View point of Skulks

MaLuS

This is a post to the Devs as direct feedback and questions.

I would like to express that I understand why the camera is situated in the center of the model but i must also say that this is extremely frustrating as you cannot really peek around a corner to see if there is a marine waiting there, etc.. most players have no clue that this is the case and get killed by the fact that they did not know that when you peek around a corner its actually half of the model that is showing around the corner so the marines can see you long before you see them.

Is it possible to have the camera further forward so we can peek around corners better yet keep the control of the skulk? Perhaps having the camera closer to the head and having the body follow from neck/shoulders (i.e. allowing the center to be a slight rotation point)? like in quadruped animals the hind legs follow the front legs and the center mass is used more of a pivot and in most cases the animals are actually unaware of their hind legs.

Also there are times where the model does not fit the direction the player is looking at and leads to some players model showing when they are completely unaware that it is due to the orientation of the surface they are on vs the direction of the players view point, I have also seen times where the model seems to not know which way to face when close to 2 or more different angled surfaces and results in the model flicking between orientations while the player remains still on their view point or it sits in a "middle ground" that was unintended by the player. Is this something you are aware of and working to fix already?

Love the game that you guys at UWE have produced and keep up the good work

Kamamura

Also, do they really have eyes in their mouths? :-P They look on the sides of skulk's head to me. And if this is the case, why the player look through his skulk's teeth?

Kouji_San

Kamamura wrote: »

Also, do they really have eyes in their mouths? :-P They look on the sides of skulk's head to me. And if this is the case, why the player look through his skulk's teeth?

Those are fake eyes to throw you off and intimidate you. Skulk sees with his mouth, no questions asked!

YoungTrotsky

I think the problem with having the camera anywhere but the centre of the model would be what happens to the model when you try to move your view only, i.e. move the mouse but don't press any of the keys. Currently the model just spins around it's dorsal-ventral axis but if the camera was non-central then presumably the model would actually move around way more, which would probably look very unnatural (even more than a skulk spinning rapidly around its DV axis) to other players and make it harder to hit you since only your head would stay still and the whole rest of your body would spin around it. If you think of it in terms of area, having the camera non-central would mean a spinning skulk would make a circle with a much larger area than if the camera is central, since the radius is 0.5 x length with a central camera but > 0.5 x length with any other camera location.

Obviously it is not how you actually see things from your own eyes but I think centrally-located cameras are the best compromise between first-person and third-person rendering of movement.

MaLuS

As I stated before, I understand that reasoning. This is why I proposed having the center as more of a pivot that would follow the front shoulders more like how a dog turns around giving a more natural quadrupedal look and also giving the ability of corner peeking. Obviously some tweaking would be needed for animations and the physics of the model but as I also stated I made this thread to get a more direct response of the devs to see if this was even possible or viable in their coding and mechanics.

This is a very basic example of how the body follows the front but you get the idea, some tweaks can be added like limiting how fast the player can swivel round or how much twist the model has etc... so the model doesn't clip into itself

Al_Bobo

There's actually a bit simpler way to allow corner peeking. Devs just need to add leaning so that when you press Q/E you lean, but it only shows the leaning on your screen. Others won't see that. What really happens is that your camera's viewpoint moves to the left (or right) to the point where alien's cheek would be. This way you can peek without lots of additional animations and marines will see just a bit of of your head.
I don't want them to change the location of mouth camera and I don't think there's other ways to enable leaning, if you keep the camera where it is now.

Rich_

The visible eyes on the skulks head are actually his testicles. The skulks 'sees' with his tongue. How did you not know this?