Halo in 2.5D a possibility?

[SonicXtreme]

Hey all , started this thread to see if i can get any help or atleast get people thinking about this idea.

http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=12822

^ I am sure most of you have seen wanksta`s post included above which shows off above views in a map , this brought to us a entirely new concept for which we could most likely turn into more maps , rather than just the 2 released in the thread.

What i came here today to talk to you all about is the possibility of making that concept broader and turning Halo into a 2.5D game similar to the picture in the link below.

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/882/882128/sonic-unleashed-20080616034150546.jpg

I am sure you can most likely see where i am going already after looking at the picture , although 2.5D could be used obviously for more than the Sonic mod , there was a 2D Halo game created by a fan at Sonic Fan Games HQ called "Halo Zero" which i am sure most people are familar of , which was quite fun , that concept could be remade to look better using Halo PCs engine instead of sprites , aswell other ideas that people might have in future.

What i am wondering is , how it would be possible , and who would like to help further this idea?

[Inferno]

What i am wondering is , how it would be possible , and who would like to help further this idea?

You could use sauce to make a camera that follows the player overhead like in old games like Diablo 2 and Nox. That would be interesting.

[Gwunty]

use a dummy masterchief biped with a third person seat. Rotate the biped about 95 degress to the right.
Not sure about this though.

[SonicXtreme]

At the moment i have someone working on it , but hes abit inexperianced when it comes to Halo , i think if we all pitch in on this the outcome would be good for the community and what ever projects use it.

[Heathen]

Is there a way to get the ai not to jump to the sides? That would make this hella hard then if you couldnt.

[SonicXtreme]

Well after experimenting slightly for the first time with Open Source we finally got the 3p Cam working for CE with Hud , and Depth thanks to Ghostmans help.

http://img95.imageshack.us/my.php?image=haloce2008121418123820pn6.png

The thing that we need help with now , is how to make the camera run on a 2d plane and follow the character.

As Wanksta stated in his thread ..



"Player biped has been modified so you cannot look up or down making it easy to control your character."


the character was modified so that it could not look a certain way , i think if the character was done so it could not strafe and some other options so that it could not look left and right then it would not fall off the level.

After that , its just a case of sorting out the 2d Camera following the character , Ghostman apparently looked into the options in source and found nothing in the basic camera options to allow us to do this , so if anyone else has any ideas then please put them foward.

[Inferno]

Getting the player to run on a 2d plane would be easy. Just make it so that in the level the player is stuck between 2 invisible walls like:


------- <--- Invis walls
o <--- Player
------- <--- Invis walls


As for the camera I know 1 way you could do it but it would be kind of awkward and annoying to set up

[SonicXtreme]

Well i do understand the wall part , that can be done easily , as its done the same way in the 2d mods done for Unreal , problem is getting the camera to track and follow the player.

[Inferno]

Well, basically the only way I know you could do it is having cameras line the side of the map and trigger volumes every X amount of feet. Then as you enter each trigger it goes to the next camera. Problem is that its annoying as shit to set up that many cameras.

[SonicXtreme]

question is , weather it would be a smooth transition or not.

[Inferno]

Depends
If you use
(camera_set camera_1 20)
(sleep 10)
And have a camera every 5 scale feet it would be a little jump but not bad.

But if you use a larger gap and faster transition it would be fucked.

[Limited]

You could always use a 3rd party app to only allow the camera to move along one of the axies.

[Con]

wait, what about a camera_set_dead script?

[SonicXtreme]

Wanksta , sounds good , might work if there was a camera every 1 foot , i know it would sound crazy and be alot of work , but i am concidering it atm.

Limited , at the moment , things are more problematic without outside applications , but the reward if something like this works , would be that it would be something new and unique for Halo without having to use something else to do it with.

Conscars , No idea what that script does , care to enlighten us?

[Con]

camera_set_dead follows units from above, such as when you're respawning and watching others play.

