[Gameplay] Diagonal run speed is higher?

[DesktopMan]

Is this a case of
x += speed; y+= speed;
?

If so, the diagonal speed is sqrt(2) times as fast as x / y direction only.

 

[GarlicJelly]

It might be a little bit faster. It's pretty handy when running away from a spinning Giga Slime. That is if you don't like using the shield ofc.

 

[Teddy]

Yeah, the movement on the two axes is separate. It was mostly a matter of what we thought felt good! If we reach a point where the speed discrepancy starts to present real issues with combat gameplay, we'll change it.

 

[Meiun]

Was just about to post this as a bug report as well. I feel that this should be addressed. It feels awkward having your character move faster on diagonals, and typically this is not the behavior you would expect (nor should it be in my opinion). The entire concept of a "diagonal" is based upon the concept of a camera angle, so it seems a bit weird to think that just because the camera happens to be oriented a certain way relative to the world that a player can run faster in certain directions than others.

As it is now, if I were to have a velocity of 10 when moving only on the X or Y axis (no diagonal), then when I'm moving on a diagonal I would have a velocity of 14.14 (xSpeed^2 + ySpeed^2 = diagonalSpeed^2). I'm sure you guys already have this figured out if needed, but a simple way to solve this would just boil down to setting both the X and Y speeds to their standard individual speed (10 in the previous example) multiplied by the constant 0.707107 (or divided by the square root of 2).

 

[SoyAntonio]

I like the feeling of the current diagonal system - it rewards activity!
Diagonal speed boost was a nice addition in Goldeneye 007, as well as the running backwards/rolling speed boost in Ocarina of Time and the jumping speed boost in EverQuest! Just makes the games more fun in my humble opinion!

 

[Aurophobia]

I feel like this is in no way game breaking.

 

[Sastron]

This really starts to shine when you are under conditions where you move really slowly like the bishop challenge or slime trails. While it feels great to beat the system it feels necessary when doing stuff like this too.

 

[Dgikmo]

This is by no means a bug. If anything it's a feature.

I almost have come to expect to move faster along diagonals in most games. It's just easier to implement, and doesn't seem detrimental to the game in general.

 

[Jashu]

This is absolutely not a feature, it's a bug and should be addressed as such. It's unrealistic, counter-intuitive and slightly game-breaking. As Good Stuff and Sastron pointed out, it's very useful or even necessary in situations where you need to move really fast, especially to evade an attack, like the Giga Slime's. Speaking of the Giga Slime, it moves as fast as you do going straight, but not as fast as you do diagonally. This doesn't only feel awkward, it also greatly influences your options in some situations. If players feel the additional mobility is important, you'll have to either adjust the speed of such enemies downwards or increase single-axis run speed (or maybe implement more mobility skills), but it's unavoidable to adjust the diagonal speed correctly, otherwise you'll run the risk of such attacks as the Giga Slime's (and, to a lesser degree, every enemy, considering that they all move at the same speed in every direction) being unbalanced - easy to evade if you can run diagonally, but hard/impossible to evade if you can't.
On a somewhat related note, I'm wondering if you ever intend to enable omni-directional movement for joystick/controller users. This seems logical, considering that enemies have it, but then again, this would somewhat favour those players over keyboard users.

 

[Dgikmo]

There's no way it's gamebreaking. In fact, I'd argue that they balanced the enemies around diagonal run being a higher speed, anyway. Success in this game is absolutely skill-based, and there's no arguing that avoiding projectiles well requires diagonal run being higher.

Say they adjust run speed to be a fixed value. You say they'd have to adjust enemies speeds to be slower. The alternative would be to make players move faster. So what difference would there be, ultimately? The net result is the same, and it's nowhere close to being a bug. If you want me to argue this from a Cartesian-coordinate standpoint, I'll do so as well.

Finally, if they implement omnidirectional movement, the formulas for run speed (were it a constant value) would have to involve trigonometric functions, and that's just more than is necessary, in my opinion.

This game is supposed to be a throwback to the good ol' SNES games. How many of those featured omnidirectional movement? How many of them let you (for better or worse) move faster along the diagonal than on the x-y axes, as compared to the number of games that didn't? I guess I'd be disappointed if they patched out diagonal run, because so much of the game already accounts for it being present. I have the impression that so much balancing would have to be done right now that it would postpone new content for a period that probably would not make most players happy.

 

[DesktopMan]

It feels and looks weird to me. Not saying it's the most important issue in the world, but I noticed it instantly and the feeling of weirdness never went away. Same response from two friends I was playing with. It also encourages snaking behavior when going straight, which also looks odd.

I'm surprised by the amount of text written here, multiplying by cos(45) is a very simple thing

 

[Dgikmo]

I feel like the question in point is whether or not it's a gamebreaking bug. Bug being the keyword. And you're right, dividing by sqrt(2) isn't a big issue anymore, but there's just no point.

I guess I'll make this argument, then. Say you have a square, with side length 's'. Let's say you want to run from corner A to corner B, where A and B are opposite corners. Is it faster to move along the edges of the square, or across the diagonal connecting A and B?

This game is fundamentally 2D, regardless of the implied depth. Moving from Point A to Point B will always be fastest in a straight line connecting A and B. I understand it's "unrealistic" for the diagonal run speed to be faster than the separate axes, but this just isn't a bug. Maybe it feels weird, and maybe it looks weird (two sentiments I disagree with, I might add), but there's no escaping how classic it feels.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm here to play a modern SNES game. And right now, this plays and feels like just that.

 

[AaronJY]

I hadn't thought about diagonal movement speed until now. It might just be the fact that I'm used to playing top-down games where players are able to move on both the X and Y axis, but I don't feel that there's any particular issue as far as diagonal movement speed is concerned. That's just my opinion though, and it's obvious you guys share different opinions