Question on layout vs camera

I am making a sidescroller shooter, now, at the point i�m in, i got the BG to scroll to give the impression of speed and the enemies appear in a time based fashion, ecery x secs...

I want to have more control of the stage design, now:

Is the layout is like a scene on the stage and i have to connect several layouts to form a stage?

OR

Is the layout the entire stage and i got to get the "camera" to follow the player around?

I made some simpler games on construct2, all single screened, to get a feel of the tool, i am having a hard time understanding the concept of a stage larger than the layout size

I hope i made sense...

each layout is a "stage"

if your game is big, breaking it into layout sections will make it easy to load and can help you on the programming side(on the end of layout, on load of layout...)

but if your game is small you can make it all in one layout (if you scale the layout to comport more sections).

you just have to remember a few things:

• keep in mind the layout sheets you use for each layout; see if is checked
• hit the "global object" so the object is show on each layout
• try not open too much layouts in the editor

OK, so, each layout is a stage, so, if my game is 800X600 natively, i have to make it something like 8000X600 if i have it to be 10 "pages" long?

if you want all in one layout and with this scale, than yes

but it depends of you design decisions, if your game is like a arcade, is better to have a layout p/ stage; if is more lika a adventure game than a area p/ layout is good

Think of R-type, will it be one layou or several, if so, how to tie them?

if is like R-type than is 1 layout per stage

to tie then you only have to make a transition event and choose the next layout

The camera follows the "ship" around?

if you put the scroll behavior for the ship, yes. you can even choose unbounded scroll to off if you want the screen to not scroll off the bounds of the layout