50 Game Camera Mistakes: 1: Using a dynamic camera when another approach would work. 2: Designing levels and camera behaviors that don't match. 3: Using global coordinates or quaternions to persist camera state. 4: Using a default camera distance that's likely to break line-of-sight. 5: Allowing obstacles to break line-of-sight from the side. 6: Pushing the camera away from an obstacle while the player is trying to swing the camera towards it. 7: Letting the player push the camera inside an obstacle. 8: Letting independent forces compete to push the camera. 9: Excessively moving the camera to prevent unimportant items from breaking line-of-sight. 10: Letting the camera intersect narrow columns. 11: Interpreting a hill as a wall to be avoided. 12: Swinging the camera sideways when occluders come from behind. 13: Letting the camera's near-clipping-plane intersect the avatar. 14: Using the same camera distance for all angles. 15: Using the same field-of-view for worm's eye angles and standard angles. 16: Shifting pitch, distance, and field-of-view independently. 17: Not cutting when the avatar passes through opaque objects. 18: Letting cuts remap directional controls. 19: Breaking the player's sense of direction. 20: Violating the 180 degree rule. 21: Focusing only on the avatar. 22: Relying on players to control the camera all the time. 23: Leaving the camera yaw alone while the player is running. 24: Making it hard to judge distances, 25: Looking straight ahead as the avatar approaches a cliff. 26. Keeping the camera level when the avatar is running on a slope. 27. Misusing the "Rule of thirds". 28. Using the same logic for ground and air motion. 29. Relying entirely on procedural camera behaviors. 30. Letting players make themselves lost and confused. 31. Rotating excessively to look at nearby targets. 32. Translating to look at distance targets. 33. Letting the avatar's own body occlude targets ahead. 34. Giving the player control over the camera, and then taking it away. 35. Immediately applying a camera hint after the player finished turning the camera to look at something. 36. Not letting experts explore. 37. Not providing inverted controls. 38. Responding to accidental controller input. 39. Using linear sensitivity. 40. Letting the camera pivot drift too far. 41. Using a too small field-of-view. 42. Rapidly shifting field-of-view. 43. Excessively shaking the camera. 44. Bouncing the camera with the avatar's walk cycle. 45. Translating or rotating up and down when the avatar jumps. 46. Rapidly transitioning to a new camera position. 47. Maintaining pitch speed until hitting the pitch limit. 48. Developing for the Oculus Rift as the primary camera method. 49. Testing with a narrow demographic. 50. Writing a general "constraint solver" that optimizes for the camera.
It's funny he says "We only notice cameras when they're bad" but I literally remember moments of Journey's camera where I was like "Look how it zooms behind the player when they go into a small space!" and "Oh my gosh it zoomed out to show me so much of the environment this is so pretty." So good.
This is what happens when you try to be an "Absolute right" or "This is all sound and sane advice" guide to something. While the advice they give is "useful" they are blind to the half the audience that notices when it is good. To an entire set of opinions... They are blind to the situations where the advice... ruins games.
You aren't the usual gamer though, you obviously have an interest in game design since you're watching an hour long GDC presentation on cameras. Of course you're going to appreciate the subtle details of a game since you have an eye for it. I am the same way but most people are not this way.
@@getgle Depends on the game, not the gamer. Most games have cameras because they are required to show the player the world, and that's all there is to it. They just need the camera to work and not be intrusive. Other games use the camera as a part of the experience. Things like the dolly zoom in Max Payne, or the Drunk Cam in GTA. I don't care who you are - if you play those games, you will notice those things, because that's the point.
Rewatching this again, just got to number 23. It seems too many people have taken this advice - it’s one of the most annoying camera features! I understand that it has a reason, but I actually like looking around while I’m running places, and many cameras can’t just go “oh, this guy’s holding the camera, let’s stop moving it” they just force it behind my character and I have to hold it in place. Which sucks and is often incredibly jerky (see the previous number about preventing jerky camera). Two games that I play a lot, ffxiv and the Witcher iii, both have this feature. It’s drastically worse in the Witcher. In xiv, if you hold the camera consistently, even as it tries to reset itself, it will hold steady and be a smooth camera to watch, and even as it does trail behind, it still doesn’t force an angle on you. In the Witcher, the camera constantly bounces if you try this. It’s a massive shame, cause I’d really love to look at the sunset as I’m galloping over some hills, instead of just the ground in front of me. The ground is a pile of dirt. Please let me look at your gorgeous game.
Really surprised to read this. For me, I have quite opposite, I want to look directly at the surface I'm running, because it is not smooth in general, so I hate when the camera behaves 'or look you need to see what's forward on you'. That was particulary annoying in Cyberpunk when I want to camera look upside down to the ground when driving. But, after all we speaking about same thing - 'don't touch my camera!'
I was hoping someone would mention this. It gives me a headache when the game keeps slapping me in the face for daring to try and have control over where I'm looking. Why on earth can the player not be trusted look where he wants while moving?
genshin impact also does this, not only for rotation but also pitch. one of the worst game cameras I've experienced. at least you can turn this off for pitch. another problem is also the inconsistency, because it's different depending on the movement type
This guy: makes a presentation giving game developers tips on how to approach 3D game design. Me, who studies psychology, at 3:10 A.M. on a tuesday: interesting.
Jack of all trades, master of none, often times better than a master of one. The wider your knowledge base, the more you can leverage. 20 min to absorb what took someone years of study and effort to learn? Worth it
@@enzoc123-x3o maybe this is a subconscious thing, but a camera's design has a lot to do with how a player perceives a game, giving it a psychological spin, too
49:00 FOV related motion sickness in first person perspective games, is dependant on how much of your actual vision is taken up by the screen, hence why console games where the TV is usually further than a monitor often go below 90° but PC games where the screen takes up more of your field of view can go above 140°.
On console it's more or less only for optimisation. The lower the FoV the less stuff that needs to be rendered. As far as distance to the screen goes, there's a golden rule that is assumed. The distance from 2 opposite corners of the screen is the distance you should sit at for the optimal viewing experience. So if your screen is 24" then you should sit at around 24" away from your screen. If people choose to sit closer or further away, that's their own decision. But as a general rule of thumb, screen size = viewing distance.
the number of people here that are saying 'i prefer having 100% control of my camera' are either A) only thinking about certain genres where what he is saying is less applicable (e.g. first person games) or B) have no idea how much the games where they THINK they have full control actually involves carefully crafted work to stop them from screwing up the camera.
I agree. I'm here because in my prototype you have full control of the camera, however, it's a 3rd person real time strategy game and I feel like messing with the camera while I'm trying to command units is annoying and taking away from the experience. It was originally going to be a side scroller (think beat 'em up style with horizontal and vertical movement) with a fixed camera but I wanted exploration in the game so I decided to make it full 3D.
I was looking at the example with BG&E and thinking "oh my, how much better felt that than any camera trying to do things I never asked it to do". It sounds like a nice idea to predict where the player would want the camera to be, but the reverse side of this idea is that it forces the player to constantly predict what the camera is predicting about him. And it bothers me as a player much, MUCH more than some jerkiness that I generate by myself. It is like with driving a car and being a passenger - this kind jerks look bad from aside, but when its only you who controls them, your mind and perception are ready to them and you easily ignore it. Much easier task for the brain than to predict camera predictions.
if you need to take control away from the player in terms of camera..you are failing as a designer. great Designer naturally used the world it self to draw the player eyes.
You see this a lot in "2.5D" games and I think it works well; however I'd prefer making the object semi-transparent instead of the character 'shining through' - gives a better visual representation of where the character is on the floor behind the object.
I remember being mind blown as a child when I realised the characters in my Harry Potter game always were in the middle of the screen. I tried so hard to get them away from the middle.
The question at the end about a "master setting" for attempting to eliminate simulation sickness has a pretty simple answer; Just put individual options underneath one master option. That way you could turn "Simulation Sickness Reduction" on, and then turn back on any option that you think you can deal with.
+Theo Laanstra That could be part of the problem : Designers, by their nature, want to Design a "Solution" - it's their process...When, like you say, the player would (most likely, most of the time) be best served with "Options" - to customise/tailor their *own* experience.
@@zetetick395 Hahahaha! That's hilarious. Now let's talk about how people *actually* work. People will play your game, get sick, then quit and get their refund without ever taking a look at the options. Even if you have some glaring popup which points out the options, they will either: #1. Forget, #2. Mash "A" past it without reading it, #3. Hop onto your Twitter and call you a lazy fucking asshole for making them "design your game for you". THAT is why we want a solution.
@@21coute Yeah, I plan for my game to hopefully reduce this issue by having a "First time boot up routine", where it puts the camera in these different scenarios known to potentially cause Simulation Sickness, and give you the option to turn the effect off, down, or up It'd be skippable, and the settings could be changed manually at any time. It's not perfect, but I feel it's as close as you can get to solving that issue
I agree with some of these and really disagree with others. Just as a player of games, I feel like the player should be 90% in control of the camera. There's been a few times in third-person games where I've really wanted to look closely at a terrain detail or get close to something, but the automatic camera says "no" and so I can't. I actually thought Ocarina of Time's camera was fine, not even remotely comparable to SM64's. I first played it as an adult, so no nostalgia.
I know. It's part of the controls and moving the player with the camera is as important as moving the playing in general. I love it in Rayman 3 as you know how and when it will turn and move when you walk in a specific direction
That's a preference, these aren't catch all. In general I think these are good. They're not the best option for everyone, but it prevents bad camera and that's the point of this presentation.
@@fishbonesinc Religion which tells stories about being kind to others and sends you to hell if you're cruel to others... has holy crusades, hate to non-believers, murder. History has shown this countless times. Believing it prevents bad when it has good intentions just creates infinitely more bad and blindness.
I really like how this talk is structured. He walks you through it layer above layer of complexity that should go into consideration while designing a camera in a game with similar mechanics.
Worst mistake of Sonic games (or most of them) is giving incentives for you to go fast and once you go out of the screen punishing you by placing a robot/trap in your way. If that's to happen, why not hint the player before? Give the player a fair chance of dodging, counter this! It could even become part of the fun.
