Slippery controls?

Started by Boco, January 13, 2010, 08:40:12 PM

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Boco

I've only played the demo on Kongregate, but the controls seemed unreasonably slippery.  After letting go of a directional button, I'd continue for 6~8 pixels before coming to a stop; this happened even if I only tapped the direction (ie, the deceleration didn't correspond to any acceleration period).  Is this behavior also present in the full version of the game, and if so why was this level of slipperiness desired rather than, say, that of Rockman 2 (where you slip about 4 pixels from full speed but only move a subpixel amount if the direction is only tapped for a few frames)?

Terry

Some people are reporting this, and I'm pretty sure it's just specific to some machines... I got similar reports about slipery controls from Don't Look Back. Could be something I'm doing wrong in my code.

Are you playing on a netbook or something? A virtual machine? Linux?

Shasharala

I've noticed that since I have a dual core and if I tell the game to use only one processor that the game is less slippery.
I've played some fairly old dos games before and had to tell it to run under one processor otherwise the game would run at twice its normal speed.  Don't know if this is a problem for anyone else.

StephenM3

Yeah, I think this is a machine-specific bug.  Most people don't seem to have a problem with this, and in fact to some people it appears at first glance that there's no inertia in place at all (once you try some challenges like Gordian Knot, though, you find otherwise).

Boco

I'm playing on a 2008-era Macbook (with the NVidia 9400M card if it matters).  I didn't have a similar issue with Don't Look Back.

The same issue was also reported by a few users on Sirlin.net, where I learned about this game.

Should I download the standalone demo to see if it has the same issue as the Kongregate version?

StephenM3

Quote from: Boco on January 13, 2010, 09:38:51 PM
I'm playing on a 2008-era Macbook (with the NVidia 9400M card if it matters).  I didn't have a similar issue with Don't Look Back.

The same issue was also reported by a few users on Sirlin.net, where I learned about this game.

Should I download the standalone demo to see if it has the same issue as the Kongregate version?
Hmm... I'm using a Macbook from 2008, and don't have any problems.  I don't have an NVida card, but that seems like an unlikely source of the problem.

Terry

Quote from: Boco on January 13, 2010, 09:38:51 PM
Should I download the standalone demo to see if it has the same issue as the Kongregate version?

If you don't mind, that would be really helpful!

Do you have an nvidia control panel with an image quality setting? If so, try setting it to "quality" instead of "performance". I've noticed that this affects the timing code in some of my old C++/Allegro games, so it's worth a look...

Boco

#7
Quote from: Terry on January 13, 2010, 10:07:23 PMIf you don't mind, that would be really helpful!
I tried the standalone demo, and it still had this behavior.  I was able to get movements as small as 2 px by tapping the direction, but the character still continued to move for an unreasonable distance if I waited more than about 10 px before releasing.  My earlier estimate of 6~8 pixels of slip is actually low now that I tried a few tests.



On this screenshot, just behind the character is a lattice 12 px wide surrounded on both sides by 2 px purple lines (16 px total).  The character is 2 px ahead of this tile and 12 px wide.  I started moving under the floating square (before the "W") and stopped holding the direction when the front of the character reached the first of the purple lines after the first black area (the line above the "b"), indicating a slide of about 30 pixels.  I ran this test a dozen or so times and this was the furthest result, but I never got a result shorter than the front of the character being at least partially in the second black space (a slide of about 16 pixels).

The character seems to move at around 2.5 px per frame, so even with 3~4 frames of user error that still indicates a slide of 8~16 pixels where I would expect a slide of 4~8 pixels at most.  Even accounting for error, with repeated tries the character shouldn't take more than a body width to stop, right?

Quote from: Terry on January 13, 2010, 10:07:23 PMDo you have an nvidia control panel with an image quality setting?
I do not.

Dreygar King of Elks

i have slippery controls on a win7 32 bit box.

will try on a netbook to see if it's different.

btw - do as i say not as i do is a maddening level.

