CCP Blam!
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C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.05.23 06:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm digging the feedback here guys.
I do actually want to put in the option for RC helicopter style flight controls. There are some challenges for this though. First off, we would need to figure out how to control the gun or the look-around camera when throttle and yaw are on one stick, and roll and pitch are on another. The current idea I have is to use the old thrust up and thrust down buttons (L1 and L2) as gun/look-around camera pitch up and pitch down. This may work because the camera on its own will gradually drift back to its neutral position when no input is provided. L2 and R2 is also possible for this, but I don't find that ideal because you are mapping an up/down movement to left/right sides of a controller, and I would also have to divorce the module switch modal from its standard R2 position. So assuming we do go the L1 + L2 route, we are still faced with the next challenge.
The next challenge is that all of our control mapping settings on the development side are based on a foundational set of "commands". For example:
StickAxes rightStickUpDown AxisPower=1 Speedx=1.0 Speedy=1.0 DeadZone=0.2
rightStickUpDown allows me to provide input to pitch up and down on the right analogue stick, using the ranges -1 to +1. This then gets routed through the gun/look-around camera. This sort of command relays values as if it were taken through an analogue device, so we get values like 0, 0, 0, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and so on when you move the analogue upwards - keep in mind the first values are zero because we've set the DeadZone to cover a margin of 0.2 degrees of control input.
The good news is that all buttons on a PS3 controller can be set to accept analogue style input, so if it it's set up, if you press a button softly, you get a smaller value than if you press it very hard. The bad news however, is that at the moment we don't have analogue input style commands that can relay information to the gun/look-around camera as only up or only down. That means I wouldn't be able to set L1 to pitch camera up, and L2 to pitch camera down. This is something I have put on the backlog and should have in place for a future deployment at which point I'll include an RC helicopter style flight control mapping. |
CCP Blam!
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C C P Alliance
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Posted - 2013.05.23 06:38:00 -
[2] - Quote
Let me expand on the ground cam, and general aiming camera status.
I do in fact plan on putting in a ground camera when we are able to release our Bomber variant of the dropship, and we have been playing around with ideas on whether or not we allow passengers to use modules shared by a vehicle. There's positives and negatives for both and a bit of design logistics to take care of there.
The aiming camera on the dropship is also being worked on in general. I want to enable the camera to be more responsive to players' direct input while still allowing the camera to gently and seamlessly ease back to its neutral position when no input is provided (in case you were wondering, the reason for the ease is so that players don't have to fumble by manually moving it back to the neutral position). These improvements require code fixes that I am working directly with a programmer on (alas Blam! is a Game Designer ;) ) |
CCP Blam!
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C C P Alliance
76
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Posted - 2013.05.23 07:07:00 -
[3] - Quote
This scheme doesn't seem to restore control to a gun camera. Opening up control customization is a bit of a task since we need to provide a whole new menu for this, and also implement the logic to ensure that mappings that cannot work with particular actions cannot be assigned - say for example putting infantry aiming on "X". Open customization is on the roadmap as part of a future release.
We do have plans for a full dropship HUD as well as HUD updates to all other vehicles. We also have plans to do Lock-On warning indicators, countermeasures, and lock-on for a certain subset of turrets. |