I amn’t a coder so I imagine this request sounds odd to those who are.
I’m worried this will sound petulant and I’m aware that often time and attention tend to reveal why the current methods are the best ones. Still…
When defining a project can we have a wizard that lets us run through a set of queries that define elements of the game type without having to code or create blueprints (at least not from scratch). This would save many people enormous trouble and save time for people who want to focus on other aspects of level building/animation and so on. I know the current templates aim to do something like that, but they’re presets not wizards … or maybe I need a guide for Dimsies.
Camera is a good starting point.
For example, if I choose the current Third Person Blueprints Only type the camera swings through walls. For me this is very hard to change (even though I know it’s pretty much just a trace function and an offset during tick), but for a coder what is easy to understand may be a barrier to others (in UE3 I could cobble a pretty good camera together from forum snippets but I’d rather have spent the time doing level art or animating), and I see a lot of people pursuing this in UE3 forum too, for years now.
Game Type Section - Camera Wizard [add previewer]
- What user input, if any, informs camera motion?
- What user input or events, if any, informs camera state switching?
- If camera states can change (ie, Top Down to Side View to Free Look or whatever) which options should be included this time?
- Can the camera trace meshes and avoid piling through them?
- What method of fixing overlap should it take if colliding or going to collide?
- Follows player?
- Has cursor/clickable item support?
- Can toggle or force following player OTS?
- Distance from player?
- Height off the ground?
- Can tilt up and down?
- Can player or event set a target during the game (ie, from player to another actor)?
- Can zoom on target via mouse scroll? Or by key press?
- Can do a nice blended move to frame an actor?
- Can do a nice blended move to default angle if key released?
- Should camera bob, and if so how much?
- For some common situations like dying or camera shakes, paths to optional components could be added.
On that last item, KillZ behavior is set in the world properties, in a special class or blueprint, but there could easily be an option to prompt, during the camera setup, whether or not you want to flip into physics crush mode and tip the camera crazily.
Some choices force or preclude other parameters, so it would be nice to be notified about that during setup. For instance, “if you want to enable a side scroller you will have to also adjust movement and aim controls (and this is where to do that).”
I know all these things and more are possible, but it often seems like just to implement one aspect often mucks up others, and a whole bunch of people have to confront the same befuddling challenges where it’s clear that lessons from the past could be brought forward into new versions. Like 3rd person shooter weapon direction and visibility; it’s fussy to track down and adjust (there is for instance a cool wizard in Unreal X Editor for ‘weapon’ classes). Given everyone faces similar choices, why not anticipate and provide coverage for them through a quick and illustrative wizard? And one where entering choices won’t risk stopping everything from working at all?
Or at the least, if a wise man can offer us an entry level camera technical guide that’d be great.
Then … camera and movement input aren’t the only core parts of game type definition … users may also want to have a Saveable gamestate that doesn’t conflict with the example projects offered when starting a project. Stuff like that would be a dream come true.