Level Up.pdf

94 LEVEL 5 The Three Cs, Part 1—Character
The cliff ledge shown in the above graphic is obviously completely
unobtainable with a normal jump/double jump distance. The player will know
that they won ’ t ever be able to reach this height and will look for another
way to get to their destination.
When determining metrics, you will have to work with a programmer to
determine where and how the character is going to interact with the world.
This is done by determining collision — the code calculates where and how
the character is interacting with the world. The more collision points have to
be calculated, the slower the code runs. In some cases, collision is
determined from a primary point on the character model. There are
generally three locations on a character from which the player can interact
with the world: the head, the feet and the center of the body.
The head: while useful for attaching hats, treating the character ’ s head as
the main collision point can cause problems, especially when determining
ground collision. The player character can appear to not be rooted to the
ground, giving the appearance of slightly floating.
The feet: while detecting collision from the feet seems like the logical
location, it can cause issues if it is used to determine where a power- up
is collected (for example if it is in mid - air, the player will have to jump to
collect it).