RPG Style Camera

[Merries]

I have done quite a bit of snooping about, on the forums and going through the tutorials on YouTube, the complete series done by Jorn Theunisen is old and I understand some parts are outdated.

 

Keeping in mind I'm not a programmer though I can read it fairly well just cannot write it, has anyone developed a rpg style 3rd person camera script?

 

Not sure what I'm referring to a example is, Skyrim or even WOW, where the camera follows and has collision detection so it does not drift through walls, and you can rotate around it with the right mouse button. I'm sure there are developers out there who know exactly what type of setup I'm referring to

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[Genebris]

Place a pivot inside player, parent camera to this pivot, rotate this pivot depending on mouse coordinates.

To avoid walls throw a raycast from this pivot to the camera, if it hits something in between then position the camera in hit position.

[Thirsty Panther]

I thought there was one on the Workshop but I cant find it.

 

Found YouGrooves script. Its a couple of years old but should get you started.

 

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/tutorials_legacy/_/artwork/third-person-template-r114

[Merries]

Thanks all, Genebris just got started yesterday, understood what you said but it went right over my head *laughs* I'm sure Ill figure that out now I know how its done.

 

Thanks Panther, love the name btw.

[Elyzera]

omg thanks you! im only remove App. in windows and all fine

[Merries]

Ok folks please one of you excellent programmers out there give this poor lady a hand, I have looked at the script for the Ball tutorial, I have watched some videos on the controllers, I have looked at the FPS script. I have done the official tutorials and I'm stuck.

 

Would someone kindly make a 3rd party camera?

 

I do wish to learn LUA, but I need to start smaller then a camera controller Im pretty sure, thank you!!

[Genebris]

That's actually a very basic task so you should do it yourself.

Take FPS script, find a line where it creates a camera and replace camera creation with pivot creation (Camera:Create -> Pivot:Create).

Then right after this create an actual camera, parent it to this pivot and offset by -1 meter on Z in local coordinates.

 

You will probably want to remove a part of code that makes FPS player model invisible because you actually want to see it from this perspective. It's somewhere in Start(). Or just attach any other model to the player.

[Merries]

Genebris what about all the rest of the code? What can you delete? What do you comment out? How do you attach it to a player?

 

How do you determine distance between the player and the camera and the camera height?

[Merries]

I thought there was one on the Workshop but I cant find it.

 

Found YouGrooves script. Its a couple of years old but should get you started.

 

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/tutorials_legacy/_/artwork/third-person-template-r114

 

Sadly the above script ran as instructed could not get it to work, I could detail out the errors but it would come down to someone walking me through replacing code as needed, again I can mod but ask me to code how to make a cup of tea I cannot connect the dots, believe me I have tried for over 2 years..the classes I took are all 'This is a function, this is a loop' but don't teach you how to use it in a practical manner.

[Genebris]

Genebris what about all the rest of the code? What can you delete? What do you comment out? How do you attach it to a player?

Leave the rest of the code untouched. use default FPS prefab.

 

How do you determine distance between the player and the camera and the camera height?

When camera is attached to it's pivot set camera position to 0,1,-1 in local space. It will be offset by 1 meter behind player and one meter above player.

[Merries]

I appreciate your help, I honestly do, but what do you mean leave the FPS prefab? That's an actual model, will that be walking around behind your character though it's invisible won't that interfere with collisions etc?

[Genebris]

Replace your fps script with this

FPSPlayer.lua

[Merries]

Last question how do I attach that to the player will there be a field exposed to do so?

[Elyzera]

Last question how do I attach that to the player will there be a field exposed to do so?

