Top-down shooter camera sliding towards mouse

Hey @Mystic_Quest Sorry for the long delay. This post fell off my radar and I just noticed it again.

The Framing Transposer is designed primarily for 2D use, and as such isn't perfect for the situation you describe. That said, it is possible to get pretty close, with a little tinkering. I tried it out, and am including my results in the attached package. Create a new project, add Cinemachine from packman, then drop this in and open the scene. When you play it by using WASD to move the player around, the camera follows at a more-or-less constant height, with a dead zone in the center. That's what you're looking for, right?

Here is how I set it up. You have to first set up your vcam with the Framing Transposer and the viewing angle (60 degrees, in this case). Then, put in the desired camera distance, and the dead zone height.

Next, run the scene. When you move the player back and forth, the camera will move up and down in Y to maintain the target distance. You don't want that, so here is where the tinkering comes in. You have to set the dead zone depth just right to neutralize the vertical movement - and that amount will depend on the specific camera distance, angle of view, and dead zone height.



What I did was to move the player back and forth so that it reached the top and bottom of the dead zone, and keep an eye on the camera Y position in the inspector. I then gradually adjusted the dead zone depth until the Y movement disappeared, or was sufficiently negligible. And that was the value I kept.

 

You can make a simple custom extension to lock the vcam's Y position. This works well with framing transposers, damping, and dead zones. Because the FramingTransposer was designed for a straight-on camera, the screen guides won't be completely accurate when the vcam is at an angle, but you can still adjust the settings to get the movement you need.

Here is an example of a custom extension that locks the camera Y position. Drop it into your scene, and add it to the vcam from the Extensions dropdown in the inspector.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using Cinemachine;
3.  
4. /// <summary>
5. /// An add-on module for Cinemachine Virtual Camera that locks the camera's Y co-ordinate
6. /// </summary>
7. [SaveDuringPlay] [AddComponentMenu("")] // Hide in menu
8. public class LockCameraY : CinemachineExtension
9. {
10.     [Tooltip("Lock the camera's Y position to this value")]
11.     public float m_YPosition = 10;
12.  
13.     protected override void PostPipelineStageCallback(
14.         CinemachineVirtualCameraBase vcam,
15.         CinemachineCore.Stage stage, ref CameraState state, float deltaTime)
16.     {
17.         if (stage == CinemachineCore.Stage.Finalize)
18.         {
19.             var pos = state.RawPosition;
20.             pos.y = m_YPosition;
21.             state.RawPosition = pos;
22.         }
23.     }
24. }
25.