3rd Person View: Broken for the last 85 Updates

The last time 3rd Person View worked as intended was Update 01.094. Since then it has been broken in one form or another. So for those of you keeping track that's 19 Months that's 85 Weeks or the last 597 Days!

Thats a long time to have a bug that has driven some players insane and they have quit playing because of it.

Now from my point of view this should be a simple fix, go back to Update 01.094 and look at the coding for 3rd person view and compare it to the coding in the current version, and you should be able to figure out what the hell went wrong and FIX IT!

This really affects players who are designing things with multiple grids, and some of the communities more creative designers have been sitting idle (for the last 19 MONTHS) because of it.

Time for the Devs to fix this, this bug has persisted for way, way too long.

 

It worked satisfactorily a couple updates ago so its only been two weeks in my opinion. How has it been broken for longer? What are the symptoms?

 

What exactly is wrong with it?

 

If your using a single grid, you will not notice an issue 99% of the time, however if you have multiple grids, like things on pistons, rotors or wheels, it get dicy fast.

Simple Example : Jan 11th, 2017


And the more complex the build the worse it gets.

Take something like

Steam Workshop Link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=527707817

Tyr using 3rd person view on this ship with all its complex grids and you'll quickly see what I'm talking about. This 3r Person view bug is one of the reason many of the communities more, shall we say innovative designers are absent as of late.

 

It looks to me like the camera in your example works exactly as defined: In 3rd person on a movable grid, make sure the camera can actually see the moving grid. This is pretty standard stuff. I thought you were talking about the swap-to-first-person thing (which technically is not a bug either, but a rather... misconstrued solution to a problem). What you're showing isn't a bug.

What I'm saying is, there's no wonder this "bug" hasn't been fixed if it's not considered a bug. Meaning; to get this fixed, you guys must create a convincing description to Keen as to why the current behavior is undesirable. You have to keep in mind though, that generally speaking, the "innovative designers" are a minority of players. If it comes to choosing between a behavior that favors them over the regular players, they will lose.

ps: No, I'm not working against you here. I'm trying to help you get your message through.

 

@High Ground



That I remember being brought up. Though I think you're sensationalizing a bit in your OP. I don't see how this could cause people to quit. Especially since Force First Person is an option that can be designed around.

As for what @Malware said about it not being a bug.. I dunno if it was listed as a bugfix? I mean ideally in Third person you should be able to see straight through all parts of the craft which includes the attached parts. Ideally.

Now.. with that said.. this isn't an easy fix. High Ground said in the OP that they should look at the original code for third person view and compare it to what we have now. I'm going to say this. I'll wager the code hasn't changed. The changes we're seeing is very much likely related to changes in how Grids work in conjunction with one another. In fact if you look at the patch cycles during that time, they dealt with a series of bug fixes. 1.094 specifically (when it broke) dealt with cockpit collisions.

The other patches 1.091 through 1.102 all dealt with bug fixes. So what you saw happen in 1.094 could be a culmination of possibly 3 months of coding tweaks. Many of which also dealing with collision models. And if you look at the gif posted above. You see an anomaly with camera collision.

This doesn't mean it can't be fixed. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed. But I doubt its something we'd see fixed by this Thursday or next Thursday, or even within a month or so. That's assuming they started now. But one thing is certain. It helps nothing to say people quit the game over it or that people sit idle until its fixed. There's a limitless set of possible creations that can work around this issue. Heck the DS I've been playing on recently has been force first person. Utilizing cameras to see where the cockpit cannot.

Admittedly that is an arbitrarily imposed limitation. But it does lead some merit to the point that this issue isn't as dire as originally postulated.

 

The image posted by OP is showing a common behavior in 3rd person cameras (raycast from target grid to find camera position), this is why I say it's not a bug. There has been bugs with this behavior, but the behavior shown is not. Whether the behavior is actually desirable or not is a completely different argument I'm not a part of.

