Scroll transition between frames?

[pinacoladaxb]

I'm in the designing stages of a new game and am considering all of the programming aspects of it before I begin. One thing I'd really like in the game is a smooth scrolling between frames when the player hits the edge of the frame, like in the old Zelda games.

Here's a little visual. If the player walks off the right edge of the first screen, I'd want the camera to move to the right seamlessly to connect to the second frame.


I assume this would be done using a parent frame and a couple sub-applications containing the frames that are being switched between, but I don't know how to do it efficiently. Can I have some advice?

I made a simple example file with no scrolling. How would I add it?

Thanks

[Stephen]

Zelda Widget

[pinacoladaxb]

Thanks, but the whole point of scrolling between frames is so that each frame can load separately, rather than loading the whole world at one time. The Zelda Widget only scrolls within one frame.

EDIT: In the actual game, the frames would be much bigger, which is why I need this.

[Anders]

Hmm I can only think of one way of doing that right now:

Have a "master frame" in which you have two sub-application objects. You then have to manually set the current frame/level of those two and move them manually as well. So when the player exits at one side of the screen it will send a message to the master frame which level to switch the other sub application to, and which way they should scroll.

[mobichan]

Seems like a lot of hassle to simluate something that was based on a hardware limitation (in Zelda).

[pinacoladaxb]

Seems like a lot of hassle to simluate something that was based on a hardware limitation (in Zelda).

I see what you mean, but doesn't it still make sense in a MMF2 app to not load your entire world in one frame? What if my world, all together, is 20480x15360 pixels, with tightly packed enemies and other active objects?

I don't know much about how MMF2 runs or how much resources this situation would take up, so I'm looking for advice at this point. Thanks to Andos, I think I could do this my way, but would the game really run just as well with my whole world in one frame?

[mobichan]

It is probably going to take some experimenting on your part to figure out the right size level for your game. Depending on how much code you have running for enemy AI, fx, collisions, etc your game will have different limitations to someone else's. As a general rule, I like to start conservatively and make levels smaller, just in case I end up needing the extra cpu for other stuff. If you are going to load your areas into one "game" frame, then you could always scale that frame's size later if you want to.