The fight between movement and magic.

Author: Jesse Silcott

3/14/2025

Hello everyone!

I'm Jesse and I am one of the gameplay developers on Relic of the Hollow King! The biggest task I've been taking on so far is the player and the player's mechanics. 

Player movement is one of the first things that a player feels mechanically in game, and has to be perfected in order to hold the attention of the audience. The movement I was originally going for was very much so and old school approach, I think a good comparison would be A Link to the Past. However the more we get into the development of this game, the more I see the movement working slightly differently. This came from a drastic need to alter some of the abilities we were adding into the game. Adding in a dash ability was the first step in completely breaking player movement. Adding in the ability to cast magic was the second step to breaking it.

 The biggest issue here is how the player moves mechanically. Using the good ole' WASD movement style was ok with a fixed camera, but I had to first solve the problem of the players animation and how to make the player rotate to where he was facing. This was completely ok until I added the dash ability in. The dash ability locks the players perspective immediately, and this had to change how the player was turning. Adding the mechanic for Casting magic made this even more clear. The player was moving too fast when he dashed, and he was facing the wrong way when he started it - deeming it uncontrollable. 

This ended up being an easier fix than I thought it would be. The dash was trying to register the direction the player was facing, not the direction the player was moving. This fix was as simple as updating the code to adjust the player to face all 8 directions. The function I was calling to help the player rotate only took into consideration if the player was moving in north, south, east or west. The dash sent the player in the direction they were facing, not walking. It was a simple change in that aspect. 

The bigger problem is balancing speed of the dash. I've recently found that the dash will sometimes send the player flying if the terrain under them disappears. This, compared with the fact that the player can dash into his own magic casts has had me rethinking movement all together.  I was able to solve the dashing into magic issue by implementing a cooldown on the use of any relic at all. This makes sure the player has time for their magic to get far enough away for them to dash. This has got me thinking though, I think a better movement system would be the player facing the mouse's location, allowing them to cast magic or swing their weapon by mouse click. I guess this will be ever