How to create a camera hack for a Torque 2D game?

Question

first I’m not programmer, I’ve been using a popular game for some time and I think it would make a great medium for machinima. Problem is that it’s a top down view startegy game and it doesn’t give control of the camera other than pan map with arrow keys, drag with left mouse and zoom on cursor with mouse wheel.

I’ve got the demo of Torque 3D and I found the documentation on creating different camera modes but I don’t want to spend hours to find out in the end that I can’t do it.

Ideally I’d like a console command to switch between the default camera mode and the machinima one. The machinima one should focus on the centre of the map OR (toggle) on a selected unit and basically let me rotate the map like a sphere but never get below it or alter its horizontality. (hope you get the picture)

So can anyone write me the code to add ?

EDIT: I just learned that it uses Torque 2D but renders things in 3D.

Answer 1

I find myself confused by your question. So you want to use a "popular game" that is a "top down view RTS game" for machinima. But it doesn't give you enough camera controls.

That's fine. Where it gets confusing is where you start talking about Torque 3D. The document you found pertains to Torque 3D users and possibly games made with Torque 3D. And I don't know of any "popular" RTS game that was made with Torque 3D. So the fact that Torque 3D has the ability to create camera modes has nothing to do with this anonymous RTS game.

If the game itself does not give you camera controls, whether directly or via scripting, then you don't have camera controls, period.

BTW, if you're talking about StarCraft 2, just say so; Blizzard's wrath will not be upon you. Also, SC2 has lots of camera controls in its scripting system; people have made third and first-person shooters in the engine. I could point you to all kinds of SC2 map editing resources you could use to make Machinima if I knew what game you were talking about.

---

I wanted to know what game it was so that I could go look it up. And now that you have revealed that it uses T2D instead of T3D, what you want is simply impossible. T2D renders 3D objects the way it renders sprites: each one has its own space. There isn't a global camera for T2D unless the game creates that concept itself. And if it does, that global camera can only be changed via a mod if the developer specifically exposes it.