Ancient Spaces Blog

Having just finished yet another tweak to the camera control system, I thought I would take some time to describe the control system we have developed. I wouldn't call it terribly innovative, but camera movement and control is solid and should allow for efficient manipulation of the camera by the user.

So, to start with, right click with the mouse has become the camera button. Holding down right click while dragging orbits the camera around a set oorbit point, Ctrl-Right dragging moves around this point, and thus the camera. This can also be done using the middle button. Mouse wheeling in and out zooms in and out of this point.

The camera feature I just added come into effect when you try to zoom in past the orbit point. When this happens the orbit point starts moving forward along with the camera allowing and indefinite zoom.

In addition to normal camera movement I spent a bunch of time this week working on the Fly Through Camera Mode. This gives you first person camera controls using the arrows keys (or w s a d) to move and right dragging to look around. This special mode is not used for editing, but can be used to explore your ancient spaces world while still in the editor.

Also in fly through mode the 'q' and 'e' keys work to raise and lower the camera, adding vertical movement to the camera.

It took a while to figure out, but the camera can switch seamlessly between normal orbit mode and special fly through mode.

The other cool camera feature is that holding down the shift key triples camera movement and rotating, so if you need to look at something far away, holding shift will get you there faster.

-Simon
Executive Director of Camera Movement