Upskirt

I want to ask you something awkward; How about using fixed-camera views in this horror game?


Just draw or photograph the background, no poly penalties, need for impossible shaders, light limitations or other nonsense. Everything was better back then.

Fixed-what? It's not unlikely that some of you younger readers that grew up with almost photorealistic graphics, Virtual Reality and Cybersex don't know that ugly word. Retired readers on the other hand probably vaguely remember old games such Alone in the Dark, Metal Gear Solid or the first Resident Evil games. It wasn't uncommon for early 3D games (and also “2D” adventure games such as Monkey Island, Phantasmagoria or Myst) to put the camera on fixed spots within the environment. Depending on the player position, the game would pick a pre-assigned camera (usually the closest or "best" point of view).

Now why the heck would you want that? Well, on old hardware, it makes sense. A fixed camera only sees a (small) fixed, predictable part of the geometry. No complicated culling algorithms are needed to keep the rest of the environment hidden, out-of-sight lamps deactivated, or prevent off-sight textures to eat (back then extremely scarce) video memory. This gain of performance usually allowed the creators to spend a bit more detail on the fixed scenes. Meaning bigger textures, higher poly characters, or better quality lighting/shadows. Hence, if the environment was really static, they could even take a snapshot, Photoshop it, and project it back in the game as a semi-3D environment. High-end graphics, low pricing.

Despite the static nature, the Resident Evil Remake was certainly one of the better looking games for the Gamecube. Being semi-3D, time and sweat that would normally be wasted on getting the requirements for rendering this as good as possible in realtime, could now be spend on some photoshopping / tuning of each individual snapshot.

Not sure how they did it, but probably they baked the static scene into an image with a high-quality offline renderer. In the game itself, a (simplified?) 3D mesh is rendered with this high quality image pasted on top. Being still 3D, the environment can cull the player if he walks around a corner, or catch shadows. Being very simple, more resources are left available for super-ultra-awesome(back then) techniques such as the water reflections, or the relative high poly character.

Of course, fixed camera views don't work very well for 1st person shooters or quick action games in general. You would get sick of the ever changing point of view while rushing through the stage. Another thing, using fixed-camera's sounds like cheating. Powerhouse graphical engines do their best to show as much real-time capabilities as possible (see my silly hunt for real-time G.I.). And in the year 2014, erh, 2013, they seem to be quite capable of doing that. But it’s not just high-res textures and fancy lighting that steals the show nowadays. Dynamics such as destructible buildings, rotating fans with volumetric lighting, or large rolling water waves are the eye-catchers these days. Motion, my friend. Fixed camera's therefore got dated. Probably it still exists here and there, but "Resident Evil Zero" on the Gamecube was one of the last games I played using them, and that was more than 10 years ago.

And before we forget, people weren't exactly charmed by the fixed camera. In RE, shooting a sluggish zombie should be an easy job. But as you often couldn't see the enemy coming from a certain point of view, those slow assholes were still able to catch you. Not fair! Aiming a gun was hard, spotting enemies was hard, and NOT walking like a drunk 600 year old statue was even harder, as the joystick directions change each time the camera changes.


And then there was Resident Evil 4. Third person view, fluent aiming system with a nifty laser pointers on your gun, a slick & agile Leon Kennedy that could roundhouse kick doors, and... shoot, it wasn't scary anymore. Leon's new super-abilities made killing zombies childsplay. To prevent the game from getting pathetically easy, they swapped the slow zombies with hordes of somewhat smarter, and especially faster, "angry farmers". The tactic of Surprise (Boo! a zombie in the closet!) was replaced with the tactic of Overwhelming. Murdering a single “Cabron” was still easy, but having fifteen of them chasing you with burning torches and rusty manure forks could be risky if you let them pin you down in a corner. Mobility & making fast decisions was the new name of the game, and changed Resident Evil in a radical way.

Don't get me wrong, RE4 was/is an extremely addictive, fun, action game. One of the few games I finished multiple times in a row. But scary... meh. An adrenaline rush yes, but not the type of game that makes you want to hit the "Power Off" button because you aren't in the mood for nightmares. Ironically, some of the people that complained about fixed camera's and stupid door scenes, now complained about RE not being so scary anymore. No shit Sherlock.