Josiah Tobin

The controls are pretty slippery for me too-- Annoying sometimes (mostly just at first), but I figured it was just how the game was supposed to be. I get a slide of about 6-10px if I hold a direction for more than about a half-second. Just tapping a direction gives me no slide.

I'm running it on an Acer Aspire One netbook, Intel Atom CPU, not sure of the graphics hardware.

~Josiah

eyf

I find that Flash 10.1 beta gives me slippery controls in the demo and the beta. (Also, Hedgehog Launch 2 on Armor Games is totally unplayable on that version - the controls stick for seconds making it impossible to control.)

Downgrading back to Flash 10.0 fixes these problems.

The standalone version of VVVVVV works fine on my computer, though. (I guess because it's built with Flash 10.0 or earlier.)

Boco

Quote from: eyf on January 14, 2010, 02:32:44 AM
I find that Flash 10.1 beta gives me slippery controls in the demo and the beta. [...] Downgrading back to Flash 10.0 fixes these problems.
For the record I am using Flash 10.0.32.18.  But the Mac and Windows versions might be significantly different.

allen

I have version 10,0,42,34 and for what it's worth, game runs perfectly fine. Controls are perfect. Windows 7 32 bit.

repeater

I am also having this issue, and from what I have been seeing in different reviews and forum discussions of the game, many other people are too.  Unfortunately, I have also seen a lot of people comment that they are passing on purchasing the game due to the slippery controls, believing it to be intended behavior / design choice and not a glitch.

It happens to me at random on all the machines in my house, but here are the details of the two machines I play the most on since they are different enough hardware-wise to possibly help you rule out some stuff out.

LAPTOP:

OS: WinXP SP3
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz
RAM: 4GB
GPU: Intel Mobile 965 Express
Flash: 10,0,42,34

DESKTOP:

OS: WinXP SP3
CPU: AMD Athlon 3500+ 2.22Ghz
RAM: 1GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS
Flash: 10,0,42,34

DESCRIPTION OF ISSUE:

I can replicate the issue in all three versions of the game (browser-based demo, standalone exe demo, standalone exe full game).

The controls are lightly slipperly at all times, which I can best describe as watching the player slide a few pixels after letting off a directional key (slightly more slippery than say, Mega Man).  This may be as intended and doesn't impact gameplay at all, I can compensate for this by quickly pressing the opposite directional key if needed.

The big slips seem to happen after I have been holding a directional key for a second or more, usually during a long jump.  Once I land on a platform and let off the direction key, the player continues to slides for about 1-2 times his own width.  These slips I have not been unable to compensate for, and are pretty much guaranteed instant death in most parts of the game.

As you can imagine, this is pretty maddening on some of the more unforgiving levels.  A few parts of the game I just had to repeat nearly a hundred times until I made it through without the slip glitch happening, like "Do As I Say..." and some of the later sections with short platforms.

I still had a great time in my first run-through of the game though, thank you for your amazing work here!  I am gonna hold off on the time trials and the last two trinkets until this is fixed though, I just don't have the skills to pull those off with all the ice-level style slippage - or at least that is my excuse for now. ;)

Please let me know if there is any more information I can provide or anything I can do to help!

Frampis

Quote from: repeater on January 17, 2010, 02:59:58 PM
I am also having this issue, and from what I have been seeing in different reviews and forum discussions of the game, many other people are too.  Unfortunately, I have also seen a lot of people comment that they are passing on purchasing the game due to the slippery controls, believing it to be intended behavior / design choice and not a glitch.

I'm one of those people. I do recognize that it's not intended behaviour but this input lag just makes the game so infuriating. I find this quite tragic because I really really like this game and would definitely buy it if it controlled properly. From what I've gathered, it's the fault of Flash since I have laggy input with other Flash games as well. Btw, I'm running Win7 32-bit and have laggy/slippery controls on both an nVidia and an Ati card with both the stand-alone and browser versions of the demo. My prosessor is a C2D something something so there definitely shouldn't be any issue there either. It just seems to me that Flash sucks and it's ruined this otherwise fine game. :victoria: