A Better Understanding of Platform Behaviour

I'm just curious if anyone has any ideas as to how best compare a pre-existing platform game, with the platform engine in construct. Me and a group of friends are trying to make a Mega Man NES fangame and we want to get the feel as close as possible. Any suggestions?

Is there a way to measure rom numbers? Or any kind of good way to compare the platform engine to a rom so I can try and match the gameplay feel? I'm really struggling here and any help would be massively appreciated

Um, Platform behaviour is the most likely candidate unless you want to completely write a custom movement. In that case, use the Custom Movement behaviour.

As for measuring the rom numbers, I have no idea of an exact method, but possibly compiling an open source one in debug mode using Visual Studio express will let you look at variables real-time as you step through the program.

I'm definitely using platform behaviour, I really don't know enough to be able to work with the custom movement behaviour, I'm a guy that fails at friggin QBasic lol. I was just hoping someone had some ideas on a good way to compare the platform behaviour with a pre-existing mega man engine to try and match the numbers (speed, accel, decel, jump, fall, gravity... blah blah blah) thank you for the input, I may just have to keep fiddling and hope to zero in on it

Deadeye did a .cap that can help for that, you may see the topic here :

Have you seen the MegaMan engine done by TecManX HERE. Don't know if it's of any use, but it has some useful ideas.

I'd forgotten about Deadeye's .cap, thanks for the reminder, and also I've found lot's of mega man X engines out there, but we're making an old school mega man fan game. It's actually for a mega man perfect runner on youtube lol, so we REALLY need to get the feel right for it.

There will be no way to compare the numbers exactly, unless you're some super programmer. The best way will be to put an emulator running megaman on one side of the screen, and keep tweaking the values until they feel right, if he doesn't jump high enough, increase jump strength, too much now? Reduce it a little. It probably won't take very long either

You can try the Megaman Movement Engine made by SuperV http://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4232&hilit=megaman+engine

That's the hardest part about making a fan game: getting it to feel just like the original. You can throw a platformer together in a few minutes with the right sprites but it just won't feel the same. The code is absolutely sloppy, as I was new to Construct when I started the project and haven't bothered to fix anything. I just piled onto the mess! That is why I don't feel good about releasing the cap at this point, but you can take a peek at my progress so far and tell me what you think. Most of the basics are there. What makes a fan game so hard are the little details in the controls. Megaman's little dance step (you know, his one pixel step) was a KILLER to figure out, as well as accurate sliding mechanics (cancelling when you turn, when to get up, etc.)! What I did to calibrate things just right was to record myself doing various actions in an emulator and play it while trying to re-perform those actions in my game side-by-side, making adjustments accordingly.

The engine by SuperV is pretty neat, I just wish I knew about it when I started this project, although it lacks in a few areas. If I ever get around to a rewrite, I will surely post it here, but like I said, I just don't feel good about posting a cap that looks like a 3 year old wrote.

Anyways, as best as I could get it for now...

Numpad + and - to add or subtract health.

Jump and shoot (blanks) with Z and X

Click to make an energy pellet. Included the "time stop as your meter goes up" thing.

F1-F3 for resize.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5530592/Megaman%20Movement%20Demo.exe

Anyways, ask if you have questions about anything specific. I probably didn't do some things right, and most things inefficiently, but it's there!

Greyspot - you're demo feels pretty damn close to the way it should, I'm very curious how you got everything working, I'm certainly willing to give credit if you're willing to help me out a little. I'm pretty stuck lol. I've been busy working on enemy AI and am just starting to tackle the feel, and to be honest, I'm not looking forward to it.

brent

That's pretty much all I've done was work on the feel of the controls, and it was a pain in the rear! I plan to scrap that and redo it to make it a little more flexible because, at this point, interacting with moving platforms, ice floors, certain kinds of weapons, and anything else that alters my movement is going to be a nightmare to implement with how I currently have things set up. Honestly, the events sheet is a complete mess and doesn't allow for a whole lot of extras without changing a ton of the basic movement events. I left off on the file for a week, and when I came back I couldn't remember what half of the actions did or why I needed them in the first place. I should take better notes :D

Oh wow, haha, well, I'm using the built in platform behaviour, and I really need to get the movement speed, jumping, and sliding right, any suggestions on numbers for those?

Oh wow, haha, well, I'm using the built in platform behaviour, and I really need to get the movement speed, jumping, and sliding right, any suggestions on numbers for those?

I'm using platform behavior as well. These are as accurate as I could get it. Of course, I handle acceleration with events because there is not option to instantly accelerate with the platform behavior. Which is strange, because I figure that would be a commonly used thing. Unless you want to do everything manually with custom movement (way too much work!), tweaking the platform behavior via events is the way to go. Here are the base values I used. With these settings, he jumps the correct height, moves at the correct speed, and I think falls at the correct speed.

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5530592/SS-2011.06.17-23.13.37.png">

wow, thank you so much for sharing!! I'll try this right away!