I was building an area using the Castle Exterior / Rural tileset and was really surprised how good it looked in the toolset. I thought it would look amazing in game with a skybox and weather and everything coming to life.
Then in game, the camera just refuses to move low enough to actually show the same beautiful view I saw in the toolset. It feels really claustrophobic and frustrating, knowing what's there but being unable to see it.
Unlocking the camera is the very first step in making the game look better. And ceilings and skyboxes are also good for visual immersion and making the world feel "complete".
Case in point. This is how the city I'm building looks like in the toolset:
This is what players actually see in game, in stormy weather:
It still looks nice, but it's simply impossible to see what the city you are entering looks like. What's the point of 3D really if you are still locked in an isometric top down view and can't look at things from different angles?
@1varangian Forgive me if you've already tried this, but you can modify the maximum and minimum camera heights now in EE, and the default settings are rather restrictive as you've noticed, considering that in Pre-EE I was able to get the Camera parallel to the ground. After modifying the EE Camera settings, I can get the camera angle to place it between my character's feet and zoom inside his model (its boring in there, but trying to navigate in pseudo-first person was fun for a bit).
The lines you need to add to/modify in your NWPlayer.ini are CameraMinPitch, CameraMaxPitch, CameraMinDist, and CameraMaxDist under [Control Options]. Fiddle with the values until you've got what you want, and recommend to players that they do the same.
@1varangian Forgive me if you've already tried this, but you can modify the maximum and minimum camera heights now in EE, and the default settings are rather restrictive as you've noticed, considering that in Pre-EE I was able to get the Camera parallel to the ground. After modifying the EE Camera settings, I can get the camera angle to place it between my character's feet and zoom inside his model (its boring in there, but trying to navigate in pseudo-first person was fun for a bit).
The lines you need to add to/modify in your NWPlayer.ini are CameraMinPitch, CameraMaxPitch, CameraMinDist, and CameraMaxDist under [Control Options]. Fiddle with the values until you've got what you want, and recommend to players that they do the same.
Great, thanks. The values are in degrees I guess?
But still mod builders can't really expect players to edit their .ini files to see the world as they intended. The game should default to an unlocked camera.
@1varangian The Pitch controls are degrees as far as I'm aware. I definitely agree that the camera shouldn't default to settings more restrictive than the 1.69 version, so hopefully they'll set that version to be the game's default.
Granted, it appears some tilesets were made with a high raised camera in mind, as there are plenty of holes in the Desert tileset that you can look through with a low camera but can't see with a high one.
A lot of ppl have had camera overrides for almost as long as the game was released so for modders it's reasonable to expect that it is used if it's really wanted, more so now since you don't need something else.
1st person view is too big a departure I think, but I hope Beamdog will see the value in enhancing the camera angles especially for modern assets.
Dragon Age Origins would be a really good reference. It's party based real time with pause, goes from tactical top down to immersive third person view, has ceilings and is from 2009. I'd be satisfied in NWN: EE would look like that.
I'm not sure about most players, it's a common practice to use unlocked cameras. Steamspy shows around 1300 (single and multi player) concurrent daily player peak and before the release just persistent worlds with the old version had between 600 and 900 concurrent nightly peaks. So I'm not sure about most players but I do think many players regardless are familiar with changing the camera either through old ways or the new way, whether or not it gets changed in the official campaigns.
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Then in game, the camera just refuses to move low enough to actually show the same beautiful view I saw in the toolset. It feels really claustrophobic and frustrating, knowing what's there but being unable to see it.
Unlocking the camera is the very first step in making the game look better. And ceilings and skyboxes are also good for visual immersion and making the world feel "complete".
This is what players actually see in game, in stormy weather:
It still looks nice, but it's simply impossible to see what the city you are entering looks like. What's the point of 3D really if you are still locked in an isometric top down view and can't look at things from different angles?
The lines you need to add to/modify in your NWPlayer.ini are CameraMinPitch, CameraMaxPitch, CameraMinDist, and CameraMaxDist under [Control Options]. Fiddle with the values until you've got what you want, and recommend to players that they do the same.
But still mod builders can't really expect players to edit their .ini files to see the world as they intended. The game should default to an unlocked camera.
Granted, it appears some tilesets were made with a high raised camera in mind, as there are plenty of holes in the Desert tileset that you can look through with a low camera but can't see with a high one.
Here's an example of the very latest camera modding tricks, when I say latest I mean about 10 years old.
Dragon Age Origins would be a really good reference. It's party based real time with pause, goes from tactical top down to immersive third person view, has ceilings and is from 2009. I'd be satisfied in NWN: EE would look like that.
The majority of players probably don't tamper with .ini files or bother with custom mods unless it's an auto HAK downloader.
It's the universal switch "use a hakpack and do whatever you want with your game, but don't enforce your choices on other authors and players"