One really cool jump thing I want to talk about is Kirby’s jump in Forgotten Land. The devs implemented a system called “Fuzzy Landing,” where if you input a jump close to the ground, rather than initiating a float, Kirby snaps to the ground and jumps again. This was one of the many little elements they implemented in Kirby’s control to make the transition to 3D easier, since they realized that in these scenarios, players more often than not probably just wanted to jump again rather than float. It honestly makes jumping feel great, and most players only really notice it if they already knew about it beforehand.
Its really a shame forgotten land didn't have a hard difficulty, everything else was really nice, the bosses were alright, the physics were truly great, and the levels were wonderfully designed. The only thing that kinda ruined it for me was never feeling in danger ever. The only fight that made me actually somewhat focus was the last one against the red fox/mouse looking thing whatever it is. The breeze mode is for basically toddlers and I get that, I also understand the other one being for younger kids (as Kirby is a kid's game of course) but it still would have been nice to have one more above that, probably about 3 times harder than the the normal mode. Oh one last complaint, the story line/lore was one of the worst I have ever seen in any game. Seriously, I doubt they spent any time on it at all, it's downright terrible. But again I understand it's made for kids and its also not really a lore driven game anyway, so I'm alright with that too.
@@roadkilledpigeon I agree on the difficulty thing; it seems the devs were at least kind of aware that people wanted a harder Kirby game, but the “hard mode” was about as hard as a regular Kirby game. Hard disagree on the story, however. While the backstory isn’t on the level of emotion the 3DS games or even Star Allies had, the worldbuilding for both the game’s setting itself and the series implications are amazing, and the moment to moment plot is easily the best in the series, properly utilizing the series’ main cast and having tons of exciting moments a few heartfelt cutscenes that really rounded out the experience. The method of storytelling for the lore is also vastly improved. Also, if you don’t like something about a game, that’s totally fine (Forgotten Land is far from perfect), but please don’t ever excuse something bad with “it’s made for kids.” Kids deserve good entertainment too, especially since it forms the basis of how they judge media quality when they grow up.
Every time I implement a character jump, I always set it so that you can input jump just a little before you hit the ground, because the game feel awful if you don't do that. I'm not sure if that's what your talking about specifically, but same idea.
@@Calzone407 I think that’s exactly what I’m talking about-kind of like a buffer system. It’s especially important in Kirby since in most games jumping and flight are initiated with the same button.
@@FedoraKirb I'm not saying kids content is always bad, but a lot of things can be made worse (this especially goes for lore imo, not just here but in general) by making things appropriate, easier to to understand, or just generally directed towards themes and elements kids find more cool/interesting and engaging. Actually, I probably shouldn't say it's worse, but for a differently aged audience. Thats somewhat how I felt about the game, but I'm saying it makes sense because it's a kids game. Sort of in the same sense that if I said Mario Oddysee wasn't gory enough or something of that sort, Obviously I'd look like like a fool because it's a kids games (I know thats a bad example as that simply isn't the focus of the game despite the age rating, but hopefully it conveys my point well enough) However, while the Mario games are certainly made with kids in mind, I still like almost all of them (The exception being Sunshine for unbearably bad controls [only my opinion btw, loads of people love the game's controls] and some of the spin off stuff like Mario Run which was mid at best and the mobile adaptation of Mario Kart which wasn't complete trash for a mobile but was so far behind it's console counterpart. The switch is also fairly portable so it doesnt really have a reason to exist.) In fact, I'd say Its's easily one of my favorite franchises of games. However here is what sets it apart from, say, Forgotten land. For the example I will use 3d world, sure the game is super easy on the first half, which can be blitzed through quite easily even if you've never played before and no clue whats going on, however, you still aren't nigh invincible like in Kirby where you have to literally fall asleep to die (my actual first death on wild mode, I legitimately fell asleep on the second last non-boss level of the secret world and died, not because of the game being boring, I enjoyed exploring the scenery the whole way and the music was good, I was just tired at the time). Instead I did die a fair amount on all the base worlds of 3d world, I fell like im a pretty average gamer too, possibly on the lower-than-average side in terms of skill, but still not a terrible scale. This is a way to make the game fun and appropriate for kids, and might I add a nice period of which to hone my skills at the game, being a "Totally epic gamer" such as I am (In other words I suck at games), while still making the somewhat easy part fun. Then you have the secret levels, which start out pretty mid but after the first, if I remember correctly, 3 worlds, It gets pretty intense (at least for me, like I said I'm not a very "good gamer" so all of this is obviously from my point of view only) And it's that intensity, and at times, repetitive failure of the task/level/stage whatever you wanna call it, that makes it all more rewarding when its complete, I felt no such thing in Kirby, even after beating the final arena boss (I will admit he killed me a few times, but that was unfortunately the only one that put up much of a fight) I really didn't feel as though "I've finally done it." as many other games made me feel (hopefully that makes sense). Don't misunderstand, the visuals were pretty awesome, and the music/sound effects equally so, I just wish a bit more difficulty was at hand. Sorry if I worded It wrong above, but this is more of what I meant. as for the lore thats purely my own perception, so if you liked it I'm certainly glad. I don't watch shows/movies and stuff and mostly read books and play vastly different games for those reason (none of that weird trash, for example I really liked Hollow Knight's lore and botw's pretty good too overall, even if it the same recycled Zelda formula to a certain extent, It had a refreshing twist too it [certainly behind most other zelda lores, not saying this in opposition to those, as botw is hardly a zelda game, but more of its own thing with zelda characters/brand] and while nothing that special it was still good enough for me.) So my opinion usually differs tremendously from other people I talk too about such things.
@@Zangelin Probably because he'd have to explain the whip windup as well while Arthur flings weapons right away and can do so like crazy with no resource cost. Plus while you CAN jump backward in the original Castlevania with exact timing, you can't turn in midair. So it's more limiting with attacks.
It's like when people complain about Megaman not being able to shoot in 8 directions like in Contra. Or in general when other games simply don't do something the same as their favorite game or game that they are used to.
True, Sunshine even had the spin mechanic which makes Mario go higher and fall slower, and you can mix the spin with almost every type of jump doubling the amount of ways you can experiment with your jumps.
This is one of the most important topics people need to see, next to collision dynamics, when it comes to action game design and programming. And Sakurai is covering it for free!
If a game requires you to jump, make sure that it’s GOOD. Bad jumping physics can make or break a game especially if it’s a platformer or has a lot of platforming
I dunno if it necessarily breaks a game. Dark Souls has some pretty rough jumping physics but that was more to be consistent with how it's designed to keep players attached to floor while also keeping the more realistic approach to movement in mind.
I was really happy to see he wasn't being prescriptive about jumps, even giving a shout-out one pro of the Ghosts 'n' Goblins system. Almost everyone who makes a blog/video on jump physics basically says, "you have to make the jumps floaty to feel good," but personally I find it kind of annoying when every platformer feels like Luigi from SMB2. Mechanics like floaty jumps and "coyote time" are over-used and can remove the tightness from a game, making it feel too loose and forgiving and asking nothing from the player; it robs some sense of danger and accomplishment from a tricky sequence. For a casual-friendly series like Kirby they're a perfect fit; for other ones it's more debatable according to personal; taste. The most important thing is to realize that these tricks are available... and then apply them as appropriate.
I know they've explicitly said they did this for SM64 - they started by designing and fine-tuning Mario's movement, and only then started building levels around it afterward. I imagine it's similar for other games.
it might be dorky of me but i think that's really cool. digging into arguably the most iconic action mario can perform and trying to improve it and make it greater than it was in previous games.
@@VinnytotheK in his example earlier in the video, he shows jumps that begin to accelerate on the downward trajectory, towards the ground. In SSBU, characters don't accelerate towards the ground, they have a set falling speed right away and it never changes
@@TheSidetrackYT I think what Sakurai was talking about was the fact that characters have a higher jump speed and compensate that time the lost in the airborne by staying at the height of their jump for a longer duration. Basically, instead of something constant, it's quick when they rise but gets slow at their peak. Same time airborn, but makes getting out of the way of danger much quicker.
@@VinnytotheK I believe what he was referring to was having jump physics without a constant downward velocity, instead allowing it to change depending on when along the jump it is. As he said it, toward the peak of the jump, downward velocity suddenly spikes high to bring the character to a stop faster, then on velocity hitting zero, the downward velocity resets back to standard so they'll fall back down at normal speed.
I’m surprised he didn’t talk about the defining aspect of the jump in Super Mario Brothers: the faster your horizontal speed is, the taller your jump will be. It’s a really interesting aspect of the physics in Mario games.
I absolutely love platformers, and so when I do little game prototypes on Unity (or Game Maker Studio, when I was younger) I love experimenting with them. And boy, getting the jump physics right is so hard sometimes. It's very easy to feel that something is wrong and sometimes to know what is wrong, but fine tuning it is a lot more work than you'd think.
