Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iNSQIyNpVGHeak6isbP6AHdHD50gs8MNXF1GCf08efg/pub

by sp332 • 11 years ago

353 27 11 years ago

docs.google.com

1wd• 11 years ago

Abuse (1996) had some kind of (inverted) target focus I think. Or is that a snappy lerp-smooth?

benihana• 11 years ago

This is so phenomenal. Just being aware of the different ways camera systems are used is incredible when playing and making games.

corysama• 11 years ago

Has this been seen by http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/ ? If not, it definitely should be :)

a_e_k• 11 years ago

Yes: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/358eyf/

mrspeaker• 11 years ago

Strangely, it didn't do that well on /r/gamedev - I get the feeling that this talk, coupled with the article (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iNSQIyNpVGHeak6isbP6AHdH...) this will become the "definitive" article on 2D camera boxes. Great work!

dcre• 11 years ago

This is so much more interesting than it should be. The GIFs must have been a ton of work to put together. Fantastic.

danneu• 11 years ago

    > This is so much more interesting than it should be.

Is this a sibling expression to "I laughed harder at this than I should have"? It's okay to find things funny and interesting, even superlatively so.

Like zombo.com says, the only limit is yourself.

rkuykendall-com• 11 years ago

They probably mean "This is so much more interesting than somebody would expect based on a description."

If someone asked me "Do you want to watch a 52 minute talk on how they move the window on side-scrollers?" I would say no. That doesn't sound like it would even be worth talking about.

But it is, and I'm really psyched to watch this video.

0942v86533• 11 years ago

Great article. (Unfortunately I had to finish it in w3m because the gifs were so huge.)

I remember doing lerp and projected-focus before I knew what they were called. It definitely has more depth than it seems, and as I was reading I was surprised at how much thought went into some of these decisions, especially Super Mario World where I had never noticed it. I suppose it's like UX design -- you only notice it if it's bad.

scott_karana• 11 years ago

This article is a strong candidate for in-focus GIFs, or webm, or both. I had similar issues :)

jzymbaluk• 11 years ago

I was also having a major issue reading this article on mobile. Every app I tried to read it on was crashing repeatedly, with increasing frequency as I got to the bottom of the page.

listic2• 11 years ago

How does w3m compare to lynx?

0942v86533• 11 years ago

I use it mainly because it defaults to http; I never took the time to actually compare the two.

Sainth• 11 years ago

Thank you so much for this!

2Xheadpalm• 11 years ago

awesome work!

bbx• 11 years ago

If you prefer, here's the 52 min video of the talk: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022243/Scroll-Back-The-Theory-...

cjdrake• 11 years ago

Great essay. Content is interesting, and the composition style is innovative.

toolchainz• 11 years ago

I took a game programming class back in college and ended up coming with a scheme very similar to the lerp smoothed box shown there. Interesting to see all the history of this.

panic• 11 years ago

It would be neat to have an interactive demo where you could explore the space of possible cameras.

wiradikusuma• 11 years ago

Awesome work!

Unfortunately, some game engines just give you the Camera and basic stuff, and you must implement scrolling yourself while wondering, "Am I doing this right?" (mostly I use LibGDX). Would be great to see this codified as a library. I think it's not game engine dependent.

babuskov2• 11 years ago

I wish every game developer read this. Some really popular games have bad camera movement. For example, Limbo has poor vertical camera and you have to make "leap of faith" often. Trine has problem with scene transition with multiple players so you often play off-screen. And Vlambeer games have too much shaking ;)

emsy• 11 years ago

Sreenshake can be turned off, but they have a problem with their offscreen action. That is, enemies that are 2 screens away from you can shoot you mercilessly which is even worse than a leap of faith because it's purely random and can't be prevented with skill or knowledge.

babuskov2• 11 years ago

Yes. I've had such moments in Nuclear Throne very often.

Donzo• 11 years ago

Platform snapping... That's a really good idea that I've never noticed. I'm going to experiment with this.

brainpool• 11 years ago

The vision and neurology section at the start was all messed up, but the review of approaches used in different games was great! Oh nostalgia :)

Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers

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