Camera
Learning paths through this topic
Smooth camera follow
A 2D camera that glides after the player instead of being glued to them. It ignores small steps, looks ahead in the direction of travel, and stops at the edges of the level.
Camera Look-Ahead
A camera centred on the character wastes half the screen on where the player has already been. Showing more of the way ahead gives the player time to react to enemies, gaps and turns, and makes fast movement fair.
Camera Dead Zone
A camera glued to the character shakes with every step and makes small moves feel like earthquakes. A box in the middle lets the character move around calmly, such as fighting, aiming or jumping on the spot, and the world only scrolls when it needs to.
Room Camera
Showing one whole room at a time gives the designer full control of what the player sees, makes puzzles and ambushes fair, and removes the need for the camera to guess. The player always knows where the edges are.
The key object in the background is cut off on a phone or an ultrawide screen
Fill a screen of any shape with one painted background and something has to be cropped. If it is always the centre that is kept, the clue near the edge disappears. Here is a way to choose the crop around what the scene needs shown.
The view jumps when the cutscene ends and I get control back
A scripted shot ends and the normal camera takes over, and the picture snaps or the player's next mouse move spins the view. Here is how to glide from the scripted view into play, which target to aim at while doing it, and where the player's own aim should start.
Cinematic black bars that slide in on any screen shape without hiding important things
Black bars make a scene feel like film, but fixed-height bars look wrong on a wide monitor, on a phone, or while the window is resized, and they can sit on top of the action. Here is a way to size them from the screen itself.
Clicks land in the wrong place when the game is scaled to fit the window
A story drawn at one fixed size is stretched to fit any window, with bars at the sides. The picture looks right, but the buttons answer next to where you clicked, or react when you click a black bar. Here is the conversion in both directions.
Zoom in on a character's face for an emotional line without cutting the head off
A close-up on a portrait sells a tearful or angry line, but zoom into the middle of a full-length picture and you get a chest, and on a tall phone the crop shape changes too. Here is how to frame a face from a single picture on any screen.
A scripted slow walk through a corridor speeds up and slows down at every corner
Telling the camera to move along several points looks right on paper, but a long stretch is crossed at a gallop and a short one at a crawl, and the view snaps round each corner. Here is how to give the walk an even pace and a smooth turn.
The camera moves with every small step, and the view never feels calm
When the camera is glued to the player, tiny movements shift the whole world and tire the eyes. Letting the player move around in a small area before the camera reacts calms the picture. Here is how to move the camera by exactly the necessary amount and nothing more.
The stretching background effect for a moment of realisation or dread
The face stays the same size while the room behind it seems to stretch or collapse. It is a famous way to say that something is wrong, but the two things you change must move together, and there are limits you will hit quickly.