Camera controls

I wanted the game camera to have the following features:

• Follow the player character
• Isometric look
• Mouse wheel zoom
• Mouse drag for looking around
• Focus on character on level

For the scripting in the game I am using an amazing Unity addon called Adventure Creator. It has a pretty amazing built in camera controller, but it failed me on few features: Focusing on player character, mouse wheel zoom and dragging for looking around. Luckily programming these features was pretty easy.

For the minimum and maximum zoom ranges I went big. I wanted to allow the player to come down really tight and look at the artwork up-close. I also wanted the player to get a really wide view of the level. More than making the usability better, I feel that generous camera zoom allows the player to enjoy the scenery more.

The game camera view could have been anything, but I was really really inspired by this painting my brother Antti did years and years ago and I have been thinking of the game in ”isometric thoughts” ever since.

Picture © Antti Kemppainen

Ultimately I did not use a real orthographic camera, but went with a perspective camera just placed really far away, The reasoning for this was simply to allow me to add in a depth of field or a fog effect later in the game. The technical price I would have paid for real orthographic rendering was too steep!

The camera feels right at the moment and thus I may not touch it again for a long time.

Share on Facebook

Tweet