Camera Mounts on all your friends

[oldi1knoby]

I was thinking about this for more of a driving game, but it would work for others. What if you had a camera running on all the players on your team from their viewpoint. In the car you drive, you have a console which shows all the cameras from your team. Would be cool huh? Would work great for a Twisted Metal kind of mod for HL2.

 

[ReDGuNNeR]

That sounds cool, also, I think the new feature to have a TV will make waiting for next rounds (in games where instant respawn isn't used) more fun. People waiting for the next round can be in a transport truck, sitting down and watching the screens, and chatting with their comrades. But I think the best thing would be after you died, you spawn into a little lounge with tvs showing the action, you can just chill, and also have little mini games you can play with others, maybe some Lazer Tag!!
:cheese:

EDIT:spelling error

 

[nw909]

Make fisheye lenses and it'll look like helmet cams

 

[simmo]

Or you could make a sticky camera, like Splinter Cell...that would rock

 

[Xtasy0]

you can only have one camera in an area.

 

[Fuzzy]

How do you know that Xtasy?

Yeah it would be crazy having everyone with headcams, and being able tos see what your teams seeing. In a kinda covert ops style mod maybe.

 

[Blud Stane]

COOP with camera on your buddy next to you!! like in ALiens where they allhad cameras and Ripley watched them.. only in this case play through cooperatively (sven?) with camera on your buddy

 

[PSX]

Originally posted by Xtasy0
you can only have one camera in an area.

that would be a design decision, not a technical limitation, isn't it? or did Valve say something about those dumb cameras?
btw, I don't think it should be a mod... more like a mutator so it adds the feature to the game and is ready to use

 

[Nathaniel]

What Xstasy0 said is true, there is a limitation of 1 single camera per "area". Although we don't know how large these areas will be, do we?

 

[Blud Stane]

if there's a camera in the game, someone will figure out a way to have more than one

I think a gladiator arena with cars & manipulators and a camera showing close ups in the stadium wall would be just awesome.

 

[Xtasy0]

i think an area is probably a large open space which is in view, like you you set a camera where you're standing and then go somewhere out of view it would be fine, i think the troubles start with multiple cameras that can see each other, but at least you can have multiple outputs for each one.


[edit]


someone should email for clarification.

 

[ferd]

Originally posted by Blud Stane
if there's a camera in the game, someone will figure out a way to have more than one

I think a gladiator arena with cars & manipulators and a camera showing close ups in the stadium wall would be just awesome.

thats ownage dude

remember kids, watch the E3 vids

 

[aku ankka]

A multiplayer mod with everyone having a camera link to each other would be laggy.

 

[Stigmata]

Originally posted by Xtasy0
i think the troubles start with multiple cameras that can see each other

That wouldn't cause the problem, since the other cameras would just show up on the output screen as another object. What would really kill the system, though, is if you have the camera pointing at the output screen, then you get something similar to having two mirrors across from each other, reflecting over and over and over... Though I think I read somewhere that the most that two barbershop mirrors 12 feet apart can reflect is about 184 times. That could lag up the game a LOT, unless the camera output is a very streamlined and non-processor-heavy operation.

EDIT: Good idea though oldi1, it would be an awesome addition to any mod :thumbs:

 

[OCybrManO]

Originally posted by stigmata
That wouldn't cause the problem, since the other cameras would just show up on the output screen as another object. What would really kill the system, though, is if you have the camera pointing at the output screen, then you get something similar to having two mirrors across from each other, reflecting over and over and over... Though I think I read somewhere that the most that two barbershop mirrors 12 feet apart can reflect is about 184 times. That could lag up the game a LOT, unless the camera output is a very streamlined and non-processor-heavy operation.

EDIT: Good idea though oldi1, it would be an awesome addition to any mod :thumbs:

No, Gabe said that was disabled by someone for the e3 footage but it that is how it will work in HL2.
EDIT: 6th post from the top - should have "camera" highlighted because I searched for that word

 

[Chris D]

"...console which shows all the cameras from your team"

Surely this is already possible even with HL1? We know that we can get first person spectator modes, and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible to extend that and have more than one on screen at a time.

 

[OCybrManO]

Originally posted by Chris_D
"...console which shows all the cameras from your team"

Surely this is already possible even with HL1? We know that we can get first person spectator modes, and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible to extend that and have more than one on screen at a time.

Explain. I don't recall ever seeing any camera input on an object like the console of a car in HL... let alone one for each person on your team.
He isn't talking about seeing your team mates when you are dead and in spectator mode.

 

[Guest]

Originally posted by Xtasy0
you can only have one camera in an area.

thats stupid, in half-life 1 you could have more than one, so why would they lower it?
(you CAN have cameras in HL1, CS have a ton of `em)

 

[Straylight]

Originally posted by stigmata
That wouldn't cause the problem, since the other cameras would just show up on the output screen as another object. What would really kill the system, though, is if you have the camera pointing at the output screen, then you get something similar to having two mirrors across from each other, reflecting over and over and over... Though I think I read somewhere that the most that two barbershop mirrors 12 feet apart can reflect is about 184 times. That could lag up the game a LOT, unless the camera output is a very streamlined and non-processor-heavy operation.

