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Author Topic: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)  (Read 5422 times)

Offline MysticReverie

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How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« on: February 19, 2019, 10:55:48 am »
Hi
I was looking at the control, but can't find a rotate or zoom.
Hope I missed it only, the game would not be very useful without them, especially rotate.
Thanks
« Last Edit: February 19, 2019, 12:29:06 pm by MysticReverie »

Online Meridian

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Re: How to rotate camare and zoon (During battlescape)
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2019, 12:00:35 pm »
It's a 1994 game, there is no rotate and no zoom... and no graphic resources to do it, even if someone was crazy enough to attempt to implement it.

Offline MysticReverie

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Re: How to rotate camare and zoon (During battlescape)
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2019, 12:28:28 pm »
Not even a rotate in 90 degrees increments?
I thought I had that feature when I used to play the PSX version.
Maybe I'm mistaken though

Offline ohartenstein23

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2019, 04:04:44 pm »
No, as we'd need to have drawn 4 times the graphical resources for each map tile in order to accomplish this, and beyond that there are myriad technical reasons why we don't have rotation. As for the zoom, the best we have is setting the zoom level in the Options > Video screen.

Offline MysticReverie

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2019, 04:56:36 pm »
Hmm
I guess it's 2d and not 3d then, Otherwise it can be done easy, I think.
Oh well... It still runs great on a laptop, and would work on a tablet.
A smartphone is pushing it a bit tho as things get pretty small.
Not knocking the game - after all, many games don't work well on small screens either.
I might actually get an android tablet just to play this game when I'm travelling. Can't think of a better game to play when stuck travelling for hours and hours.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2019, 05:38:23 pm »
Well, to be precise, the battlescape is 3D... Only the graphics are 2D. ;)

Offline aceshigh

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2025, 02:25:27 am »
No, as we'd need to have drawn 4 times the graphical resources for each map tile in order to accomplish this

Why? As I understand, each of the static resources on a map is already available from 4 different angles at least. Like say, a wooden wall. When you create a map with a square house with wooden walls, each wooden wall tile has a position and an angle. Like... right bottom, right top, left top and left bottom. Any 90 degrees rotation would just go to the next position of that same type of resource

Quote
and beyond that there are myriad technical reasons why we don't have rotation. As for the zoom, the best we have is setting the zoom level in the Options > Video screen.

if the zoom level can be set to 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x etc by the menu, wouldn´t it just be a matter of doing it SMOOTHLY (by increments or decrements of 0.1 for example) with the pinch movement?


Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2025, 10:55:19 am »
Why? As I understand, each of the static resources on a map is already available from 4 different angles at least.

No. Why would you think that? Most resources do not have multiple facings. Some do (like the alien chair), but it's an exception rather than a rule.

Offline aceshigh

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #8 on: February 06, 2025, 07:30:32 pm »
Why would I think that? Because clearly they SEEM to have 4 faces. Now, maybe they don´t, but you asked why I would THINK they have

For instance




the wall panels clearly have internal faces and external faces. Towards right and left. THus 4 faces.

Those internal 1 tile tanks, etc, are clearly made to look the same no matter the angle. If we could rotate the map, they would be in the same tile and look the same.


there are few resources I can think of that don´t have multiple angles... like the cow operation table from UFOs, or the front and turbines of the Avenger or Skyranger.

Online Meridian

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #9 on: February 06, 2025, 10:13:32 pm »
My humble guesstimate would be that over 99% of tiles don't have 4 facings and less than 1% has.
Somebody should count that just for fun.

In mods, it's probably even worse, easily going towards 99.9%

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: How to rotate camera and zoom (During battlescape)
« Reply #10 on: February 06, 2025, 10:45:28 pm »
For extra clarification. Even if:
1) All parts had all directional counterparts, and
2) There was a feature to flip the terrain 90 degrees,
then this feature still wouldn't be possible, because you would have to add these extra facings to the existing tilesets, and that would mess up map files. And even if you were prepared to redo hundreds of maps basically from scratch, you would run out of tile space (you can use 253 or so per terrain).
Having rotating maps would be nice, but it's not feasible even with a lot of work; unless you write a new engine with a new file format.