What are your guys’ takes on 1st Person (ASWD Movement) vs 3rd Person (Click to Walk) from a developer’s point of view (Meaning taking in account pathfinding, etc).
I prefer 3rd person, but I find it rather difficult to have with pathfinding in large games which won’t support navmeshes.
What exactly do you want to know?
The two are completely different, and not really comparable. One is a direct control system, the other is a command system. As such my preference is for whatever better suits the goals of a given project.
As for implementation complexity, anything including pathfinding is likely to be at least moderately complicated because it requires interaction with external systems. All that a direct control system has to do is see if the input you have given is valid and then apply it to the object in question. But with pathfinding (or other command style systems) there’s necessary interaction with other systems in order to be able to properly interpret and carry out commands: did you click in a valid place? Is there a valid path to that place?
Camera depends of the Gameplay O_o…
Dunno you can choose a camera type depending of your taste, right?
Well which do you prefer to play is the main question as well?
Mostly a matter of taste, but there are reasons when you want to favor different types of controls for different types of games.
As for my part I prefer 1st person view because the immersion is simply more authentic when you look though the eyes of the actor. Sure you can get used to 3rd person controllers, but it still remains awkward when the controlled character is on the left side of your screen, while the focus is on the middle of the screen. I recall the controls of Dead Space being uncomfortable because of the weird controls (especially when turning around or getting attacked from the side). In comparison to that earlier games had their 3rd person controllers placed in the middle of the screen, which were much more convenient.
Regarding pathfinding: if you go for 1st person perspective you can avoid pathfinding for your own character, but if your game contains any other computer controlled characters you must always use some type of pathfinding for the AI. So there’s no way to escape the pathfinding anyways
Regarding controlling characters via mouseclicks: this concept fits well for games, where you control multiple characters, or the overall scene gets confusing if it weren’t for the bird-eye perspective. I find them more appropriate for strategy games though. Your mileage may vary. But again: no matter what you choose - if you are using multiple computer controlled characters, you must use or implement some pathfinding mechanisms anyways.
While first person might be more immersive, i’d argue that third person could in theory be better for producing a really good looking game. With first person, some of the action going on is “cropped”, due to the inability to see your own character’s animations and actions properly. As mentioned above, it is situational. Personally, i think that first person is somewhat overused these days.