fickle's camera mod that she refuses to give a good name to

If it was available in the base game, maybe. As an addon it's too close to "aimbot" territory for my comfort, and I'd hate to do anything that could be called "tainting" MP balance (as if there's any to begin with lmfao)

No yeah, that shit would get slapped down by the admins or judges in a heartbeat. I'm not pressuring you, by any means; this is something I'd have to directly convince Mystic or Rob of.

I'm just flailing about hopelessly thinking about this, because gamepad / third person viability in ringslinger is a possibility that excites me to no end.

---------- Post added at 05:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:05 PM ----------

Is anything not disabled in the current EXE? (The v1 MB release is more up-to-date than anything I posted on Discord.) Aside from the aim assist, if anything's still enabled that's a bug I need to fix. I could disable aim assist, too.

Yeah, the aim assist is my issue. The problem is that I also hold onto the center-view button in first person while using mouse+keyboard to level out my aim in match/ctf, and the lock-on system directly conflicts with that unless I turn it off deliberately.

It's not the end of the world, it just feels a little awkward having to go into the options any time I want to play CTF after doing gamepad SP/coop for a while.
 
Holy guacamoly, this is incredible! It works so well! The only issue I can find is that the boss aim-assist stops locking on when you hit a boss, but it still thinks it is on, leaving you in a state where you're just strafing without any lock-on, so if you have it set to toggle, you have to press center camera once to disable it, and then *another* time to lock back on.
 
Thank you very much for making this. Full disclosure, I don't know how, but I was able to see the submissions board in a read only mode for, like, 10 minutes, and I managed to download this on Tuesday of last week, not knowing I shouldn't have. I have played through the whole game like this, and I want to tell you this is absolutely amazing. This is my preferred way to play. I cannot wait to play with this, the LUA player/object shadows mod whenever that gets ported and the Sega Saturn models.

This is honestly incredible and I want to congratulate you on a job well done, FickleHeart.
 
The new autocamera options are all really great, like "Shift to Angle" and "Turn to Spin Dash" and specially Center View that now snaps the camera smoothly behind the character.
I really like Turn-to-Input because it reminds of the Old Analog, I only use a little of Turn to Angle because it feels like I can do turns more sharper.
I keep changing all the time, but here is my current autocamera config:

autocamera.png



But now, there is some things I would like to suggest:

- "Turn to Spin Dash" should make the camera always try follow the same angle direction that the spin dash is charging to, just like in old "Turn to Angle".

- Thok should work with Turn-To-Ability, just like it worked on Old Analog, and I hope that the the max setting can turn the camera the same speed as using Center View when thokking.

- This is not important, but it would be good to have the game to save the camera config of each play style, because for example, if I change the "Camera Distance" and "Camera Height" in 'Simple' play style and go to Standard and come back to Simple it will always come back to the same 224 and 50 values respectively. Also the auto camera configs are not saving after quitting the game.

- For those that only want the ability to go the direction the character is facing and doesn't want an autocamera, there should be included a "Ability Angle - Movement/Camera" option in "Player 1 Controls" to separate it from the 'Simple' mode (with the "Ability Angle" option affecting directionchar, just like in the current Simple mode).

- And my last suggestion, I found out yesterday that setting both Turn and Horizontal Camera to X-Axis while using Standard mode is actually the simplest control scheme for gamepad, making the camera always look in front of the character while not having the player to worry about manually moving the camera because they already are moving it when turning. I think this control scheme could even become the new Standard mode to differentiate it from Legacy, making Legacy the only one with "Tank Controls". And with that, bring back "Character Angle - Movement/Camera", because I think the current Legacy and Standard doesn't have enough differences in gameplay to be different play styles.
 
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Just managed to beat the entire game with the mod. I've found it also really helps when you're on a laptop with a crappy track-pad that deactivates when you're pressing too many keys. Sure, it's not the optimal way to play, but honestly no game-pad control scheme can ever match the precision of mouse & keyboard when the game relies so heavily on camera direction. Even the old Sonic Utopia tech demo didn't quite manage to make them equal.

So please, can one of you developer guys please add this to the base game? Please? I'm begging you, here. Come on, you know you want to. Do it for the minimum-wage camera-man that has to trail behind Sonic all the time. Do it for him. He's not paid nearly enough to stare at that blue behind all day. Give him some tools to make his life easier.
 
- "Turn to Spin Dash" should make the camera always try follow the same angle direction that the spin dash is charging to, just like in old "Turn to Angle".
This is what it already does, unless you mean something different. Are you rotating the camera manually while charging a spindash? All automatic camera movement is stopped when you rotate the camera until you press to start moving/changing angle again, so that you don't have to fight it to look around.