Also, this has kind of highlighted some things I always knew were wrong with classic games but could never define. Things I felt were somehow off, were failings in the camera dynamics.
5 years later, hello from the future lol, yes absolutely agree. Lately I've been revisiting games from my childhood, one being 3D platformer Croc on PS1, and 99% of the issues with that game are directly camera related, as is the same for heaps of other early 3d games, namely platformers.
There needs to be an FPS/Keyboard+Mouse edition of this, although it might be a bit shorter. Things that come to my mind are: - Never touch the player's camera angles: Unlike #22 suggests, K+M players are perfectly capable of rubbing their belly and patting their head at the same time. Imagine you walk on the streets while looking to the side at some show windows, and there's someone walking behind you who constantly grabs you head and slowly turns it into walking direction or some point-of-non-interest. - Don't overdo fancy shader effects: Chromatic abberation is a pest: In the real world, you don't notice with your eyes, only through cheap or distorting lenses of a camera, binoculars etc., likewise overemphasizing fog, rain, blur, bloom and hdr to a "show off"-level looks cool the first few minutes but tends to be pretty distracting or annoying once it wears off. - Have a user-configurable FOV setting! It's 2020, and there's still games who don't have it. If you port a console game to PC, remember that PC-gamers sitting much closer to their screens. Fixed Vertical-FOV is not a solution, and if you need to restrict a player's vision then you're doing it wrong. - Have an option to invert Y-axis.
Never touch a player's camera angle means you can't show stuff like an object collapsing for example, lets say you walk into a room and the point of interest that is about to collapse does everything right to draw attention to it... this means a savvy player explores the room and looks away from it for secrets and rewards. They look back in the center of the room after a noise... and don't notice the object collapsed. You'd grab and turn someone's head to show them the tsunami is coming.
You're first suggestion is a major reason for my hatred of the Tomb Raider reboot. I hate trying to look at something only for the camera to be pulled away from me. Never bothered me on a controller (on my PS2), but on KB+M? It's rage inducing.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 I think it was addressed towards times, when player does not need to see something important but camera keeps rotating towards movement direction or something
@@prycenewberg3976 A hypothetical force feedback mouse might improve this. If you’re using a stick and something tugs on your camera a little, you can easily balance that tug. If you’re using a mouse instead, it feels as if your view is slipping. If you try to counter it, you quickly run out of space and have to pick it up. That’s the worst. If your mouse had force feedback and the camera acted through that instead, the link between mouse and camera movement would be preserved. You’d feel it and you could hold it in place if you wanted. That’s assuming I can’t just sort myself out without such frills.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 Hell no. If your player's attention is diverted away from your big blockbuster moment, your level design is wrong, NOT your camera. I cannot overstate how much I hate games that take control of my camera to show me something "cool".
No actually, it's a terrible video. He's just describing ways to work around bad rendering. In truth, the camera is not physical, and is free to move through and see through objects. I admit that making the renderer work this way is not easy, but this is the *right* way to handle a camera This talk is merely the *cheap* way to do it. Edit: #15 and on return to reasonableness, but not because any of those things are *mistakes* per se, but because his solutions are cinematic and beautiful. I'm guessing he wanted his camera to be cinematic, and that's a wonderful choise. But few games make that choice.
Have you actually tested doing a camera that way? Because personally I've played/playtested a couple things where the camera *can* go inside objects, and it just ends up feeling very weird to me that I'm looking from inside an object but not seeing it. So perhaps too many people share my reaction, and people who've actually tried it have noticed that (if it's the case)?
Jess Kay I've played a few games that way, it was quite nice. There was no dicomfort, since the camera always goes where you expect and shows what you need.
Fair enough, I'm not at all saying my reaction is universal, but it's definitely not something that feels comfortable to everyone. So in light of that I still don't think it's just a lazy decision.
@@Asdayasman Nope I meant #9. Although Minecraft might have changed in 4 years, LOL to make #33 even more relevant than it was. ^^; Back then it's #33-ish problems all were so extreme, jumping in and out of your head and all this other stuff that I couldn't even call it that one. XD
When someone points out that the camera designer for TGC's Journey made this video and that TGC's successor game Sky breaks, like, at least half of these rules
I generally like games that let me control the camera. I tend to be more frustrated when the games take away control. There's one section in Assassin's Creed II (I think, although it could be a later game) where you're supposed to use a backward eject jump of some kind to climb up a series of platforms, and they put the camera in a position where judging distances is harder, and won't let you change it because they feel it's the best angle. The way the move you're required to use "works" doesn't require you to judge distances, but it's still grating because it feels awkward to be forced to look at it from a perspective where you can't do so. Granted, maybe it's just because I'm so used to having full control from the N64 days, but the truth is that I think there's rarely (if ever) a good excuse from taking camera control away from the gamer unless you're doing a cutscene. Keep it from clipping into walls and such, and I'll take it from there, leave me alone. LOL. There is such a thing as trying too hard to make the camera behave in an ideal fashion and ultimately making the player feel "stuck" with someone else's camera preferences. Rarely would two directors shoot a scene the same way. So naturally, gamers may well disagree with a camera angle too. The problem is, aside from obvious stuff like having good collision detection and not clipping, a lot of this stuff is subjective, and what one person likes may not be what another likes.
all of the journey footage looked pretty incredible, a lot of the points were focused on not confusing the player & communicating boundaries or trajectories, very little was subjective (like rule of 3rds)
I've always found the Rocket Leauge camera difficult despite the wealth of options. There was never an in between for the front facing view of the car or toggle to tracking the ball and it made it really difficult to transition control from ground to air. I wish there was a dynamic option that would make it easier to control the car in a complex ariel whilst also targeting the ball. Maybe I'm too lazy to teach my brain to do the opposite when my car is backward/upside down etc, but I never had a problem doing acrobatics whilst tracking objects accurately in a dogfighting game such as Warhawk.
Journey is the one game that allows me to play without experiencing simulation sickness. There are other games that offer intense beauty and remarkable graceful control of the avatar (i.e., ABZU, BOUND), but I am unable to play those games but for 5 minutes at a time before having to stop because simulation sickness begins to set in. Thank you John Nesky for your sensitivity to this area of game play. Journey is a daily part of my life since 2012!
18# drives me nuts, I hate when I'm entering a room and because I'm still pressing a direction to enter suddenly turns into the same direction to exit and I end up exiting the room again. Is maddening.
Yeah, a good rule of thumb is to maintain the direction of motion from before the cut until the player chooses a new direction for themselves. It takes the brain a moment to process the new environmental layout.
Could you implement another camera, so you can record what the first camera is doing to avoid obstacles? Would love to see that. What about a chain of 10 camera's chasing each other?
+Chris Koss What do you mean? How would more cameras solve any of the obstacle avoidance problems for the first camera? And which of those cameras would actually render to screen? It would always be only one of them anyway, so I don't see the point of having more cameras, when you can just use raycasting and spherecasting to detect obstacles and such.
+Rafał Dorsz yep! I think if you could get a chain of ~10 of them you'd see some really interesting emergent behavior as some movements could be amplified in fun, non intuitive ways as you go down the chain.
Frist of all, this video is extremely insightful and I actually like the simple presentation style. but just funny that I feel Journey is one of the most frustrating games I have ever tried in terms of camera control. I have to fight the camera constantly.
About # 22 and #23, I prefer having the option. So if I take control of the camera, the behaviour of the camera shouldn't interfer. It's the camera artist responsability to take back control of the camera the smoothest way possible. It can be based on a delay time after I release the camera stick, based on a specific relative camera angle with its target or an when I click on a button like R3 to reset the camera to its default position. But both option must be supported so all players can have a great time.
+nossfu Agreed, especially on PC where the mouse can quickly and easily move the camera. I found the automatic camera in the Tomb Raider reboot to be a huge problem.
+nossfu He touches on that with #35. I agree entirely - any time a game takes obvious and/or immediate control over my camera, it's annoying at best, disorienting and nauseating at worst.
Feels to me a lot of cases could simply be avoided by making whatever is between the camera and the avatar semi-transparent. If there is an object, still show it transparent. If someone runs through something make it transparent so the camera can see behind it. Seems way simpler than moving the camera around itself (which somewhat violates the players intend and gets annoying if the camera is working against the intend).
This is the approach I've seen, especially in 3D dynamic camera Mario titles. I think there's not a one-size-fits-all solution though because every game has different player navigation and tone needs
A great presentation. But for the first time in my life, I appreciate that Public Speaking course I had to take in college. The prof would tell us how many times we said 'ummm...' in a 3-minute talk, and at the beginning of the quarter everyone's "umm count' was in the hundreds. Ten weeks of hearing the prof's little clicker count off every time he heard "umm" was all it took to make most of the class stop saying it entirely.
Yup. Vocalized pauses are so easy to get rid of once someone points them out. Beforehand, you don't even notice you're doing it! I pretty much never say "um" anymore, but I do still have a "like" problem!
I now hate you, I didn't notice at all until I read the comment but now, its excruciating! It's like after every uuurm..three uuurm words. uuurm! -_- :P
What makes me feel sick is when I'm controlling a first person view, then suddenly the 'camera' flies out of my control into a cut-scene. 'Thief' is a good example of this problem - I thought I had control over my eyes, but no, apparently they are a camera flying about the place. Player comfort sacrificed for artistic camera play - sickening, but typical.
+David Hoskins I'm envisioning this as I wonder what made them chose that approach over just cutting to an establishing shot from a third person view, too - choosing a neutral angle when you walk into the room, cut to and hold that for a beat, and going from there...
I didn't realize how much I've taken for granted that the devs know what they're doing when it comes to what they want the player to see. Even the most minute details. I am just here from the video on 'negative spaces' and this as well confirms quite well what's going on. I've had some idea, but not to this extent. I definitely know it happens in movies, but I always feel those are more controllable environments than gaming ones. This is great.
