Deledrius wrote:You say first-person controls, but the video is showing the avatar in third-person. Was this just for demonstration, or was it a typo?
No, it was just for demonstration. Since the running speed is the same in all directions, I thought it would be less confusing to show how the avatar behaved in third person - that is, moving towards the screen, while still allowing you to look in the other direction. It doesn't make third person controls any better, though - that would require being able to orbit the camera around the player using the mouse.
(it was also a pain to make the running animation look correct in third person, so might as well make it worthwhile
)
- At least I know how to use quaternions, now Show Spoiler
Deledrius wrote:Even when Uru was in development, a standard had already emerged and I see very little if any gameplay or design reason to eschew them.
Well, third person controls can be justified by how Cyan planned to put camera regions everywhere to give things a more "cinematic" feeling (which works quite well IMHO).
Things like the slow sidestepping or walking backwards instead of rotating the whole avatar like in the video was probably to make avatars behave more realistically in multiplayer.
The problem is that because of it, third person controls aren't as good as they should be.
As for first person, I guess that's because whoever worked on it didn't have time for more than adapting existing third person controls to first person.
Ehren wrote:You act like there isn't even a single merit to Uru's first person controls, like they barely even work
Alright, I may have gone a bit too far with "completely suck"
Of course, they are still usable, it's just that there are some points which makes no sense to me.
If I sound bitter, that's because controls often make little sense in most of Cyan's games in realtime 3D. I disliked the "box" around the cursor in realMyst, and then I disliked how Uru's controls generally worked. Myst V's controls were perfect IMHO, and then recently Cyan returns to nonsensical controls in RM:ME. To me it seems Cyan is reluctant to use controls used in first person shooters (as in, "we used point&click for years, so there is no reason we would return to 'casual' controls". I know, that's just an impression, there are other factors like programmability, and as I said, Uru's default viewpoint isn't first person). That's what makes me sad.
Ehren wrote:I think it is kind of genius that you can almost entirely just use the mouse alone to move around
That's most true, and it's definitely a point in favor of Cyan.
But in the case of first person, even though we could imagine worse controls, they aren't good either - well, that's my opinion when comparing to other games. Myst V had great first person controls allowing you to use either the mouse and keyboard to look around as you moved towards a particular point, while still allowing to play with only the mouse if you wanted to. That's what I would like to see in Uru.
Ehren wrote:The controls don't inherently suck, it's just a matter of preference.
The problem here (and the problem whenever people use the "it's a matter of preference" thing) is, just because some people prefer particular controls, is it a good reason to force these controls to every player ?
Obviously, it's hard to debate whether the majority would prefer other controls, since I don't remember many debates about controls in Uru. However, as Deledrius mentioned, there is a standard in gaming that Cyan rarely complies with.
Ideally, we would try to please everyone just like Cyan did with Myst V in regard to previous Myst games - allow all possible options to be used however the player prefers. That's a bit utopic, though...