One of the things I always appreciate in an action game is the ability to buffer jump inputs before I land. Even if there's only a small window, it can make jumping feel so much better. Mario Galaxy is a really good example of this. When and why to implement input buffering could probably be it's own whole topic (even if you don't just talk about fighting games the whole time!)
Huh I never noticed that jumping in Smash Ultimate had the same "balloon" physics as Knockback and that basically no other Smash game had it. But it really makes jumps a stronger option both in offense and defense, it's pretty sick
I remember when I first thought that the balloon knockback looked weird but now I can't imagine a Smash game without it. Every time I see one of the older games, except maybe Melee, it just feels so slow and weak when characters fly off stage at a steady velocity.
@@teero121 Had the same exact reaction, I don't think I could ever go back to the weird straight angle knockback. The ballooning in Ultimate is just perfect.
@@teero121 For me, even when watching Melee clips they tend to make me think "wait, that killed". It's also strange not having the lightning effect that was added in Smash 4. (Of course expanded upon in Ultimate).
Balloon jumping does have a pretty significant tradeoff though. It's very difficult (and sometimes impossible) to do a rising aerial (attack while you have vertical momentum). Rising aerials in previous games let you do aerial attacks quickly while still being low to the ground, which allows for more offensive options while in the air. With balloon jumps, you get to the top of your jump so fast that most attacks don't have time to come out before you start falling. It's not a negative though; it's a tradeoff from an offensive option to a defensive one. Which you prefer is preference.
I've been making character jump for a decade, but that last bit genuinely threw me off guard. Amazing little tips and tricks from the Great Uncle of modern gaming.
Glad you brought up Metroid! I really enjoy its jump physics. Having that floaty essence gives me a degree of control with those front flips and backflips.
As someone whose been trying to get the jump right in my own games this was really nice to listen too and I didn't even consider that last part before now but it makes so much more sense when you point it out.
If you want to tinker and learn more about this, Game Maker's Toolkit (GMTK) published something called a Platformer Toolkit to let you experiment with basic platforming concepts such as jumping and movement. It's a great way to see how different mechanics influence a game's feel and design.
For me one of the most iconic jump is Donkey Kong. Being able to jump after rolling off an edge, a pit or a hole gives it a certain momentum and a fun way to blast through tough obstacle.
Metroid Dread went ahead and did this too, when you slide off a ledge and jump late, it's officially called a coyote jump and they put sequence breaks in the game for players who learned it.
I still remember some DKC2 bonus rooms where Dixie had to helicopter float over spikes, while Diddy had to roll, fall underneath it, then jump to safety. Mind blowing as a kid.
Coyote Jumping, of various leniencies, are rather common in platformers due to how they make tight jumps off ledges not feel as fucked up, and make minor accidents feel less common, DKC meanwhile has a much stronger form of that where you just straight up don't lose your jump till you end the roll, which gives you that very unique movement
Some time ago I watched a video about jump arcs, and even when the video focused on fighting games I couldn't stop thinking about the topic and how diverse such a simple action can be, and because of that I started to think of interesting differences between other actions, such as interacting with walls, like having a few moments to jump from the wall like Mario 64, slide through the wall like in MegaMan X, grab the wall and climb like in Celeste, jump to the wall and slide upwards like in Super Meat Boy, grab the wall and stay there like in Guacamelee, make a hard but rewarding wall jump like in Super Metroid, etc. How making a jump floaty, fast, go high, responsive, etc. Can change drastically how you feel and how you see the world, is really interesting when people do things such as porting a character from a different game and play it there, like using Shovel Knight moveset in Sonic 1 and pogo jump through enemies, or using Meat Boy in a game like Celeste. Is interesting to think about those differences and how you could implement them differently.
pretty much every game does this as its pretty much impossible to make good level design unless your character's ways to traverse the level is nearly finalized.
@@Potidaon story and art first isn’t an issue imo. When it comes to the gameplay itself, that’s when you should focus on your character’s movement first
@@Potidaon Story, Art, even certain kinds of mechanics, do not interfere with the core necessity of Control being required for Stage Design, and often they can inform how you want your controls to behave and feel
I'd still like to know why Sakurai removed the conservation of ground momentum going into jumps in Smash Bros from Brawl onward. It was one of the things that made Super Mario Bros. stand out among platformers, and it just feels much better than having air speed disconnected from ground speed. I assume it was for balancing reasons, considering the increasingly large roster including characters like Sonic, but still, I miss it. I hope they bring it back if they make another Smash.
Design space variety. When jump speed and ground speed are separate variables, you can have characters that are fast on the ground, slow in the air (e.g. Meta Knight) or vice-versa.
@@zerarch77 Air speed and ground speed still existed in Melee. When you're running, a percentage of your ground speed gets carried over into the air. So characters can have low air speeds and still take advantage of full momentum jumps. Jumping at full speed is very risky, since you need some space to set it up and it's all around a large commitment. They can definitely return.
This is the one mechanic I truly wish came back, Ultimate made a lot of great additions and changes like faster jumping, being able to act out of dash, instant short hop aerials, etc. but transfering momentum to your jumps is the one that would make the Ultimate experience perfect for me.
Technically it still “exists,” it’s just that they now cap your air speed to the max air speed param so that your character won’t go above that amount (basically just “min(groundToAirCalc, maxJumpSpeed)”). In Melee, what they did was allow characters to exceed the max air speed after a grounded jump using a percentage of their ground speed on the frame of the jump (counting friction applied during jumpsquat), and then they’d get slowed down by their air acceleration value every frame until they were back at or below their max air speed. Something interesting is that all the characters that were in Melee have kept the same values for those params ever since then, and because of that you can also see what new characters used another as a base, like Little Mac who was based on Captain Falcon and Incineroar who was based on Ganondorf.
@@zerarch77 That's true that it gives more freedom to devs in designing characters. I still wish a few characters followed that momentum, though, Captain Falcon and Sonic come to mind.
as someone who's spent a lot of hours perfecting jump curves and thinking about them, this video was nice! you managed to fit a lot of stuff into a small amount of time. i hope we get more videos like this one where we go into thr details of a specific mechanic
It costed me a little to understand the difference of jumps on smash Ultimate, for those who were confused go back to 0:43 to 0:58. Look how most of the distance of the jump was made by the arrows that kept decresing its speed value, in contrast to 4:05 where most of the distance of kirby's jump was made by the initial jump. I don't actually know if this is really helps players get out of bad situations but is indeed a really alternative way to program jumps
POV: A thing is flying toward you and you need to JUMP OVER IT. Pick a jump. A) normal jump B) same jump, but go up faster since less reaction time is needed with B), it is the correct choice. It absolutely helps players.
Having a jump or not changes the entire game, so it is only appropriate that there's so much thoughts and details behind every jumps. This is a great focus of a topic and I really wish more about jumping being discussed on this show, sneakily or not. Ghosts n' Goblins is a great mention here!
Jumping is a crucial mechanic in many games. Anyone noticed that jumping is a core mechanic in Sonic Frontiers? Many attacks are airborne, most people were taken aback by this new approach because they are so used to being grounded in hallways, boosting along a race track. Even with a small team of 60 people, this is still a commendable feat.
"small team of 60 people" That's a large team for game development. It isn't a massive team like those of Monolithsoft or western AAA developers, but most games do not have a team that big.
I definitely noticed the faster ascent in SSBU's jumps, but I never noticed it was used previously in Kirby Super Star. Actually on a semi-related note, the fact that that game doesn't have variable jump heights began to mildly annoy me on replays when I first noticed it. (Not to say I don't still love it to death though!!)
You're the first person I've ever seen who's pointed out the fixed jump height in Super Star. I think it's the only Kirby platformer that doesn't have variable jump height, which is pretty strange to me.
The fixed jump height is very important to the overall design. It creates commitment to each jump which is important since Kirby is much more powerful on the ground (has more attack options and Guard mechanic). Also, some hazards and bosses are low enough that you cannot safely jump underneath them (e.g. Kracko).
@@zerarch77 I'd be curious to know if what you're saying was the official developer reason. If it is, it seems they changed their mind in future games, since the more recent entries with Super Star-like abilities still let you control your jump height, which I'm okay with. I believe that the beefier enemies and bosses already balanced out Kirby's added capabilities just fine anyway, and in a Kirby game I value the additional jump control over a marginal bit of extra difficulty.
I can't speak for developers as I've only created mod levels, but if a game relies heavily on jumping, I believe properties such as height and distance should be finalized before level creation. If major movement changes are made after levels have already been designed with the old physics in mind, everything will be driven off-balance.
