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We are currently researching different types of navigation systems being implemented in adventure games. We are trying to get an idea of which navigation scheme people would prefer to see in a modern adventure game. So far we have summed possible navigation into 3 categories:
Which of these methods would you like to see most in a new adventure? Please explain why you chose the way you did.
1) Static camera focused on single area or room – One can see this type of system in most adventure games, including modern games. This can be seen in the form of 2D pre-rendered backgrounds with ‘true’ 3D characters placed on top. Still-life, Syberia, Longest Journey all employed this technique. This technique could also be used in a full 3D environment (no pre-rendering); the important point is that the camera remains static (does not move). To interact with items in this scheme, the player hovers the mouse over the static screen until the mouse passes over an interactive item. At that point the mouse cursor changes to indicate a hot spot.
2) Running freely in an opened 3D environment – this technique was used in the DreamFall game. The camera sits just behind the main character and follows the character around as you press and hold the arrow keys on the keyboard to move around the world.
Interacting with items in this navigational scheme was different than traditional games. The player needed to right-click the mouse; this would display a blue disc that expanded across the world. This disc could be rotated using the mouse and when the disc intersected with interactive items in the scene, a visual indication that the item was interactive was shown.
3) A combination of both? – in the latest incarnation of Broken Sword (see the demo at http://www.adventure-eu.com), the environment and player are true 3D and the camera follows the player around. In keeping with tradition however, you click around the world using the mouse and the player moves accordingly. Additionally, the camera ‘adjusts’ itself to keep you and environment in full view. Additionally like traditional adventures, you hover the mouse over the environment (at whatever the current camera perspective is shooting from) and interactive items change the mouse cursor.
One way that this technique differs from technique (2) is that the camera is not immediately behind the player, but rather at a distance and off at some angle so as to keep the player and room in full view.
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We are currently researching different types of navigation systems being implemented in adventure games. We are trying to get an idea of which navigation scheme people would prefer to see in a modern adventure game. So far we have summed possible navigation into 3 categories:
Which of these methods would you like to see most in a new adventure? Please explain why you chose the way you did.
1) Static camera focused on single area or room – One can see this type of system in most adventure games, including modern games. This can be seen in the form of 2D pre-rendered backgrounds with ‘true’ 3D characters placed on top. Still-life, Syberia, Longest Journey all employed this technique. This technique could also be used in a full 3D environment (no pre-rendering); the important point is that the camera remains static (does not move). To interact with items in this scheme, the player hovers the mouse over the static screen until the mouse passes over an interactive item. At that point the mouse cursor changes to indicate a hot spot.
2) Running freely in an opened 3D environment – this technique was used in the DreamFall game. The camera sits just behind the main character and follows the character around as you press and hold the arrow keys on the keyboard to move around the world.
Interacting with items in this navigational scheme was different than traditional games. The player needed to right-click the mouse; this would display a blue disc that expanded across the world. This disc could be rotated using the mouse and when the disc intersected with interactive items in the scene, a visual indication that the item was interactive was shown.
3) A combination of both? – in the latest incarnation of Broken Sword (see the demo at http://www.adventure-eu.com), the environment and player are true 3D and the camera follows the player around. In keeping with tradition however, you click around the world using the mouse and the player moves accordingly. Additionally, the camera ‘adjusts’ itself to keep you and environment in full view. Additionally like traditional adventures, you hover the mouse over the environment (at whatever the current camera perspective is shooting from) and interactive items change the mouse cursor.
One way that this technique differs from technique (2) is that the camera is not immediately behind the player, but rather at a distance and off at some angle so as to keep the player and room in full view.
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Patrick,
Some more ideas to throw around are the camera views of Tomb Raiders and Battlefield 1942. Tomb Raiders often holds the camera behind the players character. In some cases the camera will take over for effect and show a zoomed out view or an animated camera path. The player can also press the Ins key in combination with the arrow keys to look around the room from the characters perspective. In battlefield 1942, the mouse is used to look around from a first person perspective while the ‘w,a,s & d’ keys are used to move with. In this case you are allways ready to look around or aim at a target. The game also has a ‘c’ button for tanks and such that allows you to change the camera perspective. Most people do not like the complexity of the Tomb Raiders controls (ie Ins) but It is powerful when you get use to it. There were several mech games where the view was also separated from the move.
It depend alot on the game. I like the third person perspective from high above in games like Ultima False Prophet. Mean Streets changed the perspetive depending on wether you were flying the car, side shooter, or in a room.
If I had to choose it would be where you can see the player and the camera follows behind them and slightly above.
