It's definitely a hard balance to be struck between the whiplash-inducing immediate tuarnaround versus wanting to see where you're going when you really do want to change direction! Two thoughts, I know nothing about camera design so these could both be terrible ideas but... they're wild guesses, anyway!
1) Making the resting position somewhat closer to center would alleviate the burden of just how far the camera has to travel when it's changing direction in the first place. I'm not saying keep the player character directly centered at all times, of course--you're right about that looking artificial, plus you'll generally need to see more of where you're going than of what's behind you anyway. But he could perhaps be at least a little closer than that! (Maybe.)
2) Perhaps a delayed acceleration to correct when the player turns around? Something that stays slow for the first second or two, so it doesn't do the whiplash thing every time you turn around to grab one single gem you missed and turn back, but that picks up the pace if you stay pointed in the other direction long enough for the game to realize you mean it. In that second shot, right around the time where the "Tortoise + 40 bonus" notification starts to fade is were I could imagine encountering some "turn around, stop, wait for the camera to sloooowwwwly show me where I'm looking" frustration if I actually did mean to start going that way. (However, I still love everything else about that demo! Smoothing out the quick little one-second-or-less turns is fantastic.)
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Date: 2015-06-28 05:09 am (UTC)1) Making the resting position somewhat closer to center would alleviate the burden of just how far the camera has to travel when it's changing direction in the first place. I'm not saying keep the player character directly centered at all times, of course--you're right about that looking artificial, plus you'll generally need to see more of where you're going than of what's behind you anyway. But he could perhaps be at least a little closer than that! (Maybe.)
2) Perhaps a delayed acceleration to correct when the player turns around? Something that stays slow for the first second or two, so it doesn't do the whiplash thing every time you turn around to grab one single gem you missed and turn back, but that picks up the pace if you stay pointed in the other direction long enough for the game to realize you mean it. In that second shot, right around the time where the "Tortoise + 40 bonus" notification starts to fade is were I could imagine encountering some "turn around, stop, wait for the camera to sloooowwwwly show me where I'm looking" frustration if I actually did mean to start going that way. (However, I still love everything else about that demo! Smoothing out the quick little one-second-or-less turns is fantastic.)