EDIT: Good idea though oldi1, it would be an awesome addition to any mod :thumbs:

This would have happened in the tech demo but the screens turned white when they were on screen.

-Straylight

 

[Blud Stane]

gabe said that feature was turned off, thats why they turned white, but its back on now so it'll reflect a million times now

 

[Wesisapie]

wow, it's almost like what doom had when you would play a serial/network game! advances in modern technology!

 

[NiteStalker]

Originally posted by oldi1knoby
I was thinking about this for more of a driving game, but it would work for others. What if you had a camera running on all the players on your team from their viewpoint. In the car you drive, you have a console which shows all the cameras from your team. Would be cool huh? Would work great for a Twisted Metal kind of mod for HL2.

Yeah, your vehicle would be nothing else than twisted metal if you drive a car and look at some monitors (afterwards=)

That's why there is no TV's in the drivers seat

 

[Xtasy0]

Originally posted by Quackzilla
thats stupid, in half-life 1 you could have more than one, so why would they lower it?
(you CAN have cameras in HL1, CS have a ton of `em)

i don't know why they would lower, but obviously there is some reason.

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Upchurch [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 11:07 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Half-Life Questions


Gabe,

Question about HL2.

The most interesting part, to me at least, about the e3 demo video was the input/output camera demonstration. How hard is it to specify a plane to be the screen and an object to be the camera? I’m guessing that this gives good possibilities for mappers to create a “waiting room” sort for spectators in which they could just sit back and view the match from a few different angles at once?

Thanks,
Adam


Hi Adam,

It's surprisingly easy to setup a camera and monitor in this fashion. At the moment, there is a restriction that there may not be two cameras in the same area, but you could certainly have multiple cameras covering different areas. I could see the "waiting area" of such a mod resembling a sports bar with big-screen TVs. Now there's an idea...

Chris.

relevant part of it bolded by me.

 

[Phlek]

I have a feeling this will change by the time of release. They'll find some way to optimize it, I mean, it's vALVE, right?

 

[LoneDeranger]

I'm still hoping somebody would make a mod with a missile-mounted camera. Please .. ?

 

[TrueWeltall]

Id like to see a van with a camera screen in it and then a car with a camera on it

 

[BlazeKun]

Originally posted by LoneDeranger
I'm still hoping somebody would make a mod with a missile-mounted camera. Please .. ?

That's been done in HL1. One was on a server side TFC mod but the server died. The other is in I think Scientist Slaughter House, go grab it. :cheese:

 

[jat]

cs had camaras in different aeas, like assualt

 

[OCybrManO]

We all know CS had cameras... but those are pieces of crap compared to what we are talking about.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by BlazeKun
That's been done in HL1. One was on a server side TFC mod but the server died. The other is in I think Scientist Slaughter House, go grab it. :cheese:

Hmm, how did they manage to do it in HL1? Must have been a lot of coding.

 

[Cheetarah654]

yah, one camera in an area, but then at the round table discussion one of valve said something about putting cameras on everyone, so who knows.

 

[Epsi]

The cameras in HL1 don't display on walls, and the coding simply moved the player's viewpoint from being around head-height on the player model to being on the rocket or on a camera in the world.

Thinking about these cameras, apart from being able to attatch cameras to things, this sort of thing was in the Q3 engine, remember those portals that let you see where you were teleporting to.

 

[FictiousWill]

I wonder how far down cameras can see? Could you theoretically slow your system to a crawl by pointing a camera at it's own tv screen?

 

[Mountain Man]

Originally posted by ReDGuNNeR
That sounds cool, also, I think the new feature to have a TV will make waiting for next rounds (in games where instant respawn isn't used) more fun.

Forget who said it, but somebody at Valve said a neat idea would be a sports bar type atmosphere with a half-a-dozen giant TV screens where you can watch the rest of the match.

 

[Sparky the Fox]

so how would that work then? would your video card instantly lose 40fps when you turned to the video screens because it now has to render a ton of extra video data?

 

[Phlek]

Actually, I think i remember reading somewhere about that screen looking into a screen and so on. I don't really recall it that much but there somehow going to do something so it will work out without losing much fps.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by Phlek
Actually, I think i remember reading somewhere about that screen looking into a screen and so on. I don't really recall it that much but there somehow going to do something so it will work out without losing much fps.

Yeah, as long as the set a point at which to stop (i.e. 5 screens) then it would not be resource intensive.

 

[Phlek]

Exactly, so that input looking into output problem can be prevented quite easily.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by Phlek
Exactly, so that input looking into output problem can be prevented quite easily.

Yeah Valve said it's not a problem actually, they just turned it off for e3 by accident.

 

[UDHA]

all the camera would do is take a shot of the room, regardless of whether it's looking at it's own output or not, wouldn't make any difference, then update that shot to the display, do it again, so after 5 captures you'd see the five tracebacks to the screen, what's so hard to get?