This is actually a brilliant video/lecture. I want to hear the 50 that were cut! I make film and I recognise some of the concepts described from cinematography but I also learned some new things here. Some concepts that will inform future creative projects. Thanks.
In some SM64 stages and pretty much all SM64 romhacks, we use a fixed-angle camera that does not see through walls, but has a limited distance similar to the dynamic camera. Best of both worlds imo, as this camera is much easier to make and more reliable to use, but still allows for moderate amounts of obstruction in the player's view without actually obscuring the gameplay. Sketchup's "perspective" view works in a similar way I think
The main thing we don't care about at all in those games is 14:54. If the camera can rest out of bounds, let it and make it look good. That is what we have found to offer the best player experience (we also tried moving the camera closer and players hate it)
#18( and #20) was *so* annoying in Super Mario 64. Going through the door, trying to move forward, but the camera changes so that your forward stick movement goes back through the door...
In #41 he first said larger FoV makes everything feel slower, while in #42 reminded us that FoV is increased while boosting in racing games. Other than that, really a great video, got a bunch of useful tips that I'll definitely apply to my game as soon as possible, like increasing the distance of the camera when looking from the top.
like, in Sonic Unleashed for example, the FoV is actually increased to increase the sense of speed. in games where the FoV is reduced when going fast, it's likely so you can see more things ahead of you and react to things around you faster. like how in some 2D platformers the camera zooms out when going fast. however increased FoV does make greater sense of speed. at least I think
I wish he had emphasized that in m&kb controlled games the player is always in control even when in third person, as a result the camera should never rotate on its own (fov and distance adjustment is usually fine). So many controller games suffer from terrible m&kb controls because of this, its especially tragic in otherwise fantastic games like dark souls and monster hunter. Imagine if in an fps your camera could pivot 180 degrees in an instant because it thinks the enemy behind you is what you want to be looking at. Thats how disorientating a lot of these controller titles cameras are on m&kb.
@@RedNayl That is a common sentiment sure but only because of the terrible m&kb ports. Dark Souls 2 was the worst adding nearly a full second of input lag to attacks and blocks when done with a mouse.
@@RedNayl After Capcom patched the camera controls for the PC port of Monster Hunter World (removing the awkward acceleration and maximum camera speed), it became just as good as controller and arguably better for the ranged weapons that could be played like any other 3rd person shooter. I've played the game with both control schemes and I honestly prefer M&KB because (at least for the most part) they fixed the camera issues that would have necessitated me to play it with a controller in the first place.
He called 3D World a "respected sequel" to Mario 64. A lot of people would strongly disagree with that. It's not just the cameras that are different, they have completely different game design formulas that their respective camera systems suit better; yes 3D World is respected but no one considers 3D World to be a Mario 64 sequel. And the implication about 3D World's fixed camera being a better camera system for that type of game than Mario 64, again assuming 3D World is basically similar to Mario 64 when it's not, kinda didn't age well when Mario Odyssey came out and returned to a dynamic camera lol. Not hating on the video, I think overall it's great, but that specific comparison is a little bit fallacious and misleading, and seems to show a bit of a misunderstanding of the different 3D Marios, and it's a bit funny that for 3D Mario it didn't age that well when Odyssey came around.
They needed this talk back in the PS1 era of camera design, rofl... Some of the worst examples I can think of poor camera choices, though they were struggling with the advent of 3D gaming, yes, yes, I'm aware. The fact still remains however that there were some terribly poor camera choices back then, lol.
+Deathbrewer Listen man, you should stop your harsh criticism of older games and understand that they were struggling with the advent of 3D gaming. lol :)
The worst is when the camera and the controls become unsynched. In Prince of Persia Sands of Time, an otherwise brilliantly cinematic game, there was a place where you run along the wall and jump over a lot of spikes to get into a tunnel. The camera, in a 3/4 side view, would suddenly torque around to follow you into the tunnel, spinning 90°. But the controls stayed the same, suddenly switching from "right = forward" to "right = fall to your death in a pit of spikes". If you landed the jump there was a save point; if you didn't land the jump you went back to the previous save point, about 5 minutes back. I must have done that stretch a dozen times before *un*-training my reflexes enough to avoid the spikes. *Consistency* is key.
On camera controls, when exact camera angle is important, make it so the player can dynamically adjust the speed at which the camera changes. For PC, the mouse is a good control (but keyboard only alternatives should be available, like pressing shift to slow down the speed). On consoles, I personally would like to see use of the analog triggers to dynamically adjust camera speed instead of relying purely on a control stick.
#37 is a massive one for me! I need to play inverted controls (full inversion when focusing on the character and y-inversion when aiming away from the character) it baffles me why there are so many games that don't do this. You can make a game but if you don't let e invert the controls to how it feels natural for me then everything in the game is going to be eclipsed by how its such a struggle to just look at things. Also, I never understood why inverted is called "inverted"... If you press "up" on the analogue stick then the camera would go up above the characters head
+akawhut But if the "image" goes up, and your view of the image stays the same, the effect on the screen is the "camera" moves down. You could argue the correlation either way - for example, sliding your finger down on a phone screen moves the "camera" upwards. This comes naturally to us because it's like sliding a piece of paper. I don't use inverted, but I'm pretty sure the primary intuition is that your controls on the camera are as if the analog stick is attached to the back of the player's head - move it up, tilt his head down and vice versa.
24:50 the worst example of this is in Assasins Creed 2 when you're exploring/climbing the inside of the churches. There are parkour moments where the camera will shift mid-jump, remapping your movements and often making you miss the next jump. You get used to it after a while, kind of, but it feels like trash and is unbelievably annoying.
On his motion sickness. The Zelda one probably doesn't cause much, seems more like a solution. It's just when you go in rooms and buildings. Most folks probably press the camera centre button once they enter the room to get it behind them again anyway. and if they don't and just start running, the background is going to be blurring past them which would probably make it worse.
I use Cinemachine (free) in Unity, it has allot of features and can combine them as well to have allot of these great features described in this talk, still relevant 5 years later.
Mistake #5 is in dark souls 1 and since movement is tied to camera position. Its easy to fall off a cliff when the camera zooms and in doing so automatically changes position to the left or right. Then moving forward become moving 90 degrees to the left or right and right off the cliff.
I think many of your points are valid, but I also disagree with a few of them, mainly the ones about fixed/dynamic cameras. In #22: "Even players who are good at it use jerky motions" is false, unless perhaps the camera controls are digital (not analog), and/or lacks any sort of smoothing. This is something you mostly see in older games, if we're talking about third person views. Personally I'm of the opinion that the more control of the camera you have, the better (to some extent, of course). I think a good example of games with camera controls done right (imo) is Demon's/Dark Souls and Bloodborne, or any other game with a similar system. I'm not 100% against fixed cameras, though, and I think it works well in some cases, but for the most part I like being in control of the camera.
Team Fortress 2 and Dirty bomb, both first person shooters, have camera shakes when certain things, most notably explosions, happen, and also for some reason when demoknights charge into something. Even if they don't affect you directly. I loathe it.
Can I sign up for the people who obsess over videogame cameras club? The camera is arguably one of the most important aspects of the video game. It is the lense the player views and interacts with the world through. I personally feel like more games should place a bit more importance on the camera being a part of the game instead of just making it functional. Do you know how immersive it is when you play a game, and the camera just plays along with you? Good cameras make a game experience just...feel right. I don't really know how to explain it. Plus, a considerate camera can make games more accessible for people with motion sickness. Fighting the camera, will always shave at least one star off of my rating of a game. Especially if it ends up hindering my ability to play/execute specific tech in the game. Seriously, what a lame way to break immersion...
still pretty relevant nowadays, recently tried one of the forza horizon games and the camera kept autofocusing to a view that i consider too low but it had no option to turn that off or set the view higher naturally. the game had a lot of other issues though like the radio.
Great video, but you lost me at #48. That Oculus "mistake" is a mistake in itself. It's like going back to the 90's and saying that people shouldn't make 3D games because they can create these issues that cause simulation sickness. Pushing against progress due to the mishaps that may happen during the various iterations until proper solutions have been found isn't productive and actively harms development for these systems.
#37 Amen, If a game doesn't let me have inverted controls, I'm vey inclined to quit playing it, if looking around is required alot. It cost like 1 minute to impliment the option a game, there is no reason not to give players the option.
#18 is so good. _Super Mario Galaxy_ should take notes. Once a Star appears, the camera wooooshes in a great curve and after that cutscene, the controls are based on whatever position the camera ended in. I died several times to this because I was in the middle of a jump and had to adjust the direction the jump should continue.
Only bad part about Dark Souls is when you are not locked on during a boss. Having to move the right stick takes away your thumb from the dodge button. Other than that, the controls are perfect imo
Maybe these rules work for some people, but I myself strongly prefer being able to have full control over the camera without any helpers. The reason the camera movement in #22 is jerky, is that it is tough to keep adjusting the left stick to counteract the smooth camera movements. The constant camera motion can also add a motion blur effect that just make you completely unable to see anything and you have to stop to look around. I personally really dislike the game changing my yaw, unless it's necessary for a nice cinematic effect like the sidescrolling portion in #29, where it's essentially a fixed angle camera, except that the angle isn't constant, just fixed on a rail. I prefer the game only changing the distance and perhaps pitch, but only in a scripted fall off a cliff. These smooth camera movements are great for a presentation, but when the camera turns and changes my input direction when I didn't ask it to, it is frustrating, even if it's a smooth change of direction. Also, in #31 on the right, I have no idea how to adjust the camera properly, because turning it would not be helpful at all (unless I misunderstand which character model is important to the player), and you can see yourself, that the change of the camera distance made the player in that animation fail to jump onto the pillar on the left.
The avatar that failed to jump on the pillar was the companion. If it was the player, a more serious issue would be the player leaving the screen. Even just a little (3 frames worth) of movement smoothing would help your eyes track objects on screen.
The use of "simulation sickness" over the more established "motion sickness" is confusing and unnecessary. Also, how can there be no mention of making obstacles transparent? From my experience it's one of the best ways to handle obstacles since it doesn't involve swinging the camera around.
