Welcome to part 2 in our ongoing series of weekly updates on my experiments with my old friend, Klik & Play. Last week I discussed linked/paired object chains, and their potential application to swing simulations. While I considered using this week's entry for a further discussion on pairing or the advantages of wait-based simulation, I decided to talk a bit about one of the most overlooked object movements in KnP: The Platform Movement.

The Platform Movement is generally looked down upon. It doesn't function well with sprite animations of irregular height and hotspot combinations, landing a jump zeros horizontal momentum, its rudimentary inertia simulation mirrors momentum when the player tries to switch directions, and the wall jumping bug is well known. But despite all this, the built-in platform movement has great potential.

If you've every tried to make a two-player game with the platform movement, I'm sure you've noticed that the "bounce" condition when applied between two platform movement objects treats the slower/unmoving player as a wall. But a simple trick can change that dynamic. One of my recent experiments was to try transference of inertia between platform objects of different speeds. It's simple. Three events. The first tests collision, and object A moving faster than B. If A is faster, B takes its direction, and both object swap speed. The second tests collision, and object B moving faster than A. If B is faster, A takes B's direction, and both objects swap speed. The third event simply tests collision, and results in a bounce. The effect of this (with tweaking) is the ability to unexpectedly shove the other player off a platform, or into a trap.

But the greatest potential I found came from not using the platform movement as a player movement. Set a number of these object to control by an imaginary player 2, and lock player 2 input at the start of a level. When two of the same collide (from being shoved by a player object), "switch position with another object" and the two appear to transfer inertia from horizontal collisions! I've found a few other tricks with locked platformer objects, but I'll probably save them for the next KOTM. It's coming up in about 11 days, I think?

edit1: fixed a few typing errors. Original post was written under time constraints.