Actor flag to force sprites to face camera

[Axensus]

For actors with rotations, the "sprites face camera" option looks amazing and it makes you feel that the actor is actually facing you (best effect is on living actors). Problem is, for everything else it looks god awful because walking past a giant tree makes it turn towards you and it's just uncanny. Would a flag to force an actor's sprites to face the camera be doable? I suppose one way to solve the "user settings first" approach is to add a third value to the option that's "Default", like with jumping/crouching/freelook. Although seeing as how the billboarding option doesn't override the flags, it might make sense to do that here too.

[Rachael]

Can you break this down a bit? What effect are you trying to achieve under what exact conditions?

[Axensus]

Sure. The idea is to only turn on sprites facing the camera for actors I know would look better that way. I can post comparison pictures later when I'm at my PC.Think of it like forcing XY billboarding on smoke sprites even if the player has billboarding set to Y-only. It just looks better and lets the modder utilize that. This would obviously do nothing for people who already play with the option to have all sprites face the camera. The request is solely for people (like me) who prefer to have the option off by default, but still get the benefit of making some actors look better by forcing them to face the camera. My first post was a tad chaotic. Does this make more sense now?

[Rachael]

Yes, it does, thank you. Sounds like something that possibly can be put into a RenderFlag for the actor.

[Axensus]

Here's a video of what it looks like with and without the option, for a more visual example. The following actor is a merchant who turns towards you once you walk close enough. The rotations already do a fairly good job of representing that. However, once you get even closer, looking around starts to shift the sprite too much and that effect of "this is a living person and she's watching me refill these magazines" is somewhat lost. When the sprites face the camera, the effect is retained. Can you actually feel the difference? The problem with relyong on just the option is that it affects all actors, even ones where it has the exact opposite effect - where facing the camera makes inanimate objects look alive, thus breaking muh precious immersion. Most screaming example is BigTree, partly because it's so wide. I can imagine effect actors like smoke would also look rather awful. Which reminds me that the feature suggestion should probably be extended to cover the opposite case as well - forcing an actor to ignore the option and always have vanilla rendering behaviour. Same reasoning as the billboarding, like previously mentioned.

[Proydoha]

I've never tried it but isn't there an actor flag for that?

FORCEYBILLBOARD
Forces the actor's sprite to "billboard" to the screen on the Y-axis when using the OpenGL renderer.
FORCEXYBILLBOARD
Forces the actor's sprite to "billboard" to the screen on the X- and Y-axes when using the OpenGL renderer.

https://zdoom.org/wiki/Actor_flags#FORCEYBILLBOARD

[Axensus]

No. What I'm requesting is different from what those flags do. Those flags affect the sprite when you look up/down, not when you look left/right or move around the actor.

[yum13241]

Can't you do this by only having an A0 rotation? i.e, MEDIA0 is the medkit, which always faces you.

[Axensus]

Do I really have to quote this post?

[phantombeta]

Can't you do this by only having an A0 rotation? i.e, MEDIA0 is the medkit, which always faces you.

That's not remotely what the request is asking for. You could, y'know, at least read the thread before saying things.

I suppose one way to solve the "user settings first" approach is to add a third value to the option that's "Default", like with jumping/crouching/freelook.

If this gets added, please do it with settings like that. I personally find "Sprites face camera" looks horrible and extremely offputting, and I'd rather not be forced to use it.
FORCE[XY/Y]BILLBOARDING doesn't have a "force user setting" option because it's really a different thing- some things really do look better always billboarding on XY or Y. (e.g., spherical objects, projectiles)

[SanyaWaffles]

Anything that gives creators more power. I don't know if I'd use this on the daily, but the use case here seems clear.

Also, as a quick aside: It's genuinely frustrating to see how someone has a detailed conversation/explanation about what they're requesting and why the alternatives won't work only to be met with "just do x".

[Rachael]

implemented

It's genuinely frustrating to see how someone has a detailed conversation/explanation about what they're requesting and why the alternatives won't work only to be met with "just do x".

Agreed.

[yum13241]

I was genuinely asking a question.

[Axensus]

Thank you so much! Worth noting that phantombeta also makes a good point. This sort of feature only works well on actors with rotations, and I sure wouldn't use it on anything else, but that's not to say someone else isn't going to use it on everything. An option would indeed be appreciated by many.

[Caligari87]

Thread was moved back to Feature Suggestions because Axensus wanted to reply but for some reason can't pass the captcha check when the thread is in Closed Feature Suggestions.

I'll move the thread to Closed in a day or so if no more discussion is needed.