You're absolutely correct, movement limits are necessary for stage design, and when things change they can get hairy, for a fun but well handled example of what can happen if you do change things later, Halo 1 ended up tweaking the Warthog's physics later in dev because in most scenarios, it felt bad to use due to various specs, and for most of the game this has no negative impact because the Warthog being heavier with better friction makes traversing with it better, and there's no particular need for huge speeds The final stage however has you take your vehicle and blast it down a long escape sequence, an escape sequence the vanilla 'Hog can't actually clear due to not having a high enough top speed for some jumps, so the solution? The Warthog you get for that map has the old properties, its faster, a bit more slippery, and light-weight, its easy to not notice, as the intensity of the scenario makes your struggle for control feel like its stress and the strange angles of the path, but its there
Dude, you decided to spotlight Virtual On. You truly are a man of culture and respect. No seriously, it's rare to find people talking about such a good game let alone reference it.(Mostly because the game was never received any advertisements or pushes to be brought to any audience in the west. It really did deserve better)
Took me a while to understand the explanation for the special jumping mechanic 😅I got a bit stuck on it because it's normal for upward velocity to be strongest at the start of a jump and then for a downward force to the applied. After rewatching that segment and stopping to think of it I realized that this part was actually describing something slightly different. Instead of creating a smooth parabola with the jump it will reach max height much quick the seemingly hang for moment before dropping normally. It's what gives the jumps that feeling of being both exceptionally responsive yet floaty at the same time. It's a really nice touch in games with a lot of action, but if it's not done right it can make jumps feel stiff and unpredictable. If the physics can be balanced so that players are likely to land in the same location with either system then I think it can be considered to be well-implemented. If a game allows for adjusting position midair then what counts as good implementation is harder to describe as it would be more heavily reliant on user feedback. How falling feels to players in such cases can be vastly different. I think Smash Ultimate has nice jumps :)
I always loved games that had a lot of complex verticality but the jump & acrobatic moves were quite rigid & needed serious commitment, some like the older Prince of Persia & Tomb Raider games, modern games like Dark Souls really excel at that but they're quite rare. That was quite insightful Sakurai-san! I cherish this type of content & we are blessed to have a legend of the industry to share with us the experience.
I noticed the different jump in Ultimate, i had an idea of why "its way quicker", but now with this i clearly understand. This is a great topic, if there's something i never feel happy with is how my characters jump in the few demos i have done, but i'm learning.
Heck yeah, jump physics. This is something that you spend a *lot* of time working on as a gamedev student. As Mr. Sakurai says, having a "quick drop" mechanic where 1) the player character falls faster than they rise and 2) the player can control the height of the jump is a great way to make jumping feel snappier. My favorite tidbit, however, is that when it comes to the actual force applied, using 1 g (9.81 m/s2) will feel very floaty. My preferred sweet spot for making small games is about *5* g (varying about 10-20% for purposes of the "quick drop" mechanic). Obviously you can go lower if it suits your game! But I like to default to a value that makes jumping quick and snappy. If you added jumping just so to make more vertical level design possible, a high g value will keep it from being distractingly slow. If you intend it as a major movement mechanic, it will give you better control of where players can go. You want players to feel like they are in control of their character while jumping, and that easily goes out of the window if players can jump farther than they can comfortably see.
I couldn't express it in exactly the same way, but I was in the right area about Kirby Super Star and Smash Ultimate's jumps: you pop up quickly, then hang near the peak of the jump longer, then quickly fall. It's a very satisfying jump. I believe Wario Land 2 and onward used similar jump physics. One other kind of jump not mentioned here is a constant speed for rising and falling (no acceleration/deceleration), seen in games like Wario Land 1 and Hollow Knight. It can feel awkward and it's not something that works for every game, but sometimes it can.
Now that I think about it, being launched in Ultimate has similar physics to jumping because you slow down at the end. Just with more extreme physics, and some cool effects. Amazing how much of a difference that can make!
After playing Smash 4 for four years since it came out, the very first thing I noticed when I finally got to play Ultimate for the first time was how much faster characters ascend when jumping. Even as someone who's played many of the Kirby games, especially Super Star Ultra, I didn't make the connection. When I think about it more I realize how much I enjoyed the feeling of jumps in that game, so it's neat to see it called out like this.
One of the first videos that got me into game design was a 20-30 minute talk on video game jump physics. It was a great presentation, and the lecture-style educational video was right for me at the time. But seeing Sakurai give an amazing presentation on the same subject, with clear examples, in under 5 minutes... this is a tremendous resource.
I've made a character controller for a game I worked on on my 2nd year of Game Design at ICAN Paris and the jump is the one thing that has the most parameters : Jump force (initial upwards push) Fall velocity multiplier (so you can go down faster, if you push the down button it increases the value making you fast fall) Jump height (the target height of the jump) Vertical force (so you can get a bit more force in the vertical direction you point with the controller, making it go a bit faster than just walking) Vertical force cancel (so if you go right then decide to go left you compensate the force and can jump right ins But there's also stuff to know if I'm grounded, what angle of ground is considered ground, walls, ceilings, etc... and be able to still be grounded if 2 objects are close and I go from one to an other, so if I leave the 2nd one the controller doesn't consider itself airborn. But then there's also Wall jumps, multiple cancels for simple stuff like, if you input the other direction do you want to cancel all forces ? I spent the entire development on the character controller alone. Like, the result is very cool and satisfying but we had to nail it because the toy was centered around it. A toy is a game without defeat and win conditions as well as no objectives. It's useful to test game mechanics and game systems and know if they are fun or not on their own. Usually you make a toy then you make it into a game. The toy will tend to get into a certain state (become the defeat condition) and the player will want to get to another state that's more favorable (becomes the win condition and naturally creates objectives to get there).
As someone whose favorite genre is platformers, this might just be the most fascinating video yet. Even with just the numbers as a visual aid, I can see exactly what he means.
I noticed the trivia about the smash jump physics after practicing combos with instant double jump (IDJ). Because you don't slow down until the peak, sometimes a double jump aerial connects easier than a full hop even though they both reach.
That’s really interesting. I suppose that does a good job of “locking in” a character’s jump height. Of course, for a game where you WANT jumps to be a bit more “ballistic”, I imagine the default solution is probably a bit more flexible, but Smash is a game more about positioning, so predictable jumps are far more important
Jump Physics is something that I’ve found tricky to make feel just right, even if I understand the physics behind it; it was really interesting to see how even the jump height ties into a game’s design throughline. Also, thanks for explaining why Super Star (Ultra)’s jump always felt a little weird compared to the modern sidescroller Kirby games; it’s been a minute since I’ve played Forgotten Land but I _think_ they implemented this Super Star-style jump in the game, although I might be mistaken. Also Masahiro Sakurai as a physics teacher is just really funny to me for some reason.
Cool to see that the fast full hops are an intended balance mechanic. Characters like Falco and Diddy Kong have super high, fast full hops which are surprisingly good as defensive options.
Celeste really innovated jumping. It gives the player so much control over its jump trajectory that it's a great match for the precise platforming in that game.
I don't think Celeste actually does anything too unique. Rather, the developers just implemented the jumping very well. There are plenty of games, both 2D and 3D, which have all the same features. Double jumping and midair dashing are not exactly new in video games. The physics and controls are very well-tuned in Celeste, though.
this came right as i was trying to figure out how to write for jumps in a master document for a video game, unbelievably perfect timing. thank you sakurai!
Someone once asked, "Why can't I jump in this game except under specific circumstances?" to which their friend rhetorically asked in return, "Well, how often do you jump in real life?"
For aspiring game devs, it's not just a nintendo thing to tune your movement before making the game. The most important thing to do first and foremost is make sure your character's movement toolbox both feels good and matches the goal of what you want to achieve in the game and a big part of that is jumping. Some people say "You don't jump in real life so it doesn't make sense to have in games" but forget that jumping is both a videogame staple now for games with freely maneuverable characters AND a way to make up for the absence of real control over the character like VR has. It's become an important part of gamefeel, a part of the power fantasy* that video games seek to provide AND a form of player expression. *Games that might not seem like power fantasy often are, STALKER still has you triumph in 1 v 20 scenarios, or at minimum, allowing for it, making you feel the progression of becoming the best STALKER in the wastes by the end of each game. Often the power fantasy of these "Non-Power Fantasies" comes from a feeling of basic primal dominance, being able to jump is a part of that as it puts you in the shoes of an athletic and tough individual who is on an adventure in a dangerous location.
I wish Smash kept running velocity's effect on jumps. It feels so clunky when I'm running at top speed and then my character just stops and jumps as far as they'd go if they were just walking or standing.
People who have been playing Smash more seriously for some time noticed fairly quickly the change in how the jumps accelerates upwards so quickly in ultimate, previously that happened mostly with characters that also fell fast, like Fox, but in Ultimate even Samus rises really fast with her jump. Combined with the universal 3 frame jump windup (besides kazuya), all of that means that jumps are a strong escape options for a much bigger number of fighters. Which contributes to how difficult it is to intercept a jump in the game even when you know it's coming, it has a higher chance of success when you try to hit a character where they'd be at the height of their jumps instead of trying to get them in the middle. There are a lot more consequences, like how it makes moves like a falling Link or Ike neutral air much stronger in the neutral game and how Samus' up air becomes much stronger as an anti-air.
