[GRdev] Hobbyist game development

OrangeRKN wrote:
Thanks, this is absolutely helpful! I've followed those steps and haven't been able to replicate it, but I suspect it might be a browser difference. What browser are you using (and OS for good measure)?

Microsoft Edge and Windows 10

Just tried it in Chrome and it doesn't happen!

Classic Internet Explorer Microsoft Edge

I've made a note of it anyway!

OrangeRKN wrote:Classic Internet Explorer Microsoft Edge

I've made a note of it anyway!

Just add a compatibility disclaimer!

OrangeRKN wrote:Bump!

This is very work in progress, but I want to share it anyway! It's my first proper attempt at a graphical game, written from scratch in pure javascript. So far all you can do is move around to explore the map, you can't interact with anything or enter any of the buildings. The map design itself is finished - it's using a version of the tileset I was posting here a while ago. Fans of Link's Awakening should find the whole thing very familiar!

https://orkn.uk/unawakening

Use wasd to move around and see if you can break anything I guess!

And please excuse the fact you are playing as a bright red square

Bro I'm pretty sure Nintendo already made a game just like this. Sorry to break it to ya ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(also Idk if this has been mentioned yet, but walking/holding diagonally into a single space, most notably into doorways, just stops the player's movement like it gets caught on a corner on each side? Also zooming in too much broke the game. Otherwise this is really, very, super cool)

Thanks!

I've just fixed that, it was a pretty good bug actually - caused by the "corner bumping" that was added to make movement easier. The player would step one pixel left, putting them just over the corner, then the upwards step would bump them back to their starting position. I've fixed it now locally by overriding that corner bump logic while moving diagonally.

I'm in the process of adding more NPCs, but expect an update soon as I have them working in principal!

Jezo wrote:Also zooming in too much broke the game.

How much did you zoom in? I should put an upper bound on it

I wanted to see more and thought zooming in was the only way so I just kept going

There is now a max zoom of 20x (or 1920x1440). More importantly, there are a load of more exciting updates! There are NPCs to talk to, the beginnings of a trading quest to progress through, and a good number of other interactions besides. You now start washed up on the beach, with a brief notice of controls, and it's starting to feel vaguely game-like!

https://orkn.uk/unawakening

The "we've relocated" sign

EDIT: The telephone house! I like how it changes once you've beat the game too.

Looking cool OR, first thing I noticed was some times pressing 'J' goes through more than 1 line of text. It looks like I'm holding it for a split second too long, since I'm used to some games that require you to 'long press' on interactions so you don't activate things by accident. Perhaps making it you have to press it each time, rather than being able to hold it down.

Also, just came across a bug walking along the water, and it forced me to keep going left until I mashed the buttons.

I can't stop messing around. Another few things.

The margin of error entering the doors can be a bit annoying, you have to be quite precise. If you miss a door north of it first time and try to 'slide' in by holding 'W' while walking past the door you don't enter. I'm guessing it only works on 'straight' movement and not 'diagonal' movement?

Diagonal movement feels a tad too fast.

I feel there should be some animation when you're pressing against a wall / immovable object.

Is it possible to 'overlay' his head over the background? The top edge of his head being the clipping box makes it feel like hes always a foot away from anything that's north of him. And moving around the fence post in front of the 2nd house feels off because of this - I kept smacking his head into it because I misjudged how close I really was.

I think it would be good when you change direction you can do an initial 'short press' to just changed the way the character is facing, and not move him a little bit. For example, when pressing against a North wall, then tap 'S' he walks a little away from the wall rather than just 'turning on his heel'.

Hacks! ... Glad you liked the telephone computer booth too

That's not a growth wrote:Looking cool OR, first thing I noticed was some times pressing 'J' goes through more than 1 line of text. It looks like I'm holding it for a split second too long, since I'm used to some games that require you to 'long press' on interactions so you don't activate things by accident. Perhaps making it you have to press it each time, rather than being able to hold it down.

Thanks for all the feedback! I've got some ideas to address most of it tonight. The text-skipping is slightly awkward - there is an input delay, which I can increase easily for dialogue, but I've also been having issues in controlling repeated presses I think because of "repeat keys" when a single key is held down. In the browser there are "key down" and "key up" events, so theoretically I should be able to only react once to "key down" events which should prevent holding the key to skip through multiple lines of text. In practice holding down a single key seems to make that event fire multiple times. I need to investigate it some more!

Key up/down events also only happen when the tab is in focus, so it's possible the "forced movement" bug you had came from losing focus - I've had that happen myself. There is a way to fix that I think, I just haven't done it yet! If that wasn't the issue, I'd definitely like to find out what it was instead!

I call this "the TNAG update"

https://orkn.uk/unawakening

- Entering doors is now much nicer in function and appearance and can be done while moving diagonally
- The input delay after using doors has been increased
- There is now an input delay when reversing direction when moving on a single axis, letting you "heel turn" with a short press
- The input delay on advancing dialogue has been increased
- You can no longer hold J to skip dialogue (which would also restart dialogue previously if held)
- Key presses are now cleared when the page loses focus, preventing forced movement
- Pushing against a wall is now animated (except when facing up)
- Walking into an NPC no longer results in the player walking on the spot
- The single post sprite outside the kennel has been edited (there is now a dog bowl filling out the impassable space)

I'm uncertain as to whether I will try to slow diagonal movement down, I agree it feels quicker (naturally as it is the diagonal of a square unit) but I'm unsure that changing it will result in it feeling better - I need to have a play around.

Otherwise I think the character feel is continuing to get better - while more and more special cases and oddities creep into the code

Thanks TNAG for all the very useful feedback!

I managed to glitch out the map! It's really cool!



