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A Moving Character is the player's avatar in the game's world. It has gravity pointing downwards and snaps to the floor. It also has a smooth movement on slopes, jumps, and moves at constant speed on the horizontal axis. It's like how characters usually move in Jump 'n' Shoot games like Cuphead or Mega Man X.
Figure 1.1 - A capture of the game Cuphead.
This recipe is the most fundamental one for a platformer game. Players use this recipe to interact with the game world. So, this is the recipe they spend the most time interacting with.
Use a Moving Character when you want players to use an avatar to interact and explore the game world. Most platformer games use this recipe to some extent, or a variation of it. As some modern examples:
This recipe doesn't go well if you want physics-simulated movement, especially if this movement is supposed to match the real world.
If you want physically accurate movement, I recommend using a custom implementation that uses a RigidBody2D instead.
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To better understand when to apply this recipe in your games, let’s make a quick Pros and Cons comparison.
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Easy to manage: it's self contained meaning minimal to no dependency.
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Full control over physics: you get what you ask from the physics engine.
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Snappy movement: the character stops as soon as player releases the keys.
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️Clear animation triggers: you know where to call each animation in the code.
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️Lacks interesting physics behaviors like friction, bounciness, and absorption.
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️Lacks acceleration/deceleration curves to add personality to the character.
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With this in mind, let’s get into action. In the next section, we are going to setup the basics to use this feature in our Godot project, followed by a practical example of how you can integrate it.
First of all, let’s “prepare” the resources. This is a process known as Mise en Place, where we put everything in their place so we can work with them easier. Think about this part as a “pre-production” stage. Follow the steps below to get everything ready for the cooking.