IISharperII's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Big Fat Tutorial]

Very Helpful! But one question...

I just want to say :O this tutorial has helped me sooooo much. Its fairly simple and easy to follow, very well done. But I do have one question that deals with the scripted camera. When using the scripted camera in your tutorial, you were able to have text and control buttons act independently of the camera, how did you do this? I've attemped to attach control buttons onto the camera movieclip, but they don't seem to function properly. And if I fade the camera in and out from black or some other color, they disappear as well.

Helbereth responds:

Aah, yes this bugged me for a while as well.

The camera, if it's on the main stage, forces the view of the stage to wherever the camera is, so unless your buttons move with the camera, you can't get them to stay onscreen.

I don't know of any actionscript way around this problem, but there is a way.

If your whole scene is contained in a movie clip 9camera and all) then placed on the main stage, you can put your buttons, text etc. on the stage (regardless of where the camera is as viewed from the stage), centered however you like, and the movie will play with the buttons affixed wherever you placed them.

As for the fading, I haven't found any way out of that. Whatever modifications are made to the camera have the same effect on whatever it's viewing (alpha, tinting, brightness, etc.). Personally, I'd do all the fades with the main stage (using a black square or whatever) where you have the buttons, and not even bother using the camera for it.

As for the tutorial, I never used the camera for any motion in the tutorial at all. Any motion you saw was actually done the hard way, because at the time I didn't know how to get the buttons to stay in place when using the camera.