2d orientation and held objects

Storyyeller · 2011-06-22T16:12:16

So in 2d games, there is a problem with orientation that doesn't appear in 3d games, specifically with regard to player facing direction and held objects. Normally, in a 2d game, a character just instantly flips left or right as soon as the player presses a direction key. The problem comes when you want the player to be able to hold large objects in front of themselves. What happens to the held object when the player flips direction? In order for the object to maintain the same relative position, it has to instantly teleport to the opposite side of the player. This has a number of problems. For example, what should happen if the player was standing next to a wall and then faces into the wall? Another option is to simply have the object stay in position. The problem is that if the character sprite changes direction like normal, it will look like the object is being held by thin air. So you need to create a completely separate set of dragging animations as well as complicating movement code slightly. A third option is to just drop the object. But this sounds very annoying for the player.

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Storyyeller June 22, 2011 04:04 AM

9 comments, last by SuperVGA 13 years, 7 months ago

SuperVGA

1,304

June 22, 2011 04:12 PM

But this is a design issue not a coding issue.

Anyway the problem with smooth rotation is that it requires a lot more art to be drawn.

Maybe you could sacrifice a little realism and get it animating smooth by scaling the characters over the horizontal axis, around their center, like 1.0 -> -1.0
Obviously they'll be paper thin at some point, but that would be very short. It could be the styleof the game. Paperthin layers. ;-)

- goes for 2D platformers.

2d orientation and held objects

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2d orientation and held objects

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