Civ 6 has camera rotation

[Thorburne]

It is useful. Often, taking a different perspective can help people make better decisions, especially when at war.

I will probably turn off the day/night cycle. It's neat, but not important for me. I don't mind that it exists, however. Just not a feature that I'm concerned about.

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[Zaarin]

I cannot think of a more useless feature... Well, perhaps a day-and-night cycle (which they also have done). Hope the devs who made these did it on their free time, because it sickens me that people would intentionally waste precious resources towards such minor, cosmetic doo-dads.

Shame on them for wasting time on improving the game's aesthetics! I mean, really the game should just be a spreadsheet and some dice, because who wants the game to look nice?

 

[Aheadatime]

I mean, really the game should just be a spreadsheet and some dice, because who wants the game to look nice?

Made me lol. I also think the rotation and day/night cycles are cool features that are welcome.

 

[rastak]

I cannot think of a more useless feature... Well, perhaps a day-and-night cycle (which they also have done). Hope the devs who made these did it on their free time, because it sickens me that people would intentionally waste precious resources towards such minor, cosmetic doo-dads.

Sickens you? You gotta re-prioritize things. This a business. Sales is what it is about.

I'm fairly sure you are one of the few people who got sick.

 

[rastak]

Shame on them for wasting time on improving the game's aesthetics! I mean, really the game should just be a spreadsheet and some dice, because who wants the game to look nice?

Example, see Aurora.

 

[m15a]

Sickens you? You gotta re-prioritize things. This a business. Sales is what it is about.

Maybe more to the point: This is a game. Pleasure is what it's about.

 

[ftl]

I don't take Civ that seriously, it's a game. I appreciate the random touches of flavor and aesthetics they put in to make it look cool. I don't know how much I'll use these features, but I'll probably try them out once or twice. Maybe after I finish conquering an empire I'll zoom around it.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Maybe my word-choice was a bit outlandish... But if, due to devoting time and money for implementing these features, there's no longer time to e.g. improve the readability of the fog of war (you cannot easily tell apart undiscovered territory from merely unvisible land, because they're all the same parchment color), then I'll be one sad (and mad! ) puppy.

Ideally, they'd fire the guy who did these features (if he did only them), and hire one more AI programmer. In practice, though, more cooks does not necessarily make the soup better, and may in fact end up ruining it. So, fire the guy and pay the AI programmers more to motivate them better? Anything is better instead of these useless gee-gaws... If you have to spin the map around to get better oriented, I don't know what to tell you. And while it does look nice, the day-night cycle serves literally no other purpose. The time-scale is so completely whacked out, with one day taking years or even decades, that any argument that it improves immersion is instantly dubious. I'd say it does the exact opposite, reminding you constantly that things are not how they should be.

Meh. It's not the end of the world that they made these features, but it's not good either. It's always an ominous sign when these kinds of smoke-screens are paraded around, but not a peep is heard about improved AI.

 

[isau]

The mechanic for rotation is pretty nice too. Even the fog of war map elements rotate, which was very surprising, because I thought they were hand drawn.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Ideally, they'd fire the guy who did these features (if he did only them), and hire one more AI programmer.

That's a great idea, having less engine programmers and more AI programmers. Who needs a functioning game as long as you have more people working on the AI?

Seriously, apart from the discussion whether all this is of use or not, it falls within the purview of the programmers doing the overall game engine not the people doing the AI logic, so for that person, it was an efficient use of his time. Furthermore, Firaxis, from what we can see, doesn't contract people for specific work but as general employees, meaning the engine programmer is then going to work another Firaxis project in the future - which includes bug fixing and support post-launch.

Even your "let's tweak the fog of war" complaint doesn't fit, because a) it falls into the art direction and b) assumes that everything is final. We're already seeing tweaks being make to the leader models and even the fog of war has changed (the mythical monsters on undiscovered map tiles).

 

[Mercade]

The mechanic for rotation is pretty nice too. Even the fog of war map elements rotate, which was very surprising, because I thought they were hand drawn.

Rotating a 2D picture is very basic graphics technology.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Rotating a 2D picture is very basic graphics technology.

Not to mention the for of war is just flat surface in 3D world. It rotates as the camera rotates.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

@Lord Tirian: You may be right about the particulars, but the fact remains that the resources they spent on these features could've been used otherwise (on something more pertaining to the skills of the individuals who made them). Even better, their focus from the beginning should have been in what's under the hood, so to speak, and not on shining the fancy hood-ornament, thus discouraging such vain deviations (and the hiring of their authors). The financial sense they make is ofc undeniable; people flock like sheep to the shinies and ignore what should be the meat and potatoes of the strategy game experience. -.- (For the record, I'd be fine with the graphics of Civ II if the AI could even approach a very basic human level. I don't care how hard it is; get a genius to do it and spend all resources on it, for very meager gains if need be. It's still better than what we've had so far, and that should be what counts. Not that the sun goes up and down on a world that whirls around headless chickens embarking in the water.)

 

[ProMeTheus112]

nobody needs to be fired for something extra to be done when profit making runs on a very high margin as is the case in AAA game industry

 

[stealth_nsk]

Graphics make a lot of casual gamer sales. I don't see any problem here.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Maybe my word-choice was a bit outlandish...

Ideally, they'd fire the guy who did these features (if he did only them), and hire one more AI programmer.

Your word choices are still outlandish. What, do you think some rogue programmer slipped this feature in under the noses of his higher-ups, and once they discover it's there they're going to fire him for ignoring his assignment and wasting resources? Or do you just think this extremely minor cosmetic feature is going to be so unpopular that the only way Firaxis will be able to apologize to the public will be to sack those responsible? Or could it be that you, personally, want somebody fired just because you, personally, don't like the idea of this feature? No, it couldn't be that. What gamer would be that entitled?

 

[MAHRana]

I didn't see the demonstration of it yet but if camera rotation is in im happy, i thought that it was a due addition. Don't see why ppl should be complaining and talking about firing the graphics guy or something when it's a nice feature.

 

[Olleus]

If I could paraphrase stiiknafuulia:

Making all these three models that can be viewed from all sides, plus the engine that can deal with it, sounds like it's a very expensive thing for the devs to do. Clearly they (or perhaps the publishers) know what they're doing and think that they recover the cost in extra sales.

Now let's assume all this 3d work took them ~5% of their budget (no idea how close that is to the real mark), and let's take the absurd hypothetical case that I could have the game with it's fancy new engine for the current retail price OR the same game without rotations but at a 5% discount. Personally, I'd choose the later in a heart beat. I like my game to be pretty, I don't feel it is necessary for every new iteration in a series to feel like they have to use up what we've gained with moore's law. Make it pretty, but not at the cost of a) making the game good or b) making the game slow.

 

[m15a]

The issue with the argument is that all that "3D work" wasn't done so there could be camera rotation - it was done so the game could be 3D.

None of us knows for sure how much work was put into camera rotation, but assuming that it was so much work that you can criticize Firaxis's resource allocation based on the presence of the feature is ridiculous.

 

[bouncymischa]

In Civ5 models wasn't designed to be looked from other sides. But in Civ6 with camera circling around wonders in their movies they had to implement models from all sides. From this, free camera rotation is a very easy technical task.

This is a bit of an odd statement, as every model I've worked with from Civ 5 or Civ BE was a completely 3D model with textures on all surfaces. Admittedly, this has been primarily improvement and unit models (and unit models have to be 3D since you can see them from all angles when they move around), so it could be that some of the wonder or city building models aren't fully 3D. Trees are obviously drawn on a plane, but given that most of the vegetation models I've imported from Civ IV are the same thing it's pretty understandable why they might have continued doing the same thing.

One interesting thing I discovered while converting Civ IV models to Civ 5 -- Civ IV models had the shadows all drawn in on flat planes along with the model, but in Civ 5 the shadows are all rendered dynamically by the game itself.