Guide to Deadlock esports and content creation: observing and camera controls

Hi Everyone,

My name is Kris (Kashi) and I am the lead producer behind The Downtown Showdown and the Grit & Glory League, and have assisted in the running and production of a bunch of other Deadlock events. So far I have more than 45 live broadcast hours accumulated since the game’s public announcement.

I wanted to put together a general guide which could help anyone looking into the esports/creative side to Deadlock. This will be primarily focused on observing and camera controls, but if there is interest in other aspects I could expand it further or make it into a series of guides covering different elements.

There will likely be a lot of improvements and updates with the upcoming patches, so I will make sure to keep this up to date with any new features that get added. I am also putting forward some feedback and proposals for new features to the developers, which will hopefully be added and allow us to enhance the overall production value of the content we create.

The basics of observing Deadlock:​

Spectating and observing Deadlock is very simple - you select the player you want to watch and the game shows you their POV. It only gets more complicated if you want to dynamically switch between players or create fancy cinematic shots of the action.

When you first join a match as an observer, your camera will be locked to a player. Moving the mouse will rotate the camera, but it will quickly return to the player’s POV. To enable the cursor and change players you need to use J. This will allow you to freely move the cursor without controlling the camera, and you can now click on the minimap or the hero portraits at the top of the screen to switch to someone else.

There are currently no keybinds to quickly select a specific player (see the commands section below). Left and right mouse clicks allow you to cycle through players, but it only switches between the players on the currently selected team - you will not be able to switch from Amber to Sapphire or vice versa.

When spectating a player, the default camera view is the “close” camera, which is the same over the shoulder camera used for players. Using the scroll wheel allows you to switch back and forth between the “close” and “far” views. The “far” view is positioned further away from the player, placing them in the centre of the screen, it moves the hp bar from the left side of the UI (above the items) to above the player character and it also shows player names above the HP bar. Please note that the "far" view does not properly display any aimed abilities (like for example Grey Talon's Charged Shot) - it does not allow you to see where players are aiming the ability itself.

Using WASD or pressing C when following a player releases the camera and allows you to enter free cam mode. With this you are able to freely fly across the map and show any location and angle of the map, which is especially useful when there is a chaotic fight between the teams. To change the elevation, press shift to go higher and control to go lower (these can be rebound in the keybinds section of the settings). Pressing C again will automatically attach the camera to the closest player and will use the “close” view, even if you entered free cam while in “far” view.

Keys F1 to F4 will allow you to switch the fog of war to show both teams or the target’s, Amber team’s, or Sapphire team’s view

Console commands:​

Default console bind to bring up the console is F7.

Useful console commands:​

(if you are already familiar with the Source console commands, you can skip this section)

Hide/show game UI:​

• citadel_hud_visible false - disables the game’s UI
• citadel_hud_visible true - enables the game’s UI

Hide/show replay UI:​

• citadel_hide_replay_hud true - disables replay UI
• citadel_hide_replay_hud false - enables replay UI

This command is most useful when covering content from the ingame replays as it disables the timeline controls at the bottom of the screen, allowing for the same ingame overlay from live coverage to be used on broadcasts.

Important note: the command also hides any additional UI clutter like the control keybinds, however it also removes useful elements like the observer player info in the top left corner, the coloured bar at the top showing whether you are currently observing the Amber or Sapphire team. The command also works when observing live matches as well, so as long as you are ok with not having the information, you can use the command to have a cleaner ingame display. Currently when using the "far" cam view with replay UI hidden, it makes the player portraits at the top of the UI unclickable, leaving you only with the option of using the minimap to switch to a specific player.

Changing camera traverse speed:​

• citadel_observer_roaming_speed X - changes the horizontal and vertical camera traverse speed, where X is the speed variable

The default value for the camera speed is 600 - changing the value to 300 makes the camera move at half speed, and 1200 would be twice as fast than the default. Please note this only affects the camera traverse speed, your mouse sensitivity will remain the same.
Binding commands to hotkeys:

• bind "[key]" [command]
  
  • Exchange [key] for the key you wish to bind, making sure you keep the quotes.
  • [command] is the entirety of the command you would enter into the console, including any variables.

For example, if you wanted to bind number 5 from the num pad to double your camera speed, the command you enter would be:
bind “kp_5” citadel_observer_roaming_speed 1200

Commands to keep an eye on (not working or useable at the moment)​

Location binds for spectating:​

• spec_goto [coordinates]
  
  • To obtain the camera coordinates, use spec_pos

This command has not been functional since mid/late August. If fixed however, it will be very useful for observers to quickly jump to select positions and show key objectives without needing a player to be present.

Command to bind player selection:​

• spec_target [1-12]

This command is currently the only way I am aware of for switching between players by using a command/hotkey. The problem with the command though, is that it seems players are randomly assigned numerical values as player number 3 can be the leftmost Amber player in one game, but be on the Amber team when you load into a different match. It may be that the client assigns numbers based on join order to the server, rather than UI position.

• spec_player [name]

The above offers a consistent way of selecting players, but is not a very feasible option unless the game is being covered through a replay and sufficient prep time is available to extra the names and positions of each player. The command would need to be rebound each game, unless the players are playing in the same order and same size between matches.




I hope you found this guide useful! If you have any feedback, recommendations or requests, feel free to reach out to me through discord (kashiwardian) or email (kashiwardian@gmail.com).

Thanks,
Kris