I’ve really been struggling lately with the camera design in Zombpocalypse.  It worked great for the environments I created because they were designed to be small and confined and organized like a theater stage.  This meant that I could fabricate arbitrary blockers that would keep the camera relatively safe from visible objects.  You might notice that the environment objects, including the buildings toward the top of the screen were tall and more elaborate than the content near the bottom of the screen.  I purposely designed the environments to build up in a pyramid fashion.  Objects near the bottom of the screen were generally short, like a fence or low-hanging barrier.  Objects near the top of the screen were tall and occluded much of the players view to keep from seeing what was behind those buildings.  It worked great to give the impression of a much larger world but what if I wanted to expand that arena??  What if I wanted to create a small part of the city to roam around in?  The camera would constantly be clipping through some tall building as the player walked down a random street.

I thought about using a dolly camera similar to Dead Rising but I really liked the 2D gameplay you get from locking the camera.  I think it opens up the game to people who don’t want to manage camera controls on top of shooting, running, ammo management and everything else.  Sigh…