Question about converting from partial 2D side scroller to top-down.

Hello, my name is Kyle. I've been into the game design world for quite a while now and just now finally got my PC built, $1200 later.. and Now have the chance to ask questions, practice design from tutorials and learn as much as possible. One question I had was say I was working on a 2D side scroller, and im going along my map, then enter a door, when I enter that door could i make it to where my camera goes from the side, scrolling with the player/character to a top-down camera view? I assume so but I'm not too sure.. I do know that the levels will be designed differently if I take this approach, If you can help it'd be much appreciated.

 

So you want to change "gameplay" from sidescroller to topdown shooter when entering new scenes. Yes, of course you can do this. What you want to do is have a variable that knows if the game is currently a sidescroller or topdown shooter. It could be a boolean, enum, int or whatever (I usually go with enums for this type of thing), add it to a "main object" that contains those settings. Then you check this variable for each object that needs to behave differently (your player for example, needs to know if it's a topdown or sidescroller so you can change controls according to which style it is, or enemies have different movement when doing top-down or sidescroller).