There was also a boxing game in the days were your character was a ghost image. This ghost image can also happen in Tomb Raiders at times.
It is good to hear you are still working on something. If I can help let me know. -
Thanks for the feedback.
As for the type of game, we are really only interested in effective navigational interfaces for adventure games and nothing else. 🙂 I tried to narrow down the 3 types based on what I have seen of adventure games over the years. There may be more … feel free to make more comments.
Thanks!
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#2 In most cases the problem with the camera view is that it effects the way the player preseves the movement buttons to work. If a character was facing towards the player would they push the right button to go right or the left button from the characters perspective? Camera views that switch causes the player to get disoriented but do open the view to reveal ones surroundings or focus them on a given location.
Problems with cameras is that the Character gets in the way. A character may get in a place were the camera is not looking and you have to bang against the walls until you get into view. Things you want to see are obstructed from view.
I hope that helps.
Just a note on perspectives for those who wonder:
1st person is were you do not see your person except maybe arms or weopon. Like Doom or Ultima Underworld.
2nd person is were you see your person in front of you like Tomb Raiders.
3rd person is from above or at a distance. -
Having the moving camera follow the character around, limits the player’s ‘looking’ aspect of the environment. Having the still/static camera gives the player more time to interact with the more stable environment.
Now, one can say in a camera-following game that the player can pause all they want (are they really going to do that just to say they did?) but in my opinion, what makes an adventure an adventure is to allow the player to explore as much of the scene as possible.
It may sound like I’m contradicting myself because when you think of a full 3D environment with unlimited camera angles, you can explore a lot more than a still/static camera view. What I mean is the player is not distracted as much in the still/static camera example. They are focused on one particular image (or static 3D view) and can get down to the nitty gritty details in that particular scene. With a moving camera, the player is kind of all over the place, and not really focusing on details as much.
In short, my choice is #1, the static camera view or 2D image. 🙂
Here’s a more direct link to the Broken Sword 4 demo Patrick mentioned.
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Well, the first thing to decide is if you’re going to make a first-person or third-person adventure. Personally, I *hate* games that flip-flop between first and third person. Either the camera is following the character, or we’re looking from the point of view of the character, not both. To me, this messes with the ‘reality’ factor of the game and raises the question, ‘Am I IN the game, or am I PLAYING the game?’
Another thing that annoys me about some of the 3D games out there (and I haven’t been playing much these days, so forgive me) is the constant cut-scenes. To me, this lineates the story too much. It just seems absurd to me that picking up an object would automatically cause my character to talk to someone, ask all the right questions about the object, and combine the object I picked up with another one in my inventory — all in a 3 minute ‘movie.’ Imagine if Gabriel Knight 1 did that — you walk into the curio shop, click TALK on the shopkeeper, and he tells you *everything* in a cut-scene and gives you the mask. No fun!!
As someone else mentioned, changing the character’s orientation can hurt the interface, too. Although it might be harder to accomplish in a pure 3D environment, it’s important not to break that ‘fourth wall.’ If the camera is going to do a 180-degree rotation, the perspective of the character should remain the same. After all, you’re controlling the character, not the camera. (If we’re always looking over their shoulder, we shouldn’t suddenly be facing them just because they turned around.) This goes back to the first-person, third-person thing.
Have I confused anyone yet? 🙂 Anyway, the ideal interface in my opinion is something along the lines of Phantasmagoria, but a little bit updated. Although it was third-person with static backgrounds, I still got the sense that I was ‘inside’ the house and ‘surrounded’ by the other walls. Take this concept, but make the backgrounds move/pan with the character. If Adrianne walks to the right, instead of a ‘cut’ to a new background, have it follow her and pan across the room. If she turns around (to go ‘down’ towards the player) have the camera rotate around her. If she walks up the stairs, have the camera follow her up the stairs instead of waiting until she gets to the top, then cutting to the upstairs hallway. Sort-of a combination between 2D and 3D: the player has full exploration of the environment, but only from the character’s perspective (the player can’t control the camera).
So what do you think?
-Tom.
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For the record, it’s going to have a third person perspective.
For the camera orientation, are you saying you’d rather have the camera be in the back of the character the whole time? If the character would turn around to face the camera, the camera would move behind him so he wouldn’t be able to see the audience?
Re the cut scenes. So you want to leave out the excess trivial things and save the cutscenes for the important parts of the game?