The lower max downward velocity was probably the biggest and most devisive physics decision between "Brawl Players" and "Melee Players," and it's probably one of the de-facto reasons why some people never "leave" Melee. It's way more forgiving for new players, which is good overall, but the more competitive-minded people really like the higher velocity and commitment to movement. It does make PLACING air attacks significantly harder, too.
In Metroid Prime your jump does the opposite of what Mr. Sakurai explained for Smash Ultimate at the end. During the initial part of Samus' jump she starts slow and then accelerates upwards like she's boosting up with a jetpack
Ah...the jumps where you had a hard time changing direction or couldn't at all made things super hard. Not surprising that Ghosts and Goblins had that.
At least GnG enables you to change the attack direction during the jumps, so it's flexible enough. And the jumps are snappy, not floaty, which is good here.
Its true that sakurai meticulously plans out every aspect of smash. Its amazing how he pays attention to all the small details to come together and make something so fluid and high quality
That's exactly WHY it's so high quality! There's tons of little details, and I hope if nothing else, people who play games but aren't interested in development will appreciate just how much work and thought has to go into a game, especially something as mechanically rich as Smash.
I know this goes without saying as technology advanced, but its cool to see how far it's come leading into Oddysee, which has incredibly movement and jump mechanics imo though not all of them have been improvements of course, imo sunshine is an abomination, its the only mario game that was so bad i couldnt play through the whole thing (thats only my opinion though i know a lot of people love it, but in my view its terrible). But i agree, M64's is better than a lot of modern games jump systems
I wonder what does he think of automatic jumping in 3D Zelda games prior to BotW, I played those games since I was a kid and got accustomed to it quickly, I always liked how you can increase your momentum by rolling as you approached a ledge to reach longer distances, despite being automatic it was still satysfying and probably as hard to implement as a normal style of jumping.
Mark Brown (aka. Game Maker's Toolkit) put together his own little gamelet some time ago: it's 2D platformer with a built-in toolbox allowing you to tweak all of its movement physics (acceleration/speed, turnaround) and jumping (height/velocity, gravity up AND down, etc) IN REAL TIME. It's less of a "game" per se, more of a design lesson in the format _of_ a videogame.
There's another important lesson he briefly mentions here: don't design something a certain way just because that's how it's always been. Ask yourself if this particular game needs this feature, regardless of whether other games have it.
I recommend aspiring game developers to make a game that's all about jumping as one of their first games, regardless of what game they actually want to make. When making jump physics, it's really easy to tell if something isn't working right, which means that it's great for practicing debugging and troubleshooting skills.
The knights jump im hollow knight is my favorite just from how different it feels from all other jumps. Most games will either have a high jumo or low jump which means that you dont have ti stop holding the jump button after a certaint point but in hollow knight the molment u stop pressing the jumo button is the molment your charecter falls. Its always so fun to get used to sfter a whole of not olaying the game and getting the hang of it makes yiu feel even mire in controll of your jumps.
I like the one in Ninja Gaiden. You're locked in one direction, but if you press back you will slow down a lot, but still go in that direction. That way you get the careful planning of a Castlevania jump, but you can also kiiinda back off if you miscalculated
I view jump physics as the single most important part of my favorite genre of games, 2D Platformers. If it isn't fun to jump and it doesn't complement the level design, the rest of it falls apart. I especially appreciated the segment on Ghosts N' Goblins as a lot of people question why there's a fixed jump arc. A lot of it, as Sakurai says, is because they want you to be patient and plan out where you're going to jump because you'll always know where you'll land. A lot of people misunderstand GnG and rush to the end of each level when the game becomes a whole lot easier if you slow down and plan out each move like a puzzle game. Another great example of jump physics complementing the rest of the game is Mega Man. Mega Man's jumps are very precise, and you have full mid-air control at almost all times across Classic, X, Zero, and ZX because a lot of those games ask for precision platforming (i.e. Yoku Blocks) and precise aiming with weapons and abilities. The entire game is basically built around precision platforming. Thanks for the great video, Mr. Sakurai! This has been my favorite one yet!
I remember I tried to make a platformer for my game design class in college. I was able to get my guy moving left and right fairly easily, but programming the jump was way harder than I thought.
0:06 The first example game used is Genpei Toumaden (aka The Genji and the Heike Clans), not Samurai-Ghost. Different games. "Samurai-Ghost" was the North American title for the 1992 console-exclusive sequel for the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16. Both games are super-cool and worth checking out, but the former is generally more well-regarded.
game maker's toolkit made a little game (Platformer Toolkit) that lets you mess around with jump qualities if anyone wants to mess around with jump physics
Very interesting deep dive from Sakurai-san. It gives me greater appreciation for how he strives to marry game feel with game essence, which goes against the naive cliche in the Smash community that he only panders to casual players.
I've gotten to thinking about the purpose of jumps in your genre determining their physics. In a platformer, you jump to get TO somewhere. In a combat game, you just to get AWAY from somewhere. Notice how differently Dante from the Devil May Cry series jumps from Mario. Dante's jump is basically a vertical dodge, whereas Mario's jump is used for navigation.
I'd like a follow-up on jumping in Fighting Games, since jumping and jumping attacks are such a pivotal part of the gameplay, yet jumping in those games is very different than every other type of game.
I had my suspicions on the Ultimate jump change considering how often jumping out of shield is, the movement was something I was wondering was just part of how they did the physics as it's not too dissimilar to the knockback change in Ultimate.
![Risk and Reward [Game Essence]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FXqEykD5Ub4/mqdefault.jpg)
![Risk and Reward [Game Essence]](/img/tr.png)
![Strike a Balance with Sound Effects [Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qKjD5qbLUeI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Down with Lag! [Grab Bag]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gjoKKyskco4/mqdefault.jpg)
![Kirby Air Ride [Game Concepts]](/img/1.gif)
Gotta love being able to just say "nah" to physics and stopping all forward momentum just to 180° back to where you first jumped
Did you have an aneurysm
Yeah but only if the game design is good enough to accommodate that, otherwise it makes a game too easy.
B-Reverse special be like:
for that matter, what even IS a double jump
@@admiralAlfonso9001 The writing is fine? It's just redundant.
One really cool jump thing I want to talk about is Kirby’s jump in Forgotten Land. The devs implemented a system called “Fuzzy Landing,” where if you input a jump close to the ground, rather than initiating a float, Kirby snaps to the ground and jumps again. This was one of the many little elements they implemented in Kirby’s control to make the transition to 3D easier, since they realized that in these scenarios, players more often than not probably just wanted to jump again rather than float. It honestly makes jumping feel great, and most players only really notice it if they already knew about it beforehand.
Its really a shame forgotten land didn't have a hard difficulty, everything else was really nice, the bosses were alright, the physics were truly great, and the levels were wonderfully designed. The only thing that kinda ruined it for me was never feeling in danger ever. The only fight that made me actually somewhat focus was the last one against the red fox/mouse looking thing whatever it is. The breeze mode is for basically toddlers and I get that, I also understand the other one being for younger kids (as Kirby is a kid's game of course) but it still would have been nice to have one more above that, probably about 3 times harder than the the normal mode.
Oh one last complaint, the story line/lore was one of the worst I have ever seen in any game. Seriously, I doubt they spent any time on it at all, it's downright terrible. But again I understand it's made for kids and its also not really a lore driven game anyway, so I'm alright with that too.
@@roadkilledpigeon I agree on the difficulty thing; it seems the devs were at least kind of aware that people wanted a harder Kirby game, but the “hard mode” was about as hard as a regular Kirby game.
Hard disagree on the story, however. While the backstory isn’t on the level of emotion the 3DS games or even Star Allies had, the worldbuilding for both the game’s setting itself and the series implications are amazing, and the moment to moment plot is easily the best in the series, properly utilizing the series’ main cast and having tons of exciting moments a few heartfelt cutscenes that really rounded out the experience. The method of storytelling for the lore is also vastly improved.
Also, if you don’t like something about a game, that’s totally fine (Forgotten Land is far from perfect), but please don’t ever excuse something bad with “it’s made for kids.” Kids deserve good entertainment too, especially since it forms the basis of how they judge media quality when they grow up.
Every time I implement a character jump, I always set it so that you can input jump just a little before you hit the ground, because the game feel awful if you don't do that. I'm not sure if that's what your talking about specifically, but same idea.
@@Calzone407 I think that’s exactly what I’m talking about-kind of like a buffer system. It’s especially important in Kirby since in most games jumping and flight are initiated with the same button.
