Learning Gravity, Basic Physics, and Camera Controls: An Angry Birds-like Game, Part I - Learn GameSalad for iOS: Game Development for iPhone, iPad, and HTML5 - page 179

Controlling the Camera: Scrolling Across the
Scene
Next, you will learn about the camera in GameSalad. The camera in GameSalad
is not a way to control the iPhone camera (this is not possible yet with
GameSalad, but it would be a very cool feature). The simplest way to
understand the camera is to think that you are seeing the game through the
camera. Then you can play with the scrolling features to enhance the player
experience in your Canon Show!
The Screen vs. the Scene
In GameSalad, there is only one camera. The camera is the point of view, the
way you see the game. The visible area of the game is on your screen and you
will implement controls to play with the camera: to move it left, right, up, and
down.
So far, you have made projects where the size of the scene was equal to the
size of the screen. This is good when you are building a project where scrolling
is not required. However, in this game you want to have a much bigger scene in
which the visible part is equal to the size of the screen.
A key concept of the camera in GameSalad is that an actor is controlling the
camera. You will use a behavior named Control Camera and affect it to an actor.
Thus, when the actor moves, the camera follows.
The camera view is the screen, but there is another tool that accompanies the
camera: the camera zone. This zone is the key to controlling the camera. As
long as the actor moves within this zone, the camera will not move; as soon as
the actor moves out of the zone, the camera will follow.
To access the camera zone, click the camera icon shown in Figure 6-23.
Figure 6-23. The camera icon
This activates the camera mode and shows the camera zone (seeFigure 6-24).