How To Fail At Making A Platformer
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- Опубліковано 27 січ 2022
- Feel like your platformer is progressing too well? This video will help you stop being so great!
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Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod
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You forgot that, as any good game designer would tell you, autoscroll lecels are never bad. They dont restrict your speed or movement by forcing you to wait until the screen has moved far enough!
Camera control is indeed a very important part of any platformer, and there are plenty of ways to fail at it. Maybe I'll make a how to fail for just camera stuff. hm....
The closest thing to a good autoscroll level imo is one where you're escaping a threat and you can run as far ahead of it as your own skills allow, but I guess that makes it more of a timed level. I also dont mind SMALL autoscroll sections, like the giant baobab fruit chase from tropical freeze
You can make those autoscroll levels even better by making them ice themed as well!
Ez fix, just make it scroll faster, they did that in kid chameleon, it's totally not near impossible as a result...
I actually personally enjoy auto scrolling levels/games when made well.
If you think this was funny.... Stop. It wasn't... This is a totally serious tutorial series and should be respected as such. ;)
Your fire keep going you will make it or not , i don't now i'm not a Old man i'm a stopped teenager who wait the life to get batter with out doing anything
ヘ（。□°）ヘ
You can't stop me ! I can't read !
Thanks, I didn't know about jump buffering and coyote time before watching this. This video really made me think.
you're right, it wasn't funny.
Thank you so much for this tutorial. I have been toying with the idea of making a platformer, but I didn't know quite how to achieve failure. After watching this, I feel fully confident in my ability to fail miserably.
Thanks again!
Hot take: I think that making a main menu will actually not help you fail. This is because I think that - as long as you don’t spend to long on it - it can make your game look a little more finished which can be motivating
Actually good advice. There are so many things to work on in a game if you start to feel burned out just switch it up a bit. Even if it means making something that you might change later, if it helps you feel motivated to keep working then it's probably a good thing.
And you can reuse a lot of the code for a good game later lol
For sure, especially since making a good template for your menus serves you well in future projects. There's a similar idea in making a cosplay - I've had multiple pros recommend, when making a full-body cosplay, to start with the helmet. It's the one piece that looks good on the shelf, even if you never finish the rest of it, so you'll always have something to show for your effort.
Conversely, if you're making something niche and the code/mechanics don't work anywhere else, you risk either falling into sunk cost or feeling like you've wasted your time when you could have been working on other things.
If you want to make your players suffer, though, make sure every single UI interaction has a sound. No, not a sound, but THE SOUND. Make sure it's extremely grating when heard more than one or two times. This way only people above certain age can play it at all. Or at least somewhat deaf.
Good menus with a lot of options do a LOT more for first impressions than some people realize. If all a player sees is "new game", "load game", and "quit", it can be surprisingly dull. Not that it kills a game immediately, it's just one small part that may harm your first impression.
Important note: your players need the freedom to control the camera, so make it so that the camera only moves when they want it to, and never automatically!
The opposite of an auto-scroller, The camera doesn't even follow the player you need to use a different input for that. And it either moves it super slowly if you push the buttons repeatedly, or super quickly if you hold them down.
You should add following camera for $10/month. BUT players can open lootboxes and get QoL features (like following camera, jump buffer, coyote time). but lootboxes also can be empty, and they are $5 each + you need 5$ key to open them. Every good platformer game have this.
make sure that it does move automatically in a few random levels though, bc if theres 2 things people hate in video games its definitely logic and consistent gameplay
What
@@aikedukethis is meant to be a bad game, not an EA game…we still have SOME standards.
i love how one of my first ever projects was a platformer that followed everything in this video unknowingly. i'm sorta glad i gave up on it but it gave me good experience in game dev i guess
I think everyone's first game is never the greatest. So yeah, always a great learning experience. :)
@@ArtindiPizza Tower, Undertale (or Toby's Earthbound romhacks, if we can count that as a game)
@@David2073those are finished and published games, you don't know everything about their behind the scenes work
@@David2073
Weenie Cop and Deltarune count.
@@David2073 first game does not equal first published game
It seems to me like the common-ness of the Double Jump is really about something much more integral: air mobility. A double Jump is one of the simplest ways to let the player reset their speed and position mid-jump without completely breaking the game.