It always pisses me off when I hear people complaining about the camera in old 3D platformers and/or hacks of these games while there were/are always mechanics to control them freely as the player.
I like how Clone drone in the danger zone handles it, the camera is locked to an offset behind the player so the camera kinda handles like a first person game while still being a third person game. If any obstacles are in the way of the camera it of course moves forward so that the player can see but this always feels like the player caused it.
Awesome just awesome I always thought about making a perfect dynamic camera like in AAA games but always skipped it because it was too much work you made it so much easier.
Just make it once and then you can reuse it and DON'T do a fucking AAA game camera. Old 3D platformers are the superior camera like Mario 64, Rayman 3, Sly Cooper and Spyro The Dragon. No fucking scripted cutscenes and locked angles for dramatic effect I want as much freedom as an FPS
@@magnusm4 yeah Sly and Spyro are great. But Shadow of the Colossus is my personal favourite in terms of camera work. Love how the camera changes slightly depending on gameplay context (on horse, sword fight, walking climbing)
Tbh I have allways liked fixed camera angles better. While a free camera does let you see more of the world, which is cool, it's also ALLWAYS going to cause problems at some point, regardless of what game you are playing. This leaves you no choice but to fix it yourself, causing you to take priority away from focussing on the game itself and moving the camera. You can allready see where the character is facing, just like irl you can allready see where you are facing, but now you have to move a fictional object in a direction just to see behind you while looking in front of you? That's like driving, but you always have to adjust your mirrors becuase they're broken.
This is a problem I've noticed with World of Warcraft. They create these huge cities with tall buildings, or massive statues, or awesome looking pillars and epic architecture. But... your camera is always pointed at the ground, so you only see the doors on the bottom floor of the tall building, you only see the base of the huge statues, etc. There is a boss in the Scarlett Monastery named Herod. He always stood out as epic because, when you enter his boss room, he is actually below the player's eye level, down the stairs, meaning you can actually see him and all of the environment around him.
after playing every tomb raider game i realized that the old ones only were though to figure out because the graphics were both simple and still managed to be confusing at times and the camera restricted the possibility to understand certain level geometries
The only time I positively recognize camera work is when it's a giving flashy angles to character animations (overwatch play of the game - street fighter super moves).
A bunch of this is subjective and the folk arguing in the comments about a surefire correct way to get the job done is plain depressing to read. Just make whatever camera feels right for you, for that game and no doubt people will let you know when they don't like it and you can decide if you're going to change it accordingly.
Saints Row does #35 really badly when driving. It constantly wants to point the vehicle camera a certain way, so mouse users need to constantly readjust the camera.
I'm really confused about all this talk about "simulation sickness"... it seems weirdly new. Does it disproportionately effect people who started playing games at an older age?
+R. Ringshifter it's pretty much what people would have referred to as motion sickness casually, except it's more specific to looking at motion on a screen. it's getting popular as a more generally used term rather than being confined as technical jargon because of VR, because simulator sickness is pretty much one of the biggest limiting factors of its acceptance
No, it just had a different name. People complained about it back when Ultima Underworld was around. Heck, I had a friend that got motion sickness from some sega racing game.
Oddly enough I got motion sick from Halo 5 when I played it, despite playing games since I was 4 years old(including Halo) and not having a problem. It was really odd, but I adapted to it.
47:06 (# 40 - camera drift too far) would a good approach be to determine the camera's speed based on how far the avatar is from the center of the screen (or whatever the target position is) on each axis? Then jerky movements near the center would theoretically be lazily smoothed over and the camera would naturally accelerate as the avatar gets further from center; with a well-tuned curve it could be made so that the player can't move faster than the camera's speed near the edges
53:30 no man sky absolutely fucks with that, everytime you enter a ship, talk to someone, interact with a screen or monolith, and a lot of other things, the camera just rushes to where is has to go, most times totally unnecessarily
it wasn't a very good camera system tbh. I knew he was talking out his ass as soon as he said the point of a camera is to draw the player's attention attention to certain things above others
KingHalbatorix This is different for different genres. But even in games where the camera is solely a tool there are a few moments, where the camera is needed to highlight things.
The Last Guardian has bad camera design but I can't figure out specifically which mistakes they made with it. I know it often breaks line of sight, cuts from one angle to another, collides into walls, and ignores player intent, but I wonder what else it does wrong.
Really great presentation but the guy definitely wasn't an English major. I had to figure out each time whether the title for each mistake was the mistake or the advised direction
It's interesting how personal motion sickness is. I don't think I've ever had motion sickness in a game , but put me in the back of a plane or bus for mere minutes and I'll be sick for a day.
I love SotC but how on earth is that your favorite?? I fought it the entire time, especially when I wanted to just gaze at shit from the side while I rode my horse. It had no excuse after games like Wind Waker got that one right, which has to be my favorite game camera. MGSV is great camera, too.
A quick counter-argument to what was said for #1 about how "A Link Between Worlds reverts to a fixed angle camera"... I would call this an incredibly poor example given the context of the gameplay. A top-down fixed angle imposes rigid design limitations on the gameplay, such that gameplay like you'd see in a third-person over-the-shoulder style Zelda would be either impossible or clunky and unexciting at best. The Mario example here is pretty on point, though.
I actually think that reinforces the point. I'm not him. But what I feel he was trying to say is "Not all games need a behind-the-back third person camera. Sometimes a fixed angle camera is better." I think that's an important point to make because there are so many games that use this style of camera even when it doesn't fit the scope of the project.
7:12 "And these are highly respected sequels" Well, not by me. I mean, it makes sense in A Link Between Worlds, but those 3D World Mario games feel so uninspired to me. Personally I want to be able to control the camera, look around, explore. In games like BotW I sometimes ride/run in one direction and rotate the camera around, doing interesting camera shots just for my own entertainment. In Mario Galaxy (1 or 2) sometimes the camera got fixed and it always f-ed me up. Like it went to a side view but you still could fall off in the front and back, and I did fall off all the time! Let me control the camera and put it where it makes sense to me, please! And in general top down view is a bit depressing to me. Always looking at the ground, never at the sky. I guess it saves money not having to design a sky?
Yep. Imo fixed camera just aged badly, I understand why people who study game cameras will praise it, but honestly? If your game has anything that remotely envolves reflexes on the gameplay, you'll be much better having a dynamic camera. Also, the Link Between Worlds camera is fixed from an upwards angle (almost completely vertical) which is what helps the most for that 2D style of gameplay. That mario game camera is from an awkward diagonal angle which is nauseating for today's standarts.
#37 ... hahaha. If you remember _Super Star Wars_ on the SNES, you may also recall that the majority of your vehicular levels used inverted (flight-style) controls, EXCEPT for the final one (the "trench run"), where you aimed your targeting crosshairs via _non-inverted_ (screen) controls. And there were no options to override this.
50 Game Camera Mistakes:
1: Using a dynamic camera when another approach would work.
2: Designing levels and camera behaviors that don't match.
3: Using global coordinates or quaternions to persist camera state.
4: Using a default camera distance that's likely to break line-of-sight.
5: Allowing obstacles to break line-of-sight from the side.
6: Pushing the camera away from an obstacle while the player is trying to swing the camera towards it.
7: Letting the player push the camera inside an obstacle.
8: Letting independent forces compete to push the camera.
9: Excessively moving the camera to prevent unimportant items from breaking line-of-sight.
10: Letting the camera intersect narrow columns.
11: Interpreting a hill as a wall to be avoided.
12: Swinging the camera sideways when occluders come from behind.
13: Letting the camera's near-clipping-plane intersect the avatar.
14: Using the same camera distance for all angles.
15: Using the same field-of-view for worm's eye angles and standard angles.
16: Shifting pitch, distance, and field-of-view independently.
17: Not cutting when the avatar passes through opaque objects.
18: Letting cuts remap directional controls.
19: Breaking the player's sense of direction.
20: Violating the 180 degree rule.
21: Focusing only on the avatar.
22: Relying on players to control the camera all the time.
23: Leaving the camera yaw alone while the player is running.
24: Making it hard to judge distances,
25: Looking straight ahead as the avatar approaches a cliff.
26. Keeping the camera level when the avatar is running on a slope.
27. Misusing the "Rule of thirds".
28. Using the same logic for ground and air motion.
29. Relying entirely on procedural camera behaviors.
30. Letting players make themselves lost and confused.
31. Rotating excessively to look at nearby targets.
32. Translating to look at distance targets.
33. Letting the avatar's own body occlude targets ahead.
34. Giving the player control over the camera, and then taking it away.
35. Immediately applying a camera hint after the player finished turning the camera to look at something.
36. Not letting experts explore.
37. Not providing inverted controls.
38. Responding to accidental controller input.
39. Using linear sensitivity.
40. Letting the camera pivot drift too far.
41. Using a too small field-of-view.
42. Rapidly shifting field-of-view.
43. Excessively shaking the camera.
44. Bouncing the camera with the avatar's walk cycle.
45. Translating or rotating up and down when the avatar jumps.
46. Rapidly transitioning to a new camera position.
47. Maintaining pitch speed until hitting the pitch limit.
48. Developing for the Oculus Rift as the primary camera method.
49. Testing with a narrow demographic.
50. Writing a general "constraint solver" that optimizes for the camera.
imbw267 ur doing Lord‘s work
You're a hero, my friend
not all hero wear capes....
some of them have i set as avatar
Thanks man
Accidentally disliked this, sorry! Fixed it right away.
It's funny he says "We only notice cameras when they're bad" but I literally remember moments of Journey's camera where I was like "Look how it zooms behind the player when they go into a small space!" and "Oh my gosh it zoomed out to show me so much of the environment this is so pretty."
So good.
This is what happens when you try to be an "Absolute right" or "This is all sound and sane advice" guide to something. While the advice they give is "useful" they are blind to the half the audience that notices when it is good. To an entire set of opinions... They are blind to the situations where the advice... ruins games.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 at the start, he said they're "most noticeable" when they fail, which is vastly more correct.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 do you even know what you are talking about lol
You aren't the usual gamer though, you obviously have an interest in game design since you're watching an hour long GDC presentation on cameras. Of course you're going to appreciate the subtle details of a game since you have an eye for it. I am the same way but most people are not this way.
