Week 8 - Player Movement

Week – 8: player movement

Where the game sits:

The current state of this game is incredibly basic, as this is only in an early developmental phase. The level is only a temporary testing environment. Both the level blocks and the player are currently placeholders, as these components are still in development.

What new:

This initial update provides the player with basic movement controls for traversing the level. The player is able to move left and right using the A/D keys and the left and right arrow keys. The player now also now has the ability to jump, which can be triggered by the space bar. The ability to double jump has also been added to the game, which can be activated by pressing the space bar again. On top of this, the player now also has the ability to dash, which is triggered by using the left shift key. This works by multiplying the player’s speed, as well as setting the gravity scale to 0 during a certain period of time.

A flip mechanism has also been implemented so that the player will face the horizontal direction that they are moving in.

Visualisation:

The following is a GIF of the player flipping direction based on inputs.

The following is a GIF of the player double-jumping.

The following is a GIF of the player dashing.

Testing and feedback:

A few users tested this game after the implementation of these features. There has been a few pieces of useful feedback, such as implementing a dash cooldown, limiting the amount that that action can be used. As well as this, feedback suggested that the controls would benefit from making the dash a occur over a longer period of time.

Both of these ideas will definitely be implemented in future updates.

Future updates: Character sprites/animations are very close to being complete and implemented in the game.