Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer

[droqen]

Oh man I really want to do these exercises!

1. a memory of jumping . . . describe that moment . . .
ideas: something from childhood, a moment in a film, the way a favourite animal moves
details: phases, how far, what body parts, surfaces, how the surfaces feel, the shape of the movement, is anyone else involved, the jump's purpose
. . . list adjectives that you would use to describe the whole jump.

2. Choose one of the adjectives . . . build a jump . . . change many of the variables . . .
{32-33
the strength of gravity and the avatar's propulsive force . . . maximum fall speed and air friction . . . inconsistencies in [ascending and descending] arcs [..or..] during collisions . . . the slope of the jump arc, its type (linear or quadratic), and the sensitivity of the button during the first few frames of motion. . . . the time before a player can jump again after landing, and "coyote time" . . . how long the player waits for the avatar to move after pressing the button, or how much it can move while in the air. . . . maximum speed or the amount of momentum that carries over from the ground to the air . . .}
. . . a warm-up phase, a short hover at the top of the jump, or a jolt of forward movement. . . .
show it to some friends and ask them to describe the jump with one adjective. Keep adjusting it until your jump communicates the adjective you initially chose.

3. choose a second adjective from your initial list that is similar to your first . . . design a second jump for your avatar that uses a separate button. Leave the previous jump untouched, but tweak the new jump until the difference between the two adjectives is clear. . . . choose a third adjective that means the opposite of your original one.

Ask different friends to try out all three and have them describe the original jump again. . . . see how the addition of this mechanic changed the player experience.

[droqen]

I've selected a memory... and an adjective... and am looking at this grand list of variables and things to tweak and I feel so strangely good about it all. There's this sensation of that moment before a tear comes to my eye. I'm not afraid to say 'it almost made me cry,' but it's just not quite right. There is perhaps the faintest tightness of the throat.

In any case I'm enjoying the exercise. How can I use all these familiar tools, these abstract friends, to convey such a specific and difficult adjective? It feels almost perverse to wield every tiny facet of a jump for something so idiosyncratic, so emotional, to spend so much intentional effort thinking about how to do this, to invest so heavily in this expression.

[droqen]

2   Dirt Suspended in the Air

51-52

If jumping is one way of defining this genre from the perspective of player action, the platform is a counterpart that allows the designer to define the space of that movement. . . . if mechanics organize how one speaks in a game, levels determine what one can speak about.

[droqen]

53

In this chapter, I explore five oppositions that organize space within platforming games and set up the major dynamics of player choice:

• horizontal/vertical,
• narrow/open,
• inside/outside,
• flat/deep, and
• stationary/scrolling.

[droqen]

54

At the heart of the 2D platforming genre is the difference between the horizontal and vertical planes. Gravity pulls down on a player's jump and differentiates the two axes, but jumping is only one way of producing that difference.

i loove to read this, but okay, let me just get through and summarize all these "major dynamics of player choice"

horizontal a plane of smooth transition and temporal progress
vertical a measure of tension and intensity

also maybe this is actually based on something i said in mcdonald's class? am i just enjoying my own thoughts, crystallized on paper? i definitely would not have been able to hold on to these ideas. certainly, i don't think about horizontality or verticality this way, so there is more than just my mad ramblings in one class.

[droqen]

57

in Inside, . . . The horizon impossibly drops to the player's eye level in each progressively lower space, . . . leaves her with an uncanny feeling that the world itself is sinking.

gosh. does it? This is the kind of thing that I don't really believe in, and yet it's fun to think about, and maybe important to believe at some level... a creative spirituality.

once you do believe in something like this, a great rift of communication opens up to you. an interpretable field of noise at least.

[droqen]

57

. . . up is good, down is bad--might seem too simple . . . On the one hand, a game always adds its own symbolism . . . When a player lures an enemy into a deadly falling burger in Burger Time, height starts to signify intelligence and cunning. One the other hand, the binary simplicity is essential

[droqen]

so much reading into the roof and the floor in this next section about narrow/open. god damn, i am into it

[droqen]

Narrowness requires excellent decision-making skills . . .

Openness emphasizes vulnerability . . .

The appearance or disappearance of the roof is one of the clearest signals that a level is changing its tenor and pace. When it appears, a roof limits the player's range of action and makes it coincide with the knowable world. In contrast, its disappearance signals exposure--to the sun, to enemies, to sight. When the roof drops away, it invites ideas of exploration and discovery. . . .

When the roof or floor appears, it lays emphasis on horizontality, and a boundary's disappearance reorients the player toward verticality.

Sometimes the floor drops precipitously when entering a wide zone, which creates a sense of momentum and encourages the player to run ahead optimistically.

If, instead, the roof roses away, this suddenly changes the sacl of the space relative to the avatar. It can lead to a feeling of the sublime as the player's vision expands past the scope of her ability to act. . . .

A confrontation at the end of a descending path suggests a guardian of some deadly secret,

while a confrontation at the end of an ascending one is more likely to be a higher power testing the mettle of the player's claims to virtue.

[droqen]

I am getting antsy and have decided to move on to the exercises without reading too in depth the sections on inside/outside, flat/deep, and stationary/scrolling. I will likely return to them as necessary, and assume that the exercises will prompt me to do just that.

[droqen]

(78-79)

"1. Choose a short story. . . . go back and map it. . . . Start by deciding what is worth charting: Is it the emotional highs and lows of a character? [etc] . . . Then decide how you will map the story to the axes of a graph. Are you mapping the objective time of the story, the order in which the events are narrated, or the amount of page space they take up? . . . make a chart . . . "

Rather than a short story, I'd like to do this with a real experience that I had and have, for a while, meant to do something with. This abstract mapping sounds really perfect to me.

[droqen]

"2. Read through the story a second time and make a note of how much freedom of available . . . Assign a number from one to ten at each point. Add a second line . . . that tracks freedom by giving more and less room above that line."

Oops, my line is too... hmm... I didn't draw it right for this.

"3. Go back a third time and look for any details or events that fall outside the main story. . . . something that makes them feel separate from the story. Now . . . Draw an arrow to a new area outside the main diagram anywhere you listed an event or detail. If it shows up again, draw an arrow pointing back into your diagram and connect the two outside points. For each of these outside areas, write a word or two about how they should feel."

i adore these.

"4. You now have the blueprint for a map. Use it . . . Discuss what elements of the story survive the translation and which do not."

this seems like such a cool exercise, i expect to get a lot out of it when i do it properly! i'll find a story.

[droqen]

https://kinopio.club/the-earliest-dreams---platformer-mapping-MgdzK5ofQ4pt--5aBCYI3

i'd like to check out the pages on inside/outside before proceeding to actually build a level.

[droqen]

64-

The Inside and the Outside

Video game space . . . stretches in impossible ways, establishes connections between distant points, and loops around on itself. . . . platforming games can hide whole worlds behind an innocuous cupboard door. . . . the flatness of the 2D screen normalizes the magic of spacious interiors as a genre-specific realism.

On the next page McDonald writes, "The contrast I want to draw . . . however, is not an architectural one."

The boundary between inside and outside is illusory, is given wholly by context; "If the player enters a mountain pass from one place in another and exits it at another point in the same level, the pass feels contained by the level." Interiority and exteriority is experienced by the player. ". . . the player mentally maps a series of connections that give some order to an illogical space."

[droqen]

The player experiences interiority and exteriority of spaces... This quality describes a relationship that places have to one another which is given to them by the player, though the designer's presentation clearly catalyzes it.