The Camera Problem

[Brandon Klopp]

I've been playing a few romhacks while preparing to learn how to hack roms myself. While playing Super Mario Star Road I've noticed that nearly every moment of gameplay is a constant battle with the camera. It never really seems to be in an ideal position for viewing the challenge at hand. The worst problem is when the camera rapidly swings in a narrow arc during critical jumps, effectively canceling the forward input of the joystick, causing mario to fall short. Then there's also the problem where mario will be inside a building and the camera will clip outside of it, with mario completely obscured by the outside wall.

I was wondering if there were any romhacks with excellent camera control, and if so, how they accomplished it. If not, how could we solve this problem?

Careful level design?
Custom camera scripts?
A combination of these things?

When I am ready to make my own hack, I want to have camera control on the level of the modern 3D mario games. So what are your thoughts?

[BaconBoy]

Careful level design. Tight spaces with very precise platforming are the sin of ROM hacks in my honest opinion. The original game built the camera off of it's level design. The game was very open with wide open and non-compact spaces. The camera is only fixable in certain areas as we know of right now. You can find tweaks in the SM64 Editor that help with the problem somewhat.

[Brandon Klopp]

So is there any romhacks with notably good camera control that you would reccomend?

[BaconBoy]

No. Last Impact 1.1 has the best so far but still very broken in certain areas