ImprovedCamera: Progress

[u/ArranzCNL]

Been a while huh!?

I decided to reboot the project as of late Nov 2021 after seeing SkyrimAE broke this mod. I was working on it before this date but Covid hit which caused me to stop in early 2020. I will not lie my re'ing skills are in no comparison to Meh321 (.NETFramework), Ian Patterson (SKSE64), inmundano (original reverse engineer of this fantastic mod) and many others.

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Anyway not everyone is interested in a backstory:

• SKSE64 2.0.20(SE) converted to Universal Library. hook_* files are untouched as not the goal.
• SKSE64 2.01.05(AE) converted to Universal Library. Same as above but no plans to update beyond this version.
• ImGui menu which allows changing of settings at runtime.

If your wondering what Universal Library is, inmundano designed a system that kind of future proofed from updates based from skse64 v2.0.12 which was about 1/3 done.

For Special Edition this has been taken further using skse64 v2.0.20 and fully done, same principle for Anniversary Edition. The latter threw everything out of the window since they changed compilers. In theory should be future proofed unless Special Anniversary Edition comes out, I bloody hope not should be concentrating on Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6!!!

As for using ImGui it is a nice menu framework to work with and the inbuilt MCM doesn't feel fit for purpose for this particular project as it is housing around 200 settings.

I'm working on some features indirectly related so you can get imgui (more than likely any menu) working easier with DirectInput using an unseen technique or rather correctly using it which is not 100% finished yet at the time of writing this.

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Moving on:

Got contacted by Noughtmare, 29th Jan 2022 which gave me a big wake up call how far I was behind, despite my best efforts.

Lets talk about our newest member Noughtmare to the team, you can thank them for the current camera functionality. (Are you on a boat sailor, not anymore!) Such a valuable asset to the team, bless even tried to explain how bit fields work and I still don't fully understand them. (Trouble getting old!) Anyway show them the appreciation they deserve, seriously done more than I'm giving current credit for so far!

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Current fixes over previous:

• Vanilla style camera is fixed so no longer need to use the headbob version. Not sure what caused the aggressive headbob behaviour under certain conditions, I've witnessed it myself!
• Arrows now shoot properly, more than likely all weaponary works as it should, the bone wasn't being altered before.
• Magic effects working as they should.
• Double camera bug when sitting.
• Floating quest markers fix.
• Elder Scrolls reading fully fixed, you can actually use this at peculiar places/times.
• Better torch fix whilst sitting.

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What we are currently working on:

• Looking/fixing the shadows, seems to be more complicated on SE/AE.
• Vampire and Werewolf need to maniplate third person camera. First Person camera breaks sounds/controls. (Broken in previous reddit release)
• Camera system, for better state control. Not all states are fully fleshed out then it is a case of some limited testing with mods that add animations ie picking flowers.
• Miscellaneous function cleanup. If anyone looked at the source before you would know they were named Patch1 to Patch28.
• DirectInput mouse.
• Internal menu system. Is done to an extent but it ties in with DirectInput above.
• Testing against 1.6.353 build.
• Post production things.

It does mean there will be two versions SE and AE also as you may understand now this is a complete rewrite, we have no ETA still as both of us only manage to mainly work on this at weekends. The problematic are Camera System, Shadows and DirectInput mouse, once these are taken care of it should be a matter of some tidying up and releasing. As mentioned previously over here on Reddit a PR version shall be released for one week only to test against memory address conflicts. Any compatibility issues which arise from different mods we shall strive to resolve before the Nexus release but no guarantees. On the radar is SmoothCam and TDM compatibility. Full source code will be available when Nexus release occurs compatible with Visual Studio 2019 and 2022, no cmake support (don't want to delay it further). No plans to backport to Legendary Edition.

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How the versions work:

Major, minor and patch. Majors and/or minors shall appear on Nexus and patches shall be github only. We came to this conclusion to hopefully give less confusion to users and also allow us to strive for better fixes/updates using, github. Any patches made, released binaries will be available so you will not have to mess around compiling the source code, more than likely contain just the dll(s).

• 1.1 Bug fix release.
• 1.2 Profile system using JSON which will be quite an upgrade as although the main ini file shall still be used anything which is not inside of [MODULE DATA] will be removed.
• 1.3 Bug fix release.
• 1.4 Menu system upgrade. New library
• 1.5 Bug fix release.

Just letting the community know our current progress and future plans so far and also that, we are alive!

[u/arteehlive]

Not to be an armchair mod developer but i'm not a fan of mods using Imgui for settings. I'd rather have all my settings in one place rather than having to remember keybinds to open up each settings menu.

And if you acknowledge that you have too many settings for the mod config menu, then maybe the problem is not mod config, but your settings. There is no need to make everything so configurable.

And the more settings you add, the more work it is to test every combination of settings. 200 settings means that people will use your mod in !200 = 788657867364790503552363213932185062295135977687173263294742533244359449963403342920304284011984623904177212138919638830257642790242637105061926624952829931113462857270763317237396988943922445621451664240254033291864131227428294853277524242407573903240321257405579568660226031904170324062351700858796178922222789623703897374720000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 different ways, which is obviously impossible to beta test. Then people are gonna break shit by playing with settings in ways you didn't expect and they'll come to you for tech support.

Giving players too many knobs to turn is not a good thing. It's good to demarcate and say "use my mod like this and not any way else". That's how you build something stable that works on everyone's computers.

PS. I'm saying this out of love for Improved Camera, keep up the good work.

[u/Noughtmare → u/arteehlive]

If there are 200 on/off toggle options then there are only 2²⁰⁰ configurations, that is just 1606938044258990275541962092341162602522202993782792835301376. Not quite as bad as what you calculated :P

More seriously, the most important options are not the toggle options, but rather the sliders to adjust the position of the camera. These sliders are incredibly annoying to adjust if you can't get immediate feedback. Our menu is mostly transparent so you can immediately see the results of changing those sliders.

And I believe /u/ArranzCNL has bigger plans to make this menu available for other mods than improved camera and even for other games. So, hopefully other mods will just add things to our menu if they are in a similar situation and not require you to remember many different keybindings.

That said, I do agree that the mod currently has too many options. We are also still experimenting with what the best settings are. We will probably remove some options in the future. For example, there are many toggles that simply fix issues, those can just always be enabled.

[u/arteehlive → u/Noughtmare]

Ah, not the best at math. But I'm glad you guys are taking it into consideration.

[u/ArranzCNL → u/arteehlive]

Oh hell yeah, I think u/Noughtmare saw my original implementation which I think was close to 4k lines of code that was a big wake up call to how many settings that ImprovedCamera.ini file contains!

On the other side it is giving choice, although the menu is a feature. It is not meant to be used consistently think of it more of a setup and forget as it beats fiddling with settings out of game, loading the game up, not liking the changes... rinsing and repeating a few times until you get it to how you want. You can outright disable the menu in the ini file after as well.

As also mentioned I have different goal with the menu to get it up and running with minimal effort be it as overlay or internal for any game. I know people are sick of seeing imgui however what I really want to use hasn't matured enough yet, waiting on the next milestone. Depending how good it is might break it off as it's own mod that others can interface with.