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DroidFreak36
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Friday, January 5 2018, 3:57 am EST
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Copied from the Discord discussion so you guys can post feedback here:

'DroidFreak' said:
Due to the switch from Gamemaker's rendering system to my own, I will now have the ability to render areas outside of the level. That is, rather than stopping when it reaches the edge of a level, the camera can now pan outside of the level. So I have a couple of options for how to proceed:

(a) Maintain the limit preventing the camera from going outside the level (camera will behave as before near level edges)
(b) Render the area outside the level as if it were filled with terrain. This would likely come with some slight mechanics changes because I'd also make the edge of the level act as if it was terrain. Don't worry about the loss of level edge water draining - drain tiles will be coming in the same update so you can use them instead.
(c) Make the area outside the level configurable between empty space and solid terrain to facilitate the creation of levels that appear to be open to the outside or a large open cave.
(d) Automatically extend the level from the outside edge to acieve a similar effect to (c) but without the need for configuration. Levels with a solid edge would appear to be in solid terrain, levels with an empty edge would appear to be in open space, and levels with a mix between the two would have a sort of smeared extension.

For both (c) and (d) I'd add a sort of "force field" effect to visually show that you can't leave the level area if you get near it.
That edge extension in (d) would behave something like this:
Spoiler:


'krotomo' said:
Maybe being able to choose between the options in c and d? Also I think it would be cool if players could place forcefield tiles manually, and create decorative areas "outside the level" (even though they are technically in the level)


'DroidFreak' said:
So basically option (c) but in addition to the options for solid terrain and empty space you have the option to use edge extension?

Plus the ability to manually limit the playable area with columns/rows ouside of the level border.

I'd probably make edge extension the default in that case. Then it'd work fairly well in most situations without needing configuration but you could manually configure it yourself.


If you have any feedback on that, be sure to post it here or in the Discord.




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canadianstickdeath
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Friday, January 5 2018, 5:54 pm EST

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Why? If you want more a bunch of terrain past the sides of your level, you can just add a bunch of terrain around the outside of your level. I'm not sure what the difference would be from just doing that... Except I guess you're sort-of suggesting some sort of force-field tile that only the player can't pass through? You could allow such a tile to be placed anywhere instead of only at the edges of the map...
DroidFreak36
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Saturday, January 6 2018, 1:53 pm EST
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You could add a bunch of terrain on the outside of your level, but that doesn't mean that people do. This change would automatically do that for people, getting rid of those annoying times the camera gets stuck on a level edge. That's what it's really about - allowing the camera to move freely into the out-of-the-level area so it can properly follow Hannah near the level edges. Actually rendering the tiles outside the level is a side-effect, really, but in order for things to look good their should be something rendered there.




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shos
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Saturday, January 6 2018, 3:08 pm EST
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If you do that, allow the maker to choose which tile is there. Some would prefer metal oR so...


canadianstickdeath
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Saturday, January 6 2018, 4:39 pm EST

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But if you want to choose what's out there why not actually choose what's out there by placing it down like you normally would. And if you want the camera to stay "normal" at the edges then you add the border and if you don't then you don't. I really don't see the point.
DroidFreak36
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Sunday, January 7 2018, 11:09 pm EST
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@shos That's would be part of the configuration, probably. And if I go with the edge extension as default, then any level with metal crates at the edge of the level, it'd automatically extend the outside of the level with metal crates.

@csd The point is that I want to disallow the camera from behaving badly near edges. Yes, a level creator can avoid that now, but I don't want them to be able to not avoid it. I want the default to look good, not require level creators to make extra effort just to make the camera behave nicely.




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canadianstickdeath
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Monday, January 8 2018, 12:14 am EST

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I've never had any problems with how HATPC's camera behaves at the edges. What do you mean by "behaving badly?"
DroidFreak36
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Monday, January 8 2018, 4:17 am EST
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I mean stuff like this, where the camera wants to be centered near Hannah but is forced off of its target by the level edge. That ideally shouldn't happen, because it breaks immersion and makes the world feel confined. It certainly shouldn't be happening in campaign levels because they are supposed to be caves and thus ought to be in a large field of terrain, not in a small box of space in a formless void.

The only reason why it's happened so far in HATPCR is because of the limitations of the engine, and presumably that was also true of HATPC, but the new engine I'm creating doesn't have the same limitation - I can render tiles that don't exist as far as the game is concerned with virtually no performance impact, while previously the only way I could do that would be to actually make the level bigger at the edges. The distinction might not mean much to you, but it's real. In the old engine, the level's size was also the size of a "Room" in Gamemaker which the camera was confined to, so in order to render anything outside of the level I would have had to expand the room. Now the room is the size of the camera view instead of the size of the level and as far as Gamemaker is concerned the camera never moves - all of the objects are rendered relative to the camera by my code.




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canadianstickdeath
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Monday, January 8 2018, 7:04 am EST

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That camera stopping at the edge of the level thing is pretty common of 2d platformers and it doesn't bother me at all. Never once has it broken my immersion (invisible walls, however, have done this). And if it did bother me I would just... add a lot of terrain around the level. (At times I've done this to force things off-screen when being near an edge would reveal more than I'd like it to. This method also comes with the bonus of the unplayable area being super-customisable. I've also specifically put certain things next to the edges of levels so that more of it would be visible by default.)

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