Part Two - Technical Foundation
Part Three - Game Design
Part Four - Input and Physics
Part Five - More Physics Things
This Week
Hello again TeamLiquid!
Welcome back to my blog about the development of The Adventures of Sam the Pirate, the 2D platformer I'm creating as the final game project for my Bachelor of Software Engineering degree. I know I know, another blog on physics?! All of my work over the last few weeks has been on the physics, so that's all I've really got to talk about at the moment. Last week I covered my work on movement and collision detection, this week is updates on mostly more of the same, which might be a bit boring, but I've managed to get moving platforms working, and have a new piece of concept art to show off.
Collision Detection
Collision detection response is now more accurate. The player will always sit directly on top of a tile, rather than sink into it a little, which is perfect. The overall reaction is still a bit dodgy, as horizontal and vertical checks are done at the same time. So if the player lands directly on top of a tile, there's no problem. If the player hits the side of a tile, the horizontal response goes off and the player doesn't go through the tile, but the vertical response goes off as well and the player is teleported to either the top or bottom of the tile, depending on their height when they collided. Not 100% sure on how I'm going to fix this yet, so I'll need to do some thinking over the holidays.
Moving platforms!
On the upside, I've now got moving platforms! They make use of the same vertical collision response as previously mentioned, but because there's no vertical collision check, they work perfectly fine. If the player lands on the moving platform, they can ride back and forth as you'd expect, but it's a little dodgy at the moment. Every time the platform changes direction, the player continues in the previous direction for a few frames before turning around with the platform. If you ride the platform for long enough, eventually this effect will cause you to be shunted off, at which the point the players velocity is still matching the moving platform, so they just slide along. So it works, but it's pretty buggy.
New Concept Art
What's next?
No new blog posts for a couple of weeks, due to Christmas and New Years. I've got plans to still do some work, likely starting work on an interface framework, buttons and the like, so when I come back the next blog post will be about any progress I've made with that. Along with any work on fixing the physics that I manage to get done. Right now that will probably be around the 7th of January. Until then, I hope you all enjoy your Christmas and have a good New Years!
Keep up to date!
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