Module 4 Examples:  All about the Camera, Familiar functions, and Views

Link to GitHub

· Credits:

o Original Design for the Characters in Dye Hard: Nathan Evers

o Assets copied from this book

Coverage

Unity specific skills you will need, practice, and demonstrate include:

· Working with camera viewport

· Changing scenes

· Information persisting across scenes

Concepts you will explore and understand include

· More about the lerp function

· Camera views and the game world,

· Soft and hard movement of the camera: lerp and shake

· Working with familiar functions

1. Basic Camera Controls:
• Run Behavior:
• N: Move camera by (x, y) values (from the X/Y slider bars)
• M: Move camera to (x, y) values (to where Dye is located)
• H: Zoom with respect to the center (zoom factor slider bar)
• J: Zoom with respect to Dye (zoom factor slider bar)
• Scene setup:
• MainCamera:
• Has CameraSupport
• UI-Canvas:
• X/Y/Zoom: sliders (all connected to UserControlLogic)
• TheWorld: has UserControlLogic
• Background: Z=1 (larger than hero and egg)
• Hero and Egg
• Empty GameObject on TheWorld::UserControlLogic
• For organization
• CameraSupport
• mTheCamea: reference to the camera
• mWorldBound: the current bounds of the world
• Behavior: updates the world bound per frame
• functions:
• GetWorldBound(): get the current world bounds
• CollideWorldBound(): collide a bound (of an object) with the world bound and returns collision status
• ClampToWorldBound()
• Move/Zoom
• PushCameraByPos
• UserControlLogic: central object that receives and parses user input
• Connection to UI sliders and other game objects
• Transmits user input to game objects to cause changes
• Camera folder/
• CameraSupport: seen this before, new function: ClampToWorldBound()
• CameraSupport_Manipulate: manipulates the connected camera
• MoveBy, Moveto, Zoom(towards center), ZoomTowards(point), PushCameaByPos()
• Testing:
• HeroControl (on the Hero)
• CollideWorldBound code
• PushCamera
• EggBehavior
• ClamAtWorldBound (always inside)
• Learned:
• Camera manipulation: simple changes to camera’s transform object (position, and orthographicSize)
• Note: the partial class to separate implementation into logical units
• Depth layering:
• Background with Z=1 (behind Hero and Egg)
• Unity: slicing of a sprite sheet
  
  
  
2. Taking a closer look at Lerp
• Run Behavior: Z to see Lerp
• Try type Z-repeatedly!
• Increase to twice current size and tries to Lerp back gradually
• If continue to increase size before lerping to original size, net growth in size
• This can be easily avoided in HeroControl (how? e.g., ignore z-key when LerpIsActive())
• Examine: TimedLerp class
• Perform lerp for a fixed duration
• Rate is in units of second (easier to think about?)
• Rate and Duration are sliders in the UI-Canvas
• Look at HeroControl
• BeginLerp() to begin
• do not need to always SetLerpParms(), if you know the values
• LerpIsActive() to receive proper lerp results
• Learned:
• TimedLerp:
• Pretty handy class in general?
• This is is _NOT_ a MonoBehavior!
• Note on testing: separate and trivial test environment, test all aspects
  
  
  
3. More respectful camera manipulation:
• Run Behavior: same as previous examples, but notice the damping effect!
• N: Move camera by (x, y) values (from the X/Y slider bars)
• M: Move camera to (x, y) values (to where Dye is located)
• H: Zoom with respect to the center (zoom factor slider bar)
• J: Zoom with respect to Dye (zoom factor slider bar)
• CameraSupport:
• Position Lerp
• Size Lerp
• Update() function must check,
• If Lerps are going, must set accordingly
• Learned:
• One simple example of using the TimeLerp function (in lerping the camera position and size)
  
  
  
4. Shaking … for the camera and more
• Run Behavior: same as previous examples, added key control
• X: To shake the camera (boss is coming!)
• Utility/ShakePosition (in Utility)
• Sampling on a DampedHarmonic function
• Number of cycles
• Length of shake duration
• CameraSupport_Manipulate:
• SetShakeParameters
• UpdateShake()
• When done, will return the original position
• Learned:
• Describe behavior and search functions learn, appropriately sample functions
• More advanced camera behaviors:
• Parallax, following: look for existing solutions (try to avoid implementing solutions that are already out there).
  
  
  
5. Orbiting (rather unrelated example)
• Run Behavior
• Eggs orbits around hero
• No UI support, must change from the editor, try
• Select Hero in Editor and move hero around (egg follows)
• Select Egg and change
1. Orbit Radius
2. Orbit Speed
• Scene:
• Egg is the satellite
• OrbitControlàHostXform points to Hero’s xform
• OrbitControl.cs on the Egg (can be on any objects):
• Literally 3-lines of code!
• Learned:
• Nice to know quaternion 😊.
  
  
  
6. Viewport and Hero Cam:
• Run Behavior: same as previous examples
• with a small cam focusing on the hero
• Background: located at z=30
• Main Camera
• Located Z=-10
• Far = 50
• Background is 40 units away, can see the background
• Small cam (HeroCam): Create a new Camera
• Projection: Orthographic
• Depth: > 0 (Main Camera is -1, the bigger the number, the more front)
• Background color:
• Camera Located Z=-10
• Camera Far=30
• Background is 40 units away, cannot see background, thus, seeing constant color
• Check out the Viewport setting
• CameraSupport:
• SetViewportMinPos(x, y)
• SetViewportSize(w, h)
• UserControlLogic: testing
• Sliders connected to the HeroCam
• Change the small view viewport settings
• HeroControl:
• Changing the CamPosition of small view
• Questions:
• What does it mean to zoom in the small view?
• What does the orthographicsSize of Small view mean?
• Learned:
• What is a viewport and its settings
• How to work with the Unity viewport
  
  
  
7. New Scene and Game State that persists over scenes
• Run Behavior: same as previous examples
• Perform some hero lerp and camera shakes (see the text echo)
• L key to load new scene: notice lerp and shake info persisted across scenes
• Unity details:
• Using UnityEngine.SceneManagement: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SceneManagement.SceneManager.LoadScene.html
• MUST:
• FileàBuild Settings
1. Make sure all levels to be loaded are in the Scenes In Build
• Level Persistency: Singleton Pattern
• GameState class
• Print from UserControlLogic
• NewLevel level
• Simply echo, value persisted levels!
• Organization:
• Level-Specific folders
• Level-specific behavior: NewLevelGameManager
• Level-ClassExample
• HeroControl, EggBehavior, and UserControlLogic
• Move Camera into Utilities
• Learned:
• All game objects are erased when a new scene is loaded
• Must take special care (e.g., Singleton pattern) to create and maintain info across scenes
• Unity how to: create/load scene
• Take a look at:
• DontDestroyOnLoad()
• https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/implement-data-persistence-between-scenes