 

3rdPerson.lua

 

Script.Camera = nil --entity
Script.positionDifference = Vec2(0,0)

Script.picksphere = Model:Sphere()

function Script:Start()
self.playerMovement = Vec3(0,0,0)
self.cameraYaw = 0
self.cameraPitch = 10
self.dx = 0
self.dy = 0
self.mousePos = 100
self.moveSpeed = 10
self.entity:SetKeyValue("type", "player")
-- HUD stuff
self.crosshairs = Texture:Load("Materials/HUD/crosshair.tex")
self.entity:SetFriction(0,0)

local material = Material:Create()
material:SetBlendMode(5)--Blend.Invisible
self.entity:SetMaterial(material)
material:Release()
self.entity:SetShadowMode(0)


self.picksphere:SetColor(1.0,0.0,0.0)
self.picksphere:SetPickMode(0)

end

function Script:UpdateWorld()

end

function Script:CameraRotation()
-- rotate yaw and tell the player about it so the character can use it in SetInput()
local mpos = window:GetMousePosition()
self.dx = Math:Curve((mpos.x - self.mousePos) / 10.0, self.dx, 3.0 / Time:GetSpeed())
self.cameraYaw = self.cameraYaw + self.dx

-- rotate pitch
self.dy = Math:Curve((mpos.y - self.mousePos) / 10.0, self.dy, 3.0 / Time:GetSpeed())
local pitch = self.cameraPitch + self.dy
if pitch > -25 and pitch < 55 then
self.cameraPitch = pitch
end

-- reset the mouse position
window:SetMousePosition(self.mousePos, self.mousePos)
end

function Script:Movement()
-- handle player movement
self.playerMovement.z = ((window:KeyDown(Key.W) and 1 or 0) - (window:KeyDown(Key.S)and 1 or 0)) * Time:GetSpeed() * self.moveSpeed
self.playerMovement.x = ((window:KeyDown(Key.D) and 1 or 0) - (window:KeyDown(Key.A)and 1 or 0)) * Time:GetSpeed() * self.moveSpeed


-- reduce speed when moving backwards
if self.playerMovement.z < 0 then
self.playerMovement.z = self.playerMovement.z * .50
end

local positionPlayer = self.entity:GetPosition(false)
self.positionDifference.y = Math:Curve(positionPlayer.y ,self.positionDifference.y,3)

-- move the camera to the player and set the yaw from 3rd person view
self.Camera:SetPosition(self.entity:GetPosition(true), true)
self.Camera:SetRotation(Vec3(self.cameraPitch, self.cameraYaw, 0), true)

-- offset the camera up and back
self.Camera:Move(0, 3, -4)

-- rotate the model along with the camera
self.entity:SetRotation(Vec3(0, self.cameraYaw, 0))

-- move the controller in the rotation of the player
self.entity:SetInput(self.cameraYaw, self.playerMovement.z,self.playerMovement.x , 0, false, 1)

end

function Script:Fire()

-- hide ourselves do we don't accidently pick ourselves
self.entity:Hide()

local p = PickInfo()
local c = Vec2(0)
c.x = window:GetWidth() / 2
c.y = window:GetHeight() / 2

if self.Camera:Pick(c.x, c.y, p) then
if p.entity ~= nil then
self.picksphere:SetPosition(p.position,false)
end
end

self.entity:Show()

end




function Script:UpdatePhysics()


self:Movement()

self:CameraRotation()

if window:MouseDown(1) == true then
self:Fire()
end



end



function Script:PostRender(context)
local width = window:GetWidth()
local height = window:GetHeight()
local w = self.crosshairs:GetWidth()
local h = self.crosshairs:GetHeight()

local pos = Vec2(0)

pos.x = (width / 2) - (w / 2)
pos.y = (height / 2) - (h / 2)

context:SetBlendMode(Blend.Alpha)

context:DrawImage(self.crosshairs, pos.x, pos.y)

context:DrawText("Mouse button Left to fire", 10, 70)
context:DrawText("W/S to walk forward / backward", 10, 90)
context:DrawText("A/D to strafe", 10, 110)

context:SetBlendMode(Blend.Solid)

end

[Merries]

After sleeping on it I came to realize something. As I'm use to Unity every object is a separate game objects so each object has its own script. What I'm seeing here is that scripts may have (for example) camera control built in to the player movement script, so that was throwing me off.

 

Again a big thank you all for helping get on the right course and showing me the code. As I learn I will be documenting and offering it to the community.