@@FedoraKirb I'm not saying kids content is always bad, but a lot of things can be made worse (this especially goes for lore imo, not just here but in general) by making things appropriate, easier to to understand, or just generally directed towards themes and elements kids find more cool/interesting and engaging. Actually, I probably shouldn't say it's worse, but for a differently aged audience. Thats somewhat how I felt about the game, but I'm saying it makes sense because it's a kids game.
Sort of in the same sense that if I said Mario Oddysee wasn't gory enough or something of that sort, Obviously I'd look like like a fool because it's a kids games (I know thats a bad example as that simply isn't the focus of the game despite the age rating, but hopefully it conveys my point well enough) However, while the Mario games are certainly made with kids in mind, I still like almost all of them (The exception being Sunshine for unbearably bad controls [only my opinion btw, loads of people love the game's controls] and some of the spin off stuff like Mario Run which was mid at best and the mobile adaptation of Mario Kart which wasn't complete trash for a mobile but was so far behind it's console counterpart. The switch is also fairly portable so it doesnt really have a reason to exist.) In fact, I'd say Its's easily one of my favorite franchises of games. However here is what sets it apart from, say, Forgotten land. For the example I will use 3d world, sure the game is super easy on the first half, which can be blitzed through quite easily even if you've never played before and no clue whats going on, however, you still aren't nigh invincible like in Kirby where you have to literally fall asleep to die (my actual first death on wild mode, I legitimately fell asleep on the second last non-boss level of the secret world and died, not because of the game being boring, I enjoyed exploring the scenery the whole way and the music was good, I was just tired at the time). Instead I did die a fair amount on all the base worlds of 3d world, I fell like im a pretty average gamer too, possibly on the lower-than-average side in terms of skill, but still not a terrible scale. This is a way to make the game fun and appropriate for kids, and might I add a nice period of which to hone my skills at the game, being a "Totally epic gamer" such as I am (In other words I suck at games), while still making the somewhat easy part fun. Then you have the secret levels, which start out pretty mid but after the first, if I remember correctly, 3 worlds, It gets pretty intense (at least for me, like I said I'm not a very "good gamer" so all of this is obviously from my point of view only) And it's that intensity, and at times, repetitive failure of the task/level/stage whatever you wanna call it, that makes it all more rewarding when its complete, I felt no such thing in Kirby, even after beating the final arena boss (I will admit he killed me a few times, but that was unfortunately the only one that put up much of a fight) I really didn't feel as though "I've finally done it." as many other games made me feel (hopefully that makes sense).
Don't misunderstand, the visuals were pretty awesome, and the music/sound effects equally so, I just wish a bit more difficulty was at hand.
Sorry if I worded It wrong above, but this is more of what I meant.
as for the lore thats purely my own perception, so if you liked it I'm certainly glad. I don't watch shows/movies and stuff and mostly read books and play vastly different games for those reason (none of that weird trash, for example I really liked Hollow Knight's lore and botw's pretty good too overall, even if it the same recycled Zelda formula to a certain extent, It had a refreshing twist too it [certainly behind most other zelda lores, not saying this in opposition to those, as botw is hardly a zelda game, but more of its own thing with zelda characters/brand] and while nothing that special it was still good enough for me.) So my opinion usually differs tremendously from other people I talk too about such things.
I'm really glad he brought up why Ghosts 'n' Goblins' jumps work the way they do, considering how people are quick to dismiss that type of control
That game is insanely hard. Jumping mechanics are the least of it too since they're retained throughout the series.
surprised he didn't use castlevania as an example instead.
@@Zangelin Probably because he'd have to explain the whip windup as well while Arthur flings weapons right away and can do so like crazy with no resource cost. Plus while you CAN jump backward in the original Castlevania with exact timing, you can't turn in midair. So it's more limiting with attacks.
@@Zangelin I mean true but I'm still happy because the more praise Ghosts 'n' Goblins gets, the better
It's like when people complain about Megaman not being able to shoot in 8 directions like in Contra.
Or in general when other games simply don't do something the same as their favorite game or game that they are used to.
Mario 64, Sunshine etc have so many jump mechanics they are so intriguing to explore from the perspective of a programmer.
The jumping in Mario Sunshine never felt right to me, it's amazing how important is to make it "feel right"
Mario Sunshine personally has the best feeling jumps in any game I’ve played. It’s so satisfying just to do it
I love the jump in Mario sunshine, it feels so fluid
duality of man
True, Sunshine even had the spin mechanic which makes Mario go higher and fall slower, and you can mix the spin with almost every type of jump doubling the amount of ways you can experiment with your jumps.
This is one of the most important topics people need to see, next to collision dynamics, when it comes to action game design and programming. And Sakurai is covering it for free!
If a game requires you to jump, make sure that it’s GOOD. Bad jumping physics can make or break a game especially if it’s a platformer or has a lot of platforming
Don't forget about the Level Design! The only thing that helped you feel the controls in general
You know you did it right when player just casually jumps around cause its fun
I dunno if it necessarily breaks a game. Dark Souls has some pretty rough jumping physics but that was more to be consistent with how it's designed to keep players attached to floor while also keeping the more realistic approach to movement in mind.
No
Wolverine: Adamantium Rage for SNES was guilty of this. Jumps felt incredibly stiff.
I was really happy to see he wasn't being prescriptive about jumps, even giving a shout-out one pro of the Ghosts 'n' Goblins system. Almost everyone who makes a blog/video on jump physics basically says, "you have to make the jumps floaty to feel good," but personally I find it kind of annoying when every platformer feels like Luigi from SMB2. Mechanics like floaty jumps and "coyote time" are over-used and can remove the tightness from a game, making it feel too loose and forgiving and asking nothing from the player; it robs some sense of danger and accomplishment from a tricky sequence. For a casual-friendly series like Kirby they're a perfect fit; for other ones it's more debatable according to personal; taste. The most important thing is to realize that these tricks are available... and then apply them as appropriate.
It probably goes without saying, but it’s highly likely that for every new Mario game, the very first thing they work on is Mario’s jumping.
I know they've explicitly said they did this for SM64 - they started by designing and fine-tuning Mario's movement, and only then started building levels around it afterward. I imagine it's similar for other games.
No they obviously work on his ground movement first. Can't test the jumping out if you can't even move.
well you would be wrong.
@@LightSilver7 huh
it might be dorky of me but i think that's really cool. digging into arguably the most iconic action mario can perform and trying to improve it and make it greater than it was in previous games.
Sakurai should include these pop quizzes in his videos because this one was actually pretty fun.😄
Do you understand what he meant about the type of jump returning from Superstar to Smash Ultimate? I didn't really get what he was saying.
@@VinnytotheK in his example earlier in the video, he shows jumps that begin to accelerate on the downward trajectory, towards the ground. In SSBU, characters don't accelerate towards the ground, they have a set falling speed right away and it never changes
@@TheSidetrackYT I think what Sakurai was talking about was the fact that characters have a higher jump speed and compensate that time the lost in the airborne by staying at the height of their jump for a longer duration. Basically, instead of something constant, it's quick when they rise but gets slow at their peak. Same time airborn, but makes getting out of the way of danger much quicker.
@@VinnytotheK I believe what he was referring to was having jump physics without a constant downward velocity, instead allowing it to change depending on when along the jump it is. As he said it, toward the peak of the jump, downward velocity suddenly spikes high to bring the character to a stop faster, then on velocity hitting zero, the downward velocity resets back to standard so they'll fall back down at normal speed.
@@TheSidetrackYT no, with acceleration he means Gravity and every jump has that. Is just how strong it is what changes.
I’m surprised he didn’t talk about the defining aspect of the jump in Super Mario Brothers: the faster your horizontal speed is, the taller your jump will be. It’s a really interesting aspect of the physics in Mario games.
This is something I noticed when playing SMB recently
I absolutely love platformers, and so when I do little game prototypes on Unity (or Game Maker Studio, when I was younger) I love experimenting with them.
And boy, getting the jump physics right is so hard sometimes. It's very easy to feel that something is wrong and sometimes to know what is wrong, but fine tuning it is a lot more work than you'd think.
One of the things I always appreciate in an action game is the ability to buffer jump inputs before I land. Even if there's only a small window, it can make jumping feel so much better. Mario Galaxy is a really good example of this. When and why to implement input buffering could probably be it's own whole topic (even if you don't just talk about fighting games the whole time!)
Huh I never noticed that jumping in Smash Ultimate had the same "balloon" physics as Knockback and that basically no other Smash game had it. But it really makes jumps a stronger option both in offense and defense, it's pretty sick
I remember when I first thought that the balloon knockback looked weird but now I can't imagine a Smash game without it. Every time I see one of the older games, except maybe Melee, it just feels so slow and weak when characters fly off stage at a steady velocity.
@@teero121 Had the same exact reaction, I don't think I could ever go back to the weird straight angle knockback. The ballooning in Ultimate is just perfect.