However, it is far from the only way. To name a few examples off the top of my head:
-Spin Jump in Super Mario Galaxy: it may technically count as a double jump, but I think its implementation is unique enough to warrant a pass
-Stomp attacks: these let the player quickly get back to the ground in the event of either being knocked away, or just needing to return to ground state, and also makes for a very cool attack
-homing attack, Sonic Adventure onwards: without a target to lock onto, this is a simple air dash, helping the player quickly regain speed after slowing down for a jump. But with a target, the attack will joke Sonic in to jump off of them without the player needing to precisely line him up. This can let Sonic effectively _fly_ across a stage for as long as there is a chain of targets to hit
-aerial recovery, Kingdom Hearts: by being able to cancel your knockback animation in midair, the player can quickly escape a dangerous combo situation and return to the fight
Not to mention Celeste.
To add, a more complicated approach could be something like Prince of Persia or Braid's time rewind mechanic. Overshoot a platform? No you didn't!
@@nicreven do you mean like the airdash thingy?
@@nicrevenDash and nice air physics? Nah, the UA-camr said we should do the exact opposite
celeste's main mechanic, yes.@@stroyosh4670
I would've also considered adding underwater levels to your platformer. It is really fun to go from gameplay that rewards speed and precision to very slow and clunky gameplay that takes away all of your movement abilities and sometimes takes away some of your attacking abilities as well
*cough* every sonic game ever *cough*
@@chrissysonicutdrloz nun uh the sonic adventure games don’t have them
@skorupigo5544 I was exaggerating for the sake of comedy
@@skorupigo5544Aquatic Mine and Lost World (the stage not the game)
You forgot to have enemies that chase you faster than you can move, but only put them RIIIIIIIIIIGHT at the end of the level. Make their spawn points randomized too!
what's most important in creating a platformer is making sure your camera is zoomed in tight and your player character moves incredibly fast. you want that exhilarating platformer rush but you also want players to appreciate your tilesets
This is the "terrible writing advice" channel of gaming and I love it
Came to say the same thing
I love that channel so much, and ironically enough, I binged watched it to learn how to make a good story and some characters for my dream game. Now I'm watching these to get tips on the actual gameplay!
I think even better than dash and double jump are wall jumps that are extremely difficult to pull off so only about one third of your players actually gets to use that ability (and many don't use it because there's no real reward for being able to pull them off)
did you play my game or smth
super metroid be like
transformice
I would argue making the simplest platformer possible without expansive movement options is a good learning step. Plus you get the motivation of knowing you made a game at all, full stop, even if it isn't the best. First project: make a platformer. Second project: make a GOOD platformer.
In my experience as someone that merely plays and reviews a lot of RPG Maker games. It's usually best for a developers first project to be something short and basic since it's going to take a new developer a while to get used to the tools they are using. Plus if you aim for something small your more likely to complete it. I can't tell you how many 10+ hour games I've seen people start but never finish over the years.
It's much easier to create a game with "physical vector speeds + land-position-grid" than to create a system of material-zones with strange rigid collision functions and horrible data storage of positions in computer, but the creators keep making that shit because it requires low brain use while good platformers require you to learn to code, no copy an oversimplified tutorial. anyway OPP small sucks a bit
Sometimes it is better to know what NOT to do in geme dev. Says me, who is learning game development and making a platformer with no interesting core mechanic XD
Haha. But hey, ya gotta start somewhere. :D
If you're finding your game mechanic isn't engaging, keep asking yourself why. Think about games you really enjoy playing. Play them, and ask yourself as you're playing, "What is it about this game that makes it so much fun?" If you keep iterating on these questions, you'll get there.
Thank you! I am currently trying to make a 2D platformer so this really helps me by knowing what pitfalls to avoid. I was feeling a bit demovtivated because I could tell my game wasn't going in a fun direction but now you've given me the motivation to keep going and try different things. (Especially with the core mechanic thing, I was developing just a regular 2D platformer).
Happy I could help. :)
hows the game going?
