The goal today was to implement my idea for a new Photo Mode interaction where the entire screen would be the camera viewfinder (also thinking ahead of the mobile UX). Iquickly found out this would only work if I ditched the idea of the 2D overlays and had a full 3D scene.
So I went ahead to remove and cleanup the code from all the stuff I had done to support the 2D overlays that were in place since the first days. In the end, this is something I would have to do sooner than later, to integrate the new art by alcaraz. These are now replaced by a simple rectangle acting as a floor to hold the foreground models.
Once that was done, I was able to work in the actual photo mode; now when you enter photo mode, the entire screen becomes the camera viewfinder; you can move around using WASD and the mouse scrollwheel (I experimented a bit with mouse movement but it didn’t work fine). Right now, you are actually panning horizontally and vertically instead of rotating, but I think tomorrow I’ll experiment with allowing both movement and rotation (or just rotation, if the UX becomes too complicated). This movement is, of course, restricted to an area in the stage, and is reset when you exit photo mode.
The transition to the photo mode is also now controlled by clicking anywhere on the scene; the initial viewfinder position is relative to where you clicked.
I also gotta fix the square aspect ratio of the photos.
Slashie's Gamedev Adventures 