Free Cam Pros: Easy to manuvere and allows for teleport to allies etc. Can run away with greater ease Better unit control, especially with summons. Cons: Destroys atmosphere
Locked Cam Pros: Greater Atmosphere if done right Cons: Harder to see what's ahead unless the minimap is fully revealed. If you summon units you can't send them in first unless you send your main guy in to get a better view.
Overall: Choice between locked and easy is the best.
Yes, good list gerbal_warfare. With locked camera, it really could become annoying to constantly clicking to escape.
It would also be harder to find where you are going. If you give the character a set path (as opposed to an open field rpg), I think a locked camera may be better.
i generall prefer 'free' camera, for it allows way better reactions and control over your hero and units.
but the thing i would most like would be something like this:
you units each have a "change cam" button, that is a spellbook. Within there you can choose to go to the next unit, previous unit, next hero, ...
The cam is always looked onto the unit you have currently choose. But not totaly looked but more like "has to be in range X of choosen unit". so if you get to the border of these area, you'll be dragged with the unit, but you can look around a bit.
also it would be kinda nice, to do the creeps/units a hero can summon a little different to the ordinary "you control em" way:
there might be 2 (or more) types of creeps: commanders and creeps. Commanders and heroes each can have a few creeps around them, but the number is limited (heros can control more than commanders) creeps can not be controlled, except by giving orders to them via a hero or commander (spellbook, that contains orders like "protect"(unit), "guard"(position), "move", ...) As long as they areen't given any order they stick to their comamnding unit (hero or commander)
i hope you could unterstand what i ment, for i did not structurize my idea that much - more kinda typed it as it came to my mind ^^
I think I think the follow-camera is better. If I have the choice between free and follow I would make somethings between. Like you have an ability called SetCamType = Free ( with description ) and you can chose between the two types. For an good atmosphere you could make a ,,free camera timer'' which count the free camera seconds. If it is too much , it could been shown a warning and the camera timer could be resetted to 0 and the camera type changes to follow-camera.
after making a universal lock camera trigger, i use it everywhere it could be (RTS melee battlefield type, Survive maps, AOS style game) and i know 1 thing: 99 % of overall players HATE locked camera.they always will try to make it free.
i saw only 10 players at AOS style map(that was like battle Tanks) who played with 3D-Camera...
________________________ My opinion have been made by using an observation point from about russian players with slow,mediocre computers ...so i may not be right.
(P.S. not all of us have bad computers,but the most part ....same as modem players....)
P.P.S. Does someone have lags at Meat 3:Generation Next? Same lags they have at Meat 4(Russian edition) with 3D-Camera.
Well when any people play World of Warcraft, the camera is locked, I wonder why people don't mind that but they mind a Warcraft camera. And plus a good idea would be to make it so you can modify your view in game by say pressing up arrow key to zoom in, right and left keys to rotate and down arrow key to zoom out. And you could type, "-mode2" where the up and down keys instead change the angle, and so on.
What I like and have done for the RPG I'm working on right now. Is have both camera types, you can toggle through them by pressing the ESC key (Player Skips a Cinmatic Event). The player can then use the left and right buttons to zoom in and out from the hero and the up and down buttons to rotate the camera up and down (Each has a limit so the player can't zoom out to far etc...).
If you want, I can post the triggers I made. There are like 3 or 4 of them (I'm at school atm >.>)
I know how to reset locked camera! Press Ctrl+C in game to free the camera.