Working on my first ever platformer game, this is exactly what I needed
Glad to hear! :D
"precision platformer = fail"
**slowly looks over at my Steam/itch library, which is 20% precision platformers**
hi
I love videos like these. Instead of giving you things TO do, they give you things NOT TO do. Sets you on a better path in life ❤
Sometimes it's simpler, and a good quick reminder.
Agree 100% ❤@@SirDavid290
Terrible writing advice be like
@@pikminman13immediately what I thought of first
instructions unclear: i made celeste 2
Instructions unclear: wife left
I thought this was going to be a video about what do do to not fail at making platforms games (I know, it literally says the opposite in the title), but no. He really made a guide for how to fail. That's it. No joke.
Visionary.
Glad I could deliver. :)
it's honestly a pretty good reference even still, there's so many ways to succeed so having just a list of "don't fall into these pitfalls" is not a terrible idea imo
obviously there's stuff that can still work (everyone loves double jumps) they just need to fit your design
I want to make a rage platformer now with a knight cursed to always double jump, even if they have the heaviest armor that weighs two tonnes and are trying to simply jump 1 inch off the ground, and their motivation is to kill some wizard that cursed them to this.
Super creative way to deliever the msg, laughed through most of it. I don't think the message would have delievered the same if the video was "How To Sucess At Making A Platformer". Good job!
Great video! Momentum is also very important in platformers. Too much momentum physics and you'll feel out of control, like you crash into things too easily. Too little momentum to where you can accelerate instantly and stop instantly, makes the game feel very flat; it doesn't feel rewarding to keep your speed by dodging stuff when you can insta stop and start without thinking. There's a spectrum of possibilities for good momentum physics, and the level design should compliment the character's physics as well as possible.
I hate momentum, one of the reasons Hollow Knight feels so perfect.
Yeah I have to agree with night, the only platfromer game I've enjoyed enough to put over 100 hours into is spelunky, which has almost no momentum affecting your air movement, and I really love how in-control it feels. I think minimal momentum can work well, as long as the game is designed to still make the movement challenging or interesting in other ways.
@@night1952Hollow Knight has momentum...
1:01 this is an accurate description of every mario maker level I have ever made
Pretty high quality vid, deserves some more views 👍
Edit: "You're the game designer, you know what's fun." lmao
Thanks! I hope eventually it catches on and the series get better know one day, for now just the lucky enough to find it and click get to see it. :)
Great video, glad UA-cam recommended it to me. Gonna watch some more and maybe it'll inspire me to start learning game development.
"Coyote time" That's a MUCH better term for it than what we settled on in college. :D I proudly labeled the logic that tracked it as the "donkey kong timer", since Donkey Kong Country is so lenient in that regard.
Woah, really quality video, I'm gonna watch this a few times before I make my platformer, overall, good stuff
Short, sweet, clever and on point. Nice work!
Thanks! :D
How does this only have 1 reply?
Make sure to force the player to run on a moving platform to stay on top of it. It'd make the game too good if the player could just stay idle on top of a moving platform with no issues.
Best if the platform suddenly changes direction. Best executed on Super Mario Maker's snake blocks.
@@divVerent Well, the snake blocks already do that. I mean just ordinary moving platform code being broken because the logic to move the player with the platform just isn't there.
I know Lego Island 2 does that.
1:59 It reminds me of that transformation in pizza tower, a knight one, and it's the only one that gives you double jump
r/beatmetoit
Thank you sir. I will watch more of your informative videos.
Fantastic video, I'm not even that interested in video game development (Although I _did_ think of a fantastic idea for one earlier and I'm tempted to try and make it, Even though it's _way_ too ambitious for a single person who doesn't know how to code and has almost no experience making games), And yet after this alone I subscribed.
Absolute GOLD content mate!
Thanks! :D
This is extremely helpful! Fortunately for me, I have no idea how to finetune my player movement in my 3d platformer ✌️
The bad writing advice channel but for video games, I love it!
You should also make sure:
the first environment is a forest (green and blue helps people learn faster)
If you have NES graphics you should add an OST with real instruments at 128kbps
If you get bored making levels just make it so the game gets dark in tone really quickly (bonus points if the twist is that the character is delusional and nothing is real)
Make it pixel art, despite the fact you've literally never made any pixel art your entire life
Don't just restrict yourself to one colour pallete, use the whole colour wheel whenever you need to change colour!
