character is looking.
Additionally we plan to have an in-game cinematic camera. This will function based on various triggers in the game world. The basic idea is that while your character is exploring the island, objectives or enemies will cause the camera to suddenly turn toward it. The amount of rotation is based on the proximity or importance of the event. For example, if a large dangerous enemy is about to ambush you from the side, the camera will rapidly turn right to view both you and where it is about to jump out from. This will help the player avert death and find new objectives.
In cases where it is a minor enemy or objective, the camera will make a much smaller shift to the side. This alerts a player to a nearby event but they will know it is not something extremely dangerous or important. The goal of this added camera feature is to create a more visceral experience, emphasizing the dangerous nature of the character's surroundings. This type of cinematic camera can be seen in games such as Fable or Bioshock Infinite, the difference being our camera will not be activated by a button, but rather intuitively activates based on the respective trigger.
In situations where large creatures do attack the player, we are planning to have small quick-time events which the player must overcome in order to survive. In these situations a zoomed-in cinematic camera will activate, getting very close to the action. This will create a very intense atmosphere, where the player feels like they are right in the game world and connected with what is happening to their character.
The combination of these three (and possible the first-person) cameras achieve to hit a balance between giving the player a comprehensive view of their surroundings while specializing when necessary. The cameras will let them openly explore our large game world while simultaneously providing insight into imminent dangers or interesting areas. Essentially this will all be done with one camera which performs the various behaviours depending on what is happening to the character. We believe this will provide an organic feeling to the game. The best cameras are the ones you don't notice at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment