Platforming Script?

'Ello.

Been playing around with making a platforming game since I'm looking forward to my Playdate arriving in the mail this year. Has anyone experimented with a script that makes for nice, fluid, pixel by pixel movement of the player, rather than moving one tile at a time? I'm new to coding but I'm having fun teaching myself some things, and I hope in the end I can put out a fun, simple platformer. Thanks!

I'm assuming the clunky tile by tile movement is a result of pulp being early beta and the Web Player and not how it'll perform on the actual device, at least I sincerely hope that's the case / plan.

Check out Pulp Pong by @Drew-Lo for an example of an animation technique that smoothes the apparent motion of the paddles. Not a universal solution but it might suggest some tricks you can use.

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This is incorrect. Pulp movement is meant to be tile by tile. It is not a bug or result of it still being in beta and is unlikely to change. There are workarounds but Pulp really isn’t designed for action or platforming.

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Ah okay @shaun . So is Pulp not going to be further developed then?
I was assuming, perhaps wrongly, that it'd be getting additional features more in line with other game engines as it went through beta to bring it in line with what can be done in the SDK, except with a GUI.

I think I can clear this up!

Pulp is meant to be an easy-to-use, friendly, browser-based dev tool, that allows people to make games with low or no code, enabling anyone to tell their story in a Playdate game. This means Pulp has, and will always have, certain intentional design decisions and limitations in order to focus on being an extremely welcoming and comfortable introduction to game making for humans of all ages.

Playdate SDK will be a full, proper, code-level software development kit, like the big consoles have, enabling the creation of any type of game imaginable for the Playdate, but the Playdate SDK will absolutely require code-level programming on the part of the developer. It will support both Lua and C languages, and will include a suite of tools such as a simulator, proper debugging, etc. And while as friendly we could make it, and that's one of the reasons we support Lua, but there's still a barrier to entry: knowing or learning Lua or C.

Both will continue to be developed! But both will go in their own very intentional directions!

In summary: Pulp will never be as robust as the full Playdate SDK, and the Playdate SDK will never be as easy-to-use as Pulp.

Hope this helps! Thanks for asking!

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Hi @cabel , yes that makes perfect sense, I think I was just expecting a little more from Pulp than it has to offer right now, since similar web based game engines/editors are effectively full sdks with a front end (for example, Construct 3, GB studio or flowlab).
Not be ungrateful for what we have, but public beta implied that feedback on it would then lead to changes, new tools, etc based on what developers wanted and were asking for, rather than "it's not meant for that".

Understood 100%! We'll try to write up the Pulp "philosophy" somewhere. We'll definitely continue to grow it, but in the Pulp direction! :slight_smile:

And it will be a lot easier/clearer to everyone when the proper Playdate SDK is released — that'll fix a lot of potential confusion.

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Aside from all that's been said above and for people who are still looking for a platformer script which has tile by tile movement. I've created a thread here. Pulp Simple Platformer Example

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