I’m currently working on a game similar to Arkanoid, but I want to have levels which are taller than the initial camera viewport allows. In order to do this, I put together a camera similar to the one in Super Mario World. If you haven’t seen this video, it’s worth a watch:

In my case, I only need a much simpler version of this camera. I don’t need any horizontal movement, and I don’t need any logic like the Mario camera uses to follow multiple platforms, etc. Here’s what I wanted the camera to do:

When the ball is near the bottom of the level, snap the camera to the bottom so that it doesn’t move.

When the ball gets high enough to go off screen, unsnap the camera so that it follows the ball.

When the ball gets to the top of the screen, snap the camera to the top so that it is no longer following the ball.

While the camera is snapped to the top, if the ball moves below the viewport, start following the ball again.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

In the next post, I’ll show how I made the camera using Playmaker, and a custom action script.