Free Flight 3rd Person View - GameCreators Forum

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Bulleyes

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Joined: 3rd Nov 2002

Location: Cyberjaya, Malaysia

Posted: 19th Jul 2003 14:15

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Hi,

I made a space combat game which which played using 3rd Person View. As it is a spaceship, it can freely move and rotate in terms of pitch, yaw, and roll.

I tried to use "set camera to follow" command for the camera but it doesn't work. The camera won't follow the tail of my spaceship if I pitch up and down.

It seems like this command only work on those RPG style of game, where the character can only rotate left and right.

Any ideas? Thanks!

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Philip

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Joined: 15th Jun 2003

Location: United Kingdom

Posted: 19th Jul 2003 19:47

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You need to make the camera position and its angle of view change each time you move the ship so that its angle of view matches that of the local z axis of the model you are looking at.

Phil

What do you mean, bears aren't supposed to wear hats and a tie?

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Bulleyes

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Location: Cyberjaya, Malaysia

Posted: 19th Jul 2003 21:06

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I don't think it is as easy as that. This is because the 3rd person camera has certain distance behind the ship. Therefore, I believe besides setting the orientation, we need the calculation to get the position behind the ship, by using the negation of the vector where the ship is pointing now.

Bad Nose Entertainment - Where games are forged from the flames of talent and passion.

http://www.badnose.com/

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Scorpyo

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Joined: 26th Aug 2002

Location: italy

Posted: 19th Jul 2003 21:25

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A rudimentary method that i used was to put a limb behind my ship (a small cube ) where the cam should sit , hide it and position the camera there:

position_camera:
cx#=limb position x(9999,1)
cz#=limb position z(9999,1)
cy#=limb position y(9999,1)
position camera cx#,cy#,cz#
xrotate camera wrapvalue(oax#+20)
yrotate camera oay#
zrotate camera oaz#
return

9999 is the ship, limb 1 is the hidden cube
oax#,oay# and oaz# are the ship angles, where oax# is increased by 20 in order to point the ship or the cam would look straight forward
i wasn't using pitch, yaw and roll tho.. not sure if you can adapt this hint to your case..

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Muddleglum

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Location: New Zealand

Posted: 20th Jul 2003 04:03

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a common method with free flight is to:-
set camera to object position
set camera orientation to object
move camera (minus your required viewing distance.)

if you have a level landscape which you want the camera to stay level with then add after that,

point camera x,yz of object you are following.

smoother 'delayed' following will take more maths- or delay routine -as well.

cheers.

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Fallout

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Joined: 1st Sep 2002

Location: Basingstoke, England

Posted: 20th Jul 2003 05:04

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How bloody odd!! I wrote that exact same thing muddleglum (almost identically) but my post didnt appear. I had to read yours 3 times to realise it wasnt mine!

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Muddleglum

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Location: New Zealand

Posted: 21st Jul 2003 01:04

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egad ! perhaps this means this forum is the first case of spontaneous artificial computer intelligence ! ... which can detect near duplicate posts ...?
.. or the moderators ? very odd.

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GameKit

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Joined: 6th Mar 2003

Location: USA, Staring Blankly at a Computer

Posted: 21st Jul 2003 05:20

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Hmmm... I did something like this once, so try...

+ Code Snippet


Position Camera Object Position X(Obj#),Object Position Y(Obj#),Object Position Z(Obj#)
Rotate Camera Object Angle X(Obj#),Object Angle Y(Obj#), Object Angle Z(Obj#)
Move Camera -(Distance#)

or for a smoother effect...

+ Code Snippet


OldCameraX#=Camera Position X()
OldCameraY#=Camera Position Y()
OldCameraZ#=Camera Position Z()
Position Camera Object Position X(Obj#),Object Position Y(Obj#),Object Position Z(Obj#)
Rotate Camera Object Angle X(Obj#),Object Angle Y(Obj#), Object Angle Z(Obj#)
Move Camera -(Distance#)
Position Camera (OldCameraX#+Camera Position X())/2,OldCameraY#+Camera Position Y())/2,OldCameraZ#+Camera Position Z())/2
Point Camera Object Position X(Obj#),Object Position Y(Obj#),Object Position Z(Obj#)

Well... I hope that helps...

Anyone Can Destroy...But Few Can Create...

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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Free Flight 3rd Person View