thanks guys
I've been tweaking the camera some, not only because I always knew a more comprehensive system was needed, but some feedback on the video prompted me to think about it more sooner. I'll talk about it a little since some of you may find it interesting and newcomers might find it informative.
It occured to me and others that the camera targeting the center of the player wasn't always ideal, it'd be nice to see where you're going. This is something I'd avoided in the past because of the "jerking" I remembered getting in previous tests when you turned the character around.
^ To anyone who may not be super familiar with Stencyl already, this is how you might attach one actor to another, by, in the updating loop, constantly setting its position to a position relative to the target actor. The value added to the offset amount is something I'll explain in a bit.
To start my new experiment, first I attached an actor relative to the player's position. This would be the new target for the camera, rather than the player actor itself.
video:
http://gfycat.com/CooperativeVacantAmericanmartenas you can see from the video, it feels jerky when you change directions. It's too abrupt.
I was thinking about how to solve this, so I decided that instead of just setting the actor instantly extending from the other side on turning around, I'd make it extend and retract from the actor, up to a maximum amount, relative to the actor's position.
http://gfycat.com/InfamousSecretAsianlionNow we're talking. It feels rather smooth, you can see ahead of you, and you never get jerked around. Remember the number attribute I added to the X and Y offsets? those numbers are rolled up and down when the player moves, and this influences the relative position of the camera dummy to the character.
As you may have noticed, I also put in a Y value. I used this for looking up and down.
I always knew I'd need to change to a camera dummy sooner or later, because it's used for more than just tweaking the behavior of the camera during basic gameplay. It can also quiet easily be used to control the camera's movements when extra control is needed for specific circumstances. Just wrap up the existing regular behavior in a value that can be turned off, at which point another set of instructions can be issued to the camera actor, such as move to a location.
