One More Block

This is something I've been thinking about increasingly lately, both playing some of the more recent levels and thinking back to the old ones.

I'm not sure that introducing the ability to free-rotate and scale blocks was a good idea.

I'm not reccomendending that it be taken out of the game or anything—it's a key part of Atmosphir now, and really cool things have been done with it—but I do think designers should consider using the ability sparingly. A lot of levels now use a ton of overlapped, scaled, and rotated blocks all over the place, as a way to create more varied and interesting looking terrain.

The problem with this is that—assuming the blocks are actually meant to be walked on, which in most cases they are—it's putting aesthetics over gameplay. Atmosphir's physics engine doesn't handle diagonal surfaces very well, resulting in glitchy character animations, rapidly fluctuating player momentum, and unpredictable jumps. In short, walking and platforming over diagonal surfaces isn't fun.

Atmosphir's physics engine is best suited to flat, even surfaces, and until we're able to directly fix the underlying code, we ought to design around the problem as much as possible. In most cases, I think it's best to leave blocks in their original form, unless they're part of some inaccessible scenery.

I've actually been thinking about this as well. Similarly, I wouldn't want to see it taken away, but much like many older games, working within the limitations of a particular game engine often leads to the most interesting creations. Not to say a good level can't be made with scaling, but I agree that the grid forced a sort of uniformed style that felt consistent and smooth (Mostly because the player model wasn't trying to deal with angles it wasn't meant to walk on.) As well as, free-rotating blocks takes Atmosphir's already slightly unreliable ledge hanging and multiplies that ten folds. So, that is also sort of frustrating

Yeah, all in all, I have to agree with you on that!

This is why in the vast majority of my levels, I usually follow a classic approach of same sized blocks- unless I have a strategic or demonic purpose for not doing so (aka TRAPS hehehe).

I think freeplacing and -rotating props is enough for a level. Blocks should only be used that way for decoration purposes.

Yeah, blocks should only be free-rotated for decoration's sake. It CAN work to have someone walk on those blocks, but it has to be used sparingly.

I hate to walk on free-rotated and shifted blocks, but I think it's great for decoration. The ability to free-rotate and shift blocks has to stay, but people should really avoid doing so, especially in race levels!

Free placing, like anything else in design mode, can be used well or used badly. I don't think the physics problem manifests itself very strongly in any levels except for races. Then it's kind of annoying and doesn't really work. Other than that, I think it just bugs WFH more than it should

TheLastLink wrote:Free placing, like anything else in design mode, can be used well or used badly. I don't think the physics problem manifests itself very strongly in any levels except for races. Then it's kind of annoying and doesn't really work.

Yeah, I've never really had any problems with the physics engine being glitchy, and I've seen it used to really great effect in some levels. I don't think it's a bad thing at all, but it doesn't automatically make your level a good one. Sorta like how famous painters can make masterpieces with just the three primary colors.

I personally find limiting myself to a small set of blocks and no free placing and rotation while designing to make it a lot easier.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by physics bugging out, but I've never had a problem with walking or jumping onto or off of free rotated or scaled blocks.

the only major issue they have is that ledge hanging gets pretty funky
also I have noticed that if you jump while walking up a sloped block you actually jump a little higher.

also imo any level that doesn't free rotate, place or scale blocks just comes off as lazy.

papaya wrote:imo any level that doesn't free rotate, place or scale blocks just comes off as lazy.

It has to be done reasonable though... I'm guilty of this myself, but if you free-rotate everything, it becomes a bit hard to navigate.

papaya wrote:I'm not quite sure what you mean by physics bugging out, but I've never had a problem with walking or jumping onto or off of free rotated or scaled blocks.

the only major issue they have is that ledge hanging gets pretty funky
also I have noticed that if you jump while walking up a sloped block you actually jump a little higher.

also imo any level that doesn't free rotate, place or scale blocks just comes off as lazy.

Baufritz wrote:It has to be done reasonable though... I'm guilty of this myself, but if you free-rotate everything, it becomes a bit hard to navigate.

I think MAYBE what he's trying to say is that it's annoying to have to jump everywhere when you're walking along the ground with a lot of free placed blocks, because if you just walk you stop dead in your tracks because of all the bumps.

oh yeah that sucks but its not just the result of free placing blocks

there's this one race level that's really cool looking but because the designer only half covered the ground in floor blocks, you lose all your speed whenever you collide with a floor from a naked block.

the thing is that if you free rotate blocks and put them all on the same level, the textures glitch out, but there's no problem with walking on it
whereas in order to have them not glitch out, you need to put them ever so slightly above/below one another (using shift-e), which causes physics to freak out when you walk from a lower block to a higher one

that's literally the only issue with them I can think of, tho