I don't think I understand what you mean here. The way I interpret what you're saying sounds severely immersion breaking and is very likely to cause a lot of complaints too, so I think I'm not getting your point.

 

I'm pretty sure it was an intentional change to stop people being able to ghost/see through solid grids.

 

Being able to see one's ship is the issue at hand. But when a part of the ship passes in front of the camera that is attached to a rotor/piston, it moves the camera. The way it apparently worked before 1.094 is that it didn't.

Say you build something akin to a helicopter rotor. And turn on the rotor. The blades would cause the camera to pan in and out. Ideally that shouldn't happen since its all 'one ship' by design. But the 'bug' (and I'm going to use it in quotes, since we're speaking of a logic error at worst here) causes what you're seeing in the image.

OP used a bad example in the image. I agree that the image likely show's something that doesn't appear to be a bug. But incase you're still skeptical, build a helicopter looking ship with a rotor and armor blocks to serve as an aesthetic blade and turn it on. You'll see what I mean.

Now imagine if the helicopters in Ghost Recon: Wildlands did that.

 

what? this is not broken, this is how it always has been. They later added F7 Camera which doesn't have this jumping view. Now, F7 is what is broken since ages ago... ¬¬

F7 was a follow camera that you can also rotate holding Alt to adjust the angle, and the difference with 3rd person view was that when you rotate the character, ship, the camera will stay in the same position, the camera will not rotate.
I remember in one of Xocliw's livestream, he was trying to play like if it was a 3D isometric perspective view game and asked a Dev (don't remember who was) if that can be done, and I think the Dev said you can already do that with F7... a weeks later the F7 camera was broken forever

 

@Taemien This is not about me being sceptical. It's about presenting the case the right way. You see, you can make the opposite case as well. There are situations (inner mechanisms) where you would want this behavior, that you would not want to have the camera move outside the hall you're working in, because you'd not be able to see what you're doing, because the whole station gets in your way... the way I build things, for instance, that's far more likely to happen than a purely esthetic rotor. Again, just playing the devil's advocate here. I have no personal stake, because I don't use 3rd person at all myself.

 

The current behavior is not ideal in common situations, for that reason I think it needs to be upgraded to take into account attached grids. A truck with a rotor turret, or a drone, or maybe a crane. A large ship with a hanger with small ships inside it. Both of these will give a very bad experience in 3rd person view, and things I regularly run into playing survival.

When 3rd person means getting a close look at the middle of your ship, and jumping in and out very quickly, and wiggling the mouse like crazy to actually get it to go into 3rd person, i'd argue it needs adjusting.

 

I can see valid points to why it is the way it is. If the view were not blocked, and I were to find a connector on an enemy ship, grind/rebuild that connector and then dock, I could see all the contents of the enemy ship. I could then identify the location of power and weapon systems and make taking over the ship easier.

For alternatives? I generally see it as OP's request works great for single player and terrible for multiplayer. Do as OP requests only if the all of the blocking grid is owned by the viewing player/faction?

 

I do think it's been a bit more of a pain the past two updates or so, but it feels more realistic. Even when allowing third person, it feels very overpowered to be able to observe almost any angle across a wide spectrum of distance. Plus, constrictions like this encourage engineering solutions such as cameras on the outer hull or even camera drones to observe your docking process.

Also, like others, I can confirm that it has not been borked for 85 updates.

Edit for auto correct

 

Any multi grid ship connected for about a year until the last patch active 1.094. It has been getting worse over time with loss of losing 3rd person on stations and unable to pan 3rd person around while controling remote control blocks.

https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/third-person-view-is-broken.7366690/

Hello and can't design around 3rd person being broken.. I have to compromise heavily or give up. High Ground really wants me to come back to SE and so do I.

1.094 was the last time 3rd person worked properly, 1.095 is the patch that broke it.

Never was a issue. Unconnected grids and voxels behaved with 3rd person correctly.

