[SCRIPT] Focus Distance Debug Variable?

[TheGreatCthulhu]

Hm... Maybe focus distance in itself is not the right tool for this problem. If you think about it, focus distance doesn't give you any information about look-at direction, so, ideally, you should combine it with something that does; for example, since player movement is relatively constrained in the scenarios you are describing, you can use that fact to strategically place script areas below and around the player that you'd then use to control the vertigo effect. In fact, you could probably get away with using script areas alone.

To give you some idea, consider a situation where the player is crossing a narrow bridge across a (effectively) bottomless chasm. The player movement is basically constrained to this bridge, which means that you, as a developer, have a pretty good idea where the player is at any moment during the scene. If you place, say, 3 script areas far below the player, one rather wide, one of medium width, and one narrow, in the center (so, "concentrically"), you can detect intersections with them, and thus infer the look-at angle, and then set the intensity based on that (see the image below).


  vertigoImplConcept.jpg (Size: 8.74 KB / Downloads: 161)

By carefully taking the environment into consideration, you can place these script areas in a way which avoids the full vertigo effect in case the player is looking at the nearby sections chasm walls, or directly at the bridge, etc. - or alternatively, you can place additional script areas on the walls and the bridge that you'd use to limit the effect.