@@teero121 For me, even when watching Melee clips they tend to make me think "wait, that killed". It's also strange not having the lightning effect that was added in Smash 4. (Of course expanded upon in Ultimate).
@@scarffoxandfriends9401 eh you get used to the different knockback in no time
Balloon jumping does have a pretty significant tradeoff though. It's very difficult (and sometimes impossible) to do a rising aerial (attack while you have vertical momentum). Rising aerials in previous games let you do aerial attacks quickly while still being low to the ground, which allows for more offensive options while in the air. With balloon jumps, you get to the top of your jump so fast that most attacks don't have time to come out before you start falling.
It's not a negative though; it's a tradeoff from an offensive option to a defensive one. Which you prefer is preference.
I've been making character jump for a decade, but that last bit genuinely threw me off guard. Amazing little tips and tricks from the Great Uncle of modern gaming.
Glad you brought up Metroid! I really enjoy its jump physics. Having that floaty essence gives me a degree of control with those front flips and backflips.
About that, they really delivered in the Smash apparition of Samus, didn't they? She's one of the floatiest characters, very similar to her games
As someone whose been trying to get the jump right in my own games this was really nice to listen too and I didn't even consider that last part before now but it makes so much more sense when you point it out.
If you want to tinker and learn more about this, Game Maker's Toolkit (GMTK) published something called a Platformer Toolkit to let you experiment with basic platforming concepts such as jumping and movement. It's a great way to see how different mechanics influence a game's feel and design.
Is this a sponsored comment or something
For me one of the most iconic jump is Donkey Kong. Being able to jump after rolling off an edge, a pit or a hole gives it a certain momentum and a fun way to blast through tough obstacle.
Metroid Dread went ahead and did this too, when you slide off a ledge and jump late, it's officially called a coyote jump and they put sequence breaks in the game for players who learned it.
I still remember some DKC2 bonus rooms where Dixie had to helicopter float over spikes, while Diddy had to roll, fall underneath it, then jump to safety. Mind blowing as a kid.
Coyote Jumping, of various leniencies, are rather common in platformers due to how they make tight jumps off ledges not feel as fucked up, and make minor accidents feel less common, DKC meanwhile has a much stronger form of that where you just straight up don't lose your jump till you end the roll, which gives you that very unique movement
Some time ago I watched a video about jump arcs, and even when the video focused on fighting games I couldn't stop thinking about the topic and how diverse such a simple action can be, and because of that I started to think of interesting differences between other actions, such as interacting with walls, like having a few moments to jump from the wall like Mario 64, slide through the wall like in MegaMan X, grab the wall and climb like in Celeste, jump to the wall and slide upwards like in Super Meat Boy, grab the wall and stay there like in Guacamelee, make a hard but rewarding wall jump like in Super Metroid, etc.
How making a jump floaty, fast, go high, responsive, etc. Can change drastically how you feel and how you see the world, is really interesting when people do things such as porting a character from a different game and play it there, like using Shovel Knight moveset in Sonic 1 and pogo jump through enemies, or using Meat Boy in a game like Celeste. Is interesting to think about those differences and how you could implement them differently.
I struggled and ignored this topic for so long with a full degree and yet he explained it all in one minute. Thank you so much!
I've always heard that Nintendo developed their characters and their movement before making the game.
This sure reinforces that notion!
pretty much every game does this as its pretty much impossible to make good level design unless your character's ways to traverse the level is nearly finalized.
That's the way every action game should be made. Any dev that starts with story, art or complex mechanics first is making it harder for themseles.
@@Potidaon story and art first isn’t an issue imo. When it comes to the gameplay itself, that’s when you should focus on your character’s movement first
@@Potidaon Story, Art, even certain kinds of mechanics, do not interfere with the core necessity of Control being required for Stage Design, and often they can inform how you want your controls to behave and feel
0:12 Great to see Virtual On get some recognition! Thank you, Sakurai.
I'd still like to know why Sakurai removed the conservation of ground momentum going into jumps in Smash Bros from Brawl onward. It was one of the things that made Super Mario Bros. stand out among platformers, and it just feels much better than having air speed disconnected from ground speed. I assume it was for balancing reasons, considering the increasingly large roster including characters like Sonic, but still, I miss it. I hope they bring it back if they make another Smash.
Design space variety. When jump speed and ground speed are separate variables, you can have characters that are fast on the ground, slow in the air (e.g. Meta Knight) or vice-versa.
@@zerarch77 Air speed and ground speed still existed in Melee. When you're running, a percentage of your ground speed gets carried over into the air. So characters can have low air speeds and still take advantage of full momentum jumps.
Jumping at full speed is very risky, since you need some space to set it up and it's all around a large commitment. They can definitely return.
This is the one mechanic I truly wish came back, Ultimate made a lot of great additions and changes like faster jumping, being able to act out of dash, instant short hop aerials, etc. but transfering momentum to your jumps is the one that would make the Ultimate experience perfect for me.
Technically it still “exists,” it’s just that they now cap your air speed to the max air speed param so that your character won’t go above that amount (basically just “min(groundToAirCalc, maxJumpSpeed)”). In Melee, what they did was allow characters to exceed the max air speed after a grounded jump using a percentage of their ground speed on the frame of the jump (counting friction applied during jumpsquat), and then they’d get slowed down by their air acceleration value every frame until they were back at or below their max air speed. Something interesting is that all the characters that were in Melee have kept the same values for those params ever since then, and because of that you can also see what new characters used another as a base, like Little Mac who was based on Captain Falcon and Incineroar who was based on Ganondorf.
@@zerarch77 That's true that it gives more freedom to devs in designing characters. I still wish a few characters followed that momentum, though, Captain Falcon and Sonic come to mind.
Another great video by Sakurai! I love jumps, as you can tell by my name, so glad to see them covered in great detail.
VIRTUAL-ON! WHOA!! Just seeing that 1-second clip brought back so many memories, I loved that game. Never seen anyone reference it before.
as someone who's spent a lot of hours perfecting jump curves and thinking about them, this video was nice! you managed to fit a lot of stuff into a small amount of time. i hope we get more videos like this one where we go into thr details of a specific mechanic
It costed me a little to understand the difference of jumps on smash Ultimate, for those who were confused go back to 0:43 to 0:58. Look how most of the distance of the jump was made by the arrows that kept decresing its speed value, in contrast to 4:05 where most of the distance of kirby's jump was made by the initial jump. I don't actually know if this is really helps players get out of bad situations but is indeed a really alternative way to program jumps
POV: A thing is flying toward you and you need to JUMP OVER IT. Pick a jump.
A) normal jump
B) same jump, but go up faster
since less reaction time is needed with B), it is the correct choice. It absolutely helps players.
Speaking of the physical impossibility of changing trajectory mid-jump, _double jumps!_ I love those.
so amazing. thanks for even more design specifics, sakurai!
Having a jump or not changes the entire game, so it is only appropriate that there's so much thoughts and details behind every jumps. This is a great focus of a topic and I really wish more about jumping being discussed on this show, sneakily or not.
Ghosts n' Goblins is a great mention here!
You can tell that Sakuri is really proud of SSBU, good for him
this is my favorite of these videos so far
Jumping is a crucial mechanic in many games. Anyone noticed that jumping is a core mechanic in Sonic Frontiers? Many attacks are airborne, most people were taken aback by this new approach because they are so used to being grounded in hallways, boosting along a race track. Even with a small team of 60 people, this is still a commendable feat.
Sonic games have always had verticality, jumping, and gravity.
"small team of 60 people"
That's a large team for game development. It isn't a massive team like those of Monolithsoft or western AAA developers, but most games do not have a team that big.
"Anyone noticed that jumping is a core mechanic in this platformer game"
@@TheGamingAnole55 yeah indie games maybe
Jumping has been a core mechanic in every sonic game, which makes sense since they are platforming games at their essence
I've thought a lot about jumping in games, and its really nice to see so many examples in quick succession! I appreciate the insight.
This is my favorite episode so far because he goes into far more depth.
I definitely noticed the faster ascent in SSBU's jumps, but I never noticed it was used previously in Kirby Super Star. Actually on a semi-related note, the fact that that game doesn't have variable jump heights began to mildly annoy me on replays when I first noticed it. (Not to say I don't still love it to death though!!)
You're the first person I've ever seen who's pointed out the fixed jump height in Super Star. I think it's the only Kirby platformer that doesn't have variable jump height, which is pretty strange to me.
The fixed jump height is very important to the overall design. It creates commitment to each jump which is important since Kirby is much more powerful on the ground (has more attack options and Guard mechanic). Also, some hazards and bosses are low enough that you cannot safely jump underneath them (e.g. Kracko).
@@zerarch77 I'd be curious to know if what you're saying was the official developer reason. If it is, it seems they changed their mind in future games, since the more recent entries with Super Star-like abilities still let you control your jump height, which I'm okay with. I believe that the beefier enemies and bosses already balanced out Kirby's added capabilities just fine anyway, and in a Kirby game I value the additional jump control over a marginal bit of extra difficulty.
