this REALLY bugged me with terraria.

in a very early version of Terraria, the screen was stuck as a small, zoomed in box that was annoying to use because you could only see ten blocks in either direction. they later fixed it, but in all of the livestreams the camera has been pretty close to the character, which is annoying when fighting large amount of mobs and it just feel claustrophobic.

 

They've shown a zoom feature and a scope feature fo rthe game.

 

As Melissia said, there will be a zoom and scope function. The scope function on certain weapons will allow you to move your view to farther left or right without moving your character, especially helpful for Sniper Rifles.

 

I imagine Starbound will support multiple resolutions (or possibly even let you drag the edges of the window in windowed mode.) In any case, as long as the game doesn't require a mouse wheel, I'll be ok with it. I hate it when games assume I have a mouse.

 

Yeah I remember using a resolution hack to make the Terraria window larger before resolution support was officially added. That tiny little window was just too small to play in.

As for Starbound, you can play at any resolution (even across multiple monitors) and while the devs have not decided whether to let the players use the zoom function, you should not have any trouble seeing what's around you. In addition as has been mentioned, there is "scope" functionality that lets you move the camera around. This function is available all the time, but scoped weapons will give it a longer range.

 

I actually didn't mind Terraria's small screen that much, but I do think I would prefer full screen on Starbound.

 

Well since we already know there shall be a zoom feature (we have seen it in streams already) and even though comparing starbound with terraria is something many dont like to see, lets turn this thread into something useful and nag about terraria so we see what should be done better in general. Sadly my main points are already covered by starbounds general concept xD
(SB = Starbound)

Terraria dislikes:

• Terraria was easy to mod due to its .Net origin, yet disributing modifications or making them work with each other was a pain.
  • SB already got announced to have a modding API even though it will most likely be available post-release and be limited initially.
• You had to leave your planet through exiting the game in order to discover new planets (load a new world). Also most planets (actually all of them) had the same there.
  • In SB we know that we can visit different worlds by default, woohoo.
• NPCs, Weapons etc were quite limited in variation. Even the later "forging" didnt change that alot since there was usually a best and a worst version, but not multiple balanced versions where one simply is better for different playstyles.
  • We know that weapons and NPCs are combined and generated in SB, lets see how well balanced they are in the end and how nice the variation will spread.
• PvP was quite limited because all players could do damage but nothing else. There was simply no teamplay that went beyond doing more damage and coordinate it. Even worse, people died way too quick in PvP.
  • Lets hope that in SB's PvP there will be some other roles like supporters. Healing teammates, buffing them, debuff enemies etc. Yet we know that using shields is already a nice resource for teamplay to protect allies from taking damage.

When you know more, please add some details on how that worked badly there and should be inproved.

 

I have some. This really bugged me in Terraria:

• The moment you touched any enemy, it would hurt you. Normal enemies were overly simple, too, and did not have attacking animations.
  • In Starbound, an enemy has to actually land an attack, for which it was animated to do. Enemies has multiple AIs and patterns.
• There was very little variation in the land creation and biomes. Once you had seen one world or two, you had seen it all, basically.
  • Starbound's biomes will be various, and even have mini biomes with further variations within, such as logs bridging across water.

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Right natelovesyou, also you just bring something else in mind.

• You could do nearly everything client-side, teleport to any location and make items with millions of damage/armor triggering every frame. Worst "security" ever
  • Hopefully in starbound most things will be shifted strongly toward server-side computations so the client is used to display informations and take inputs only.
• The AI was to simple and usually moved right toward you except of a few exceptions like teleporters and the green arrow shooters.
  • I hope starbounds AI will be more complex and allow formations/grouping/coordinations and more advanced dodging so that shielding enemies block projectiles for other units, others take cover behind walls/obstacles/shields etc...
• Terraria was mostly hardcode, and modding THAT was a mess. The worst, dropping items when tiles get removed like doors, mining ores/dirts etc.
  • We know about how flexible starbounds code shall be through using JSON and LUA, so lets see how flexible and versatile the current setup really is

 

There will be a 'scope' where you can shift the screen from one side to the next. As for the Zoom, it's not a sure thing. Tiy said somewhere that the zoom may not make it in because what's the fun in being able to zoom out and see EVERYTHING. If anything I think they'll allow some minor zooming for different resolutions, but nothing as drastic as you saw in some of the streams because they were using Dev features and it's not the final build of the game anyways.

 

Yeah, a lot of things they do in the streams are totally admin abilities, such as placing a block as far as they can see, or zooming out really far. I'd imagine that an implemented zoom would be very limited, so as not to ruin the fun and challenge.