@@getgle Depends on the game, not the gamer. Most games have cameras because they are required to show the player the world, and that's all there is to it. They just need the camera to work and not be intrusive. Other games use the camera as a part of the experience. Things like the dolly zoom in Max Payne, or the Drunk Cam in GTA. I don't care who you are - if you play those games, you will notice those things, because that's the point.
Rewatching this again, just got to number 23. It seems too many people have taken this advice - it’s one of the most annoying camera features! I understand that it has a reason, but I actually like looking around while I’m running places, and many cameras can’t just go “oh, this guy’s holding the camera, let’s stop moving it” they just force it behind my character and I have to hold it in place. Which sucks and is often incredibly jerky (see the previous number about preventing jerky camera).
Two games that I play a lot, ffxiv and the Witcher iii, both have this feature. It’s drastically worse in the Witcher. In xiv, if you hold the camera consistently, even as it tries to reset itself, it will hold steady and be a smooth camera to watch, and even as it does trail behind, it still doesn’t force an angle on you. In the Witcher, the camera constantly bounces if you try this. It’s a massive shame, cause I’d really love to look at the sunset as I’m galloping over some hills, instead of just the ground in front of me. The ground is a pile of dirt. Please let me look at your gorgeous game.
Really surprised to read this. For me, I have quite opposite, I want to look directly at the surface I'm running, because it is not smooth in general, so I hate when the camera behaves 'or look you need to see what's forward on you'. That was particulary annoying in Cyberpunk when I want to camera look upside down to the ground when driving.
But, after all we speaking about same thing - 'don't touch my camera!'
I was hoping someone would mention this. It gives me a headache when the game keeps slapping me in the face for daring to try and have control over where I'm looking. Why on earth can the player not be trusted look where he wants while moving?
Its especially annoying when you’re trying to take a pretty picture, and you’re fighting with the camera to get the desired angle
Should of followed rule 35
genshin impact also does this, not only for rotation but also pitch. one of the worst game cameras I've experienced. at least you can turn this off for pitch. another problem is also the inconsistency, because it's different depending on the movement type
The quality of education available online these days is through the roof
Developers developers developers developers...
@@AnubitekOfficial He needs a good pop filter. :/
Dude it blows my mind
Through the roof? Like a badly designed camera?
Love it.
This guy: makes a presentation giving game developers tips on how to approach 3D game design.
Me, who studies psychology, at 3:10 A.M. on a tuesday: interesting.
I'm curious, as a student of psychology why do you think you are watching this?
@@ironbard4901 Because, as it turns out, I'm also a big (big) sucker for videogames and I love to learn everything about them.
Jack of all trades, master of none, often times better than a master of one. The wider your knowledge base, the more you can leverage. 20 min to absorb what took someone years of study and effort to learn? Worth it
@@enzoc123-x3o maybe this is a subconscious thing, but a camera's design has a lot to do with how a player perceives a game, giving it a psychological spin, too
Game design is largely psychological so it's not a far leap.
49:00 FOV related motion sickness in first person perspective games, is dependant on how much of your actual vision is taken up by the screen, hence why console games where the TV is usually further than a monitor often go below 90° but PC games where the screen takes up more of your field of view can go above 140°.
On console it's more or less only for optimisation. The lower the FoV the less stuff that needs to be rendered. As far as distance to the screen goes, there's a golden rule that is assumed. The distance from 2 opposite corners of the screen is the distance you should sit at for the optimal viewing experience. So if your screen is 24" then you should sit at around 24" away from your screen. If people choose to sit closer or further away, that's their own decision. But as a general rule of thumb, screen size = viewing distance.
The best camera is the one the player doesn't notice... brilliant talk on something that's so easy to get wrong.
Kinda annoying he has to point to Journey so much when speaking on how to do it right...
the number of people here that are saying 'i prefer having 100% control of my camera' are either A) only thinking about certain genres where what he is saying is less applicable (e.g. first person games) or B) have no idea how much the games where they THINK they have full control actually involves carefully crafted work to stop them from screwing up the camera.
I agree. I'm here because in my prototype you have full control of the camera, however, it's a 3rd person real time strategy game and I feel like messing with the camera while I'm trying to command units is annoying and taking away from the experience. It was originally going to be a side scroller (think beat 'em up style with horizontal and vertical movement) with a fixed camera but I wanted exploration in the game so I decided to make it full 3D.
I was looking at the example with BG&E and thinking "oh my, how much better felt that than any camera trying to do things I never asked it to do". It sounds like a nice idea to predict where the player would want the camera to be, but the reverse side of this idea is that it forces the player to constantly predict what the camera is predicting about him. And it bothers me as a player much, MUCH more than some jerkiness that I generate by myself. It is like with driving a car and being a passenger - this kind jerks look bad from aside, but when its only you who controls them, your mind and perception are ready to them and you easily ignore it. Much easier task for the brain than to predict camera predictions.
if you need to take control away from the player in terms of camera..you are failing as a designer. great Designer naturally used the world it self to draw the player eyes.
@@TheMrTape brah, was this towards me or what? cause wtf did i say to get attack lol
@@BrotherO4 Most likely because you are gatekeeping.
"If you don't do x then you are not y"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeping_(communication)
Regarding LOS: some games just show a transparent/dithered character if they're blocked by an object, so you could argue this isn't super-important.
"wallhack view" and hiding objects that break los are indeed options too.
You see this a lot in "2.5D" games and I think it works well; however I'd prefer making the object semi-transparent instead of the character 'shining through' - gives a better visual representation of where the character is on the floor behind the object.
@@NoxiousPluK a lot of ARPG do that, dithering/making stuff in front of the character transparent.
It depends on what sort of visual feel you want to give your game. It's still pretty important.
Depends on how important it is to see other things in the environment your character is interacting with, including navigating around.
I remember being mind blown as a child when I realised the characters in my Harry Potter game always were in the middle of the screen.
I tried so hard to get them away from the middle.
Discipline!
The question at the end about a "master setting" for attempting to eliminate simulation sickness has a pretty simple answer; Just put individual options underneath one master option. That way you could turn "Simulation Sickness Reduction" on, and then turn back on any option that you think you can deal with.
+Theo Laanstra That could be part of the problem : Designers, by their nature, want to Design a "Solution" - it's their process...When, like you say, the player would (most likely, most of the time) be best served with "Options" - to customise/tailor their *own* experience.
@@zetetick395 Hahahaha! That's hilarious. Now let's talk about how people *actually* work. People will play your game, get sick, then quit and get their refund without ever taking a look at the options. Even if you have some glaring popup which points out the options, they will either: #1. Forget, #2. Mash "A" past it without reading it, #3. Hop onto your Twitter and call you a lazy fucking asshole for making them "design your game for you". THAT is why we want a solution.
@@21coute Yeah, I plan for my game to hopefully reduce this issue by having a "First time boot up routine", where it puts the camera in these different scenarios known to potentially cause Simulation Sickness, and give you the option to turn the effect off, down, or up
It'd be skippable, and the settings could be changed manually at any time.
It's not perfect, but I feel it's as close as you can get to solving that issue
I agree with some of these and really disagree with others. Just as a player of games, I feel like the player should be 90% in control of the camera. There's been a few times in third-person games where I've really wanted to look closely at a terrain detail or get close to something, but the automatic camera says "no" and so I can't.
I actually thought Ocarina of Time's camera was fine, not even remotely comparable to SM64's. I first played it as an adult, so no nostalgia.
I know. It's part of the controls and moving the player with the camera is as important as moving the playing in general. I love it in Rayman 3 as you know how and when it will turn and move when you walk in a specific direction
That's a preference, these aren't catch all. In general I think these are good. They're not the best option for everyone, but it prevents bad camera and that's the point of this presentation.
@@fishbonesinc Religion which tells stories about being kind to others and sends you to hell if you're cruel to others... has holy crusades, hate to non-believers, murder. History has shown this countless times.
Believing it prevents bad when it has good intentions just creates infinitely more bad and blindness.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 bro you good?
@@Buglin_Burger7878 What the fuck made you say this?
I really like how this talk is structured. He walks you through it layer above layer of complexity that should go into consideration while designing a camera in a game with similar mechanics.
I think the Sonic games make all of these mistakes
sonic games made the mistake of existing
Worst mistake of Sonic games (or most of them) is giving incentives for you to go fast and once you go out of the screen punishing you by placing a robot/trap in your way. If that's to happen, why not hint the player before? Give the player a fair chance of dodging, counter this! It could even become part of the fun.
Have you even played the Mega Drive ones? Or even the DS ones. They're great!
bananaboy482
Like you.
Kennedy Richard Games
They do the exact thing you describe.
Also, this has kind of highlighted some things I always knew were wrong with classic games but could never define. Things I felt were somehow off, were failings in the camera dynamics.
5 years later, hello from the future lol, yes absolutely agree. Lately I've been revisiting games from my childhood, one being 3D platformer Croc on PS1, and 99% of the issues with that game are directly camera related, as is the same for heaps of other early 3d games, namely platformers.
There needs to be an FPS/Keyboard+Mouse edition of this, although it might be a bit shorter.
Things that come to my mind are:
- Never touch the player's camera angles: Unlike #22 suggests, K+M players are perfectly capable of rubbing their belly and patting their head at the same time. Imagine you walk on the streets while looking to the side at some show windows, and there's someone walking behind you who constantly grabs you head and slowly turns it into walking direction or some point-of-non-interest.
- Don't overdo fancy shader effects: Chromatic abberation is a pest: In the real world, you don't notice with your eyes, only through cheap or distorting lenses of a camera, binoculars etc., likewise overemphasizing fog, rain, blur, bloom and hdr to a "show off"-level looks cool the first few minutes but tends to be pretty distracting or annoying once it wears off.
