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pseudo-cylindrical world/camera effect? (animal crossing, ff:4 heroes of light)

Discussion in 'Scripting' started by teatime, Mar 27, 2011.

  1. teatime

    teatime

    Joined:
    Jun 16, 2008
    Posts:
    129
    As shown in the videos below, the environment in Animal Crossing: Wild World and Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light seems to bend as it recedes into the distance.




    (skip to about 2:30)

    Could anyone offer a guess as to how this effect is achieved? Is it simply a custom camera matrix (my experiments with camera matrices would suggest otherwise,) a full-blown Mario Galaxy-style relative gravity effect (although the severity of animal crossing's curve plus the size of the world makes that seem unlikely), or something else?
     
  2. JFFM

    JFFM

    Joined:
    Nov 13, 2010
    Posts:
    336
    I wondered about this too.

    I'm not sure how say... Animal Crossing achieved it, but I think if you had simple enough requirements (e.g the interactive, walkable world is flat, a'la animal crossing) you could likely use a curved surface (say, a sphere) instead of the standard plane for your ground - and instead of using any physics to move about - interpolate your position over the surface of the sphere/curved surface according to your relative coordinates.

    That is.... the game would treat the sphere as if it were a flat, 2D object - and your position (everythings position) would be reflected as an x,y coord on this... but instead of moving directly along the true x,z axis' - you would translate this coordinate into a point on the curved surface, and reorient the normal so that you are standing upright.

    Thaaaatttt's my low-end solution. I think it would work - I don't remember Animal Crossing having any notable three dimensional movement or physics - so if your 2D unwrapped map was of a fine enough granularity, that should be nice.

    Theories!

    -JFFM