Yep or just build a low vehicle with large wheels and try to view it from the side.

...... Spets I hope you are joking:

The ability to pan with F7 became possible weeks before the new models and then removed all functionality to be identical to F9 in that very patch. I was even gearing to come back since F7 could do what we lost with 3rd person even with a few flaws with orientation that I found a few ways to get around.

Yep it did work with small grids attached via connector to not spasm the camera while flying a large carrier.

You have it wrong, just attached grids and you were never able to clip the camera through stuff with 3rd person when it worked properly.

 

@Ravric I remember that it was always like this when using attached grids, a lot of time using this mechs I had to adjust the view so the camera will not jump. Apparently I didn't remember that they changed/fixed that at some point...
Sry, it seems that my memory is also broken.

 

I don't understand how this can be when I've been able to successfully create designs with First Person in mind. I've also been able to convert designs that were based around Third Person to a Forced First Person environment.

As I've said, I think the bug needs to be fixed. But I don't believe saying the game is unplayable is going to garner much support, in fact it will be the opposite. The better method would be to show videos of practical designs being handicapped by this issue. That hasn't been done yet.

The gif shown above shows a practical use of the 'bug' being a feature to the layman you can argue that isn't the case all you want, but I've shown that image to people who haven't played SE and they say it looks like they'd expect the camera to work. You all need a different example. And I would dare say something that could be built in survival. To cover all bases.

 

You can say that even if all components except for armor blocks interfered with 3rd person not just rotors, pistons and wheel suspension.

Here is the video showing the issue better that High Ground showed the gif for

Here are demonstrations of 3rd person working properly:

Here are builds that if you try to use 3rd person with you will inevitably get the spasm back to 1st person:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=874393766
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=880689171
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=861656065
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844364599
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=664653879
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=795488758
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=646859157 Use the front cockpit vs the rear to see why the rear one is soo much better.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=570424360 The Atmosphere craft in the base
Here is aneasy example of a workshop where 3rd person pan being broken with remote control blocks negatively impacts use:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=870331139

I will demonstrate using Astroneer's 3rd person:

Now with SE's 3rd person:

 

I'm pretty sure the idea was to stop people hiding inside an armoured static grid and being able to have perfect vision.

I remember the change, it was intentional but I can't remember the exact reasoning.

 

It's seems more like camera obstruction behavior not a "bug". People are so quickto label things as bugs without even trying to understand what's actually going on. Could they design a better way of calculating where to place third person cam view depending on the over all grid? Sure. As builds become more and more complicated, with multiple grids attached, etc., third person camera view will be more challenging to interpolate without actually allowing the camera to simply clip through our structures. And I don't think anyone wants that.
That said I've noticed that the third person view is a lot more finicky lately depending on where you place your flight seat within your build. You'll have a lot nicer time with the camera view placing your flight seat near the edges and center of a build, so that there's not a lot of obstacles to get around. Or use cameras. Cameras are a lot more viable now for me with that godsend of a mod that allows limited camera view rotation by holding down "alt". When we suggested cameras back in the day that's the functionality most of use were looking for to start with anyway. But I digress.

 

All the people pointing out that the camera being pulled back to near the primary grid when it is obstructed is not a bug are correct.

There definitely still IS a bug, though! Instead of being pulled back near the ship, it sometimes snaps all the way back into first-person view.

 

Link?

..... It worked perfectly back in 2015 treating all connected grids as a single entity for 3rd person. Just like Jump Drives, Blueprints, Copy/Paste does now.

Find a place to put a flight seat on this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=440388286

If it is a separate object that is not part of your ship it should pull in. But if it is part directly connected to your ship then no, it is a bug.

 

I agree some form of solution is needed, but... with your way, when operating cranes and lifts inside a factory hall you'll just see the base from outside rather than what you're moving? As I said, there's two sides to this. No, it's not a bug but it's not right to favor one side over the other. The way it is now favors them, that's wrong, but if you guys get your will through, we'll have someone else equally fuming that their builds don't work anymore... that's not right either.