- Thok should work with Turn-To-Ability, just like it worked on Old Analog, and I hope that the the max setting can turn the camera the same speed as using Center View when thokking.
So in the original tests, turn to ability was set to non-zero by default and it caused thok to immediately snap the camera to the player's back. I removed that during tests because I was told it was disorienting, but I also disabled turn to ability by default after that. I may look into a smoother camera pan when thokking to try and get the benefits of it without the disorientation.


- This is not important, but it would be good to have the game to save the camera config of each play style, because for example, if I change the "Camera Distance" and "Camera Height" in 'Simple' play style and go to Standard and come back to Simple it will always come back to the same 224 and 50 values respectively. Also the auto camera configs are not saving after quitting the game.
It's not too hard to implement this, so I can look into it. I'm not sure why the new camera settings wouldn't save, though? They save fine for me, unless you're going back and forth between this and the normal EXE. (Since the auto camera variables aren't in the normal game, they'll be lost when the config is updated on other EXEs.)



- For those that only want the ability to go the direction the character is facing and doesn't want an autocamera, there should be included a "Ability Angle - Movement/Camera" option in "Player 1 Controls" to separate it from the 'Simple' mode (with the "Ability Angle" option affecting directionchar, just like in the current Simple mode).

[...]

And with that, bring back "Character Angle - Movement/Camera", because I think the current Legacy and Standard doesn't have enough differences in gameplay to be different play styles.
The reason I added the playstyle menu instead of giving separate toggles for these things is that they have to be layered on top of each other to make any sense. If your character angle always faces toward the camera, it doesn't make sense to have a separate option for whether player abilities face the camera or the character, since they're both the same. And if your player abilities face the camera, it's bad to have an auto camera swinging around and throwing off your angles.

Communicating the relationship between those modes is difficult in a menu with limited space for option names, so I opted to create the play style menu instead, to give space to fully explain the differences between each option. (You can freely criticize the exact text in there; I wrote it on very little sleep.) The only missing option is one that sends player abilities in the facing angle with a fully manual camera, but this seemed to me like an uncommon enough case that it would be fine to omit for the sake of keeping the number of different play styles manageable. Those who want this option can turn all of the automatic camera features off, aside from center view pulling the camera behind the player, which I plan to add a toggle for.


- And my last suggestion, I found out yesterday that setting both Turn and Horizontal Camera to X-Axis while using Standard mode is actually the simplest control scheme for gamepad, making the camera always look in front of the character while not having the player to worry about manually moving the camera because they already are moving it when turning. I think this control scheme could even become the new Standard mode to differentiate it from Legacy, making Legacy the only one with "Tank Controls".
Honestly, that sounds kind of painful to use. I guess it's an alright substitute when there's no other option outside of tank controls? But I don't think it would benefit anyone to have that as a proper menu option.

Anyway, the default control scheme is called "Standard" mostly in an attempt to please the egos of everyone who insists that kb+m is the only way to play, for long enough to petition to get this in the base game. If I had the final say, it would be called "Advanced" instead.
 
As someone who has been playing SRB2 with mouse and keyboard for over a decade, I am in love with this mod. Sure, it's less precise than the recommended controls, but SRB2 finally plays like a regular 3D platformer now, and that's about enough to send me over the moon. I finished the main campaign as well as Aerial Garden with this mod and I am liking it a lot - no longer do I have to hunch over my keyboard when I want to casually play this game. This is good stuff, thanks so much for developing this.
 
This is what it already does, unless you mean something different.
Oh yeah, I think I was so used to the Standard spin dash where you could just aim with the camera and not wait for it to go behind you that I expected something like that.
But now that I came back to test that, I found that there is some times that the camera doesn't turn when I initiate the spin dash, don't know why honestly.

I may look into a smoother camera pan when thokking to try and get the benefits of it without the disorientation.
Many people were already fine with how it was in old analog I guess, but if you say it can be even better, I'm looking forward to it (not that I want to use it, just test it).

I'm not sure why the new camera settings wouldn't save, though? They save fine for me, unless you're going back and forth between this and the normal EXE.
Probably it is, I was going to the normal .exe to check the differences compared to your build. But saving the "Camera Distance" and "Camera Height" would be nice.

The reason I added the playstyle menu instead of giving separate toggles for these things is that they have to be layered on top of each other to make any sense.
Those who want this option can turn all of the automatic camera features off, aside from center view pulling the camera behind the player, which I plan to add a toggle for.
That is actually a good explanation, is good to know that there is a good reason behind these choices. Like you said, it can already be done adjusting the camera options but honestly a toggle to turn off autocamera would save time for some people.
Honestly, that sounds kind of painful to use. I guess it's an alright substitute when there's no other option outside of tank controls? But I don't think it would benefit anyone to have that as a proper menu option.
In my opinion it would be fine for those getting in the game now that doesn't like the "tank controls", but since it's something I found recently it may be actually seen as a horrible control scheme by the community.

