What does "track" do? (ZScript)

[Agentbromsnor]

Since I've been looking at Nash's old platformer ZScript thing, I've noticed that he uses "track" for the camera. I would like to know more about this function, since I would like to implement some more sophisticated camera controls in my game (for example: locking down the camera on a certain axis). However, I can't find any documentation on this function and I've looked everywhere.

I would greatly appreciate the documentation.

[gwHero]

You mean track in 'if (track)' ? (line 9)

Code: Select all

class SideScrollerCamera : SecurityCamera
{
	// the player to track/scroll to
	SideScrollerPlayer track;

	override void Tick(void)
	{
		// position and point the camera to the player
		if (track)
		{
			double cx = track.Pos.X;
			double cy = track.Pos.Y + CAMERA_DISTANCE;
			double cz = track.Pos.Z + CAMERA_HEIGHT;
			Vector3 camPos = (cx, cy, cz);
			SetOrigin(camPos, true);
			Angle = CAMERA_ANGLE;
		}

		Super.Tick();
	}
}

It's the player object; it's defined as SideScrollerPlayer, which inherits DoomPlayer (you can check that in player\SideScrollerPlayer).

What Nash is doing, is checking if the player exists. Before you refer in code to an object, it's best to always check if an object is existing, otherwise you could get those nasty null errors. So, only in the if block, when it's certain that a player exists, the camera is synced to the player's position.

[Nash]

I apologize for the overly-short or perhaps not-so-descriptive variable name but as gwHero already explained; it's a variable holding a reference (pointer) to a DoomPlayer-derived object called SideScrollerPlayer. The SideScrollerCamera needs to know which player to follow, hence why it's stored in that variable.

"track" is a local variable and it can be named anything, really. I could just as well name it "ThePlayerObjectThatThisCameraMustScrollAlongWith" but that would be annoying to type. :P

The "if (track)" part simply checks to make sure that the "track" variable is not empty before proceeding. If I had not added that check there, GZDoom would if the pointer to the player does not exist. And it may happen, depending on several factors not in my control.

People may write the same code as "if (track != NULL)" and I know some people are going to get anal about my overly-short null check but, meh, whatever... =P