For the panning and following the character across the screen, do you mean like in King’s Quest 7? An example is when Valanice walks from the desert oasis to the scorpion building and the same for the strange curiosities mouse to the stone exit doorway.I’m not disagreeing with you, Tom, just making sure I’m getting what you’re saying because I’m involved in the game too. 🙂
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I like option #1, because it allows the player to see everything that’s in the screen all at once, and it’s fairly easy to move about without getting disoriented. It also allows for very beautiful artwork that doesn’t require the very latest video card or processor to run the game. When I was playing Syberia, Still Life and Longest Journey, I didn’t feel at all hindered or that the interface was obsolete. In fact, I was often impressed by the graphics. And of course you can still include cut scenes that are in 3D.
However, I am not opposed to an interface that is 3D with a moving camera. The best example of this that I can think of is in Gabriel Knight 3, because I could manipulate the camera view without having to move the character, and when the character did walk from one place to another, I could press Esc and skip the walking.
What I don’t like is the ones where the character and camera view is fixed in one point and you can look around only from that point in each screen. I believe Atlantis and Beyond Atlantis were made that way, and I didn’t care for it.
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Two games to look at are Syberia and Nancy Drew. Syberia uses a static view that may side scroll at times. Nancy Drew uses a third person perspective that can pan around a room in the newer games. Both of these turn to third person when they are examining a puzzle. My best suggestion is to allow the story to determine the best camera angle. You might also look at how Shivers was done in third person. Good Luck, Got to Go to Work.
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I’d have to see the 3rd option to understand it, but the other two are
good depending on the type of game. The 1st way is always good for
adventure games. The second is usually only necessary if combat is
involved or if you’re going for a certain level of immersion. And if
you want the player to interact a lot with the environment, then the
second way is usually the way to go. If you’re trying to create
something along the same lines as the old Sierra games, then I’d say
option 1 is the best. Otherwise I’d go with option 2 and create a full
3d world since the technology now is to the point where 3d enviroments
are as good, if not better than any handpainted environment. -
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Julie,
In regards to camera movement with the character, I guess the answer to your question is Yes: If the character is facing North in Screen 1 with the camera behind them, and the character turns around to walk South to Screen 2, we’d see the character turn around and walk towards us, and then the camera would do a 180, so both the camera AND the character would be facing South in Screen 2. During the 180 pan, we would ‘see’ screen 3 or screen 4 as we turn around depending on which direction the camera rotated.Now, this doesn’t mean the camera would ‘follow’ the character all the time… in other words, we wouldn’t ‘zoom’ in to the background as the character walks forward. The screen would remain largely static unless there was an area of detail to explore like a keyhole or an object on the ground.
As for the cut-scenes, I meant just the opposite of what you said. They should be left for the unimportant stuff that doesn’t necessarily progress the story. In other words, the movie shouldn’t ‘do’ anything for you. I watched my friend play some console game, I think it may have been one of the Final Fantasy games, where it seemed all you did was walk around and ‘click’ to watch a bunch of mini-movies. This was the #1 complaint among players of Phantasmagoria when it first came out… the single cursor and over-use of movies took away from the gameplay, although Phantasmagoria still had WAY more interaction than the game I saw my friend play.
I personally LOVE games that you can beat with only exploring 50% of the possibilites. Re-playability is a very important factor for me when I invest $40+ on entertainment. Also, it gets those people who brag about beating a game in four hours to shut up. 🙂 ‘I beat the game!’ — ‘Yeah, but did you even GO into the catacombs?’ — ‘What???’ hehehe.
I’m sorry I haven’t really played KQ7 all that much, so I can’t quite picture what you’re talking about. Maybe I’ll install it today. It will give me something to do besides watch hurricane coverage. (I’m in FL) 😉
-Tom.
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Tom,
Race you to the beach! Not! Your not too far from me, about 1 1/2 hrs.
I like games that change. Space Quest had a one part were you dodged rocks in a land speeder. Mean Streets had a flying car. Heart of China had a 3D tank segment. I played Nancy Drew hoping they would go full 3D in their car driving sceen in the Old Clock. Unfortunately it was an above view like having a magnet under a toy car riding it around in the city. The static sceen has worked great for all Sierra Adventure games. It’s a formula that works. I would like to see someone think outside of the box, capture the feeling they want to get across, and hold the players attention. I can remember in Tomb Raiders when I was scared stiff when the wolf jumped out around the corner. I don’t know if you could get this from a static screen? -
Ohh okay. Thanks for clearing that up. 🙂
We’re focusing on static full 3D camera views for now. If the camera-following-character method works better for some scenes, we may implement that instead.
The replayability is definitely something to implement in the game. We have a few ideas for that as well.
I hope you guys won’t be affected by the hurricane too much. Here in Louisiana, we’re anticipating the next big one.
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