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[azeo]

For most platformers, the basis is the jump. Sure, you have bionic commando and the like, where they have something to replace the jump, but that's not what I'm talking about. So, when designing a platformer, how do you think a jump should feel? Floaty? Intertia? Air Control?

Personally, I like jumps that are more vertical, less horizontal. I find, also, that if you make the jump move slower than running, you wont get people who just jump cause its fun, as well as a more "realistic" jump.

And I must say, I am not a fan of slow, Prince of Persia-style jumps.

[AndyKorth]

Ahhh, great topic. There is really an art form to a good jump!

It's probably a bit obvious, but we've found that holding down the jump key to make a longer or higher jump is pretty important to a good feeling jump. We thought we could get along fine without that, but it was pretty key.

That game was a 3D platformer using PhysX. We applied an initial upward force, then added a certain amount of force each frame while the jump key was held down. We kept track of the total force added in a jump so there was an upper limit. This gave 3 numbers to tweak to adjust the jump (in addition to some air control stuff)

[Konidias]

I'm a fan of Mario jumps... Meaning you get about equal height and distance. It's also responsive and quick, and there's the holding down the jump button to jump higher thing.

Also a big thing I think is important is breaking the "realism" by letting the player fully control the character while in mid-air, as if they were walking on the ground. (as in Mario)

It should be 1 to 1 control or else it's just frustrating. Floaty jumps, in my opinion, are just bad. Anything that isn't super responsive just makes the player fight the controls.

But that's just my personal preference, and it really depends on the game. If it's just something generic, I think my preference works well. If it's something that's supposed to be super realistic, well obviously the character isn't leaping 20 feet in the air and fully controlling their direction as they fall.

[baconman]

I personally favor the air-control influences of MegaMan and MegaMan X style games mostly; but there are times where something along the lines of Yoshi's Island-style manueverability can be a fun, intergral part of the game. I do prefer horizontal distance = vertical distance + 1 or 2; but that's partly due to my preference for fast-paced horizontal momentum as well, not a lack of vertical agility.

There's a few alternative jumping schemes I've played around with the idea of. One of which is like a "Mega Buster charge," where you can power up your jump for a set amount of time/run tiles, and control your jumping height with absolute precision for a particular scenario (for instance, if you get a running start, press and hold jump 8 tiles before your "takeoff" location, and time your release correctly, then your character's inertia will precisely place you where you desire, like +4 height at a run-appropriate speed). Another is kind of similar to the classic press/release method, a bit floaty in it's initial execution, but then followed with a second press/release cycle that pushes you into more down and/or forward momentum for precise, "gymnastic-like" control. And if you DON'T utilize it at some point, you'll fumble the jump and tumble forward instead.

They both have unique, fun qualities, but they also seem a bit extraneous, however. XD

[noah!]

Argh, this is a tough one to nail down, at least for me. Personally, I would disagree with the idea that a good jump has to be fully controllable at all times. Take, for example, Strider. It had a very strict, Castlevania-esque jump. And yet, it just felt right. Maybe it was the predictable arc, or the generous terminal velocity, but you could feel the jump physics right in your thumbs.

But on the other side of the spectrum we have Mega Man, whose jump arc matched your input right down to the frame. It's a completely different type of jump. Yet that feeling was still there. You are in control of this jump.

I guess that this is what I'm going for: Make the jump feel tactile. Make the jump feel responsive. You can work around the other details (jump length, terminal velocity, inertia) later, in the level design.

And sorry for being so vague, jumping physics are just one of those weird things where you only notice them when they're not done well.

[Muz]

Hard topic. It's like discussing what kind of bread is the best.

I like horizontal-ish jumps, and with a lot of control.

[Tiderion]

Strangely enough, I prefer the 3ft high or just enough to clear that log on the ground jumps. I like them to feel real. So no air control at all. Only way for me to enjoy getting more height or length, etc, out of a jump is if you get a powerup to make it so.

Of course, I also enjoy bunny-hopping. So what do I know?

[fraxcell]

In a fairly abstract platformer, I like jobs like those in Knytt, where you have full control over your movement in air, and there is very little inertia. Sure it isn't realistic, but it's a lot more forgiving and adds  to the exploratory aspect of the game because you don't have to worry about making every single jump perfect.

[SplinterOfChaos]

This thread lacks context. I like the jumps in Street Fighter because they're fast, not controllable, and can be done in almost the amount of time it takes your opponent to react. I like the jumps in Mario because having rough control of your air movement creates a physics challenge when deciding how to get past an obstacle. I like Megaman jumps because precise control is best for action games, but i also like Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) jumps because they're quick, fluid, and work nicely with the rest of the mechanics.

What i really want to know is what do you guys think are bad jumps? I honestly can't think of a game with poorly implemented jumping.

But i will say i almost always hate FPS jumping physics. Can't really say what's bad about them, though.

[gimymblert]

On a more technical level:
In some game skip the current frame and calculate the jump as if the button was pressed on the previous frame.

[Chipacabra]

The funny thing is that sometimes going for realism gets you a result that feels less realistic. Jumping is a great example of this. Obviously, it's not realistic to be able to control yourself in midair. But if you don't let the player steer in the air, it actually can feel less realistic! Why?

In reality, if you want to jump you don't just launch yourself into the air at a predetermined direction and velocity. You pick the spot you want to jump to, or the path in the air you want to travel, and your fancy physics computer brain calculates just how much force it will take to do that.

