The Struggle of Side Scroller Cameras in UE4

[UnrealLou]

Hey everyone,

I've been trying to make a third person side scroller camera for a 2.5D style game for a while now and so far found it rather tedious.

The two main features I'm struggling to implement being;

Platform locking - where the camera stays at a constant height (Z position) during a jump, and then I can lerp it to a new height if the next platform is at a different level, similar to the super mario world camera
Shown in this video at 1:20 https://youtu.be/TCIMPYM0AQg?t=1m20s

Idle room - where the camera stays put until the player reaches a boundary and then lerps ahead of the player
As shown in this video https://youtu.be/01AHrMZ2Qvs
I've actually managed to get my camera to offset depending on the player's velocity before, but I have no idea how to give room to idle before the camera starts moving.

Currently I'm using a camera component attached to a spring arm - should I be using a separate camera actor with collision boxes or something? (bearing in mind I'd like to have the functionality of changing the spring arm length for other features) - would having a separate camera actor impact performance?

So if anyone has any ideas on this or has managed to do anything like this before I'd love to hear about it!

Cheers!

[SB1985]

I would say making the camera its own actor is the way to go in this case. Then change the Z based on what platform the character is, but have it always follow the player on the X.