This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Setting Up a Fixed Camera
Right now, your game has a camera that follows your Pawn around. This is the default, but for the game you want to make, it isn’t quite right. Instead, you want a camera to stay fixed, looking down at the spaceship from above. You also don’t want it to move when the Pawn does.
To solve this quandary, you can use Camera Actors and view targets and the built-in PlayerController class to set the view that a player sees. This setup could be done in the Level Blueprint, but it would then be more difficult to port your game logic to a new level. Instead, you are going to bundle this camera logic into a Game Mode. When the game begins, the Game Mode will spawn a camera for your game and then tell the PlayerController class to use that new camera.
In the next Try It Yourself, you use the BeginPlay event and the SPawn Actor from Class node to create a new camera and position it with a Make Transform node before setting it as the PlayerController class’s view target.
Try It Yourself: Create and Set a Fixed-Position Camera
Follow these steps to use the ArcadeShooter_GameMode to spawn a new camera and set it as the PlayerController class’s view target:
In the Content Browser, navigate to the Blueprints folder and double-click the ArcadeShooter_GameMode Blueprint class to open the Blueprint Class Editor.
If the Editor shows only the Class Defaults panel, then in the note beneath the panel title, click the Open Full Blueprint Editor link.
In the EventGraph, locate the Event BeginPlay node, and if it doesn’t exist, create it by right-clicking and searching for begin play.
Click+drag from the Event BeginPlay node’s exec out pin and place a SPawn Actor from Class node.
On the SPawn Actor from Class node, click the down arrow in the Select Class field, and select CameraActor.
Click+drag from the SPawnActor CameraActor node’s SPawn Transform property and place a Make Transform node.
Set the Make Transform node’s Location property to 0.0, 0.0, 1000.0.
Set the Make Transform node’s Rotation property to 0.0, –90.0, 0.0.
To the right of the SPawnActor CameraActor node place a new Get Player Controller node.
Click+drag from the Get Player Controller node’s Return Value output pin and place a Set View Target with Blend node.
Hook the SPawnActor CameraActor node’s Return Value output pin into the Set View Target with Blend node’s New View Target input pin.
Hook the SPawnActor CameraActor node’s Exec Out pin to the Set View Target with Blend node’s exec in pin. Figure 20.11 shows the completed GameMode Event Graph.
FIGURE 20.11 The finished Event Graph to set up a fixed camera in the Game Mode.
On the toolbar, click Compile and then click Save.
Give the game another test run. At this point the camera should be looking straight down at your Pawn, which moves left or right when its input keys are pressed.
)