What you demonstrated with the Astroneer imaging, that is... well, it's not really a bug either since it had to be deliberately coded to work that way, but it is a poor solution that I doubt anyone likes - and which should be changed.

 

If you're gonna be one of those "citation now!" people even when multiple other people tell you it's true then good luck bro, have a nice day.

The sky is blue... but you probably need a citation for that too.

 

My Way? It should work the way it did for most of 2015 up to August. And this is the way for probably every other game. Find a one where 3rd person treats directly connected parts to you as an obstruction.

Your example does not make sense or work... This simple setup wont even let you go into 3rd person right now and if you make it all the same grid it wont let you see inside the building in 3rd either. I don't know what your trying to get at.

So. Build a cockpit, then attach a 5x5 wheel suspension to it. Only need those two components now go into 3rd person and then pan it around. When you are forced back into 1st person when you should not be. What would you call that?

Also 2 sides? Are you saying people are having an opposing will that favors wheels,rotors,pistons interfering with 3rd person?

You are going to have to reword your Astroneer comment as it needs more detail on who's code and everything.

 

That's what they changed sweetheart.

I remember you used to be able to sit in a station control chair and be able to zoom 3rd person out into a sort of orbit view of the entire station then they changed it.

Most other people just dealt with it.

 

No, I'm saying the people building mechanisms like cranes or lifts inside bases will, and I'm saying there should be a solution that allows both.

As for the Astroneer example I'm agreeing with you, that particular "feature" is bad. I'm simply msking a side comment that it's not the same thing as demonstrated earlier (the zoom) and that it's deliberately coded this way by Keen, making it not a bug. Still doesn't make it right, but it's not a bug.

 

If I had to WAG, I think the bug (the thing where the camera snaps into the cockpit) is related to the fact that the camera now seems to have a (large-ish) collision box. That's okay in many circumstances, because it means the camera will avoid being put into awkward positions.

Where it fails terribly is when there's a narrow gap between the ship and an obstacle (like when using a mining ship to bore a hold through an asteroid), then for most 3rd person angles, there isn't room between for the camera collision box and the wall of the tunnel.

This is bad because in the past, the 3rd person camera would most often wedge itself usefully between the ship and the asteroid wall. Sure, it clipped occasionally, but at least you could TELL where the camera was trying to go and move it around.

Now, the 3rd person camera is locked into first person view, and your only option is to hold ALT and carefully wiggle the mouse around, hoping to find that one sliver of angle where the camera will stop being locked into the cockpit and actually go into 3rd person view.

That's a pretty undesirable behavior, and fair to categorize that part of the problem as a bug, since it was introduced relatively recently with camera changes.

 

No, I'm at your earliest convenience person and at the earliest convenience to you please provide a link or something that supports your earlier statement that KSH intentionally changed 3rd person.

I am getting a vibe of hostility from you. Why? I want all aspects of the game working properly and 3rd person should be a easy thing to KSH to resolve since it worked great for nearly a year almost 2 years ago.

Here is a mockup for third person right now:



Red pillar will force 1st person when zoomed all the way in in 3rd with the space of 5 blocks.

Blue pillar will force 1st person if zoomed any more with the space of 6 blocks.

Yellow pillar will not force 1st person at 7 blocks.

All 3 pillars cannot be seen from behind.

vs

3rd person from 01.094 will allow you to to see all pillars from behind and it would of behaved like the zoomed in blue pillar when in front and when intersecting it pushed you out rather than in like the yellow.

What did they deliberately code?

 

Yeah, I'm gonna go back over 100 odd change-logs to give you a citation for something that is commonly known amongst people?

I didn't even like the change; I liked being able to see everything on my station from a control chair...but I just got on with it like everyone else.