- Have a user-configurable FOV setting! It's 2020, and there's still games who don't have it. If you port a console game to PC, remember that PC-gamers sitting much closer to their screens. Fixed Vertical-FOV is not a solution, and if you need to restrict a player's vision then you're doing it wrong.
- Have an option to invert Y-axis.
Never touch a player's camera angle means you can't show stuff like an object collapsing for example, lets say you walk into a room and the point of interest that is about to collapse does everything right to draw attention to it... this means a savvy player explores the room and looks away from it for secrets and rewards.
They look back in the center of the room after a noise... and don't notice the object collapsed.
You'd grab and turn someone's head to show them the tsunami is coming.
You're first suggestion is a major reason for my hatred of the Tomb Raider reboot. I hate trying to look at something only for the camera to be pulled away from me. Never bothered me on a controller (on my PS2), but on KB+M? It's rage inducing.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 I think it was addressed towards times, when player does not need to see something important but camera keeps rotating towards movement direction or something
@@prycenewberg3976 A hypothetical force feedback mouse might improve this. If you’re using a stick and something tugs on your camera a little, you can easily balance that tug. If you’re using a mouse instead, it feels as if your view is slipping. If you try to counter it, you quickly run out of space and have to pick it up. That’s the worst. If your mouse had force feedback and the camera acted through that instead, the link between mouse and camera movement would be preserved. You’d feel it and you could hold it in place if you wanted. That’s assuming I can’t just sort myself out without such frills.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 Hell no. If your player's attention is diverted away from your big blockbuster moment, your level design is wrong, NOT your camera. I cannot overstate how much I hate games that take control of my camera to show me something "cool".
A master class on 3rd person game camera design.
Morten Brodersen journey may have been a very simple game, but it's camera work was complex and excellent.
No actually, it's a terrible video. He's just describing ways to work around bad rendering. In truth, the camera is not physical, and is free to move through and see through objects. I admit that making the renderer work this way is not easy, but this is the *right* way to handle a camera This talk is merely the *cheap* way to do it.
Edit: #15 and on return to reasonableness, but not because any of those things are *mistakes* per se, but because his solutions are cinematic and beautiful. I'm guessing he wanted his camera to be cinematic, and that's a wonderful choise. But few games make that choice.
Have you actually tested doing a camera that way? Because personally I've played/playtested a couple things where the camera *can* go inside objects, and it just ends up feeling very weird to me that I'm looking from inside an object but not seeing it. So perhaps too many people share my reaction, and people who've actually tried it have noticed that (if it's the case)?
Jess Kay I've played a few games that way, it was quite nice. There was no dicomfort, since the camera always goes where you expect and shows what you need.
Fair enough, I'm not at all saying my reaction is universal, but it's definitely not something that feels comfortable to everyone. So in light of that I still don't think it's just a lazy decision.
# 9 is the # 1 reason why Minecraft's third-person camera absolutely reeks.
And I watched this whole video, even though it was an hour. :D
(late answer :P)
Sadly hard to fix for Minecraft as you can't just tag obstacles or something as it's a player-made world.
Well, it's not really a third person camera, just a first person camera with an offset. That being said, a decent third person camera would be nice.
Yea, it make me feel sick
Sure you don't mean #33?
@@Asdayasman Nope I meant #9. Although Minecraft might have changed in 4 years, LOL to make #33 even more relevant than it was. ^^; Back then it's #33-ish problems all were so extreme, jumping in and out of your head and all this other stuff that I couldn't even call it that one. XD
When someone points out that the camera designer for TGC's Journey made this video and that TGC's successor game Sky breaks, like, at least half of these rules
I generally like games that let me control the camera. I tend to be more frustrated when the games take away control. There's one section in Assassin's Creed II (I think, although it could be a later game) where you're supposed to use a backward eject jump of some kind to climb up a series of platforms, and they put the camera in a position where judging distances is harder, and won't let you change it because they feel it's the best angle. The way the move you're required to use "works" doesn't require you to judge distances, but it's still grating because it feels awkward to be forced to look at it from a perspective where you can't do so.
Granted, maybe it's just because I'm so used to having full control from the N64 days, but the truth is that I think there's rarely (if ever) a good excuse from taking camera control away from the gamer unless you're doing a cutscene. Keep it from clipping into walls and such, and I'll take it from there, leave me alone. LOL. There is such a thing as trying too hard to make the camera behave in an ideal fashion and ultimately making the player feel "stuck" with someone else's camera preferences. Rarely would two directors shoot a scene the same way. So naturally, gamers may well disagree with a camera angle too.
The problem is, aside from obvious stuff like having good collision detection and not clipping, a lot of this stuff is subjective, and what one person likes may not be what another likes.
all of the journey footage looked pretty incredible, a lot of the points were focused on not confusing the player & communicating boundaries or trajectories, very little was subjective (like rule of 3rds)
This man would later go on to design a music program that’d change the life of many people :) Thank you Mr. Nesky
I've always found the Rocket Leauge camera difficult despite the wealth of options. There was never an in between for the front facing view of the car or toggle to tracking the ball and it made it really difficult to transition control from ground to air. I wish there was a dynamic option that would make it easier to control the car in a complex ariel whilst also targeting the ball. Maybe I'm too lazy to teach my brain to do the opposite when my car is backward/upside down etc, but I never had a problem doing acrobatics whilst tracking objects accurately in a dogfighting game such as Warhawk.
Journey is the one game that allows me to play without experiencing simulation sickness. There are other games that offer intense beauty and remarkable graceful control of the avatar (i.e., ABZU, BOUND), but I am unable to play those games but for 5 minutes at a time before having to stop because simulation sickness begins to set in. Thank you John Nesky for your sensitivity to this area of game play. Journey is a daily part of my life since 2012!
18# drives me nuts, I hate when I'm entering a room and because I'm still pressing a direction to enter suddenly turns into the same direction to exit and I end up exiting the room again. Is maddening.
Yeah, a good rule of thumb is to maintain the direction of motion from before the cut until the player chooses a new direction for themselves. It takes the brain a moment to process the new environmental layout.
Could you implement another camera, so you can record what the first camera is doing to avoid obstacles? Would love to see that.
What about a chain of 10 camera's chasing each other?
+Chris Koss What do you mean? How would more cameras solve any of the obstacle avoidance problems for the first camera? And which of those cameras would actually render to screen? It would always be only one of them anyway, so I don't see the point of having more cameras, when you can just use raycasting and spherecasting to detect obstacles and such.
Oh no practical use, I just think it would be cool to watch how a camera moves from another camera that is chasing it.
+Chris Koss Ooh okay, so more like a debugging tool then. Yeah that can be done. I've seen similar solutions before :)
+Rafał Dorsz yep! I think if you could get a chain of ~10 of them you'd see some really interesting emergent behavior as some movements could be amplified in fun, non intuitive ways as you go down the chain.
Could we call it a "camera snake"? Or a "camera caterpillar"? Or, since that's too long... a "camterapillar"?
Frist of all, this video is extremely insightful and I actually like the simple presentation style. but just funny that I feel Journey is one of the most frustrating games I have ever tried in terms of camera control. I have to fight the camera constantly.
About # 22 and #23, I prefer having the option. So if I take control of the camera, the behaviour of the camera shouldn't interfer. It's the camera artist responsability to take back control of the camera the smoothest way possible. It can be based on a delay time after I release the camera stick, based on a specific relative camera angle with its target or an when I click on a button like R3 to reset the camera to its default position. But both option must be supported so all players can have a great time.
+nossfu Agreed, especially on PC where the mouse can quickly and easily move the camera. I found the automatic camera in the Tomb Raider reboot to be a huge problem.
+nossfu He touches on that with #35. I agree entirely - any time a game takes obvious and/or immediate control over my camera, it's annoying at best, disorienting and nauseating at worst.
Feels to me a lot of cases could simply be avoided by making whatever is between the camera and the avatar semi-transparent.
If there is an object, still show it transparent.
If someone runs through something make it transparent so the camera can see behind it.
Seems way simpler than moving the camera around itself (which somewhat violates the players intend and gets annoying if the camera is working against the intend).
This is the approach I've seen, especially in 3D dynamic camera Mario titles. I think there's not a one-size-fits-all solution though because every game has different player navigation and tone needs
Yeah! Especially in games with a lot of enemies on screen.
A great presentation.
But for the first time in my life, I appreciate that Public Speaking course I had to take in college. The prof would tell us how many times we said 'ummm...' in a 3-minute talk, and at the beginning of the quarter everyone's "umm count' was in the hundreds. Ten weeks of hearing the prof's little clicker count off every time he heard "umm" was all it took to make most of the class stop saying it entirely.
Yup. Vocalized pauses are so easy to get rid of once someone points them out. Beforehand, you don't even notice you're doing it! I pretty much never say "um" anymore, but I do still have a "like" problem!
I wish I didn't read this comment. I might not have noticed it so much.
You mean like when you're like, "she was like"?
imo "like" is a lot more annoying to hear than "um"
I now hate you, I didn't notice at all until I read the comment but now, its excruciating! It's like after every uuurm..three uuurm words. uuurm! -_- :P
What makes me feel sick is when I'm controlling a first person view, then suddenly the 'camera' flies out of my control into a cut-scene.
'Thief' is a good example of this problem - I thought I had control over my eyes, but no, apparently they are a camera flying about the place. Player comfort sacrificed for artistic camera play - sickening, but typical.
+David Hoskins I'm envisioning this as I wonder what made them chose that approach over just cutting to an establishing shot from a third person view, too - choosing a neutral angle when you walk into the room, cut to and hold that for a beat, and going from there...
One of my favorite things about Half-Life is that at no point in the game your vision leaves Gordon Freeman's perspective, it's awesome.
There are two games called "Thief," one released in 1998 and one in 2014. Which one are you referring to?
The 2014 one, the camera is fucking awful. Why? Because they can, so they did...
Not sure why that'd make you sick...
