Alternate ways to pan the camera
Robby
Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
With all the great ideas and work done by the devs and now CDT i'm surprised that there still seemingly hasn't been any work on a way to control the camera while commanding other than to either click on the mini-map, which isn't very accurate, or bring up the big map and click in there, which is rather intrusive, or to move the cursor to the edge of a screen, which could be of better use elsewhere. It really is bothersome that i have to move the mouse away from the often important central part of the screen (such as when playing marine com) just to pan the view a little bit. If a i.e. a marine gets too far off the central part of the screen there's a big chance you'll end up having scenery to fight with when trying to support. This is less problematic when controlling drifters, but it's not just about efficiency. If there were smarter ways to pan the camera, which many of us are used to from other top-down-view games, it would also be a lot more comfortable to play commander.
A smooth and very quick way to pan the camera yet leave you with great control over it is to let it pan in a 1:1 ratio of how you move the mouse while i.e. holding down the right mouse button, along with resetting the cursor to the center part of the screen when you release. This could mean very efficient yet easy ways of controlling the camera in practically every occasion as a com.
A smooth and very quick way to pan the camera yet leave you with great control over it is to let it pan in a 1:1 ratio of how you move the mouse while i.e. holding down the right mouse button, along with resetting the cursor to the center part of the screen when you release. This could mean very efficient yet easy ways of controlling the camera in practically every occasion as a com.
Comments
Not very practical. An option to rebind those keys would be superb.
Yes, but we are trying to keep the amount of keys options relatively low, that would mean adding 4 new options. Which if you think about it, no matter where you bind them you it would still be inconvenient as the grid keys take up a lot of space.
I could see a movement override key working though where you could hold shift for example and it would override the wasd keys to be used for movement instead of grid keys.
Also, some mice have extra buttons (laid out in a grid), or even have a thumb joystick on the side that could be used for this.
I'm sorry, what? So you think that a solution better than to use the mouse to pan the camera is to have me let go of either the mouse or the grid-keys every three seconds? This is most lazy response to a real issue i've ever seen.
Which is why the camera panning would be best left to the mouse.
How is this any different than from holding down a mouse-button and moving the mouse?
That's a smart way of fast getting to the marines. But i think you've misunderstood my point, mate. This topic is not about getting to the marines fast. It's about being able to pan the camera in a smooth fashion when following them around rooms and corridors without having scenery getting in the way.
Your solution affects the "macro panning" and i'm talking about the "micro panning". NS2 currently doesn't have any micro panning other than moving your mouse to the edge of the screen or to, as Samus suggested, move a hand over to the arrow keys. Both of which are rather ancient methods. The arrow keys pan the camera pretty fast in NS2 too for that matter, so it's still a jerky macro experience even for those with three arms. The suggestion to activate camera panning with the WASD keys when holding Shift isn't ideal since the keys have a set pan-speed to them. From one engagement/situation to another, they may feel too slow or too fast. If it's too fast you may have to waste valuable time correcting over-panning mistakes. If it's too slow you'll get frustrated as you can't get to the marines fast enough and will pull up the map and click anyway. Only with the mouse could you have complete control over this yourself.
I can't imagine your technique saving more than a miniscule amount of time compared to hitting the map key and clicking there or simply pressing the space-bar. When commanding in a PCW a good commander can keep track of when and where a marine would need medpacks anyway. In a bigger game on a public server it's obviously out of the question to hotkey marines.
A 1:1 ratio of mouse-movement to pan-movement while holding down the right mouse-button or any other configurable button with the option of keeping the mouse-pointer locked at it's current position while panning and unlocking at release, or resetting the mouse-pointer to the center of the screen when releasing, would make it a joy to pan the camera. This would make the viewing experience of watching casters a lot better too. I've lost count how many times i've seen casters try to micro-pan the camera back and forth to cover engagements with WASD and thus making it hard to follow. A smooth camera-movement would make NS2 look more professional in live-streams.
When a marine is moving, you re-center the screen with a quick double tab of your hotkey.
If you are doing it correctly, you hardly ever need to use mouse scrolling at all.
Edit:
I guess I'd prefere to argue in the original thread, as this is quite a derailment. But if you pay close attention, those two sentences are mutually contradicting.
If you are a good commander, and can keep track of when and where a marine would need medpakcs by your own admission; then you do not need to make several hotkeys, only hotkey the select few important fights. -This is surprisingly trivial infact once you've practised it.
At the same time, whether you can keep track of who needs medpacks or not, is of no consequence to the effectiveness of the technique, because that is not the goal of it. It is, as you put it yourself, to combat the poor "micro panning" as well as incidentally being a good tool for "macro panning" .
I posted a demo in the original thread in a big pub game on descent. You should, even in a high playercount server, not need to hotkey more than 4 groups of marines - as that is usually what you need to routeblock an entire map. In the demo, I only ever use 3 hotkeys.
Ah, so it's 1+1+S+Click repeatedly? Hehe, i guess that actually would work in terms of accuracy! But boy am i sad that we actually have to resort to this in 2014. Frankly it's sad a topic like this even needs to exist. UWE created a whole new game in a new shiny engine yet couldn't once think about a modern way to pan the camera.
Thanks for posting your technique. I'm sure it will help some people at least!
Well you don't need to re-center between each medpack, but in essence; yes.