I can't speak for developers as I've only created mod levels, but if a game relies heavily on jumping, I believe properties such as height and distance should be finalized before level creation. If major movement changes are made after levels have already been designed with the old physics in mind, everything will be driven off-balance.
You are correct and this is generally standard practice for retail games
You're absolutely correct, movement limits are necessary for stage design, and when things change they can get hairy, for a fun but well handled example of what can happen if you do change things later, Halo 1 ended up tweaking the Warthog's physics later in dev because in most scenarios, it felt bad to use due to various specs, and for most of the game this has no negative impact because the Warthog being heavier with better friction makes traversing with it better, and there's no particular need for huge speeds
The final stage however has you take your vehicle and blast it down a long escape sequence, an escape sequence the vanilla 'Hog can't actually clear due to not having a high enough top speed for some jumps, so the solution? The Warthog you get for that map has the old properties, its faster, a bit more slippery, and light-weight, its easy to not notice, as the intensity of the scenario makes your struggle for control feel like its stress and the strange angles of the path, but its there
This explains why Jumping out of Shield in SSBU is one of your better response options to an attack. Nice.
Dude, you decided to spotlight Virtual On. You truly are a man of culture and respect.
No seriously, it's rare to find people talking about such a good game let alone reference it.(Mostly because the game was never received any advertisements or pushes to be brought to any audience in the west. It really did deserve better)
Took me a while to understand the explanation for the special jumping mechanic 😅I got a bit stuck on it because it's normal for upward velocity to be strongest at the start of a jump and then for a downward force to the applied. After rewatching that segment and stopping to think of it I realized that this part was actually describing something slightly different. Instead of creating a smooth parabola with the jump it will reach max height much quick the seemingly hang for moment before dropping normally. It's what gives the jumps that feeling of being both exceptionally responsive yet floaty at the same time. It's a really nice touch in games with a lot of action, but if it's not done right it can make jumps feel stiff and unpredictable. If the physics can be balanced so that players are likely to land in the same location with either system then I think it can be considered to be well-implemented. If a game allows for adjusting position midair then what counts as good implementation is harder to describe as it would be more heavily reliant on user feedback. How falling feels to players in such cases can be vastly different. I think Smash Ultimate has nice jumps :)
I really enjoyed the quick Pop Quiz, really put me into thinking and proving that these videos actually are helpful in learning
I always loved games that had a lot of complex verticality but the jump & acrobatic moves were quite rigid & needed serious commitment, some like the older Prince of Persia & Tomb Raider games, modern games like Dark Souls really excel at that but they're quite rare.
That was quite insightful Sakurai-san! I cherish this type of content & we are blessed to have a legend of the industry to share with us the experience.
Sakurai is the kind of guy who could talk about something as simple as jumping ina video game for hours on end.
As a (very small) game developer, you really start to appreciate how much depth some seemingly simple mechanics have.
I noticed the different jump in Ultimate, i had an idea of why "its way quicker", but now with this i clearly understand. This is a great topic, if there's something i never feel happy with is how my characters jump in the few demos i have done, but i'm learning.
Heck yeah, jump physics. This is something that you spend a *lot* of time working on as a gamedev student. As Mr. Sakurai says, having a "quick drop" mechanic where 1) the player character falls faster than they rise and 2) the player can control the height of the jump is a great way to make jumping feel snappier. My favorite tidbit, however, is that when it comes to the actual force applied, using 1 g (9.81 m/s2) will feel very floaty. My preferred sweet spot for making small games is about *5* g (varying about 10-20% for purposes of the "quick drop" mechanic).
Obviously you can go lower if it suits your game! But I like to default to a value that makes jumping quick and snappy. If you added jumping just so to make more vertical level design possible, a high g value will keep it from being distractingly slow. If you intend it as a major movement mechanic, it will give you better control of where players can go. You want players to feel like they are in control of their character while jumping, and that easily goes out of the window if players can jump farther than they can comfortably see.
I couldn't express it in exactly the same way, but I was in the right area about Kirby Super Star and Smash Ultimate's jumps: you pop up quickly, then hang near the peak of the jump longer, then quickly fall. It's a very satisfying jump. I believe Wario Land 2 and onward used similar jump physics.
One other kind of jump not mentioned here is a constant speed for rising and falling (no acceleration/deceleration), seen in games like Wario Land 1 and Hollow Knight. It can feel awkward and it's not something that works for every game, but sometimes it can.
Now that I think about it, being launched in Ultimate has similar physics to jumping because you slow down at the end. Just with more extreme physics, and some cool effects. Amazing how much of a difference that can make!
I love the retreating jumps animations in ultimate.
*Input the jump then immediately press back
Thanks for breaking it down for us, Sakurai-san!
One of your best videos so far! 👏🏻
After playing Smash 4 for four years since it came out, the very first thing I noticed when I finally got to play Ultimate for the first time was how much faster characters ascend when jumping. Even as someone who's played many of the Kirby games, especially Super Star Ultra, I didn't make the connection. When I think about it more I realize how much I enjoyed the feeling of jumps in that game, so it's neat to see it called out like this.
One of the first videos that got me into game design was a 20-30 minute talk on video game jump physics. It was a great presentation, and the lecture-style educational video was right for me at the time. But seeing Sakurai give an amazing presentation on the same subject, with clear examples, in under 5 minutes... this is a tremendous resource.
I've made a character controller for a game I worked on on my 2nd year of Game Design at ICAN Paris and the jump is the one thing that has the most parameters :
Jump force (initial upwards push)
Fall velocity multiplier (so you can go down faster, if you push the down button it increases the value making you fast fall)
Jump height (the target height of the jump)
Vertical force (so you can get a bit more force in the vertical direction you point with the controller, making it go a bit faster than just walking)
Vertical force cancel (so if you go right then decide to go left you compensate the force and can jump right ins
But there's also stuff to know if I'm grounded, what angle of ground is considered ground, walls, ceilings, etc... and be able to still be grounded if 2 objects are close and I go from one to an other, so if I leave the 2nd one the controller doesn't consider itself airborn.
But then there's also Wall jumps, multiple cancels for simple stuff like, if you input the other direction do you want to cancel all forces ?
I spent the entire development on the character controller alone. Like, the result is very cool and satisfying but we had to nail it because the toy was centered around it.
A toy is a game without defeat and win conditions as well as no objectives. It's useful to test game mechanics and game systems and know if they are fun or not on their own. Usually you make a toy then you make it into a game. The toy will tend to get into a certain state (become the defeat condition) and the player will want to get to another state that's more favorable (becomes the win condition and naturally creates objectives to get there).
As someone whose favorite genre is platformers, this might just be the most fascinating video yet. Even with just the numbers as a visual aid, I can see exactly what he means.
I noticed the trivia about the smash jump physics after practicing combos with instant double jump (IDJ). Because you don't slow down until the peak, sometimes a double jump aerial connects easier than a full hop even though they both reach.
That’s really interesting. I suppose that does a good job of “locking in” a character’s jump height. Of course, for a game where you WANT jumps to be a bit more “ballistic”, I imagine the default solution is probably a bit more flexible, but Smash is a game more about positioning, so predictable jumps are far more important
Jump Physics is something that I’ve found tricky to make feel just right, even if I understand the physics behind it; it was really interesting to see how even the jump height ties into a game’s design throughline. Also, thanks for explaining why Super Star (Ultra)’s jump always felt a little weird compared to the modern sidescroller Kirby games; it’s been a minute since I’ve played Forgotten Land but I _think_ they implemented this Super Star-style jump in the game, although I might be mistaken.
Also Masahiro Sakurai as a physics teacher is just really funny to me for some reason.
Cool to see that the fast full hops are an intended balance mechanic. Characters like Falco and Diddy Kong have super high, fast full hops which are surprisingly good as defensive options.
Celeste really innovated jumping. It gives the player so much control over its jump trajectory that it's a great match for the precise platforming in that game.
I don't think Celeste actually does anything too unique. Rather, the developers just implemented the jumping very well. There are plenty of games, both 2D and 3D, which have all the same features. Double jumping and midair dashing are not exactly new in video games. The physics and controls are very well-tuned in Celeste, though.
I use Godot and wanted to make a jumping mechanic. It helped me a lot. thanks man!
this came right as i was trying to figure out how to write for jumps in a master document for a video game, unbelievably perfect timing. thank you sakurai!
Did you try the Game Maker's Toolkit Platformer Toolkit? It's super helpful as well!
Wow, this one was really good. You really spilled beans
Excellent Jump Physics information!😀👍
This is a very important topic. Thank you so much for another helpful lesson.
👍Implementing your knowledge is next level. Thank you for sharing!
