Camera

Cameras are important parts of the JamJar game engine, they define how the game world is viewed and rendered. A camera is a Component, any entity can be made into a camera by simply adding a Camera to it.

Camera World Position

The camera's world position is defined using a Transform component on the same entity, with the position field dictating the world position of the entity and therefore the camera.

Camera Virtual Scale

The camera's virtual scale, specified by the virtualScale field on the Camera, and is defined in world units. The virtual scale defines how much of the world the camera is able to see, for example a virtual scale of (160, 90) can see 160 world units wide and 90 world units tall.

Camera Viewport

The camera's viewport defines where on the screen/canvas the camera will be rendered. This is defined with two properties of the Camera, viewportPosition and viewportScale. The viewportPosition is the position of the camera's viewport on the screen, with from the bottom left (-1,-1) to top right (1,1) with (0,0) as the center. The viewportScale is the scale of the camera's viewport, relative to the canvas/rendering surface. A viewport scale of (1,1) would take up the entire canvas, while a scale of (0.5, 0.5) would only take up half of the screen (width and height).

Example

const cameraEntity = new Entity(messageBus);
cameraEntity.Add(new Transform(Vector.New(0, 0), Vector.New(5, 5)));
cameraEntity.Add(new Camera(
    new Color(1, 0, 0, 1), // Red
    Vector.New(0.5, 0.5), // Top right
    Vector.New(0.5, 0.5), // Half width and height of canvas/screen
    Vector.New(160, 90) // 16*9 screen, show 160 * 90 world units
));