Camera closer

I spent this week working on the little things, like UI updates and pushing the camera closer to the player.

In the equipment screen, the boxes were previously empty, and I put helpful background images to show the player what goes into them. This should be useful, especially when the boxes grow more numerous. I am no UI professional, and I have the utmost respect for those who work solely on UI. I don’t know how you guys do it. It drives me crazy.

I noticed recently while playing other games (mostly soulslikes) that the camera for their character was quite close, at least in comparison to Memoirium’s. I’m a little embarrassed to admit I didn’t consider how much that distance affected the entire game. So I decided to see what it was like to push the camera about 150 Unreal units less than where the default was.

The difference was quite stark. It was a more personal experience, things felt farther and bigger. When fighting enemies, you could read their actions better, but also things from behind could have a better chance of sneaking up on you. That’s a big thing I neglected. I wanted enemies to be able to catch the player by surprise, but when the camera was far away, the player had a clear vision of whatever was coming up from behind. With this camera change, I think the game feels so much better because it heightens the tension.

You can see the before and after for the camera change. The farther camera makes it feel like the original God of War, a more action-oriented game. A closer camera brings you closer to the character and encourages you to act more carefully because you can’t see everything.

With that change, I also thought about other dangers the mechanics could pose. When picking up loot in the wild, I made sure to slow the player down. This will hopefully encourage players to act more cautiously when getting an item. It was too easy before to run past it to pick it up since there was no interruption, but now the player will be vulnerable while looting.

I’ve also made changes/updates to the “quest” system. Another shoutout to those who work in story or quest design, that’s another crazy thing to do. I already went crazy with a linear quest design, I cannot fathom testing one with multiple possibilities.

It has been both a fun and frustrating week. I tried adding a new mechanic with the weapons, and it kept crashing on me. The problem is probably with my weapon system, and I tried for hours to get it to work. Alas, I gave up on that, but my subconscious is certainly working on it and will let me know when it has an epiphany.