Hardest things to program in a platformer Mario game?

**Mariotroid** · 05-13-2020, 04:15 PM

Hey just wondering what everyone finds most tough to program in a Mario game? I'm stuck on some moving platform which will be programmed soon. Just wondering what you all find tough. Someone on discord said power ups, but I find that easy, at least for my game. What do you say is toughest to program? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

**Gate** · 05-13-2020, 04:22 PM

May I ask which platform?

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**Mariotroid** · (This post was last modified: 05-13-2020, 04:33 PM by Mariotroid.)

I have made two moving platforms in the past for my game. Just working on a third one. Id say any platform, just explain your reasoning.

**Hyper** · (This post was last modified: 05-13-2020, 05:01 PM by Hyper.)

Slopes. Because you have to calculate the positions depending on player's x position and movement direction. Also "y -= 1" is inefficient.

Edit: moving platforms are moderate for me. I managed to figure out some tricks to make it work better. Moving slopes would be a nightmare to program.

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**Mariotroid** · 05-13-2020, 05:12 PM

(05-13-2020, 04:59 PM)Hypernova Wrote: Slopes. Because you have to calculate the positions depending on player's x position and movement direction. Also "y -= 1" is inefficient.

Edit: moving platforms are moderate for me. I managed to figure out some tricks to make it work better. Moving slopes would be a nightmare to program.

Are you talking about angular slopes or rounded slopes? I had some difficulty with angular, but rounded seems impossible for me.

**Hyper** · 05-13-2020, 05:15 PM

(05-13-2020, 05:12 PM)Mariotroid Wrote:
(05-13-2020, 04:59 PM)Hypernova Wrote: Slopes. Because you have to calculate the positions depending on player's x position and movement direction. Also "y -= 1" is inefficient.

Edit: moving platforms are moderate for me. I managed to figure out some tricks to make it work better. Moving slopes would be a nightmare to program.

Are you talking about angular slopes or rounded slopes? I had some difficulty with angular, but rounded seems impossible for me.

Angular slopes. It's possible to program rounded slopes but there would be a lot of trigonometry involved.

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**VinnyVideo** · 05-13-2020, 07:02 PM

Moving platforms were murderously hard when I first started programming. It didn't help that I was trying to splice them into a not-very-good engine.

Slopes can also be hard.

Making interesting boss battles is really time-consuming.

As for gameplay elements specific to Mario games, Yoshi is hard to get right.

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**Mariotroid** · 05-13-2020, 07:12 PM

I made the gargantuan Blaarg for Super Mario Holidays in about a month. It didnt take long. Then again, I did program some things already that worked with the boss.

I wish I could program efficiently. That's what school is for though I guess.

**SuperSledgeBro** · 05-13-2020, 11:07 PM

I've been unsucessfully trying to get a good platform engine working right. Making simple things like walls, solids, jump-through platforms, powerups and such is no problem for me at all. But, like you, I struggle a lot with moving platforms. My engine will not be perfect if it doesn't have platforms that can go through each other without causing weird behavior. I'm still trying to find a good collision system...

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**GeneSu730** · (This post was last modified: 05-15-2020, 07:35 PM by GeneSu730.)

How about the Yoshi module? The one I built has 1500 lines of C++ code (in addition to some intensive modification of the Mario module). It took me 4 months to sort out all of the bugs. Among the issues I had to deal with was how to keep the Yoshi animation from being broken when he sticks his tongue out. Also, I had a lot of trouble keeping Mario from getting stuck in the ceiling. The height of his and Yoshi's combined sprite is greater than 32 pixels. Thus, I had to cut off the top portion of his collision footprint.

The next hardest thing was Caped Mario's cape projectile. I still have a few bugs. Do you know that sometimes, Mario will not go into a walking sprite again after twirling his cape?

Slopes were not too difficult for me. I only have 22.5 and 45 degree slopes. The only slight flaw is that my Mario cannot slide down a slope when a player pressed down unless Mario walks up and down the slope for a few pixels at first.