[SonicXtreme]

I get where your coming from Conscars , problem is , its only from above like you said , unless theres some way of editing that.

[SonicXtreme]

Just wondering , would it be possible to attach a camera node to the player and then have it view from that? cause thats the only thing i can think of atm in terms of tracking constantly apart from Wankstas idea.

[bobbysoon]

how about making the map cylindrical, with a camera in the center? Maybe a target for an object_set_facing could be attached to the camera at 15 degrees or so to keep the player's side facing the camera
being able to zoom would be good

[NuggetWarmer]

Cool. I wanted to do something like this a little while ago, but never got around to it.

[SonicXtreme]

КĨЯßΨ_422 says:
(script continuous cam
(camera_control 1)
(ai_attach <unit> <ai>)
(camera_set_first_person <unit>)
(ai_look_at_object <unit> <object>)
(ai_follow_target_players <ai>)
(ai_follow_distance <ai> <real>)
(sleep 5)
)
КĨЯßΨ_422 says:
show that to the people in the topic, see if they can do anything while im gone


Kirbys asked me to post this here and see if anyone wants to have ago at testing because hes just nipped out to a friends house , basically hes attached the camera to a biped and then asked the biped to follow the player using that script above.

Any takers?

[Inferno]

That's fucking genius. It would work too.

[Syuusuke]

I must digress from your camera scripting, guys.

The same way DMT made the player not be able to look up or down in their overhead maps (damn you =P) should be applicable to prevent the player from looking to the left or right...but what about looking to the back? We could leave it as the backwards guy.

[Heathen]

and fyi, shorten the melee distance. From a side angle you can really see how fucked up the h1 melee was. You could melee 3 feet away.

[Syuusuke]

In a server where you have to lead and from a client's view yes...you do melee from "3 feet away".

[KiLLa]

why would you want a side scrolling halo...
Seems to me like it would be more frustrating, and aggrivating, than the already laggy halo currently is...unless your talking about SP, but even then, the fast paced action + side scrolling slowness = anger...
But of course your just trying to use the community to figure out your lil dream of making halo into sonic...not much has changed I see..
Anywho, why not just make scripted cameras, with trigger volumes that trigger the switchin of cameras to the new area?
The way your going at it, seems more problematic than anything..

[Inferno]

I already said that and there not going to do it because it would take ages to script all of those trigger volumes and cameras.

[KiLLa]

Uhhhh...they've worked on this sonic mod since I can remember...4-5 years now?
And they're gonna whine about a little scripting?
oh boo hoo..want a working functional concept?
Don't be a lazy douche...it's not really that gruling at all...it was just be a bit redundant after a bit, but anything worth doing takes effort, so I say put your big boy panties on, and man up :)
strickly my opinion tho, lawl

[SonicXtreme]

Uhhhh...they've worked on this sonic mod since I can remember...4-5 years now?
And they're gonna whine about a little scripting?
oh boo hoo..want a working functional concept?
Don't be a lazy douche...it's not really that gruling at all...it was just be a bit redundant after a bit, but anything worth doing takes effort, so I say put your big boy panties on, and man up :)
strickly my opinion tho, lawl

I would normally rise to the occasion and put some really personal comment in on that KiLLa , but unfortunately you`ve been away from the community that long that you have no idea whats been going on in the mean time, anything to do with the Sonic mod is offtopic, the only reason i mentioned it is because its just one of many projects that could benefit from the rewards of having something like this done.

Anyways , back on topic , and closing the thread down because your post kinda derailed it , Kirbys got to work on the concept, any results we get , i`ll post here , and also if it works as good as we want , concider it open sourced.

Thanks for all your input with the exception of KiLLa.

[p0lar_bear]

This concept might very well be possible with Open Sauce. As far as I know there's a value you can change in the source file to enable a third-person camera. More than likely, one could probably set it up so the camera is third-person and at a 90 degree angle to the player.