Camera issues. Help

[Aperson4321]

I just bought the game and I must say its great! But I have sadly a big problem with it.

The camera height!

I love the total war series, supreme commander and the game R.U.S.E because of their great unrestricted camera height (total war needs an ini file fix for it though).

unrestricted camera height helps me immensely to get an overview and manage units, it's the way I love to play rts. And I find games with restricted camera height very unplayable, I just keep on forgetting my units and weak points.

Is there any way to make the camera height unrestricted/unclipped?

If it is and even if I have to create a mini mod for it I will do it, because I really want to play this game!!!

Ps: I don't find mini maps very helpful as you can't manage your units from it. If I see something I want to hit on the mini map with artillery I have to slowly move the camera over to my artillery then over to the target, It's all very stone age, in other rts you can just zoom out and do it much faster.

Pss: I have spent hours searching for a fix but can't find it :( Please help!

Here is a picture I made I will post another one if someone gives me an fix that is how desperate I am!

http://www.deviantart.com/download/276725947/ready_for_adventure_by_aperson4321-d4kr73v.png

[inductile]

I found that it's possible to play missions like that in the GEM editor. Start the mission through the editor (this clips the camera position) and then switch to the "F2" mode of the editor and uncheck the "clip camera position" and switch back to F1 to play. It'd be convenient to have this option in the game itself though if anyone knows how.

[inductile]

Hello again, I was digging through the game files a bit today and I found a file in the gamelogic.pak in the set\registry\ folder called camera.reg.

it has some values like these:
{camera
{perspective
{viewAngle 23}
{distance 1600}
{fov 65}
}

I tried editing the values and putting the file into a small mod, but only the "fov" value actually seems to have a lasting effect in-game though. It affects your field of vision and is 65 degrees by default. "viewAngle" is the starting angle your camera will have relative to the ground. "distance" is the starting height for the camera and does have an effect - but the camera will quickly clip back to its "maximum distance" which seems to be hardcoded or changed elsewhere.

If we can change the viewing distance permanently somehow, I noticed we also need to modify the "fog" distance for every mission as well or else everything will be fogged when you zoom out.

[Aperson4321]

The fov fix did help a lot, its all fish eyed but I can at least see more :) thank you!

I have looked at the files but I can't find anything that it makes sense to edit. It's probably hard coded as you say,

One solution would be to somehow modify the height of the camera at every frame by multiplying it with an number. But I have no idea how to do that.

at least the fov fix makes it a lot better, so now I find it playable! thx

here is another picture:
(i put it in as an link so it won't take so much space)
http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2011/147/3/5/fjell_dal_editeditedit_by_aperson4321-d38lvhn.png

[inductile]

I found something new today, which seems to be part of every "map" file. I mean the file, included with every map, that's simply called "map" without an extension. You can find these files in the map.pak. Find this section:

{Clips
{"[auto]"
{world -4431.1 -6261.1 418.897 8148.9}
{camera -4100 -4800 100 7300}
{pather -3900 -4600 -100 7100}
{distance 200 850}
{viewAngle 20 50}
{water -10}
}
}

Edit the higher value of {distance 200 850} and change it to i.e. {distance 200 2500} and you'll be able to zoom the camera out quite far! I didn't notice any problems with fog or anything else by altering this value. I noticed that the camera zoom speed is a bit slow by default for zooming out all the way like that. I don't know where to change that though. Good luck!

Nice art by the way, I don't draw that well :)

[Trotskygrad]

yes, map camera limits are defined PER map, as opposed to hardcoded into the game. this includes height limits

so just edit every map with inductile's fix and you should be fine.

Be warned, though, the higher the camera, the laggier it can get.