When I create a new platform I create a Polygon2D and add it as a child. Polygon2D has a variable called 'polygon' which is just a list of vertices. So I calculate a bunch of points around the far edge and then calculate more but backwards on the near edge which creates the loop of the shape. Then I can rerender it when it needs updating by calling the same function again. I wrote it super quick and dirty because it's just a debug tool, not intended for the game.

Yeah interesting. I'm thinking I will have some set pieces, ie areas where I have specifically laid out the positions. But I think I've done enough on the platforms for now, I'll come back to them once I've added a few other things to the game

Yeah I have plenty more planned. Just need to keep testing what is actually fun

Hey glad you liked it! I just added a code example to the description of the video

Yeah that's exactly right!

Yeah for sure. And you're right that I'm not overly concerned with performance at this stage. However the guess and check method involves the conversion between polar and Cartesian coords anyway so by the time you've gotten 1 wrong guess, the other method has finished running, forget the other 10 - 50 other guesses you might need. Imo the code is also less intuitive making it messier. Imagine I made the shape really tiny so it took up 1/500th of the x and y range. I would expect to need this to run 500 times, in which case I might want to cut down the range of x and y so it doesn't miss so much and all of that is unnecessary complexity. My point is not that I care about performance too much at this stage, more that it's a decision with no trade offs 1. We like the bias it introduces 2. The code is more straight forward and simple 3. It's more perfomant

​@@nick-brooking ok fair enough but to clarify a couple of things : the 10-50 other guesses are a matter of milliseconds, your computer is capable of running billions of calculations it truly does not matter at all for code that runs once a second if you made the shape really tiny you would make the x,y range really tiny as well. for example if your shape had values of x [0,0.005] you wouldnt generate random numbers from 0 to 1. unless you had some really weird shape with some really thin areas that require a lot of empty space in between them it truly doesn't matter now to give the devil his due i agree with the benefits of the bias but there are more "brainless" ways to induce said or similar bias that would need less thinking and time. now the reason i am saying all that is that i see a lot of gamedevs that are working on personal projects overthink and over-engineer unimportant parts of their code without taking into account their lack of time/manpower. to write the function in the brainless way i suggested would land you with a couple ms of delay but could be accomplished in 5-10 minutes while to actually sit down and think on how to deform the random generator to fit the area i had in mind and how to change the biases of the generation function to get more platforms slightly closer to the player would take a lot longer which is time an indi-dev could use to add a more important mechanic to their game or to fix bugs. that is not to say you shouldn't do what you want with your project but i am just saying for most indi-devs its not a good idea to focus on such things because most indi-devs leave their projects half way through and over-engineering (i believe) is a big reason why.

@@user-dw5ch6ux3u I completely agree with you that people waste time on things that don't matter and that in general, people spend way too long on solving problems they shouldn't. I laid it out my video the way that I did because I believe it made the most sense to explain the concepts that way. My goal is to share info about such concepts and describe what solutions I choose then let people do what they want with that info. When I actually wrote the code it took about one minute. Here it is, I don't know how to write the guess and check method and simpler than this but let me know if there's a way. var theta = _rng.randf_range(_theta_1, _theta_2) var r = _rng.randf_range(_r_1, _r_2) var x = r * cos(theta) var y = r * sin(theta)

@@nick-brooking oh i don't disagree that the code is simple but you also have to factor in the time you spent thinking about it up until it clicked in your head to use polar coordinates and just mess with the radius and angle. now you might have polar coordinates and imaginary numbers fresh in your mind in which case it might come to you automatically or even faster than the "guess randomly and throw away" method but if you haven't recently worked with it it will take some time until that metaphorical light bulb lights up. since you asked the naive method would have been to get a random x,y pair and do these checks: x^2+y^2<r_large x_2+y^2>r_small vector from center to the x,y pair has angle within theta_1 and theta_2 the good with this method is that its easier to come up as a first thought not that its programmatically easier. that is because if you have a specific amount of time to allocate to a project it doesn't matter if that time is spent in thought looking at the ceiling or actually coding.

