"Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GDCAs"

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Jaedar
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by Jaedar »

Wait did aemer just say that player-controlled cameras always suck?
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by shadowblade34 »

Yes, yes he did.
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by AEmer »

Jonas wrote:
AEmer wrote:Obviously, player controlled screens/viewports is the worst of all solutions in almost every single game genre
Wh-- what?

Care to elaborate on that?

Cuz... you know. Most RPGs, all strategy games, and every single first- or third-person game with mouse-look...

Perhaps the statement is less obvious. It's currently one of the best for real time strategy games, and real time tactics games.

It's only good for RPG's when they have elements of tactics games to them, or when they require lots of micro management, and they want to cram it all into the same viewport manager...anything turnbased, too.

I'd argue that first person and thirdperson cameras are automated viewports - they snap to what the player character is aiming at. Regardless, if they're not, then my statement isn't true, so for the purposes of my statement they are.

But considering the myriad of genres where that isn't the case...

Well look at this list.

Shooter game
Action game
Action-adventure game
Adventure game
Role-playing game
Simulation game
Sports game
Strategy game

There's only two genres where manual viewport management isn't always one of the, if not outright the, worst options, and that's RPG's and Strategy games...

(this is wikipedias video game genre list btw, drafted to make an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_genres )
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by Jetsetlemming »

The problem with Epic Mickey's camera isn't that it's player controlled. It has some auto-balancing to it. The problem is that it works basically like Mario 64's camera controls on the dpad, and an auto-go behind button, except the camera refuses to clip through walls, and the levels are frequently built with tight walls in your way, with on concessions given to the camera, the auto-correct button is less convenient to hit than R on the n64 pad, Mickey's orientation is harder to get exactly right unlike Mario's because it's more fine (there's more degrees at which Mickey can stand facing, essentially), so even using that pointing the camera properly is still a challenge, even if it CAN fit behind Mickey in a given environment. They're also a stickler about letting you go into a first person view, when this was much easier and smoother in Mario.
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by AEmer »

Right; but even supposing they did an exact copy of mario 64's camera, and more open environments, don't you reckon it would still be a major issue?
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by Jonas »

AEmer wrote:I'd argue that first person and thirdperson cameras are automated viewports - they snap to what the player character is aiming at. Regardless, if they're not, then my statement isn't true, so for the purposes of my statement they are.
Ah, yes I see. No true player-controlled viewport is a good solution ;)
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by AEmer »

Jonas wrote:
AEmer wrote:I'd argue that first person and thirdperson cameras are automated viewports - they snap to what the player character is aiming at. Regardless, if they're not, then my statement isn't true, so for the purposes of my statement they are.
Ah, yes I see. No true player-controlled viewport is a good solution ;)
but, I don't...what?

You're seriously accusing me of inversing the argument for the purposes of not looking like I'm wrong? :?
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by EER »

By "manual viewport management", do you mean like OpenTTD style?
http://images.pbidir.com/screenshots/openttd1.png
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by Jaedar »

AEmer wrote:
Jonas wrote:
AEmer wrote:I'd argue that first person and thirdperson cameras are automated viewports - they snap to what the player character is aiming at. Regardless, if they're not, then my statement isn't true, so for the purposes of my statement they are.
Ah, yes I see. No true player-controlled viewport is a good solution ;)
but, I don't...what?

You're seriously accusing me of inversing the argument for the purposes of not looking like I'm wrong? :?
All player managed viewpoints are bad.
{Player managed viewpoints that are demonstrably not bad}
Those aren't true player controlled viewports.

No true scotsman viewport.
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by AEmer »

I suppose, yes; the viewport is handled completely distinctly from the rest of the gameplay. It does not follow automatically from the way you play the game, but rather must be consciously and continuously managed by the player.

Well consciously is a bit vague; at length, people feel as though they do it automatically, and it's something they'd argue they don't think about...and I'm sure you could probably eventually get that sense from the scheme used for mario, or the one used for epic mickey...

But it's still a viewport solution that delegates much more work to the user than other schemes, so unless there's a really good reason for it, it shouldn't happen.
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by AEmer »

@Jaedar

Yes, I understood that's what Jonas was saying. You haven't added anything with your explanation.

Added:

To be more specific, I wanted to be sure that he meant what he was saying; which is, "Dude, you said something overly general, and now you're just applying artificial, non-obvious constraints on what you were saying so as not to appear wrong", as I understand it.
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by Jonas »

Yes that is what I said.

I think what you mean to say is that viewports that are managed by the player independently of controlling the rest of the game tend to be problematic except in a few (very very large and popular) genres. That's more or less what you just said a couple posts above this.

Which doesn't seem like a very interesting point to make, but is never-the-less true. You could just have said "player-controlled camera in platformers is usually a superbly bad idea."

Games with mouse-look are player-controlled viewports, there's no way around it. In FPS games, the viewport usually is the player character. Sometimes a player model will be attached to the camera (eg. Thief 3, FEAR, Escape from Butcher Bay). Third-person games with mouse-look will tend to map the camera directly to the mouse input and then orient the avatar in relation to what way the camera is facing. I'll grant you that the relationship isn't always that clear cut however, especially on a gamepad where the camera tends to be on the right stick and the avatar movement on the left stick, and both inputs are sometimes contextual to each other (eg. Gears of War: hold down the A button to roadie-run and your camera is now locked behind your avatar).
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by AEmer »

But I don't believe I'm changing my initial statement; I'm not actually adding anything to it that isn't already there.
Jonas wrote:I think what you mean to say is that viewports that are managed by the player independently of controlling the rest of the game tend to be problematic except in a few (very very large and popular) genres.
I think that's what I wrote too. From a game engine standpoint, lets take counter strike: The viewport is snapped onto the player characters position and orientation. It could easily not be attached to the player characters position and orientation. Counter strike could have a static camera, and indeed the killcams and spectator cameras illustrate just how that could work. In fact, full control over the viewport would be a great asset: You could peek around a corner without having to expose your character...assuming, of course, you could snap the viewport back to your characters perspective as soon as the action was about to commence.

It should also be apparent that I used the words controlled and managed interchangeably in my post; it would seem strange to suggest that the player manages the viewport in counterstrike, as though he needs to babysit it the way epic mickey requires it. It's not the same thing at all, I think that's obvious from the context.

And just to prove that I had originally considered this, in the post I draw forward the example of the character-locked viewport in 2d platformers. By the same arguments you just used for 3d games, you could reason that really, 2d character centered games are another example of a player controlled viewport. After all, when you move right, it goes right, when you go left, the viewport goes left, and when you jump, the viewport jumps! And the viewport takes readouts directly from the human interface device too...But despite this fact, I considered it a distinct viewport type from the player managed / player controlled viewports I alluded to.

This is my issue with you right now. You're not saying I was imprecise, which I'll gladly take responsibility for. You're saying I want to change what I said so as not to be wrong. That's rude, it's wrong, and I don't understand why you're doing it.
Which doesn't seem like a very interesting point to make, but is never-the-less true.
I didn't say it was interesting; the point of the post was, the subject of viewports has a level of depth, I think they actually considered the solution and were aware of the problems, and persisted in making a mistake in their choice they underestimated genre conventions.

But then someone didn't understand what I was saying, then I elaborated, then I got told off for changing my statement without being willing to admit it.
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by Jonas »

I didn't tell you off. You can take your martyrdom and shove it, I have no patience for that today.
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Re: "Warren Spector getting Lifetime Achievement award at GD

Post by DDL »

What if I suggested that player controlled viewports were sexist?

*runs away*
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