Vertigo : Discussion + Related Info

[Jindo]

Concept: You are a Llama that can switch between walking on ground and ceiling.

Storyline:

Spoiler

Llama Land is struck by a golden meteor, this meteor has plastered every stretch and corner of the land and its inhabitants in gold. You take the role of a llama that was not encased in gold but instead blown far away (7-ish worlds away to be precise.) In attempt to fix things right, you decide to find a way home using your unique ability of walking upside-down.

Controls: Arrow keys to move and jump, space to switch (only in mid-air), you switch automatically when you're closer to ground or ceiling. Jump on enemies heads to kill them, collect the coins, and avoid dying.

Please do not spread the link outside of this forum! It is very important that I keep the testing closed, I don't want to resort to password protection but that's what I'll do if I start seeing the game all over other sites before it's finished.

 

[thewrongvine]

Awesome concept, I like it, pretty unique
Yeah... the ending impossible, ah.
There should be some items that like take time to recharge or only like usable a few times, that let you change directions in the air, allowing you to maneuver better somtimes,

But nice job me likes.

~Hai-Bye-Vine~

 

[Tru_Power22]

Cool concept. I think it will make a neat game when its done.

 

[ElderKingpin]

ahhh. i got it. took me like 10 tries to understand what to do. but ya. i got to the end. pretty fun :O

 

[Arcane]

No! The cake!!

 

[Jindo]

Thanks for the comments!

I've updated the page with a slightly newer version, this one allows you use to both up and down arrow keys to jump, and space to reverse gravity while in mid-air (which makes the final jump beatable).

Much more difficult version of the level incase you found the first one too easy. (Beating the old one will cause the page to redirect you to this)

 

[Arcane]

Can we have the cake now?

*plays*

Wth, top right corner. D:


- I hate the beginning.
- NO! SO CLOSE TO THE CAKE!
- I has the cake.

I like it, except for the very beginning. I don't know how I do it, I just kind of press the keys madly, and then I get it, once every five times.

 

[thewrongvine]

Ah, those one-spacers where you require one space to do it exactly are killers, with the delay on jump for me, lol.
Why not make it like health or changes such as in Mario, instead of starting over every... single... time.
Can't figure how to get cake D: I gots to very end cept for cake.
Good but annoying but cool game,

~Hai-Bye-Vine~

 

[Jindo]

Ah, those one-spacers where you require one space to do it exactly are killers, with the delay on jump for me, lol.
Why not make it like health or changes such as in Mario, instead of starting over every... single... time.

I'm sorry, I didn't understand a word of that.

Can't figure how to get cake D: I gots to very end cept for cake.
Good but annoying but cool game,

I plan to make it easier overall, so don't worry!

 

[Whitesock]

There are a good amount of shortcuts there (you don't even need to use the one spacers) and it's buggy where if you're moving sideways it doesn't always pick up the switch (even if you hit it with your head).

 

[Jindo]

There are a good amount of shortcuts there (you don't even need to use the one spacers) and it's buggy where if you're moving sideways it doesn't always pick up the switch (even if you hit it with your head).

Yeah the engine itself is horribly glitchy.

I've just attempted to write out how the system works and why it's glitching, but it turns out that even I can't understand what I'm trying to say, so I'll leave it blank for now and say that I need to be smarter if I want this to work.

 

[seph ir oth]

How are you going about coding the gravity flip? I noticed that certain portions of blue ceiling don't attract you back down, even though you are extremely close to it (i.e. the small block jutting out on the left portion of the example, about 2/3 of the way up). If you are still working on cleaning up the code and you haven't done this yet, I would suggest implementing 2 classes, floor and ceiling, and have it so that if the player jumps and gets whatever distance close to it, the gravity is inverted.

 

[Jindo]

How are you going about coding the gravity flip? I noticed that certain portions of blue ceiling don't attract you back down, even though you are extremely close to it (i.e. the small block jutting out on the left portion of the example, about 2/3 of the way up). If you are still working on cleaning up the code and you haven't done this yet, I would suggest implementing 2 classes, floor and ceiling, and have it so that if the player jumps and gets whatever distance close to it, the gravity is inverted.

How it works:

There are 2 points, point 1 reaches the closest ceiling point, point 2 reaches the closest floor, the points have the following 3 rules:

If they're ON ground but not touching it, move them in the appropriate direction until they're on the top of the ground.

If they're in mid-air but not touching ground, move them in the appropriate direction until they're on to the top of the ground.

In order to recalculate properly, the points do not update when the player is jumping.

---

These 2 rules work until you get to blocks in mid air, the points will touch the ground but because they're not on any ground they won't move up to the floating block.

Because I don't have an efficient way of tracking these, the points don't always update themselves.

SO: If you jump FROM a part where the ceiling is really high, but end up below a really low ceiling while in mid-air, it doesn't track this and so it still thinks you're under a high ceiling, and so you don't flip.

If I can find a way for the points to recalculate correctly and update while the player is in mid-air, that should be enough to fix this.

---

Even if you do understand how this works, I understand that the above method(s) could sound complicated without diagrams D:

 

[Azlier]

I... get nothing for getting to the cake in the more difficult version? It's just a hologram? The cake is... a lie?

I'm having problems with the space flip gravity thing not working 50% of the time. By not working, I mean pressing space does nothing.

 

[Jindo]

By not working, I mean pressing space does nothing.

I will look in to this.

 

[thewrongvine]

Wow. I had no idea the space bar did something.

~Hai-Bye-Vine~

 

[seph ir oth]

I follow what you say. The question is: what is your ultimate goal on the gravity? Do you want it to continue acting as it is, or would you like the gravity to flip whenever you are that close to the ceiling?

 

[Jindo]

I follow what you say. The question is: what is your ultimate goal on the gravity? Do you want it to continue acting as it is, or would you like the gravity to flip whenever you are that close to the ceiling?

The latter, currently it does that provided you're under the ceiling BEFORE you jump (it doesn't update when you're in mid-air, so that it can recalculate properly when you land)

 

[seph ir oth]

Pseudo code during a jumping procedure:
Update the location of the character based off of gravity and left and right arrow keys
if (alreadyFlipped == false) {
   if (gravity is negative) {
      Update the location of an invisible line to be 300 above the character's head
   }
   else if (gravity is positive) {
      Update the location of an invisible line to be 300 below the character's feet
   }
   if ((invisible line is touching a "ceiling" class object and the gravity is negative) OR (invisible line is touching a "floor" class object and the gravity is positive)) {
   gravity = gravity * -1;
   alreadyFlipped = true;
   }
}

Obviously the invisible line can situated however far you need it to be from the character. That's why I felt it would be nice to set up classes for the floor and ceiling; so that you can just draw away whatever object shapes you wanted in your game.

 

[Jindo]

I removed a couple of conditionals to produce this:

link gone

In this test I've created multiple levels, and I've removed the segments of code that prevent the points from updating when the player is in mid-air, hopefully the game won't break!

For debugging purposes, and to make it clearer for you, I've made the points visible.

Assuming this is all working fine, I'll be adding better obstacles and some collectables.

EDIT: The last level should show you the problem I'm having, you'll see a block, but the ceiling point will appear on the ceiling above that block because it hasn't recognized it.