I didn't realize how much I've taken for granted that the devs know what they're doing when it comes to what they want the player to see. Even the most minute details. I am just here from the video on 'negative spaces' and this as well confirms quite well what's going on. I've had some idea, but not to this extent. I definitely know it happens in movies, but I always feel those are more controllable environments than gaming ones. This is great.
This is actually a brilliant video/lecture. I want to hear the 50 that were cut! I make film and I recognise some of the concepts described from cinematography but I also learned some new things here. Some concepts that will inform future creative projects. Thanks.
In some SM64 stages and pretty much all SM64 romhacks, we use a fixed-angle camera that does not see through walls, but has a limited distance similar to the dynamic camera. Best of both worlds imo, as this camera is much easier to make and more reliable to use, but still allows for moderate amounts of obstruction in the player's view without actually obscuring the gameplay.
Sketchup's "perspective" view works in a similar way I think
The main thing we don't care about at all in those games is 14:54. If the camera can rest out of bounds, let it and make it look good. That is what we have found to offer the best player experience (we also tried moving the camera closer and players hate it)
#18( and #20) was *so* annoying in Super Mario 64. Going through the door, trying to move forward, but the camera changes so that your forward stick movement goes back through the door...
In #41 he first said larger FoV makes everything feel slower, while in #42 reminded us that FoV is increased while boosting in racing games.
Other than that, really a great video, got a bunch of useful tips that I'll definitely apply to my game as soon as possible, like increasing the distance of the camera when looking from the top.
like, in Sonic Unleashed for example, the FoV is actually increased to increase the sense of speed. in games where the FoV is reduced when going fast, it's likely so you can see more things ahead of you and react to things around you faster. like how in some 2D platformers the camera zooms out when going fast. however increased FoV does make greater sense of speed. at least I think
I wish he had emphasized that in m&kb controlled games the player is always in control even when in third person, as a result the camera should never rotate on its own (fov and distance adjustment is usually fine). So many controller games suffer from terrible m&kb controls because of this, its especially tragic in otherwise fantastic games like dark souls and monster hunter.
Imagine if in an fps your camera could pivot 180 degrees in an instant because it thinks the enemy behind you is what you want to be looking at. Thats how disorientating a lot of these controller titles cameras are on m&kb.
Well those 2 games you mentioned should be played on controller to be fair.
@@RedNayl That is a common sentiment sure but only because of the terrible m&kb ports. Dark Souls 2 was the worst adding nearly a full second of input lag to attacks and blocks when done with a mouse.
@@RedNayl After Capcom patched the camera controls for the PC port of Monster Hunter World (removing the awkward acceleration and maximum camera speed), it became just as good as controller and arguably better for the ranged weapons that could be played like any other 3rd person shooter. I've played the game with both control schemes and I honestly prefer M&KB because (at least for the most part) they fixed the camera issues that would have necessitated me to play it with a controller in the first place.
he did talk about both points
He called 3D World a "respected sequel" to Mario 64. A lot of people would strongly disagree with that. It's not just the cameras that are different, they have completely different game design formulas that their respective camera systems suit better; yes 3D World is respected but no one considers 3D World to be a Mario 64 sequel. And the implication about 3D World's fixed camera being a better camera system for that type of game than Mario 64, again assuming 3D World is basically similar to Mario 64 when it's not, kinda didn't age well when Mario Odyssey came out and returned to a dynamic camera lol. Not hating on the video, I think overall it's great, but that specific comparison is a little bit fallacious and misleading, and seems to show a bit of a misunderstanding of the different 3D Marios, and it's a bit funny that for 3D Mario it didn't age that well when Odyssey came around.
They needed this talk back in the PS1 era of camera design, rofl... Some of the worst examples I can think of poor camera choices, though they were struggling with the advent of 3D gaming, yes, yes, I'm aware. The fact still remains however that there were some terribly poor camera choices back then, lol.
+Deathbrewer Listen man, you should stop your harsh criticism of older games and understand that they were struggling with the advent of 3D gaming.
lol :)
The worst is when the camera and the controls become unsynched. In Prince of Persia Sands of Time, an otherwise brilliantly cinematic game, there was a place where you run along the wall and jump over a lot of spikes to get into a tunnel. The camera, in a 3/4 side view, would suddenly torque around to follow you into the tunnel, spinning 90°. But the controls stayed the same, suddenly switching from "right = forward" to "right = fall to your death in a pit of spikes". If you landed the jump there was a save point; if you didn't land the jump you went back to the previous save point, about 5 minutes back. I must have done that stretch a dozen times before *un*-training my reflexes enough to avoid the spikes.
*Consistency* is key.
Super Mario 64 is an open world game. Super Mario 3D world is linear.
It's not appropriate to have a fixed camera on an open world game
On camera controls, when exact camera angle is important, make it so the player can dynamically adjust the speed at which the camera changes. For PC, the mouse is a good control (but keyboard only alternatives should be available, like pressing shift to slow down the speed). On consoles, I personally would like to see use of the analog triggers to dynamically adjust camera speed instead of relying purely on a control stick.
#37 is a massive one for me! I need to play inverted controls (full inversion when focusing on the character and y-inversion when aiming away from the character) it baffles me why there are so many games that don't do this. You can make a game but if you don't let e invert the controls to how it feels natural for me then everything in the game is going to be eclipsed by how its such a struggle to just look at things. Also, I never understood why inverted is called "inverted"... If you press "up" on the analogue stick then the camera would go up above the characters head
+Velocity Eleven No, when you move up, the image goes up.
+akawhut
But if the "image" goes up, and your view of the image stays the same, the effect on the screen is the "camera" moves down.
You could argue the correlation either way - for example, sliding your finger down on a phone screen moves the "camera" upwards. This comes naturally to us because it's like sliding a piece of paper.
I don't use inverted, but I'm pretty sure the primary intuition is that your controls on the camera are as if the analog stick is attached to the back of the player's head - move it up, tilt his head down and vice versa.
24:50 the worst example of this is in Assasins Creed 2 when you're exploring/climbing the inside of the churches. There are parkour moments where the camera will shift mid-jump, remapping your movements and often making you miss the next jump. You get used to it after a while, kind of, but it feels like trash and is unbelievably annoying.
On his motion sickness. The Zelda one probably doesn't cause much, seems more like a solution. It's just when you go in rooms and buildings. Most folks probably press the camera centre button once they enter the room to get it behind them again anyway. and if they don't and just start running, the background is going to be blurring past them which would probably make it worse.
12:50 why use raytracing? Wouldn't the depth buffer provide all the information?
Holy cow, this is the first time I've seen the auto-generated captions get the speech almost perfectly :D
Lots of gems in this talk, thank you!
So basically: Don't jank the camera around, let it drift to highlight things if necessary, use whiskers to navigate around large obstacles
I use Cinemachine (free) in Unity, it has allot of features and can combine them as well to have allot of these great features described in this talk, still relevant 5 years later.
Game development is very interesting. Lots of interesting problems to work on. It can be a risky field to join though If you prefer stability.
Mistake #5 is in dark souls 1 and since movement is tied to camera position. Its easy to fall off a cliff when the camera zooms and in doing so automatically changes position to the left or right. Then moving forward become moving 90 degrees to the left or right and right off the cliff.
I think many of your points are valid, but I also disagree with a few of them, mainly the ones about fixed/dynamic cameras. In #22: "Even players who are good at it use jerky motions" is false, unless perhaps the camera controls are digital (not analog), and/or lacks any sort of smoothing. This is something you mostly see in older games, if we're talking about third person views.
Personally I'm of the opinion that the more control of the camera you have, the better (to some extent, of course). I think a good example of games with camera controls done right (imo) is Demon's/Dark Souls and Bloodborne, or any other game with a similar system. I'm not 100% against fixed cameras, though, and I think it works well in some cases, but for the most part I like being in control of the camera.
Team Fortress 2 and Dirty bomb, both first person shooters, have camera shakes when certain things, most notably explosions, happen, and also for some reason when demoknights charge into something. Even if they don't affect you directly. I loathe it.
Very nice presentation. I'm working on a 3rd person camera at the moment, and this is gold!
Can I sign up for the people who obsess over videogame cameras club?
The camera is arguably one of the most important aspects of the video game. It is the lense the player views and interacts with the world through. I personally feel like more games should place a bit more importance on the camera being a part of the game instead of just making it functional.
Do you know how immersive it is when you play a game, and the camera just plays along with you?
Good cameras make a game experience just...feel right. I don't really know how to explain it.
Plus, a considerate camera can make games more accessible for people with motion sickness.
Fighting the camera, will always shave at least one star off of my rating of a game. Especially if it ends up hindering my ability to play/execute specific tech in the game.
Seriously, what a lame way to break immersion...
if you have time tell the next 50, please!
and maybe all first person camera mistakes, as well..
great talk!! thank you so much!!
still pretty relevant nowadays, recently tried one of the forza horizon games and the camera kept autofocusing to a view that i consider too low but it had no option to turn that off or set the view higher naturally. the game had a lot of other issues though like the radio.
Great video, but you lost me at #48. That Oculus "mistake" is a mistake in itself. It's like going back to the 90's and saying that people shouldn't make 3D games because they can create these issues that cause simulation sickness. Pushing against progress due to the mishaps that may happen during the various iterations until proper solutions have been found isn't productive and actively harms development for these systems.
#37 Amen, If a game doesn't let me have inverted controls, I'm vey inclined to quit playing it, if looking around is required alot. It cost like 1 minute to impliment the option a game, there is no reason not to give players the option.
#43: Shaking the camera.
Broforce with its troll camera shake settings: Are you challenging me?
Truly excellent discussion of camera use.
