Player movement discussion

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Just thinking about trying some shmups with non traditional 8 way movement.

Can anyone help me find some arcade (MAMEable) games that have some different approaches to player movement speed?
In particular I'm wondering if the "fast diagonals" (can come from a naive movement algorithm) fits better with a square gate joystick.
I don't recall seeing the "fast diagonals" much in the arcade but you see it a LOT in first time shmups.
Might be cool if a person could whip up a web program that reads controller and keys with changeable parameters. (I've not bothered to learn JavaScript).

You can see what I sort of mean below.
I've also included a slow axes diagram for shmups that think you should be penalized for flying backward by slowing you down.



So to recap:
1. Arcade games with non 8 way symmetry in movement.
2. Do you like this style of thing in *any* shmups?
3. Do you think joystick gate shape fits one style movement better than the other?

[Shepardus]

Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider, and Battle Bakraid all have non-normalized ("fast") diagonals ("square" in your image). I think they play well in spite of that and not because of it. Wing Force has this too, which makes horizontal movement feel uncomfortably sluggish compared to diagonal movement.

You should also note games like Raiden which have different horizontal and vertical movement speeds which may also depend on whether you're playing as P1 or P2.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider, and Battle Bakraid all have non-normalized ("fast") diagonals ("square" in your image). I think they play well in spite of that and not because of it. Wing Force has this too, which makes horizontal movement feel uncomfortably sluggish compared to diagonal movement.

You should also note games like Raiden which have different horizontal and vertical movement speeds which may also depend on whether you're playing as P1 or P2.

Oh guess it is more common than I thought. Just played Battle Garegga and yeah it feels natural with a square gate. Don't have an octagonal gate for my stick but I wonder if it makes the diagonals feel overwhelming/underwhelming?

Any explanation on the p1/p2 movement differences? Seems really odd if they both use the same hardware.
Come to think of it, I wonder if the movement speed is actually based on the shape of the joystick gate mounted in the cab...

[Vludi]

Any explanation on the p1/p2 movement differences? Seems really odd if they both use the same hardware.
Come to think of it, I wonder if the movement speed is actually based on the shape of the joystick gate mounted in the cab...

It's a feature of Raiden DX, Player 1 (red ship) has faster vertical movement but slower horizontal movement. Player 2 (blue ship) is the opposite: faster horizontal movement but slower vertical movement.

[trap15]

Come to think of it, I wonder if the movement speed is actually based on the shape of the joystick gate mounted in the cab...

Given it's 4 digital switches, no.

There are a large number of STG, arcade and otherwise, that use non-normalized, and a large number that use normalized. Non-symmetrical is far less common, I can't think of any instances. Horizontal/vertical being at different speeds is pretty much exclusive to the Raiden series (and even then, in a game with 2 players simultaneous it turns this functionality off).

Basically just pick what you think feels better, there are reasons to pick non-normalized (though I mostly find them not worth it). The gate doesn't really matter much for it, but most cabinets use square gates if that's going to influence your decision. Personally I'd never pick anything other than sane and simple normalized movement.

[Squire Grooktook]

Non-normalized sucks imo.

[atheistgod1999]

Come to think of it, I wonder if the movement speed is actually based on the shape of the joystick gate mounted in the cab...

Given it's 4 digital switches, no.

They could've programmed the movement speeds with the shape of the gate in mind.

[Bananamatic]

inertia and slower backwards movement please

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Come to think of it, I wonder if the movement speed is actually based on the shape of the joystick gate mounted in the cab...

Given it's 4 digital switches, no.

They could've programmed the movement speeds with the shape of the gate in mind.

That's more what I was getting at actually.
Since you have physically more diagonal throw on square gates.

inertia and slower backwards movement please

Careful, some pervert might just grant that wish.

[ciox]

It's in a lot of games, Ikaruga and Psyvariar 1 have it too in addition to Raizing's stuff, so basically all my main fave games have it...

Now I wouldn't add it myself to a new game, but I can't deny it adds a lot of flavor and technique sometimes, whether you prefer diagonal motion just to get around faster or zig-zag to dive after falling items.

[atheistgod1999]

But I'm pretty sure that any faster diagonal movement was just a simple oversight, due to code like this:

Code: Select all

if leftPressed == true {
    xPos -= 5;
}
if rightPressed == true {
    xPos += 5;
}
if upPressed == true {
    yPos -= 5;
}
if downPressed == true {
    yPos += 5;
}

(YES, I KNOW THEY WOULD'VE BEEN USING ASSEMBLY FOR ANYTHING PRE- ~1995 )

[Bananamatic]

we get it you can make hello world

[Shepardus]

I think it's obvious enough that any developer would have noticed their diagonals weren't normalized, just some didn't care enough or were too pressed for time to throw in a couple extra conditionals and multiply their movement speeds by 0.7.

On that note, one other thing to take into consideration when normalizing diagonal movement is that it can make your movement look jerkier if you normally move a whole number of pixels per frame but have to scale that by 0.7. It's more noticeable with slow movement speeds on low resolution displays. For example, in Parodius Da! the default movement speed is one pixel per frame, so if you press yourself against the left edge of the screen and move up and down you'll notice on most frames you move one pixel but on some you don't move at all, making the movement noticeably more jittery than simply holding up or down by itself. Perhaps that bothered some devs enough that they intentionally chose to leave their diagonals not normalized, though in practice it hardly matters.

It's more likely, though, that those who used non-normalized diagonals simply preferred how it felt. Shmups aren't exactly known for their realism anyway.

Also, I think they would have used a combination of C and assembly.

[trap15]

Yagawa's arcade games are almost entirely C, at least. CAVE's games seemed to be assembly until CV1000, at which point they became almost entirely C.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

@ag1999 you can do fast diagonals in 2 lines

Spoiler

// assuming that the _pressed() functions return 0 or 1
x += (right_pressed() - left_pressed()) * speed
y += (down_pressed() - up_pressed()) * speed

Guys writing in ASM generally are no dummies though. (tips fedoræ to trap15)
I'd say the initial impulse might be to simply move in cardinal directions if a direction is held though. Leading to fast diagonals.
All my early shmups had fast diagonals though. Somebody didn't learn trig quite yet.

After playing through the suggestions I like both but fast diagonal movement might have a very very slight edge with this joystick.
Seriously debating offering both modes in my next shmup. Selectable of course.
I guess if Raiden paved the way it's safe right?

[Jeneki]

Shogi gold general gate plz.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Shogi gold general gate plz.

Haha, man that'd be frustrating as hell.
You may have won the tread.
I'm debating making a little test demo with the different styles and adding that abomination for the lulz.

[BryanM]

Shit, I figured everything used fixed vectors like in Link to the Past. What a newb I am.

This changes everything.