• OPENING SCENE
• Introduction
• Jumping Right In
• Jumping Right In
• Choose your own Adventure
• Getting Started
• Building a World
• Adding Movement
• Create a Game Space
• Making Things Happen
• Adding a Reward
• Hazards and Enemies
• Adding Game States
• GAME MECHANICS
• Game Mechanic: Add a Countdown Timer
• Game Mechanic: Jumping on Enemies
• Game Mechanic: Player Health
• Game Mechanic: Longer Jumps if Holding Jump Down
• Game Mechanic: Smaller Sprite Collision Boxes
• Game Mechanic: Extending the Game Size
• Game Mechanic: Adding Levels
• Game Mechanic: Keys and Doors
• ADDING POLISH
• Polish: Animate Sprite when Zapped
• Polish: Scaling our Game and Sprites
• Polish: Screen Shake
• Polish: Add Soundtrack Music
• Polish: Explosions using Particles
• Appendix
• Summary of our approach to learning Game Making
• How we approach Coding
• Playful and Reflective Approaches

Game Mechanic: Longer Jumps if Holding Jump Down

In the game Super Mario Brothers. When Mario jumps you can make him jump for longer by holding down the jump button.

This allows for a greater feeling of control and lets you play around with your level design to make for more complex challenges.

Check the Code: what we need to know and do

This mechanic will depend us writing some code to check how long the player has been holding down the jump key and it will change the players velocity based on that value.

Check the Code: what we need to know and do

Our mechanic depend us writing some code to check how long the player has been holding down the jump key and it will change the players velocity based on that value.

To do this we'll need to know about the following game elements;

• Adding Physics and Gravity - see Building a World
• Working with player input - see Adding Movement

Going over the code:

Have a look at the code which controls the variable height of the player jump.

    if (game.input.keyboard.isDown(Phaser.Keyboard.UP))  {
        if (player.body.touching.down && jumpTimer === 0) {
            // jump is allowed to start
            jumpTimer = 1;
            player.body.velocity.y = -300;
        } else if (jumpTimer > 0 && jumpTimer < 31) {
            // keep jumping higher
            jumpTimer++;
            player.body.velocity.y = -300 + (jumpTimer * 5);
        }   
    }  
    else {
        // jump button not being pressed, reset jump timer
        jumpTimer = 0;
    }

The code adds an extra if statement into the game which makes a difference between if the player has just touched the jump button or if they are pressing down on the jump button. In the first case the jumpTimer would be at 0 and the code makes the player jump and starts the clock on the jumpTimer variable. The next case where the button is being held down the timer value increases is of importance in the line -- player.body.velocity.y = -300 + (jumpTimer * 5);-- and this increase means that the players velocity is slowed down closer to 0 the longer the button is pressed.

This solution was found at this blog post on amphibian.com which goes into more details about the coding process.

That's it. We hope you enjoy adding this game dynamic to your game to jump on enemies.