Someone once asked, "Why can't I jump in this game except under specific circumstances?" to which their friend rhetorically asked in return, "Well, how often do you jump in real life?"
For aspiring game devs, it's not just a nintendo thing to tune your movement before making the game. The most important thing to do first and foremost is make sure your character's movement toolbox both feels good and matches the goal of what you want to achieve in the game and a big part of that is jumping. Some people say "You don't jump in real life so it doesn't make sense to have in games" but forget that jumping is both a videogame staple now for games with freely maneuverable characters AND a way to make up for the absence of real control over the character like VR has. It's become an important part of gamefeel, a part of the power fantasy* that video games seek to provide AND a form of player expression.
*Games that might not seem like power fantasy often are, STALKER still has you triumph in 1 v 20 scenarios, or at minimum, allowing for it, making you feel the progression of becoming the best STALKER in the wastes by the end of each game. Often the power fantasy of these "Non-Power Fantasies" comes from a feeling of basic primal dominance, being able to jump is a part of that as it puts you in the shoes of an athletic and tough individual who is on an adventure in a dangerous location.
I wish Smash kept running velocity's effect on jumps. It feels so clunky when I'm running at top speed and then my character just stops and jumps as far as they'd go if they were just walking or standing.
People who have been playing Smash more seriously for some time noticed fairly quickly the change in how the jumps accelerates upwards so quickly in ultimate, previously that happened mostly with characters that also fell fast, like Fox, but in Ultimate even Samus rises really fast with her jump.
Combined with the universal 3 frame jump windup (besides kazuya), all of that means that jumps are a strong escape options for a much bigger number of fighters. Which contributes to how difficult it is to intercept a jump in the game even when you know it's coming, it has a higher chance of success when you try to hit a character where they'd be at the height of their jumps instead of trying to get them in the middle.
There are a lot more consequences, like how it makes moves like a falling Link or Ike neutral air much stronger in the neutral game and how Samus' up air becomes much stronger as an anti-air.
I'd love to hear more about how an idea becomes a video game. Pitching and storyboarding, etc.
The lower max downward velocity was probably the biggest and most devisive physics decision between "Brawl Players" and "Melee Players," and it's probably one of the de-facto reasons why some people never "leave" Melee. It's way more forgiving for new players, which is good overall, but the more competitive-minded people really like the higher velocity and commitment to movement. It does make PLACING air attacks significantly harder, too.
Thanks for today's lesson Sakurai. Arigato
In Metroid Prime your jump does the opposite of what Mr. Sakurai explained for Smash Ultimate at the end. During the initial part of Samus' jump she starts slow and then accelerates upwards like she's boosting up with a jetpack
You can really feel that when you hit Space Jump, Samus sorta shakes in the air for a moment before lunging up again
Ah...the jumps where you had a hard time changing direction or couldn't at all made things super hard.
Not surprising that Ghosts and Goblins had that.
At least GnG enables you to change the attack direction during the jumps, so it's flexible enough. And the jumps are snappy, not floaty, which is good here.
Its true that sakurai meticulously plans out every aspect of smash. Its amazing how he pays attention to all the small details to come together and make something so fluid and high quality
That's exactly WHY it's so high quality! There's tons of little details, and I hope if nothing else, people who play games but aren't interested in development will appreciate just how much work and thought has to go into a game, especially something as mechanically rich as Smash.
Mario 64 has one of the best jump mechanics in a video game.
I know this goes without saying as technology advanced, but its cool to see how far it's come leading into Oddysee, which has incredibly movement and jump mechanics imo
though not all of them have been improvements of course, imo sunshine is an abomination, its the only mario game that was so bad i couldnt play through the whole thing (thats only my opinion though i know a lot of people love it, but in my view its terrible). But i agree, M64's is better than a lot of modern games jump systems
And still pretty much the best 3rd person swimming mechanics to this day. Why will no one copy it?
@@PabbyPabbles because they want to make new stuff (I also disagree on that, I though the swimming mechanics were awful)
@@roadkilledpigeon what new swimming mechanics have they made in the last 25 years, though?
@@PabbyPabbles New swimming mechanics... pretty much every game that involves swimming has one.
Even Fallen Order has a swimming mechanic
I wonder what does he think of automatic jumping in 3D Zelda games prior to BotW, I played those games since I was a kid and got accustomed to it quickly, I always liked how you can increase your momentum by rolling as you approached a ledge to reach longer distances, despite being automatic it was still satysfying and probably as hard to implement as a normal style of jumping.
Mark Brown (aka. Game Maker's Toolkit) put together his own little gamelet some time ago: it's 2D platformer with a built-in toolbox allowing you to tweak all of its movement physics (acceleration/speed, turnaround) and jumping (height/velocity, gravity up AND down, etc) IN REAL TIME.
It's less of a "game" per se, more of a design lesson in the format _of_ a videogame.
There's another important lesson he briefly mentions here: don't design something a certain way just because that's how it's always been. Ask yourself if this particular game needs this feature, regardless of whether other games have it.
this is one aspect to designing a physics engine or choosing a physics engine and what makes characters feel floaty vs not floaty.
I recommend aspiring game developers to make a game that's all about jumping as one of their first games, regardless of what game they actually want to make. When making jump physics, it's really easy to tell if something isn't working right, which means that it's great for practicing debugging and troubleshooting skills.
The knights jump im hollow knight is my favorite just from how different it feels from all other jumps. Most games will either have a high jumo or low jump which means that you dont have ti stop holding the jump button after a certaint point but in hollow knight the molment u stop pressing the jumo button is the molment your charecter falls. Its always so fun to get used to sfter a whole of not olaying the game and getting the hang of it makes yiu feel even mire in controll of your jumps.
anything this guy uploads is amazing
I like the one in Ninja Gaiden. You're locked in one direction, but if you press back you will slow down a lot, but still go in that direction. That way you get the careful planning of a Castlevania jump, but you can also kiiinda back off if you miscalculated
Nice to see KSS's jumping mechanics get covered. It's pretty quirky and I like it.
bless you for inclusing short jups
I view jump physics as the single most important part of my favorite genre of games, 2D Platformers. If it isn't fun to jump and it doesn't complement the level design, the rest of it falls apart. I especially appreciated the segment on Ghosts N' Goblins as a lot of people question why there's a fixed jump arc. A lot of it, as Sakurai says, is because they want you to be patient and plan out where you're going to jump because you'll always know where you'll land. A lot of people misunderstand GnG and rush to the end of each level when the game becomes a whole lot easier if you slow down and plan out each move like a puzzle game. Another great example of jump physics complementing the rest of the game is Mega Man. Mega Man's jumps are very precise, and you have full mid-air control at almost all times across Classic, X, Zero, and ZX because a lot of those games ask for precision platforming (i.e. Yoku Blocks) and precise aiming with weapons and abilities. The entire game is basically built around precision platforming. Thanks for the great video, Mr. Sakurai! This has been my favorite one yet!
I remember I tried to make a platformer for my game design class in college. I was able to get my guy moving left and right fairly easily, but programming the jump was way harder than I thought.
Sakurai having fun adding things like pop quizzes now to his videos.
0:06 The first example game used is Genpei Toumaden (aka The Genji and the Heike Clans), not Samurai-Ghost. Different games. "Samurai-Ghost" was the North American title for the 1992 console-exclusive sequel for the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16. Both games are super-cool and worth checking out, but the former is generally more well-regarded.
Kazuya just sitting there with the frame 7 jumpsquat
That's outta pocket man
game maker's toolkit made a little game (Platformer Toolkit) that lets you mess around with jump qualities if anyone wants to mess around with jump physics
Very interesting deep dive from Sakurai-san. It gives me greater appreciation for how he strives to marry game feel with game essence, which goes against the naive cliche in the Smash community that he only panders to casual players.
Dang, I was hoping he'd touch on the loss of jump movement inertia from Melee to Brawl. Would be an interesting topic.
Dw, it should be covered in the Melee/Brawl videos coming up
I've gotten to thinking about the purpose of jumps in your genre determining their physics. In a platformer, you jump to get TO somewhere. In a combat game, you just to get AWAY from somewhere. Notice how differently Dante from the Devil May Cry series jumps from Mario. Dante's jump is basically a vertical dodge, whereas Mario's jump is used for navigation.
I'd like a follow-up on jumping in Fighting Games, since jumping and jumping attacks are such a pivotal part of the gameplay, yet jumping in those games is very different than every other type of game.
I've always been fond of the jumping in Ice Climber. It was very unique, and I think it worked very well for the game they made.
it was a nice and clean system yea
3:55 Was it Kirby's Jump?
Good thing I was paying attention. It was Kirby after all.
i think it might be for all characters?
looking forward to the next smash game, which is just ultimate without jumping
I had my suspicions on the Ultimate jump change considering how often jumping out of shield is, the movement was something I was wondering was just part of how they did the physics as it's not too dissimilar to the knockback change in Ultimate.