How do I create a Magnifying-Glass?

So, I'm currently working on a game similar to Super Smash Bros.

What I'm trying to recreate are the magnifying-glasses that show up when players are off screen. Here's what it looks like in-game.

I've attempted at making it and I did get it to work, but it was flimsy and unreliable. Displaying the character inside of the magnifying glass with image points is easy, but I have issues otherwise. I'd like to see what people come up with in hopes for a maybe a better way of doing it. :)

So what exactly is the problem?

You can check this demo:

howtoconstructdemos.com/scope-with-magnification-effect

The problem being how to detect or determine a position of the magnifying glass. It doesn't stay in a certain spot, it usually is in a corner of the screen depending on where the player is. So if the player is off-screen to the left, the magnifying glass would be on the left side of the screen.

I believe the effect he is going for is for the magnifying glass to be positioned at the actual angle the character is from the center of the viewport, but constrained to the border area of the screen.

Here is someone else's example:

dropbox.com/s/2mlk515sxvmivvk/AimLine_TDS_triangle_cursor_4.capx

Something like this?

Yes thank you, I may need to rework it for the platform fighter but this should work

So I went ahead and messed around with it, and for some reason it didn't seem to work well with a multi-layered scrolling layout with the camera scaling like a Smash Bros. game. I'm not sure what to do...

There may be an easier way. You can add a border around the edges of the screen, using invisible sprites for example. Then cast a ray from the center of the screen to the target, using Line Of Sight behavior. Detect where the ray hits the invisible border, and position your magnifying glass in that point.

I found an older example I made.

dropbox.com/s/3gtnd67ty83v9et/ConstrainToViewportEdge.capx

There may be an easier way. You can add a border around the edges of the screen, using invisible sprites for example. Then cast a ray from the center of the screen to the target, using Line Of Sight behavior. Detect where the ray hits the invisible border, and position your magnifying glass in that point.

I actually did something similar to this, but without the Line of Sight behavior. I actually used the if overlapping condition, but I'll try this out.

So I tried it, and it didn't work. Perhaps you could provide an example dop2000? I'm not sure if I know how to execute your ideas.

Have you tried oosyrag's version? It's pretty cool.

Here is with LOS raycasting:

dropbox.com/s/djkilpaho46uuch/BorderAim.c3p