Environment Conventions

In any game there are standard environment conventions that make the movement of the character fit the environment. Maximum jump distance generally comes with gaps in the floor that correspond to it — otherwise there would be unpassable areas of the game.

The same goes for vertical jumps — there are generally stairs, or some kind of vertical climb that can be pushed horizontally against to ascend, small jumps, and sometimes hanging and pulling up when the ledge is higher. They have to be basically standard sizes or the gameplay gets muddled.

In my previous discussion about Resolution I said I wanted a 1/4 ratio of character height to screen height so I could get the emotional depth and detail I want. That could be problematic, depending on the environment conventions I choose.

If I want 3 playable levels on the screen then 1/4 ratio is too big. I have to account for the height of the character, plus his jump height to get the size of each level. If we say the play is 6′ tall, then the screen is 24′ tall. If maximum jump height is 8′ (which is really too short), then we could squeeze 3 levels onto the screen if we didn’t leave any room at the top or bottom. That would look bad because a character on the “ground” level would look like he’s walking on nothing, and if a player wanted to see what was above the top level, he couldn’t tell if there was a ledge or anything.

Realistically a level for a character that’s 6′ tall has to be more like 10′, which makes 3 playable levels on screen impossible since the levels would take a minimum of 30′ while the screen was only 24′. 10′ may sound large, but players expect the physics to work a certain way in platform games. If you consider a title like Megaman, given his size, he could jump horizontally maybe 30′ and vertically at least 20′. Even if we’re going for more realism, we have to make the character’s motions feel “epic.”

After doing the study (below) I’ve concluded that 10′ in a good height, and that 2 (not 3) playable levels on screen is workable.

I also discovered that in 1024×768 resolution, each foot is very conveniently 32 pixels. At 1280×1024, each foot is 42.6 (repeating) pixels. That could influence my choice of resolution.