4 ms·

Truth is, there are no formulas…it’s just a big huge hack. I spent two months on the controls for SMB to get them perfect. Everything from the weird “fr

by omn1 13y ago

Truth is, there are no formulas…it’s just a big huge hack. I spent two months on the controls for SMB to get them perfect. Everything from the weird “friction” that happens when you change directions in the air to the 200MS delay that happens when you’re on a wall and pull away is based on how it feels to me when I play it. None of these formulas are based on physics concepts, they are 100% based on feel. I like this. It's brutally honest and sounds wrong, but the result speaks for itself. Super Meat Boy has _great_ controls and that really makes a huge difference. Here's to one perfectionist programmer who really cares about the nitty-gritty details of great game design.

afterburner 13y ago
Why does it sound wrong, is there a tradition of using actual physics in side-scroller interactions?
- wpietri 13y ago
  I think it could sound wrong to the naive because novices generally want things to be simple. They want a few rules, a simple formula, a way to reduce an unknown problem to a known one. This comes up a lot. The most pithy version I've seen is from Mencken: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." But the same lesson is in the [1] Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, and also in the shu-ha-ri model [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisit... [2] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShuHaRi http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShuHaRi
baby 13y ago
It doesn't sound wrong, this is the best way to attain a game were controls and movements feel great. This is my big problem with the new Counter Strike : Global Offensive that a lot of new comers don't see. It doesn't feel as good as old 1.6 or quake 3 or uT... It feels like developers didn't really care about great movements and focused on other things in the game. I can't agree more with SMB's daddy, movements are the most important thing in the game. It's the core.
- cclogg 13y ago
  Haven't tried CS:GO, but do you think it's related to being on console + PC? Coming from HL/HL2/CS, the controls are very very tight, but over the last few years it seems like most games are always xbox+ps3+pc and they never seem to be that great for PC. Either consoles get away with a lot worse controls, or the ports/PC-versions are just worse quality :( P.S. I will say an example for me wasn't CS:GO, but some of the newer Call of Duties. Which is ironic because the first Call of Duty back on PC was actually one of the few games that could contend with Valve-quality FPS controls (I felt).
  - rangibaby 13y ago
    Source engine games all feel like you are ice skating. HL1 and CoD1 have one thing in common: they are both based closely on engines by id, whose movement and guns feel really "solid"
next89 13y ago
The fact is that when it comes to SMB the physics are a make it or break it kind of deal. If he hadn't spent that time tweaking them, SMB wouldn't have had a chance to succeed. And I'm not saying that the physics are the key to its success, but they definitely were a requirement.
shurcooL 13y ago
It's too bad he didn't think 120+ FPS was important enough to support. Being constrained by consoles is unfortunate.
- kbenson 13y ago
  What does 120 fps get you, especially with a game like meat boy?
  - shurcooL 13y ago
    The opposite of what you would lose by playing SMB at 30 FPS [1]. http://www.testufo.com/#test=framerates http://www.testufo.com/#test=framerates Smoothness, feeling of fluidity and responsiveness. Being very timing-sensitive and twitch-skill-based, SMB would gain a lot more from 120 Hz than a slower paced game would. [1] Of course, the gains of going from 60 to 120 fps are much smaller compared to 30 to 60, but still. People have PCs and monitors capable of running SMB at 120 fps, so being bottlenecked by the software is frustrating.

by omn1 13y ago

afterburner 13y ago

Why does it sound wrong, is there a tradition of using actual physics in side-scroller interactions?

wpietri 13y ago
I think it could sound wrong to the naive because novices generally want things to be simple. They want a few rules, a simple formula, a way to reduce an unknown problem to a known one. This comes up a lot. The most pithy version I've seen is from Mencken: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." But the same lesson is in the [1] Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, and also in the shu-ha-ri model [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisit... [2] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShuHaRi http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ShuHaRi

baby 13y ago

It doesn't sound wrong, this is the best way to attain a game were controls and movements feel great. This is my big problem with the new Counter Strike : Global Offensive that a lot of new comers don't see. It doesn't feel as good as old 1.6 or quake 3 or uT... It feels like developers didn't really care about great movements and focused on other things in the game. I can't agree more with SMB's daddy, movements are the most important thing in the game. It's the core.

cclogg 13y ago
Haven't tried CS:GO, but do you think it's related to being on console + PC? Coming from HL/HL2/CS, the controls are very very tight, but over the last few years it seems like most games are always xbox+ps3+pc and they never seem to be that great for PC. Either consoles get away with a lot worse controls, or the ports/PC-versions are just worse quality :( P.S. I will say an example for me wasn't CS:GO, but some of the newer Call of Duties. Which is ironic because the first Call of Duty back on PC was actually one of the few games that could contend with Valve-quality FPS controls (I felt).
- rangibaby 13y ago
  Source engine games all feel like you are ice skating. HL1 and CoD1 have one thing in common: they are both based closely on engines by id, whose movement and guns feel really "solid"

next89 13y ago

The fact is that when it comes to SMB the physics are a make it or break it kind of deal. If he hadn't spent that time tweaking them, SMB wouldn't have had a chance to succeed. And I'm not saying that the physics are the key to its success, but they definitely were a requirement.

shurcooL 13y ago

It's too bad he didn't think 120+ FPS was important enough to support. Being constrained by consoles is unfortunate.

kbenson 13y ago
What does 120 fps get you, especially with a game like meat boy?
- shurcooL 13y ago
  The opposite of what you would lose by playing SMB at 30 FPS [1]. http://www.testufo.com/#test=framerates http://www.testufo.com/#test=framerates Smoothness, feeling of fluidity and responsiveness. Being very timing-sensitive and twitch-skill-based, SMB would gain a lot more from 120 Hz than a slower paced game would. [1] Of course, the gains of going from 60 to 120 fps are much smaller compared to 30 to 60, but still. People have PCs and monitors capable of running SMB at 120 fps, so being bottlenecked by the software is frustrating.