You absolutely need a speedrun timer on the bottom right that counts fractions of a millisecond
Can't forget a crt filter for that nostalgic feeling!
Some really original enemy designs that makes sense for your hero to slaughter on the quest for restore peace are bats, wolves, bears, rats, snakes, eagles, scorpions and penguins.
When you're done, don't forget to publish it online! We've all been waiting patiently for someone, _anyone_ to make a pixel art puzzle platformer!
Finally, someone talked about that fucking dash ability that every indie game has nowadays, for some reason.
the best part is that Super Meat Boy is widely regarded as one of the best platformers of all time and it follows a lot of these principles
Rules are meant to be broken. ;)
I've been a Meat Boy hater since it came out. SMW sensibilites ftw.
at first i watched these because they were funny, but now i started making a game and this video taught me a few things that i should modify and stuff that i didnt even knew about
how to fail at making a platformer:
1. dont even make it, you've failed to create a platcormer thus making you failed making a platformer
Terrible writing advice but for gamedev is such a genius idea, i love this video!
2:34 , easy for you to say! I've never had one whole thought my whole life! 😹
I love the sarcasm for this tutorial. 10/10. I think you just summarized why I don't enjoy platforming and jump puzzles in most games, honestly.
1:34 oh my god I remember trying this game and constantly dying on every jump because of the lack of coyote time
I absolutely love this series)
Me Too! :D
You forgot the part where you add randomly spawning projectiles to your precision platformer so that players can experience new, inventive, and unavoidable ways to die every run
Very inspiring ! What to fail at next ? Save system ? Hiscore system ?
I've never even thought of doing a video on those, so many options! Thanks! :D
I ... I need some self reflection after this :P
I also never heard about Coyote Time. That's handy to know, thanks!
Thank you ))
Finally =))
The first video I followed the advice from, and succeeded ))) in failing my game )))
Glad I could help. :)
I actually adore these types of videos because they're a sort of good tutorial in their own right - sometimes we can be so focused on what TO do we end up falling in the simplest gaps (no pun intended) either way, as someone interested in game and level design, these videos seem like a fun and entertaining way to get started with the basic philosophies of it! Consider yourself one subscriber stronger. :)
By the way, would you consider doing hack-n-slash? It's a favorite genre of mine, but also seems like a genre easy to mess up - I'd be interested to see your take on it! Thank you. :)
0:26 Mah Story ;D I actually appreciate the dedication to the pixel art scroll there
Remember, if you are going to have a dash or double jump then make sure there is an in universe reason as to why the character can do such a thing. There are many ways it can be done such as rocket boots are a magical item the can throw you forward, but it usually depends on the games setting and world.
thanks for all the tips
“make sure your dash or double jump ability makes no sense at all” (celeste was an award winning game)
Also don’t forget to make the endgame as short and anticlimactic as possible. That way, all of those upgrades the player went out of their way to get felt like a waste of time.
Starbound Devs needed to watch this....
It's like @TerribleWritingAdvice but for game development. I love it!
I love it! Devs need to step their game UP!
You forgot the best tip, making jumps have absolutely zero arc. Make sure it feels like your character is bashing their head on an invisible ceiling each time ;)
Good old Atari jumps.
Luigi in meele be like
I mean, A play former with a core mechanic that the controls are wonky seems pretty fun.
This video made me realize all the mistakes I'm making in the game I'm developing, I'll try to fix it
Oh and be sure when programming your collision to just undo the vertical movement for that frame and set your velocity to zero, that way you have to fall to the ground a second time and can't jump until you do so.
I love your content LOL, this sounds like the voices in my head 🤣
Listen to the voice.... it will guide you... 0.0
;)
@@Artindi lol
"Don't add things like jump buffering or *coyote time*" [stares at Dustforce]
Since I started my game development with turn based RPGs, my ideas for platformer mechanics have to do with stat numbers and customization of builds. There'd be certain "baseline" levels of running and jumping designed to be satisfying and all the main challenges of the game at least _possible_ with all stats at zero, but stats for "how much coyote time?" and "maximum bonus jump height" and "number of multi-jumps before landing" as RPG style stats that can be grown, whether through static in-world upgrades (Metroidvania), shops that use money drops from enemies, or experience system(s) from either defeating enemies and choosing an upgrade in the menu or from repeatedly doing an action gradually improving the action itself.
