This post discusses the background and evolution of camera use in 2D games. It provides numerous examples from the classic coin-ops to contemporary indie games, and offers techniques, terminology and practical solutions applicable in your own game.
20170221 02:43
XB3001 - Side-Scroller Camera Theory
As part of my researching on how to get the screen transition that I want for our side-scroller I came across this really useful and informative article written on Gamasutra.
It breaks down the different possibilities of camera work using different side-scrollers as examples.
It also shows just how much work and planning goes into camera work, which actually surprised me, because as camera use goes, I had just assumed that side-scrolling cameras were pretty basic. Turns out, they can be as complex and important as camera work in any film.
The transition that I’m looking to use for our game is one that involves the camera snapping to fixed locations. This was often used in beat-em ups or action games to either slow down the pace or completely halt the player while they tackled more difficult foes or bosses. As you can in the clip below from the classic Sega game Gunstar Heroes. While the camera moves with the player for the most part, periodically it remains static preventing the player from moving on until all enemies have been cleared.
(Gunstar Heroes - Sega, 1993)
Each of our levels are separated in to one or two screen-sized puzzles, and I want the camera to only move as the player reaches the edge of the screen they are currently in.
The smoothest and most flexible way I found to do this is via the use of a timeline within the level blueprints.
This meant that I could keep the same camera and its settings and just tell it exactly where to move to and how long it should take doing it. Keeping the same camera and it’s settings is very useful for us due to our use or orthographic mode. It means we can ensure the camera stays the exact distance away from the set and at the exact height and just have it move along a perfectly straight path along the X axis.
I wanted to also disable the character movement during the transition. Even thought the camera movement is only 0.8 seconds long, I wanted to make sure the player couldn’t run off any edges or return to the previous screen mid-transition.
I tried first by disabling movement, but I found it too clunky, and also couldnt work out how to re-enable the movement again.
I also wanted to try Deactivate (character movement) as seen above, but i couldn’t get this to work at all. I couldn’t outright reference the character movement component from the level blueprint, but even when casting to 2DSidescrollerCharacter, I couldn’t get this to work.
But, as it stands, I don’t feel like it’s completely necessary to have the movement disabled as the transition actually feels pretty nice and is very smooth.