Want more freedom from the camera in Sacred 2?

[gogoblender 3,073]

When I first got the game, I was taken back by how beautiful it was. Then quickly realized that even free cam setting won't let me raise my head...because there is no sky!

 

Zarhrezz, from the SIF wrote a very good explanation of the trade-offs involved, which made me feel better about why this happens:

 

"What the OP is referring to is that no matter the camera type you use, you always have a maximum "footprint" on the ground that you can see.

 

In reference to this image:

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/document...GES/SPHERE.GIF

Theta can be controlled with A/D. Phi is controlled by the zoom level; the closer to the character, the larger phi (camera point closer to the x-z plane).

 

What people expect from a "free camera" is that both theta and phi can be fully controlled (going to phi is 90 degrees for first person view with maximum zoom in).

 

Although this would be nice, there is a drawback; open sky in 3D engines is very demanding on the GPU side. As demonstrated by plenty of games (Gothic 3, Hellgate: London to name the last few that I've seen doing it poorly), not controlling the visible footprint can destroy the FPS that can be reached by the non-godly system.

 

Especially in a massive seamless world, this can quickly become a factor (Gothic 3 failed because of this; 1-2 seconds loading lag every 15 seconds anyone?). The camera control chosen in Sacred 2 ensures that this not happen, so the developers chose to limit camera freedom to ensure good performance. We see the same in Diablo III where the choice is made to not allow the player to control the camera at all. Doing this allows the developer to render only what the player can see...from 1 direction. Doing this is a huge, huge save on graphical load on the card, allowing much higher quality textures to be used that would be possible with a player-controlled camera.

 

In the end, it's a trade off between freedom of camera vs. quality of what is shown. Sacred 2 chose the middle path and personally I'm fine with that. Even though a little more phi on the zoom levels would be nice..."

I thought that was a good explanation of the trade-off, and I've now come to Sacred 2 feeling a little better about the incredible camera offered in Requiem, and Guildwars.

 

However, this morning, I decided to visit the SIF before work...and saw this great thread with a response in it by EciDemon

"You can change this in retail game (dunno bout demo).

 

Go "Documents and settings/yourusername/Local settings/Aplication Data/Ascaron"

 

Look for options.txt

 

the first entries is about camera. Cam1 I think is the free cam, change min angele to 0, and tweak zoom if you like but dont go below 100 on the min zoom, else it will look funkey when you talk to NPCs...

 

Yeah ive made those changes my self.

Theres a separate entry for dungeon camera aswell. dun1 and dun2. Format is the same so its easy enugh to figure out what to change.

 

I spent a few hours yesterday looking at the game scripts/resources in an effort to find places where you could make some fun tweaks, like font and stuff.

 

Then I found where the options.txt was stored and started editing the camera at first.

 

I changed my camera to allow for ground level angle, and I also change the min zoom to 100 for a closer view. I also tried even closer but then it gets odd when you talk to NPCs.

It's worth mentioning that when you change the angle to a lower value the camera will more often be placed under the world if your running down a slope. But im more happy this way cos now I have the option to have any angle I want for immersion

 

I was also looking for entries to make your toon be placed a bit off centre. Kinda like the Witcher camera. Then you could have more of a chace cam without being obscured by your toon. Ive not found anything yet though but im sure its in the resources somewere.

 

Another thing worth mentioning is Physx acceleration seems to be set to OFF according to options.txt. I have physx acceleration via gpu enabled in the drivers and figured it would be used by default.

I did not notice any performance differences with physx off vs on from options.txt. Then again theres not that much physics going on on screen compared to other games.

 

Setting Grass to 0 does not remove it completley, thats too bad else it be a good performance option for low end machines."

 

Think this could help out with getting the game to "feel" better with more camera work happening?

 

 

gogo

[stubbie 21]

While there is the ability to change some settings in the options.txt just be very careful

 

This quote:

Look for options.txt

 

the first entries is about camera. Cam1 I think is the free cam, change min angele to 0,

is misleading as there is no entry in that file that has any reference to camera angles.

 

stubbs