I'd also make the platforming itself pretty easy regardless, due to my own relatively poor action game reflexes.
This video saved my game
No joke i watched it a few months ago and everything he said here reflected on my game
At first i was stubborn after all changing the entire game i worked more then an year already would be brutal
But i eventually just came to accept that my game was jist not fun and i did an entire combat rework on it that i am still finishing now
But well the game is fun now
Thanks i can now see a future where my game actually succeds now with ismt something i could do before
It's the occasional comments like yours that make it feel like my channel is worth while. Thank you for sharing. I'm glad the video helped. :)
Thanks! I'm failing every game jam now!
You're ironically inspirational! We'll work to make games so crappy they're stunningly fun!
I like your sprite art :D
Thanks. :)
Omg I found the video game version of Terrible Writing Advice, I love it
This gives me a lot of confidence yippee
>video shows indies how to make a bad game
>mainstream studio Sonic Team travels to the future from 2017 and follows this video to a T when going back to make Sonic Forces
The first “Platformer” game I thought of making is very inspired by Hollow Knight. I did put reason as to how you are able to dash, which just like Hollow Knight you don’t immediately have until you beat a boss, but still only 1 jump (not including walls) even after getting all the abilities.
Your pixelated stick figure is so expressive
let's just take a moment to remember Celeste, one of the best platformers in history
def gonna use this advice
can't wait to see how hard you fail! ;)
Reason PoP and Tomb Raider worked the way they do is that they actually delayed your jump to the very end of the ledge. They also had precise set lengths for steps, jumps and running jumps, and levels were built using that knowledge:
i.e. Lara can make this specific jump when running and grabbing the ledge but the game engine makes it easy to kick off at the exact end while pressing the button earlier - yea, it buffered jumping during running, so did Prince.
I honestly don't know where the line between sarcasm and real advice is.
"The only thing that makes a platformer good is how unnecessarily difficult it is to get from point A to point B"
As someone who loves Mega Man Zero is it bad that I somewhat unironically agree with this.
Never heard the term "Coyote time". I've been calling it Donkey Kong jump leeway.
This feels like you're calling out Cloudberry Kingdom for some reasons and that just makes it funnier
Feeling inspired to make a game just to follow this tutorial
With the power of this channel and terrible writing advice, I am bound to make the most innovated, creative, groundbreaking story driven video game there will ever be
This is making me want to try and make a game now XD
In the words of Emporor Palpatine: Do it. ;)
Very educational to be only 2:39 minutes!!! Amazing video.
Good advice, but I'll save it and come back when I can get my ramp and collision physics working in pygame first :)
You’ve earned my respect in like… a minute dude I think a lot of people should look at your guides (inferring they can understand sarcasm)
This mans just described super meat boy in two minutes
This is like terrible writing advice, but for game design instead. I love this genre of video, and we need more of it for other types of art.
2:03 reminding me of that one flash game Pixel Quest
I watched 2 celeste videos and the UA-cam recommends gave me this. Thanks😀
it is also important to have a player sprite that is teeny tiny that you can barely see on the 4k screen resolution
I like this series, maybe my next game will be better
Man, you must not be paying attention then. ;)
I hate to say this but most of this video’s points are dangerously close to just describing Hollow Knight
Edit: I hadn't played much hollow knight when I posted this, but after playing a bunch more. Yeah. This video just describes Hollow Knight. No idea how anyone likes that game.
To be fair, hollow night had a really sick main menu.
Shoutout to youtube for recommending this video to me *after* turning in my game development assignment that I made a platformer for.
Holy crap, I didn’t know scratch platformers were badly designed!
You mean games made by people with no prior understanding of game design don't have good game design?
This format slaps
Oh it slaps hard. :) Thanks! :D
Locking the player character to one movement speed (which they'll snap to with no gradual acceleration) and give them a set jump height regardless of jump input length 😈
Mission failed successfully
I solute you.... I think.... I'm so confused. 0.o
"Did you actually pause to read this ?" -Legend
1:39 i literally took a screenshot of that part and i'm gonna add most of those to my game