In a platformer video game, you typically don't have the luxury of plotting out your path or destination before you launch yourself. Mario physics replaces the before-the-fact control with after-the-fact control. The process is less realistic, but you get the correct end result of landing exactly where you want. If you have 'realistic' jumping, there's nothing to replace the before-the-fact control of your jump. Once you push the button, you're committed, and there's no error correction provided by the game.

An example of the worst case of this was Ultima 8. In its original release, jumping was always a fixed distance in one of the 8 directions. This made the (many) platform puzzles needlessly frustrating. If the target platform is less than the jump distance, you actually have to move further away to aim the jump correctly. It was pretty terrible. They eventually patched it out with a third option, just clicking on your desired destination and it would adjust the jump for you.

[shadowdim]

just clicking on your desired destination and it would adjust the jump for you.

This.

Clicking, or using some sort of "pointer" when you jump, would be the best compromise, I guess.

[dspencer]

I'm struggling with this a little bit right now, in my platformer. The issue is, I'm not sure what I want from my jump physics. I can tell they don't quite feel right (I guess they feel closer to knytt stories than what I want) but I don't know how to tweak them to make them better. I know I don't want it to be super controllable (like it is, or like megaman, etc). I'm not really sure where to start.

[azeo]

I think a game that didn't have a great jump was Cave Story. I thought it was way too floaty, and hard to be precise. I don't think it's because I'm a bad platformer (Have almost completed super meat boy dark world), it just didn't mesh with me.

[Triplefox]

I think there are basically two constraints on control:

• Immediacy
• Other mechanics

The ideal jump control would be to have something wired to your brain: "jump like THIS." But in an action platformer you have to go through some button presses to do it instead. So then we add cheats on physics like air control, or even something like auto-assisted steering in driving games.

The other part of it is how much the game is asking you to do. If the game has levels like Super Meat Boy but your jump mechanic is tuned like Castlevania, the game is going to get blamed for being hard to control. On the other hand, if you're playing QWOP, it's extremely hard to move around at all, but the level design isn't asking anything special of you either.

For another example, think of a game like Metroid - the jump is tuned so that when you release, you get tons of hang time so that you can land on platforms. If the game is mostly about dodging stuff like in Mario that jump would be too slow, but in Metroid, you're concerned with shooting in mid-air, and the platforming is relatively slow-paced, so the jump actually assists you and also covers up a fault seen in the Mega Man jump - accurate placement of "jump shots." The Metroid jump lets you focus on one thing at a time, instead of forcing you to multitask.

Edit: One more example, from

The jumping is actually BINARY in nature, and as a result it feels incredibly responsive. Since the game doesn't actually have "platforming" in the usual sense it never feels like anything is missing. I started an unfinished remake of it many years ago and added platforms and falling post-jump. It worked surprisingly well...

[Alistair Aitcheson]

What i really want to know is what do you guys think are bad jumps? I honestly can't think of a game with poorly implemented jumping.

I hated the jumps in Flashback, personally. I think the old Prince of Persia games may have had similar controls. It was all done to look very realistic, but it felt incredibly clunky and awkward, and you had to keep on stopping and starting all the time. I've heard it's meant to be a great game, but I found the controls too irritating and have never managed to get into it

I tend not to like it if you can't re-direct yourself mid-jump, except for in beat-em-ups. I actually re-directing yourself is closer to realism than fixed jumps, because in real life you can decide how far you want to jump and how high. In a fixed-jump game you only have a limited number of possible jumps you can do.

And anyway, if you want to treat the player nicely, why not give them some unrealistic abilities, especially if it gives them more control over what they do?

[torahhorse]

Jumps, like walks, reveal a lot about character! When the game is more about mechanics, though, Super Mario jumps all the way. You can't overlook the animation either. Sometimes the animation sells the jump better than the actual movement.

[RichMakeGame!]

on the subject of animation, experienced game animators know that the jump has to begin the instant jump is pressed.. none of that wind up and transfer of mass stuff. Animators new to games might press for it, but nothing breaks jumps like having to wait for a wind-up animation (like er, flashback..but in that game it sort of has a charm to it)

aladdin and lion king had fantastic feeling & animated jumps
edit:
thinking about that, in those games its all about the landing as well as the jump. Another thing which kills a nice jump is stuttering or slowing down when you land- it needs to just go fluidly into the run again like nothing ever happened.
lion king:

[snowyowl]

I think Jumper 2 deserves a mention. Among other things, your mid-air steering ability is a lot lower than in most games... but you can double-jump or wall-jump to change direction quickly, and the game frequently requires you to do this. Yet it manages to feel natural by the time you've beaten the tutorial.

Feeling "natural". Not necessarily realistic, but definitely intuitive. I guess that's the important thing we're driving at here.

An example of a game that I played which did jumping wrong was Dominos. It was physics-based, and you jumped by holding down the "Up" key to charge your jump, and then releasing after a certain amount of time to determine how high you went. You had no ability to steer in mid-air. And there were platforms which you had to jump across in rapid sequence, with precise timing. PLEASE DON'T EVER DO THAT TO ME AGAIN.

[Shackhal]

For me a good jump depends of the game itself. Have someone think that a soft ans slow jump in a rapid type game (like action games) is very "compatible"?? And vice versa??

It's have to be a certain feeling of "compatibility" depending of your game. For me is ideal if you want a successful jump.