#18 is so good. _Super Mario Galaxy_ should take notes. Once a Star appears, the camera wooooshes in a great curve and after that cutscene, the controls are based on whatever position the camera ended in. I died several times to this because I was in the middle of a jump and had to adjust the direction the jump should continue.
i really like how dark sopuls handles distances
yea dark sopuls best game ever
Only bad part about Dark Souls is when you are not locked on during a boss. Having to move the right stick takes away your thumb from the dodge button. Other than that, the controls are perfect imo
or use keyboard and mouse
Maybe these rules work for some people, but I myself strongly prefer being able to have full control over the camera without any helpers. The reason the camera movement in #22 is jerky, is that it is tough to keep adjusting the left stick to counteract the smooth camera movements. The constant camera motion can also add a motion blur effect that just make you completely unable to see anything and you have to stop to look around. I personally really dislike the game changing my yaw, unless it's necessary for a nice cinematic effect like the sidescrolling portion in #29, where it's essentially a fixed angle camera, except that the angle isn't constant, just fixed on a rail. I prefer the game only changing the distance and perhaps pitch, but only in a scripted fall off a cliff.
These smooth camera movements are great for a presentation, but when the camera turns and changes my input direction when I didn't ask it to, it is frustrating, even if it's a smooth change of direction.
Also, in #31 on the right, I have no idea how to adjust the camera properly, because turning it would not be helpful at all (unless I misunderstand which character model is important to the player), and you can see yourself, that the change of the camera distance made the player in that animation fail to jump onto the pillar on the left.
The avatar that failed to jump on the pillar was the companion. If it was the player, a more serious issue would be the player leaving the screen.
Even just a little (3 frames worth) of movement smoothing would help your eyes track objects on screen.
The use of "simulation sickness" over the more established "motion sickness" is confusing and unnecessary.
Also, how can there be no mention of making obstacles transparent? From my experience it's one of the best ways to handle obstacles since it doesn't involve swinging the camera around.
It always pisses me off when I hear people complaining about the camera in old 3D platformers and/or hacks of these games while there were/are always mechanics to control them freely as the player.
Slight audio problem in this, but it's still a great talk.
I like how Clone drone in the danger zone handles it, the camera is locked to an offset behind the player so the camera kinda handles like a first person game while still being a third person game. If any obstacles are in the way of the camera it of course moves forward so that the player can see but this always feels like the player caused it.
I hate # 22. Sometimes i just want to look what is behind my character, but the camera keeps trying to force me look forward.
Awesome just awesome I always thought about making a perfect dynamic camera like in AAA games but always skipped it because it was too much work you made it so much easier.
Just make it once and then you can reuse it and DON'T do a fucking AAA game camera. Old 3D platformers are the superior camera like Mario 64, Rayman 3, Sly Cooper and Spyro The Dragon. No fucking scripted cutscenes and locked angles for dramatic effect I want as much freedom as an FPS
@@magnusm4 yeah Sly and Spyro are great. But Shadow of the Colossus is my personal favourite in terms of camera work. Love how the camera changes slightly depending on gameplay context (on horse, sword fight, walking climbing)
Tbh I have allways liked fixed camera angles better. While a free camera does let you see more of the world, which is cool, it's also ALLWAYS going to cause problems at some point, regardless of what game you are playing. This leaves you no choice but to fix it yourself, causing you to take priority away from focussing on the game itself and moving the camera. You can allready see where the character is facing, just like irl you can allready see where you are facing, but now you have to move a fictional object in a direction just to see behind you while looking in front of you? That's like driving, but you always have to adjust your mirrors becuase they're broken.
This is a problem I've noticed with World of Warcraft. They create these huge cities with tall buildings, or massive statues, or awesome looking pillars and epic architecture. But... your camera is always pointed at the ground, so you only see the doors on the bottom floor of the tall building, you only see the base of the huge statues, etc.
There is a boss in the Scarlett Monastery named Herod. He always stood out as epic because, when you enter his boss room, he is actually below the player's eye level, down the stairs, meaning you can actually see him and all of the environment around him.
after playing every tomb raider game i realized that the old ones only were though to figure out because the graphics were both simple and still managed to be confusing at times and the camera restricted the possibility to understand certain level geometries
4:20 IM THE AVATAR, YOU GOTTA DEAL WITH IT!!!
The only time I positively recognize camera work is when it's a giving flashy angles to character animations (overwatch play of the game - street fighter super moves).
A bunch of this is subjective and the folk arguing in the comments about a surefire correct way to get the job done is plain depressing to read. Just make whatever camera feels right for you, for that game and no doubt people will let you know when they don't like it and you can decide if you're going to change it accordingly.
I really wish "The Last Guardian" camera designer had seen this talk.
Yeah or from SotC! Still working on recreating the system.
Saints Row does #35 really badly when driving. It constantly wants to point the vehicle camera a certain way, so mouse users need to constantly readjust the camera.
I never head a problem with gears of war's camera bobbing until i played gears 4 on a 144hz display.
I'm really confused about all this talk about "simulation sickness"... it seems weirdly new. Does it disproportionately effect people who started playing games at an older age?
+R. Ringshifter
it's pretty much what people would have referred to as motion sickness casually, except it's more specific to looking at motion on a screen.
it's getting popular as a more generally used term rather than being confined as technical jargon because of VR, because simulator sickness is pretty much one of the biggest limiting factors of its acceptance
No, it just had a different name. People complained about it back when Ultima Underworld was around. Heck, I had a friend that got motion sickness from some sega racing game.
It's the same thing as people who say they feel nausea if they play a game at 30fps instead of 60fps. So nothing really that new.
Oddly enough I got motion sick from Halo 5 when I played it, despite playing games since I was 4 years old(including Halo) and not having a problem.
It was really odd, but I adapted to it.
Play Minecraft, you'll know what it mean.
That guy has really thought a *long* time about cameras. The GOAT!
I didn't know camera programming was so well thought
Or rather, it often isn't :(
talks like this really remind me how young this medium is
This is good for film makers too. Interesting stuff.
I think 46 is wrong. It's more jarring to jave a cut with no reference than it is to have a fast but smooth reference point as to where you are.
47:06 (# 40 - camera drift too far) would a good approach be to determine the camera's speed based on how far the avatar is from the center of the screen (or whatever the target position is) on each axis? Then jerky movements near the center would theoretically be lazily smoothed over and the camera would naturally accelerate as the avatar gets further from center; with a well-tuned curve it could be made so that the player can't move faster than the camera's speed near the edges
53:30
no man sky absolutely fucks with that, everytime you enter a ship, talk to someone, interact with a screen or monolith, and a lot of other things, the camera just rushes to where is has to go, most times totally unnecessarily
50 Game Camera Mistakes : # 1 : Mario 64, how to say I'm not surprised a bit ?
very interesting, although tbh i found the camera in journey a bit bossy here and there.
it wasn't a very good camera system tbh.
I knew he was talking out his ass as soon as he said the point of a camera is to draw the player's attention attention to certain things above others
KingHalbatorix could you elaborate your point? I'm not sure if I disagree with him there.
KingHalbatorix
This is different for different genres. But even in games where the camera is solely a tool there are a few moments, where the camera is needed to highlight things.
This can work for many games though, and it definitely worked in journey.
Wanna experience a frustrating camera, go play sotc! :( lol
The Last Guardian has bad camera design but I can't figure out specifically which mistakes they made with it. I know it often breaks line of sight, cuts from one angle to another, collides into walls, and ignores player intent, but I wonder what else it does wrong.
Really great presentation but the guy definitely wasn't an English major. I had to figure out each time whether the title for each mistake was the mistake or the advised direction
Random dude: "Don't give camera freedom to players"
Miyamoto: "Let's add dedicated camera physical controls and paint them yellow"
sm64 in the thumbnail was expected lets be honest
It's interesting how personal motion sickness is. I don't think I've ever had motion sickness in a game , but put me in the back of a plane or bus for mere minutes and I'll be sick for a day.
My favorite game camera are Shadow of the Colossus, Uncharted 4, GTAV and MGSV.
I love SotC but how on earth is that your favorite?? I fought it the entire time, especially when I wanted to just gaze at shit from the side while I rode my horse.
It had no excuse after games like Wind Waker got that one right, which has to be my favorite game camera.
MGSV is great camera, too.
Sotc camera is one of the worst ever. Especially on the last coloss. But even this fact not making this game bad.
A quick counter-argument to what was said for #1 about how "A Link Between Worlds reverts to a fixed angle camera"... I would call this an incredibly poor example given the context of the gameplay. A top-down fixed angle imposes rigid design limitations on the gameplay, such that gameplay like you'd see in a third-person over-the-shoulder style Zelda would be either impossible or clunky and unexciting at best. The Mario example here is pretty on point, though.
I actually think that reinforces the point.
I'm not him. But what I feel he was trying to say is "Not all games need a behind-the-back third person camera. Sometimes a fixed angle camera is better." I think that's an important point to make because there are so many games that use this style of camera even when it doesn't fit the scope of the project.
At point #13 I decided to make my game first person..
7:12 "And these are highly respected sequels" Well, not by me. I mean, it makes sense in A Link Between Worlds, but those 3D World Mario games feel so uninspired to me. Personally I want to be able to control the camera, look around, explore. In games like BotW I sometimes ride/run in one direction and rotate the camera around, doing interesting camera shots just for my own entertainment. In Mario Galaxy (1 or 2) sometimes the camera got fixed and it always f-ed me up. Like it went to a side view but you still could fall off in the front and back, and I did fall off all the time! Let me control the camera and put it where it makes sense to me, please!
And in general top down view is a bit depressing to me. Always looking at the ground, never at the sky. I guess it saves money not having to design a sky?
Yep. Imo fixed camera just aged badly, I understand why people who study game cameras will praise it, but honestly? If your game has anything that remotely envolves reflexes on the gameplay, you'll be much better having a dynamic camera. Also, the Link Between Worlds camera is fixed from an upwards angle (almost completely vertical) which is what helps the most for that 2D style of gameplay. That mario game camera is from an awkward diagonal angle which is nauseating for today's standarts.
For number 5 (at around 13:00), how does the clip illustrate the point? I'm failing to see it
#37 ... hahaha. If you remember _Super Star Wars_ on the SNES, you may also recall that the majority of your vehicular levels used inverted (flight-style) controls, EXCEPT for the final one (the "trench run"), where you aimed your targeting crosshairs via _non-inverted_ (screen) controls. And there were no options to override this.