The typical top-down camera's, close to the player, didn't really help to get an overview of the situation. Zombies could be anywhere. Behind you, uhm, under your feet. Oh, and in closets of course.

Not saying that it's impossible to create a scary game without door(loading time)sequences and fixed camera's, but I think a lot of people missed the fact that RE was scary partially BECAUSE of that damned camera. Zombies were slow, doors opened slow, the game was slow. You could hear them moaning, but couldn't tell if or from which direction they exactly would come, as the fixed camera rarely gave an overview of the entire room. That made cowardly sniping your foes down from a safe distance, almost impossible. You had to wait if/when they entered your TV screen, then quickly shoot them. Slow & cheesy terror, but yet it worked. Basically, the camera just made the game hard enough to be scary.

Having first-person-view powers on the other hand would make you a God, running through the house like The Running Man, shooting or avoiding everything in your way, finishing the game within 30 minutes. It's the reason why modern zombie games like "Left 4 Dead" use gigantic flocks of upgraded super-zombies. If they didn't, the game wouldn't be a challenge, and thus not fun at all. But as described in my previous post, a continuous flood of raging monsters and blood usually doesn't make a game scary. The classical Resident Evil ghost mansion atmosphere is gone (and even if they attempted to re-create the old feel, the story has become so absurd and stupid with the 20 sequels, that it can't be saved).


Another reason to chose fixed camera's (or at least partially fixed, it doesn't mean the camera is always frozen on a single point) is to boost the production. Hmmm? Making an engine that renders potential big environments, is tricky. You have to cull invisible objects, fall back to lower LOD's for distance stuff, decide which lights are used for casting shadows, make sure everything in the background is loaded before you can see it, be careful with resolutions and object counts, et cetera. Well, I like that challenge, but we have to be realistic as well: we don't have billions of people, hours, resources and money to create a big-ass game.

Asides from technical issues, picking fixed camera views allows to cheat as well. Usually I have a pretty good idea how an environment should roughly look. But in a setting that repeats itself a lot (flat = apartments, corridors, apartments, corridors, app…) it's hard to make each corridor unique. The more square meters you have to decorate with planks, wallpapers, blood decals, paintings, cracks, flowers, or whatsoever, the harder it gets. And everything you make, has to look good from all possible camera-angles. Shadows, specular highlights, lamp halo’s, volumetric shafts, lens-flares or reflections can create an interesting scene. But view the same scene from the other side, and the result might be dull because those elements didn't quite work out from that particular position. You can’t just snap an World-Press photo from any angle either.

With a fixed camera, you can for example keep the ceiling invisible (I hate figuring out how each ceiling should look different). If you chose to render a certain wall or object from a distance only, you don't have to produce a super detailed mesh or normalMap for that object either. If the lighting doesn't work out fully for angle-X, you pick angle-Y instead rather than tweaking parameters forever that enhances one scene and screws up another. Hey, you'll do that all the time. Each time when I take a screenshot for this blog, I'll try to pick a point of view that looks the best.


Like a photographer tries to find the best spots and angles, Camera's can be placed to serve the scene in a certain way. Same door, but the top one looks more threatening due its size, as the camera was placed in "Dwarve perspective".

Again, I'm not saying Tower22 will suddenly change the camera. I always had this game in mind with a First-Person-View, so I'll try to make it that way. But the advantages mentioned above -some extra difficulty/fear + easier technology + less assets to produce in huge detail- sound very attractive. Think of it this way, would you rather have a finished game that cheats with camera's, or no game at all because it was too much work for a group of hobbyists? You know most FPS games either look mediocre, or had a super-budget and a very experienced team making it. If a fixed-camera can help us, we shouldn't just drop it because it sounds old fashioned and people complained about it (and then complained RE4/5/6 weren't scary anymore).

Anyhow, to you, the Fixed-Cam would be:

* Still have no clue what is
* No,no! NO! NOOOO!
* Don't like it, but if it helps the production of this game...
* Don't care, I'll play anything
* Fuck yeah, I missed them ever since