How to make a "scrolling camera"?

I've made a lot of games (casually) since MMF1, so I have a lot of experience with MMF, completely self-taught. Because of that, I have some basic holes in my understanding of the program, the most annoying being the inability to make a scrolling camera. Try as I might, I can't guess how to do it on my own.

I just want to make your basic platformer, where the playing field is larger than the visible field (Think Super Mario Bros, Sonic...basically any 2D side-scrolling game ever.) How how do I make the playing field larger than what the player can see at the start of the game? And then do I set the "camera" so it follows the player character?

Do you see what I'm asking? Incredibly basic. But its finally irked me enough to swallow my pride and ask the forums

The "Frame size" is how big a level is.
The "Window size" is how big the camera is.

So if you make the frame size bigger than the window size, you will create a playing field larger than the visible field.

To change the placement of the camera. Note that you cannot change the dimensions of the camera, just the X/Y Position

Here's a screenshot:

http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/8215/2ta9.png

Red events happen only once. Here is a little info on red events.

http://www.xable.us/fastloops.php

Replace the timer condition with an "Always" condition and you should be fine.

Here's a second screenshot:

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9163/tw8a.png

Protip: Instead of making the camera stay at 0,0 on your player, make a new active called Camera and make the camera stay at 0,0 of that active. Then set that active's position to

X = (9*X( "Camera" ) + X( "Player" ))/10.0
Y = (9*Y( "Camera" ) + Y( "Player" ))/10.0

Replacing "Player" with the name of your player active.

This will make your camera smoothly follow the player with a sort of easing effect. Just try it out, it looks nicer.

That's a really good method of camera control Jacob! If however, you wanted the camera to move in front of the player, rather than behind the player, how would you alter that expression to do that? Changing the + to - only breaks the entire thing ;D

Enchaintainement, that is quit simple. After you have the camera working behind the player, instead of using the Center Window position in frame action, set the Horizontal and Vertical Window Position individually and use the following expressions:

Center Display at X = X( "Player" ) + X( "Player" ) - X( "Camera" )
Center Display at Y = Y( "Player" ) + Y( "Player" ) - Y( "Camera" )

Thanks for for the response Popcorn. That example works very nicely! Much appreciated :)

Um, whenever I want to scroll in Fusion 2.5, the scrolling never works, and my character ends up going out of frame, even though I follow everything down to the last detail.

The frame needs to be bigger than the window. Then in the event under the Storyboard Object Scrolling>Center position at 0,0 of your character.

Marv

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Popcorn

Enchaintainement, that is quit simple. After you have the camera working behind the player, instead of using the Center Window position in frame action, set the Horizontal and Vertical Window Position individually and use the following expressions:

Center Display at X = X( "Player" ) + X( "Player" ) - X( "Camera" )
Center Display at Y = Y( "Player" ) + Y( "Player" ) - Y( "Camera" )

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Heya ! Just digging this up a bit

This works really well, however I wish the camera would always stay in front of the player's direction whenever facing left or right instead of recentering on him. Is there a way to do this ?

Create an active and place it so that it's in front of your character, whenever facing left or right; then focus the camera on that instead of the character.