volCAMERA: a powerful camera engine for Clickteam Fusion 2.5

[elvisish]

@Volnaiskra thanks for the reply! I think it's cause "the PMO uses floating points but they are hidden (Gets clamped down to Fusion coordinates, which are int)
volCamera seems to use Alt Value X and Y, which have floating points (But then gets clamped as the object is set to X and Y position to those values)" and I'm not sure if there's any way of matching up volCams int positions to PMOs. It's a bit of a shame as I was relying on PMO as I love it's simple solidness that I haven't found in widget-based movements.

[Fenris]

Hello @Volnaiskra , I just have a quick question abut this camera as I can't get it to work properly. I copied VolCamera engine and all essentials to my game. I also replaced all references of demo player. When I start the game camera works, but I just can't get xOvershoot to work. I set it to yes but no matter what values I put in, the camera stays at default. I know I'm probably doing something wrong or missing something, but I just can't figure it out. Any ideas? Thanks

[Chaos]

Excellent camera system man! Very nice work indeed.

[Volnaiskra]

Hello @Volnaiskra , I just have a quick question abut this camera as I can't get it to work properly. I copied VolCamera engine and all essentials to my game. I also replaced all references of demo player. When I start the game camera works, but I just can't get xOvershoot to work. I set it to yes but no matter what values I put in, the camera stays at default. I know I'm probably doing something wrong or missing something, but I just can't figure it out. Any ideas? Thanks

Sorry, but without seeing your game, I can't really tell what the problem might be. Unfortunately, the best advice I have is to try importing everything again, and hopefully whatever you did wrong last time (if indeed you did anything wrong) will be fixed this time around :/




@Chaos Thanks very much

[elvisish]

@Volnaiskra As I mentioned in https://community.clickteam.com/threads/101080-volCAMERA-a-powerful-camera-engine-for-Clickteam-Fusion-2-5?p=740803&viewfull=1#post740803 I'd love to be able to use VolCam with PMO. I understand PMO's float coords get clamped internally which would make it difficult to accurately match the position with VolCam, but a lot of people rely on PMO's simplicity, including me. Is there any workaround you could think of that would allow VolCam to track correctly with PMO? I'd really appreciate it as I didn't expect PMO to have any issues like this and I'm relying quite heavily on it's functionality.

[Fenris]

@Volnaiskra Thanks for answering. I tried importing the engine again and plug my player in and I still have the same problem. I even tried using default camera demo object instead of my player. I deleted my object and just plugged Demo object in PMO, as it is already set to engine. But the problem is still the same, I only get default camera movements. I'm certain that I'm doing something wrong, but I just can't figure it out, and it's driving me crazy Here's my example if you maybe have the time to look at it :testcamera.mfa

[Volnaiskra]

@Volnaiskra Thanks for answering. I tried importing the engine again and plug my player in and I still have the same problem. I even tried using default camera demo object instead of my player. I deleted my object and just plugged Demo object in PMO, as it is already set to engine. But the problem is still the same, I only get default camera movements. I'm certain that I'm doing something wrong, but I just can't figure it out, and it's driving me crazy Here's my example if you maybe have the time to look at it :testcamera.mfa

Hey Fenris. volCAMERA needs to know data about your player (movement speed, whether player is on the ground, in the air, etc,). So you need to populate the Connect volCAMERA with game group with up-to-date information about your player, by giving that information to the volCAMplayerStates object. The comments in that group outline what values you need to provide and where.






For example, you've linked Xspeed of volCAMplayerStates to an alterable value of your player called Xspeed. That's a good start. But Xspeed of your player doesn't actually do anything at the moment; it just stays at zero. So even when the player is moving on the X axis, the alterable value of Xspeed just remains 0, as you can see in the debugger on the right side of this screenshot:







So, you need to get information about your player's x speed, and tell that information to volCAMplayerStates. For example, this would do it:



Or, an even simpler way:




So now, volCAMplayerStates knows what your player's xspeed is, and can operate properly.

......well, not quite. As I was looking through the code, I noticed a bug that was my fault, which also prevents overshoot from working properly - doubling your problems! Sorry about that! You also need to make the following change, please:








Once you've done all that, overshoot should work:

[Volnaiskra]

@Volnaiskra As I mentioned in https://community.clickteam.com/threads/101080-volCAMERA-a-powerful-camera-engine-for-Clickteam-Fusion-2-5?p=740803&viewfull=1#post740803 I'd love to be able to use VolCam with PMO. I understand PMO's float coords get clamped internally which would make it difficult to accurately match the position with VolCam, but a lot of people rely on PMO's simplicity, including me. Is there any workaround you could think of that would allow VolCam to track correctly with PMO? I'd really appreciate it as I didn't expect PMO to have any issues like this and I'm relying quite heavily on it's functionality.

I don't mean to sound like I'm just being defensive, but I don't think volCAMERA has anything to do with your problem. When I completely disable volCAMERA in your MFA, I can see the same type of stuttering on the character.



If I disable volCAMERA and set the mfa to always centre on the player as below, then the player of course becomes smooth (since he's no longer actually moving on the screen). But now, everything else (the trees, the rocks, poor Santa...) stutters in just the same way as the character did previously. It's just less noticeable because one doesn't look at them as intently.



I guess it's just how PMO works. You could try fiddling with some of the physics values and/or the MFA's framerate (acceleration, speed, etc.) and see if you can find a combination that feels smoother. I got considerably less stuttering when I tried Max Y velocity = 400 and gravity = 6. The demo that comes with volCAMERA uses PMO and actually moves very smoothly. I think that's partly because the movement is faster, and partly because the MFA is high-resolution (see below)

The "maximise on bootup" setting also has a lot to do with it. If you turn it off, the stuttering isn't too bad, but when it's on it amplifies those 1-pixel jumps since each pixel is now so huge. I guess you could try using a higher resolution in your game and 'simulating' the pixelart look instead, by making each 'pixel' actually comprised of 4, or 9, or 16 pixels. This would make the graphics just as blocky as before, but would allow things to move at finer increments.

[Fenris]

Thanks a ton! @Volnaiskra . I knew I made some stupid mistake somewhere but just couldn't figure it out. It all makes a complete sense now It works and it's amazing. Thank you again for your time and keep up the good work!

[Julian82]

Hey Vol! Cool to have you back, dude Hope things are going well! My 2 cents on PMO and low resolution: It jitters; I think this object uses sub-pixel movements which don't really look nice when heavily scaled up. I've some sine-based platforms in my game (which is technically sub-pixel), if the player is attached to them I get the same issue. It's not really visible on higher resolutions tho.