Fun and Fair Transitions: Lumpy's Guide
Jun 2, 2016 21:53:22 GMT -5
QJrocks, SeptaGon7, and 7 more like this
Post by Lumpy on Jun 2, 2016 21:53:22 GMT -5
Lumpy's Guide to Being a Better Creator
Making your Transitions Fair and Fun
(issue #2, June 2)
I covered in the last issue how often and when you should use mode transitions. I got some requests to make a guide detailing how to make them good, and once I thought about it I realized this is far more important. Actually, I think aside from luck-based bugs, deaths from bad transitions are the most frustrating things any GD player will face consistently in a given level. The basic idea of a transition is to bring the player from one area to the next– but a transition should NEVER be the reason you die. The reason you die should be the actual gameplay.
What follows are the three most common mistakes people make when doing transitions.The transitions in the following video are numbered accordingly.
The problem with the first one is, you could probably guess, an invisible portal. Transition portals should never, EVER, be invisible unless you have a sprite replacement for it. You don’t know what form you are until a moment after you’ve already entered the section, which is plenty of time to send you spiraling toward your death, which is frustrating because it requires unnecessary memorization. There’s no reason to make it invisible, unless there’s a specific effect-like style you’re going for which the portal design doesn’t fit into– but again, in that case, just use a sprite replacement. Ideally, the sprite replacement should be an icon of the mode or something specific that’s the color of the mode, and be very distinctive. Words are better than nothing, but the other two options are preferable as words require reading, which doesn’t work well in fast-paced stuff or GD in general.
The second one is what I would call a blind transition. It doesn’t have an invisible portal, but essentially suffers from the same problem– you die before you know what you’re doing. Just in this one, it’s the obstacles you can’t see until the camera finishes scrolling downward. Transitions like this are okay if you give the play time to react to the area and transition before you start trying to kill them, but certainly don’t throw them into it right away.
The third transition is kinda the same thing as the first one… invisible portals… but I want to emphasize it because even many good creators make this mistake. It is more subtle, yes, but notice the invisible size portal and especially the invisible gravity portal. Now it doesn’t seem like much, but trust me, it makes a difference. Generally, invisible size portals in ship and ball parts, and invisible gravity portals in cube, ball, and robot parts aren’t so bad (though they should be avoided when possible) but otherwise it can mean life or death whether or not the player knows when they change size or gravity. As you can see in the video, the player started to hold because they thought they were still upside-down, but the invisible gravity portal caught them off guard and they flew into the ceiling. Not cool. If you think multiple portals mashed together looks ugly, separate them out, or reduce their opacity, or something, but don’t leave them invisible.
I know what you’re thinking. What about teleport transitions? Well, I didn’t include it above partially because its not much of a problem anymore, but partially because not all teleport transitions are bad. Let me show you the difference between a bad and good teleport transition. They are numbered in the video below.
The reason why some people use teleport transitions is that sometimes they have trouble blending the decoration of one part to another part, which I can understand. It can be hard sometimes, but that’s no reason to sacrifice gameplay at the other end of the transition.
Number 1 is a horrible teleport transition. Number 2 is still a bad teleport transition. Number 3 is a “good enough” teleport transition. The problem with number 1 is obvious: you have to have literally memorized the gameplay after it to not die, because of the scrolling effect. That’s not okay. Number 2 isn’t nearly as bad, but using invisible slopes and such to try to “save” the player isn’t really good practice. Not only does it confuse the player, sometimes it unexpectedly kills them once they do have the transition memorized. Use Number 3 as an example: you should build a 1-2 second section after the teleport specifically to be auto, in order to give the player time to react and not confuse them. As you can see, as long as the player wasn’t being a dingus and randomly tapping as they went through the portal they would have time to see what they should do to survive.
By the way, the same logic with teleport transitions applies to mirror portal transitions as well.
Wave transitions, both into and out of, are a special thing. They are much harder to do correctly because of the linear movement of the wave and that wave cannot slide on blocks without dying. View the video below: area number 1 has good wave transitions and area number 2 has bad wave transitions.
There is a specific mistake that is often made with entering and exiting the wave mode. First, it is putting solid blocks to close to the entrance point of the wave portal, which forces the player to spam out of the transition when they shouldn’t have to. In transition number 2, you can see how close the player came to dying. When 2.1 comes around, we should all use them wave-compatible blocks for wave transitions, but for now things like a pink pad in transitions number 1 to ensure the player enters the portal away from blocks will have to suffice.
Transitioning out of a wave section is also a special thing. It is because the next mode will have a different trajectory depending on whether your wave was moving upward or downward when it entered the next portal. Your wave direction is very hard to control in straight-wave/spam sections. As you can see in transition number 2, the player died because they didn’t have enough trajectory to reach the platform, while transition number 1 ensures the player enters the ball portal moving the right way. Controlling trajectory is generally the better thing to do, but if you must transition directly out of a straight-wave area: for square, ball, and robot, ensure the player has an extended platform to land on to catch them whatever trajectory they take, and for ship, leave a small area clear of obstacles for the player to orient themselves. For ufo, just avoid it whenever possible.
There are two kinds of basic transitions, specific and player-varied. The former uses an auto mechanism to make sure the player always enters the next portal the same way, and player varied does not. Usually, what kind you use doesn’t matter: except for UFO transitions that require calibration.
Take a look at the video. The UFO part pictured above isn’t free-range, do whatever you want like in probably 2/3-3/4 of UFO parts, its specifically designed so you always tap at the same places to survive. This is most common in demon and insane levels. Now take a )closer( look– transition number one is a player-varied transition, and the second one if specific. Now this may seem like a small difference, but consider for UFO parts like those in the video can become )very( difficult is you enter the portal the wrong way, because of the specific way the part is constructed. Correcting yourself is not always so easy like in ship and wave parts. In the first section, you can see the player came quite close to dying in the first two jumps because they entered the portal too high– it was as if the player wasn’t calibrated– while in the second section the player was aligned perfectly (the gravity portals do a good job of equalizing the UFO positioning so it’s hardly noticeable after those jumps). Saying that it’s the players fault for entering the portal wrong is ridiculous, that timing is often ambiguous and unnecessary, so do try to use auto elements to transition into UFO segments that require calibration.
Some levels with very fun and fair mode transitions are Motion (yes), Psychosis, and Infiltration (by Viprin)
Thank you for reading and I hope this helped you! In the replies say what you want the next issue to be about but most likely my my next article will be relating to decorating and visuals. Previous article: gdforum.freeforums.net/thread/28565/mode-transitions-good-lumpys-guide