Thursday, November 19, 2009

Making the camera less dynamic

Hey guys, today's post is a bit of a design introspective about the camera system, since I've recieved a few requests to change it to something simpler.

For those of you not familiar with it, the camera in Annihilation Undead pans out infront of the player, in the direction they're aiming. I designed the camera like this for two reasons: Firstly, it gives the player a larger viewfield to the front, to better see what they're shooting at. It also decreases the visibility behind them too, which has the effect of making the game more tense, allowing monsters to sneak up behind the player and suprise them.

The idea was to give the game a more panicked and scary feel to it, to more closely match it's horror inspiration. In hindsight however, It doesn't mesh very well with the rest of the game - AU is largely focused on balls-out action more than suspense, and so because of this, the Dynamic Camera is now optional, turned off by default, so new players will have a more familiar centered-character view.
This feature will be in the next update, along with two new game modes, and a new weapon. More on these later!

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