What I'm working on (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

With the new collision changes that have come to GM I've decided now is a good time to revisit some of my platformer content for 2022!

I'm not seeking to completely replace the "Complete Platformer Series" but instead make a supplementary shorter series with a different style. I'm not really sure what to call it. "Intermediate platformer" sounds more accurate but honestly not super SEO friendly. Maybe it will just be Platformer 2022 or something? Robust Platformer? I dunno.

Either way, the idea is to do my research and present a strong foundation for movement and collision first and foremost. I've experimented with a few options trying to balance what is effective to teach, what is effective long term and a number of other factors. I want to tackle some of the common issues with my generic solution to platformers such as floating point positions in a cleaner way than recommending people simply don't use non-integer movements and positions. 

This isn't to say that my prior methods don't work, I'm still using them very successfully in PokeyPoke which is a serious long term project. But I know a lot of people out there are looking for robust and solid solutions and as much as I extoll the virtues of "getting stuff done" in whatever way works for you, I appreciate that this kind of more robust, intermediate and "solid" content is somewhat lacking.

I've gotten some help from other coders and looked at a lot of ways of doing things and I'm pretty happy with where I'm going!

I'm currently looking at a new approach that relies on moving *first* and then resolving collisions, rather than my standard approach of pre-empting collisions and moving to the correct position.

Here's a quick look at the new step event:

I'm still experimenting and want to see how this holds up as we build on top of it but it's really promising thus far. Moving to exact coordinates rather than using a while loop has several advantages in our new floating point world albeit being a bit trickier to teach and not quite as lightning fast to get working. This eliminates pretty much all of the potential issues with floating point speeds and collisions letting you set gravity and speeds to whatever you need them to be for your game without worrying about minor graphical glitches or other strange occurances which is a big win.

I'm still not sure exactly the form this video, series, or whatever will take but this is my progress thus far. I'm also considering starting to do some text tutorials and working on a website that collects my tutorials and also tutorials from other creators into one place. That's something I've wanted to do for a really long time and I think it might be about time to actually make a start. So look forward to some information on that hopefully soon!

I'm also continuing my work on PokeyPoke, it's incredibly difficult to keep switching gears all of the time but I'm adapting more and more and progress is starting to pick up. 

That's where I'm at right now! Let me know what you think.

Are you happy with the direction I'm taking? are there videos or topics maybe I've mentioned in the past that haven't gotten made yet that you've been looking forward to? Would you like to see something other than what I've been mentioning? Let me know! My patron support has sadly been dropping a bit these last few months, and while this can happen naturally for many reasons (People have less money, there's a pandemic, people are using other engines, etc) I want to make sure I'm doing everything I can to make you feel you're putting your money towards something valuable. So I'm happy to hear any and all criticism you have of my work or thoughts on what you would like to see or on the direction I'm taking.