How to reproduce: stand in the empty tile immediately diagonally top-right from the portal to the kennel; hold down A and S to move diagonally bottom-left into the portal.

I guess that approaching the portal from the wrong angle messes up the code that transports you to the indoors world.

OrangeRKN wrote:I call this "the TNAG update"

OrangeRKN wrote:I'm uncertain as to whether I will try to slow diagonal movement down, I agree it feels quicker (naturally as it is the diagonal of a square unit) but I'm unsure that changing it will result in it feeling better - I need to have a play around.

I've heard in developer interviews sometimes when you have something like this it's not always the obvious solution - eg, there was a game (I think Half Life 2?) where the players were complaining a reload animation was too long. Rather than reduce the speed of the reload, which would have affected balancing, they reduced how many movements there were in the animation so it felt less busy and got positive feedback.

But I do think in this case it's too quick. It feels like it's still moving side to side is as quick when moving diagonally than when you're only moving in one axis - but you're travelling over more distance.



To me it feels moving along the red line takes the same time as the blue, but should be a fraction slower.

OrangeRKN wrote:Otherwise I think the character feel is continuing to get better - while more and more special cases and oddities creep into the code

I agree, it feels much better in this build. The main 'slightly annoying' thing that was sticking out as I was playing just now was I would sometimes move through the edge of the screen to another part of the map by accident when I didn't mean to when moving around some of the set/ too close to the edge. I would even occasionally ping quickly through 2 if on a corner which was very disorienting, when done unintentionally. Would it be possible to make it so the playable area is actually 1 square large than the visible window, and you only move to the next window when you go more than half way over the threshold? (so the character is visibly creeping over (I suppose under) the edge before you transport them - essentially giving a margin of error).

OrangeRKN wrote:Thanks TNAG for all the very useful feedback!

No problem, it's enjoyable seeing the progress you keep making on this.

Karl_ wrote:I managed to glitch out the map! It's really cool!



How to reproduce: stand in the empty tile immediately diagonally top-right from the portal to the kennel; hold down A and S to move diagonally bottom-left into the portal.

I guess that approaching the portal from the wrong angle messes up the code that transports you to the indoors world.

Eh? Where the hell is this, I couldn't see this area?

Karl_ wrote:I managed to glitch out the map! It's really cool!

...

How to reproduce: stand in the empty tile immediately diagonally top-right from the portal to the kennel; hold down A and S to move diagonally bottom-left into the portal.

I guess that approaching the portal from the wrong angle messes up the code that transports you to the indoors world.

I think you'll find...

https://www.zeldaspeedruns.com/la/dogho ... use-glitch

It's a feature

You're not wrong though, entering the door from the wrong angle is the cause of the glitch in Link's Awakening - although it behaves a little differently to my recreated version here! It's not the only "glitch" I've replicated either - you can also screen warp by pressing "-" as you transition screen. I'm even fairly certain you won't actually break anything with either!

That's not a growth wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:I'm uncertain as to whether I will try to slow diagonal movement down, I agree it feels quicker (naturally as it is the diagonal of a square unit) but I'm unsure that changing it will result in it feeling better - I need to have a play around.

I've heard in developer interviews sometimes when you have something like this it's not always the obvious solution - eg, there was a game (I think Half Life 2?) where the players were complaining a reload animation was too long. Rather than reduce the speed of the reload, which would have affected balancing, they reduced how many movements there were in the animation so it felt less busy and got positive feedback.

But I do think in this case it's too quick. It feels like it's still moving side to side is as quick when moving diagonally than when you're only moving in one axis - but you're travelling over more distance.

To me it feels moving along the red line takes the same time as the blue, but should be a fraction slower.

It does take the same amount of time because diagonal movement currently is just the sum of moving in both the x and y directions. Theoretically it should take ~1.4x the amount of time as it is ~1.4x the distance. I have a few options:

- Alternate diagonal movement between x and y every frame. This will make it 2x as slow, so a fair overshoot, and possibly you would feel the "zig-zag" (not sure, would have to playtest).

- When moving diagonally, do not move every other frame. This will also make it 2x as slow, but should be an even stop-start rather than a zig-zag.

- When moving diagonally, do not move every third frame. This will make it 1.3x as slow, which might be close enough to the expected speed, but the asymmetric stop-start may be noticeable to the player.

I'm going to try out the third option at some point and see how it feels.

That's not a growth wrote:The main 'slightly annoying' thing that was sticking out as I was playing just now was I would sometimes move through the edge of the screen to another part of the map by accident when I didn't mean to when moving around some of the set/ too close to the edge. I would even occasionally ping quickly through 2 if on a corner which was very disorienting, when done unintentionally. Would it be possible to make it so the playable area is actually 1 square large than the visible window, and you only move to the next window when you go more than half way over the threshold? (so the character is visibly creeping over (I suppose under) the edge before you transport them - essentially giving a margin of error).

There is a buffer for transitioning screens (currently at 6 frames) where you need to move against the edge for that number of frames to trigger a transition. There is then an input delay after transitioning (also currently set to 6 frames) where you can't do anything until that number of frames has passed. The balance is in minimising the accidental transitions without getting in the way of intentional transitions. I've already upped the similar input delay on using a door to 12 frames and I could play around with some different numbers on screen transitions, although I do like how "snappy" they are at the moment (also an effect of having no transition animation).

Taking Link's Awakening as a reference point, there the player can move ~3 pixels out over the edge of the screen which makes transitions feel a bit more deliberate. That's basically what you're suggesting above and is probably worth investigating!

That's not a growth wrote:Eh? Where the hell is this, I couldn't see this area?

Stand here, then hold down both A and S: