Im very conflicted on whether or not to use delta time for my platformer. I am very used to Unity and always using deltaTime, but due to the much lower resolution of the playdate, moving a character in fractions of a pixel can cause tiny stutters because of the nature of moving pixel perfect.
I feel like I should use it, and when not using double sized screen in simulator / on device im not sure I can even see that the little pixel stutters happen. But it is nice to see when using integers only that it moves very smoothly even on bigger screens. That being said in a lot of cases I can't use integers only to get the exact speeds a want anyways, like my gravity step. So should I just get over it and use delta time? I think this is the way to go but would like some feedback before I commit to trying to adjust all my speed values for delta time. My main concern is people using screen mirror to play would probably see the little stutters right?
Floating point numbers are good either way - just use math.floor() to convert them to integers when drawing. Personally I prefer fixed step for platformers as it makes math simpler and the physics won't go crazy if fps suddenly drops.
Sorry for the incredibly late reply. I forgot I even posted this. I’m used to using the discord instead. By fixed step do you mean just not using delta time? I’ve currently ended up just not using delta time, I’m still used floating point numbers like you said and rounding and it hasn’t been a issue since I’ve made all my screens optimized but you never know what the player may be able to pull off that you don’t expect lol.
Yes, that's what I meant. If delta time is always 1.0 (fixed) whatever-units, you can leave it out completely. Physics-wise you always need to know how much time has passed for the equations to work.