Anyway, the default control scheme is called "Standard" mostly in an attempt to please the egos of everyone who insists that kb+m is the only way to play, for long enough to petition to get this in the base game. If I had the final say, it would be called "Advanced" instead.
Oh no, you shouldn't have said that, now the autocamera is never coming to vanilla SRB2 D:
But being honest, I was a analog player and testing the default controls in 2.2 made me see why the developers push them so much, but I still care for analog and its viability for gamepad players.

But anyway, thanks for answering, honestly I was testing this a lot to try to search for an issue and formulate my opinions about it just to give my feedback, but I glad that in the end I didn't find any issues at all. This mod is awesome and I can say it works perfectly for me, I just have to find my best config. Really hoping that it becomes part of the vanilla SRB2!
 
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Maybe it's something obvious that I'm not seeing, but is there a way to keep the "thok in the camera's direction" behavior without disabling the auto-camera? Apparently I'm so used to making tiny adjustments to my jumps with the analog stick that I can't stop myself from constantly thokking backward.

Now that I'm played through the whole campaign with this mod, I'm more used to it and I like it more than before (although it was still a relief to go back to the default gamepad controls and feel that I had more control again). However, my opinion is a lot less important than a new player's, and I 100% think that I'd have an infinitely easier time introducing people to SRB2 with this mod than with the normal controls, so I'm going to do that from now on. Thank you so much!
 
A suggestion: It would be cool to have a list of the respective new options' cvars in the release post for folks trying to set up macros for different cameras like myself. Sure, you could look in source, but it'd be more accessible and convenient that way.
 
Sure, and I'll post them here too:


Player 2 cvars are on cam2_ instead of cam_ unless otherwise noted



The base toggle for Simple mode: abilitydirection/abilitydirection2 [Camera/Movement] (having this on with directionchar off is unsupported)
Rotation Speed: cam_rotspeed [1 to 25]


Shift to Player Angle: cam_shiftfacingchar [0.00 to 1.00]
Turn to Player Angle: cam_turnfacingchar [0.00 to 1.00]
Turn to Ability: cam_turnfacingability [0.00 to 1.00]
Turn to Spindash: cam_turnfacingspindash [0.00 to 1.00]
Turn to Input: cam_turnfacinginput [0.00 to 1.00]


Lock Button Behavior: cam_centertoggle [Hold/Toggle]
Sideways Movement: cam_lockedinput [Strafe/Turn]
Targeting Assist: cam_lockaimassist [Off/Bosses/Enemies/Interests/Full]
 
Walking down a slope can cause the camera to bug out horribly, making it near unplayable.
 

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A couple notes from messing around with Ray's glide script on this version of the code:

  1. If the new controls don't already set a Lua-detectable flag when they're active they should.
  2. It'd be nice if there was a way to detect the user's input relative to the camera. Ray uses forwardmove and sidemove for this, but with the new controls sidemove is always 0 and forwardmove always positive, so you can't use it to detect if the user is angling towards the screen. I could always hack something together using angleturn if this isn't feasible, of course.
 
This works pretty well, I'd even consider it a worthy replacement for analog, but I still have a couple gripes with it that I'd like to see adressed before I'd say it was good enough.

The first thing is more of an SRB2 character turning issue than something that this mod has tackled, but using keys or buttons leads the camera to feel slow and clunky while tapping the button, and feels way too fast when holding the button down. I feel a bit of a delay from when I press the camera rotate button (formerly known as the turn character button) to when I actually get some meaningful movement out of it, and as soon as I hold it for the time where I feel the camera's moving quick enough, it starts going even faster so it feels even less precise than analog.

The second thing I don't agree with is a mix of two things relating to the camera lock on button, those being that why is it set to center camera which is for bringing the camera back to being centered on the character from a vertical shift while reset camera is over here doing literally nothing.
The other thing I would like to ask is why does the Z-Targeting still stop entirely when I hit a boss? The point of it should be to aleviate the need to have the camera constantly being guided everywhere and it's impossible for me to follow the boss when I am fighting both the boss and the camera buttons. I'd like it if it could just permanently lock onto the boss without needing to do anything more.
 
I know it's pretty much pointless, but for anyone who wants it I took the latest commit (Fix RVZ autocam AGAIN/1f88c70d) from the git repository and compiled it for 64-bit versions of SRB2.
 

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I noticed a glitch while playing with standard controls; when trying to fly using Sonic+Tails, Tails flies straight forward and I'm unable to change direction or slow him down mid-air. The problem doesn't occur on the default exe, only when I'm using this one.
 

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