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I'm currently working on a 2 player top down Racer and I'm trying make the screen zoom out when the Players ar far apart and zoom in when they're closer. I have no idea how to do this. I have the Frame size 1980 x 1080 and the Window size 800 x 600. Do I need an extension or somthing?
This might be very expensive, but the lens shader is the only thing that comes to mind. It's a 'fake' zoom, of course. Instead of having a camera that zooms in and out you make the game so hi res that the whole track is actually rendered onscreen, and then use the lens shader on an object that covers the whole screen object to blow up parts of the image. Again, this will possibly be slow and tricky to make good looking art for.
I believe the Perspective object had a similar feature that could zoom the frame in and out. Then you would set the width and height to the players max/min coordinates.
I havn't Used the Perspective object yet. How would I set it up?
Would suggest the Viewport object extension, if your project is windows only, a very nice and performant solution
(I think Sumo was referring to this? They are both made by Andos, our deepest thanks to this man! XD)
You can basically choose the area you want to capture, and provide an output screen size
so just by altering the source area dimension (i.e. widening it when player gets farther one from the other)
you can zoom out
and make very nice effects
How would it look in the Event Editor?
Say your minimum window area is 800x600
I think you would try more or less something like this:
set source region to:
(can't recall now if it asks for center or top-left corner, maybe optionally both?)
center: (Xplayer1 + Xplayer2) /2
width: max(800,abs(X(player1) - X(player2)))
heigth: max(600,abs(Y(player1) - Y(player2)))
you would have to place the viewport object in frame editor on the top-left corner of your frame area
make it 800x600 size
build the racing track below it and keep some safe space from the viewport,
to make sure the source region doesn't "feed" with the viewport itself or it won't work
then you don't need scrolling at all, the viewport should take care of everything
EDIT________
actually, there was a little more to it XD
(not that much)
mostly because viewport can't capture frame area outside the window
so you need to set your application window size to max frame area
and then use the window control object to force correct window area and reset position
see quick example:
Attachment 19507
just to see the basics
(also, untick "no thick frame" in application properties window options, or users dragging the window would show hidden frame areas)
EDIT 2 _____
oh, and I remembered uncorrectly, you can actually feed the source region what's below the viewport,
so you can draw you race even below the viewport area,
only thing you would avoid objects reaching the very edge of the frame,
(like placing an obstacle perimeter before the edges)
or some distortion lines would occur
Yep, you're correct Schrodinger. I meant the Viewport object, not the Perspective object. Thanks for correcting me. I remember messing around with the object to do a "predator missile" effect where the screen would start zoomed out and then start zooming into an area on the screen while the missile falls.
WOW, this is usefull, can you do this with 4 players also?
Yes, here's a rough scratch:
Attachment 19712
though I get noticeable framedrops when zoom pans over a wide area
Thank you very much =). The framedrops seems to be related to processor clock speed. My new i5 at 3.2 Ghz is noticibly slower than my older processor that had higher clock freq 3.6 ghz.
What if the games scrolling? Iv'e only been able to use the viewport properly in static frames.
scrolling would be handled by the viewport itself
(you have a source region that scrolls through the frame area)
@schrodinger I copied some of the Viewport code over to my game and it's not working. The camera won't move at all.