The Dink Network

Platform Dink

January 23rd, 2010
2.0
Score : 7.7 good
fairy.gif
Someone
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
Platform Dink is a simple example of a set of scripts that allow Dink to emulate a Mario-like platformer.

Good: Well commented scripts and nothing unnecessarily complicated. It works.

Bad: The mechanics have an obvious flaw: vertical movement of Dink is not disabled. Up movement appears disabled because it is counteracted by the continuous loop that pushes Dink downwards (i.e. gravity), and down movement appears disabled because touch() of the platforms bumps Dink back to on top of the platform. But vertical movement isn't actually disabled. Because of this, you can lengthen or shorten the height of a jump by holding up or down respectively. This is a harder issue to solve than may seem because you want Dink.exe to handle left/right movement as you can't stop Dink on key up otherwise, which means you can't just disable brain 1. (Padding with a couple of hard sprites that shadow Dink would probably be effective albeit inelegant.)

Conclusion: It works, the scripts are simple and well commented. But the mechanics are not perfect.