How do I setup pawns/camera for an Isometric game?

Development Character & Animation
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I’m working with someone else to make a character setup kinda like how Baldur’s Gate did it: one main character plus five other party members that can all be moved/controlled. How would I begin to set this up with Blueprints?

Do I need to have a separate Player Controller/Pawn Controller for each Character/Pawn? If so, would I need to have a separate Blueprint just for switching between the Controllers? Also, is there a way to have my main Character and all the Pawns selected at the same time? Do I setup my Character and Pawn movement in the Controller or the Pawn/Character itself?

I’m also trying to implement an isometric camera that follows the party and scrolls with the WASD keys and when the mouse hits the edge of the screen. I don’t want the player to be able to rotate the camera at all. I’ve seen a few answers and a tutorial for this but they all seem to differ. I’ve seen the camera attached to a Character with a spring arm and also seen it set up to be a separate Pawn with its own Controller. Should I make a separate Pawn just for the camera or have it attached to the main Character and Pawns (whichever is selected)? Should I try modifying the Top-Down Blueprint Template?

I’ve been trying really hard to read all the documentation and learn how to do this on my own, but it’s hard. The general tutorials I’ve found on YouTube are great and I feel like some of the C++ ones would be helpful (if I knew enough C++, heh) but it’s not what I’m really looking for. If anyone can answer even one of these questions it would be a huge help to me!

Thanks!

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you need to have a separate pawn for each character, and you only need to control at most 1 character with a player controller. the rest of the friendly characters can be ai controlled using path finding and behavior trees. you can make each pawn have its own AI controller. if you want the characters to cooperate as a group, you can make a separate AI for the group that registers pawns onto a list, then places destination way points for each group member.

for the camera, if you want it to move with the player always in the same spot on the screen, you should attach it with a spring arm. the spring arm keeps it from penetrating the world, but in an isometric game, the levels should be designed so that nothing comes between the player and the camera. if you want it to scroll independent of the player, like an RTS, you should make the camera a separate pawn with an AI controller. you can even do both, and have the AI of the camera interpolate towards the end of the spring arm on the player during gameplay, and interpolate into an animation for a cut-scene.

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Hmm, this is a lot to think over! I’ll have to read up on path finding and behavior trees. Thank you for taking the time to answer! If we get anything definitive working I’ll post it here. :slight_smile: