Camera Rotation?

Wow, I just got this game on Steam and wandered over to these forums and I must say it seems like just about every question gets answered. Well done! I'm glad there is a game of this type on Steam. I like TD games, and the thing they typically suffer from is the limitations of being in a 2D flash environment in a tiny box. I'm glad to see some 3D accelerated full-screen justice done for the tower-defense concept! (not to mention the story, levels, strategy...etc)

So here's my question. Something I noticed right away while playing is that while the view is 3D, there seems to be no way of rotating the view. Am I missing something, or is it not implemented? If not, I would greatly encourage you to consider doing so. As it stands it feels very limited to have a 3d environment and not be able to see it from the other side.

At the very least, I'd love the ability to rotate horizontally - even in fixed directions would be better than nothing. In particular I'd love to gaze from over the towers at the hordes of aliens streaming out of the gates...so, any chance at implementing a rotating camera view?

Of course, being able to rotate vertically and zoom in would be awesome, so I could jzoom in horizontally and watch them get taken down before my eyes at ground level....but one thing at a time :)

Thanks for an entertaining game...

-- Joren

[jeff]

Hi and thanks for the camera suggestion.* We started out looking at several different options for controls, and what we found and have seen on previous projects is that if you can keep the camera angle fixed, you can increase usability significantly.* As a small indie developer making a game like this on our own, one of the things we think about are features that allow more people to play the game and one of the decisions we made was to keep that horizontal camera angle fixed to help widen the audience.* We do adjust the angle vertically as you zoom changing the pitch angle of the camera.* I understand you'd like more than that.





Jeff

[Joren]

I understand the desire to prevent the user from accidentally rotating their camera into oblivion... however, it's not always necessary to deny the ability in order to prevent that from happening. Why not make it an option that is turned off by default? e.g. - go to settings, turn on "free camera" mode or whatever, and that allows you to look around a bit more?



As for interface...you could also consider a simplified horizontal mode, with only 8 cardinal directions that you could move between by hitting right or left arrow...? Of course, my personal favorite interface is to have the user hold down the middle mouse button while rotating vertically and horizontally...but not every user has seen that before.



Is there a design reason that prevents this? (e.g. missing textures on opposite sides of building, worry about occlusion/collision if user is zoomed in too far, etc...)



Thanks,



-- Joren

[jeff]

Once we made the camera choice, we did*design much of the content to be viewed from that specific angle.* Levels were in many ways designed with the viewpoint in mind.





Jeff

[alien]

Ok, if you cannot provide the more advanced player with full rotation and full zoom (which I wish you would) capability, then at least, please give us a variable zoom. The three levels you have provided are either to close or to far way and make the game difficult to play.

[polaris2013]

concerning zoom, I find the most distant zoom and the middle zoom both to be suitable (I call them Zoom 1 and Zoom 2).

The closest zoom (I call it Zoom 3) is so close I don't see any purpose for it, though. Zoom 2 is already focused on just one tower, so why zoom closer than that?

I guess I wouldn't be opposed to a hypothetical Zoom 1.5, but on the other hand I like having no more than 3 levels. More than that and I tend to get confused whether wheel up or wheel down zooms in or out from my current position :-P