🎥 Camera Follow Player

What is it?

The camera system in GameCrom allows the camera to automatically follow the player in order to keep them visible on screen during gameplay. This behavior is controlled through the cameraFollow property, along with several parameters that define how and when the camera moves.

📖 Main parameters

• cameraFollow: boolean. If set to true, the camera will follow the player.
• cameraFollowAxis: camera follow axis. Defines in which directions the camera will move.
  • "both": follows both X and Y (default value).
  • "x": follows only horizontally.
  • "y": follows only vertically.
• cameraSmooth: number. Controls the smoothness of the camera movement. Higher values produce slower and smoother motion.
• cameraMargin: number (in pixels). Defines a margin around the player within which the camera will not move, preventing small jittering movements.
• offsetX / offsetY: Current camera offset. It is calculated and updated automatically by the engine.

✅ Basic behavior

- If cameraFollow is set to false, the camera remains fixed.

- If cameraFollow is set to true, the camera will automatically move to keep the player within the visible area, respecting the defined margin and smoothing.

🧭 Follow axes

Using the cameraFollowAxis property, you can decide on which axes the camera should follow the player.

• "both": The camera follows the player both horizontally and vertically.
• "x": The camera moves only horizontally. Ideal for classic platformer games.
• "y": The camera moves only vertically. Useful for shooters or vertical scrolling levels.

The axis that is not followed will remain fixed, even if the player moves in that direction.

🎯 Using custom players

By default, the camera system automatically follows any object of type player, top_down_player, flying_player, or point_click_player.

If you are using a player created through a custom script, you can manually tell the camera which object it should follow. To do this, add the following line in the Start event of the object script:

function Start(obj) {
  cameraFollowTarget = obj;
}

This assigns the current object as the camera target. Important: there must be no object of type player in the scene, as the engine’s automatic system has priority and will override this manual assignment.

🎬 Example without smoothing

{
  "cameraFollow": true,
  "cameraFollowAxis": "both",
  "cameraSmooth": 0,
  "cameraMargin": 50
}

👉 The camera will follow the player instantly when crossing the 50-pixel margin.

🎬 Example with smoothing

{
  "cameraFollow": true,
  "cameraFollowAxis": "both",
  "cameraSmooth": 5,
  "cameraMargin": 80
}

👉 The camera will move smoothly toward the player, keeping an 80-pixel margin.

🎬 Example: horizontal-only camera

{
  "cameraFollow": true,
  "cameraFollowAxis": "x",
  "cameraSmooth": 4,
  "cameraMargin": 60
}

👉 The camera will follow the player only horizontally, keeping the vertical position fixed.

🎬 Example: vertical-only camera

{
  "cameraFollow": true,
  "cameraFollowAxis": "y",
  "cameraSmooth": 6,
  "cameraMargin": 40
}

👉 The camera will follow the player only vertically.

📌 Notes