Vantage

Vantage is a small Defold camera controller for quickly adding mouse, keyboard, and touch-driven 3D camera movement to a project.

The extension includes a ready-to-use camera component, a sample input binding file, and a minimal example scene. It is intended for prototypes, 3D samples, debug cameras, level viewers, and other projects that need a simple camera without building the input handling from scratch.

Features

• WASD-style first-person camera movement.
• Mouse-look rotation.
• Q/E vertical movement.
• Optional orbital camera mode.
• Basic two-zone touch controls on mobile devices.
• Runtime properties for mode-specific movement, rotation, zoom, and camera mode.
• Example project showing how to switch camera modes at runtime.

Installation

Add Vantage as a dependency in your game.project file:

[project]
dependencies = https://github.com/Jhonnyg/defold-vantage/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

Then fetch libraries from the Defold editor.

Setup

1. Add a camera component to a game object.
2. Add /vantage/vantage_component.script to the same game object.
3. Add the Vantage input actions to your project's input binding, or use the included /vantage/vantage.input_binding file.
4. Make sure the camera game object is included in the collection you want to control.

The component acquires input focus automatically during init().

Input Actions

Vantage listens for the following action names:

Action	Default binding	Description
VANTAGE_W	W	Move forward
VANTAGE_S	S	Move backward
VANTAGE_A	A	Strafe left
VANTAGE_D	D	Strafe right
VANTAGE_Q	Q	Move down
VANTAGE_E	E	Move up
VANTAGE_MOUSE_1	Left mouse button	Rotate the camera with mouse movement
VANTAGE_WHEEL_UP	Mouse wheel up	Zoom in orbital mode
VANTAGE_WHEEL_DOWN	Mouse wheel down	Zoom out orbital mode
VANTAGE_TOUCH_MULTI	Multi-touch	Touch movement and rotation on mobile

The sample binding also includes EXAMPLE_1 and EXAMPLE_2, which are used by the example scene to switch between first-person and orbital camera modes.

Component Properties

The vantage_component.script exposes these properties in the editor:

Property	Type	Default	Description
use_orbital_camera	Boolean	false	Switches between first-person and orbital camera behavior.
first_person_movement_speed	Number	20	Movement speed used by first-person mode.
first_person_rotation_speed	Number	0.25	Mouse and touch rotation sensitivity used by first-person mode.
orbital_rotation_speed	Number	0.25	Mouse rotation sensitivity used by orbital mode.
orbital_zoom	Number	5	Base distance from the look-at point in orbital mode.
orbital_zoom_speed	Number	20	Mouse wheel zoom step used by orbital mode.
orbital_look_at	URL	msg.url()	Optional game object URL used as the orbital look-at point. Defaults to world origin when unset.

You can also change these properties at runtime:

local camera = "/camera#vantage_component"

go.set(camera, "first_person_movement_speed", 5)
go.set(camera, "first_person_rotation_speed", 0.2)
go.set(camera, "use_orbital_camera", true)
go.set(camera, "orbital_rotation_speed", 0.2)
go.set(camera, "orbital_zoom", 8)
go.set(camera, "orbital_zoom_speed", 20)
go.set(camera, "orbital_look_at", msg.url("/target"))

Example Project

The included sample project contains a simple 3D scene with a Vantage-controlled camera.

• Press 1 to use first-person camera mode.
• Press 2 to use orbital camera mode.
• Use W/A/S/D/Q/E and the mouse to move around.

Mobile Touch Controls

On Android and iOS, Vantage enables touch controls automatically:

• Touches on the left half of the screen move the camera.
• Touches on the right half of the screen rotate the camera.

The touch controls are intentionally minimal and are best treated as a starting point for project-specific mobile camera controls.

Notes

• Vantage assumes the input action names listed above. If you merge the input actions into an existing binding file, keep the action names unchanged.
• The first-person camera mode is the primary supported mode.
• Orbital camera mode is included for experimentation and may need project specific adjustments before use in production.