Yeah totally, thanks for sharing. Hey are you working on any projects of your own? I'd be keen to hear how you apply this progress-focussed mindset

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it

Thanks so much :)

for real this is awesome

Yeah bouncy platforms are fun! I'm playing around with that idea

Thanks so much! The encouragement from everyone is going a really long way. Comments like this mean a lot!

@@nick-brooking yee

Yeah great idea. The game will be like a rogue lite so this might be a great upgrade to help you get more platforms

Yeah it's quite a natural mistake to make. What did you do about it?

Haha, I think they need people who actually fix their bugs lol

Haha! That's a funny idea. I think I'm going to have something in the level that chases you but haven't figured out what yet. As for the hitboxes, I think it's simple enough just to detect which side of the platform you hit

@nick-brooking how do you detect which side you hit? Didn't know that was possible 😅

There are a few ways. You can break the platform up into pieces and detect which one you hit. Or you can check where the player is relative to the block at the moment of collision. You could even detect it with velocity upon collision which works a little differently but might suit your needs. You could even do all of this in reverse and detect which part of the player is touching the platform. All depends on what you want to achieve.

@@nick-brooking good to know, thanks!

Haha! That's so funny! It's just a placeholder!

@@nick-brooking Oh

But I kinda like the Tic Tac now

@@nick-brooking You do you

Hmm, interesting. I'll have to test a few ideas and see what feels best

Yeah wow, completely the other way! That would make it have quite a unique feel

Yeah I need to tweak the whole character controller at some point. I want to add a few more features first though because a character controller doesn't exist in a vacuum

A problem might be that the game probably can't detect where you are touching the platform.

Anything is possible! I'm still deciding what to do but detecting which side you touched isn't too hard, I just forgot

Nothing a good cranial crater can't fix

Jesus christ this is the best fix ive ever heard

I'd rather be good at art. Shaders you can just learn

Yeah great shout. It's so important to have fast workflows that don't interrupt your thought process

I find that it so fast to develop in. I like working quickly and godot definitely has a nice balance of capabilities and simplicity. I also like that it's open source and the community is great.

It's a convention to indicate that the variable should only be used in this file. It would be possible to reach in and change the value from elsewhere in the code. We add the leading underscore as a reminder that it's created with the intention not to do that. This keeps the code much cleaner and easier to work with.

​@@nick-brooking wouldnt it make alot more sense to do some specific thing like that for non local variables.

Yeah maybe but this convention is older than godot. People do something similar in c++ for example. Although in c++ they have proper public/private keywords, also sometimes they use m_ at the start instead of just an underscore. I have very strong opinions about a number of things in programming but these sorts of conventions I'm happy just to follow the norm. I think the value of everyone being consistent is better than any one idea.

Thanks so much! Yeah I'm hoping to post more as I feel this particular project has legs... but we'll see

Here before you blow up ❤

That's a great approach too. I want my game to have expressive art so prototyping it and experimenting with it early is important to me. I'm open to changing anything I've made so no loss. The advice about not doing art too early is about avoiding the need to throw away work right? I'm curious if you have any other reason? Or anything you've learnt from experience? I'm willing to make a trade-off and potentially throw any of this away to get the benefit of forming the artistic vision along with the mechanics.

Yeah totally. Some people are so clever with their camera. I haven't looked into camera movement at all. I think for now I'll move the player a bit lower down but keen to revisit this as a topic and find a solution so it's not so locked.

Thanks so much! That's Canva, I like to use their whiteboard to do unstructured thinking and planning.

Completely agree with both of those! I still need to make a character, but it's enough of a design direction to keep building

​@@nick-brooking turn it into a chicken

Haha, cool idea. I have a bunch of ideas for the mechanics so I'm going to explore those more first. I'm hoping the personality and form of the character will emerge from their movements and abilities.

Haha! Oh no. I'm questioning everything I know about how people perceive me. Maybe it's because I'm doing a weird lean to get my head in frame because I couldn't be bothered to put more books under my phone lol

I feel like it's really good lighting and framing. The glasses also fit his face shape well.

I'm not complaining 👀

@@Ninjujitsu Neither do I 😄

Thanks so much!

Thank you!

Thanks!