Alright, so I’ve been tinkering with this little thing I’ve been calling the “14 ladder” project. Sounds a bit daft, I know, but it was just a small piece of a larger puzzle I was trying to figure out in my spare time. Nothing groundbreaking, just me trying to get something to work, you know how it is.
Getting My Hands Dirty
So, the idea was simple enough: make a character climb a ladder. Specifically, a ladder with exactly 14 rungs. Don’t ask me why 14, it just felt like a number that wasn’t too small or too big for what I was aiming for. I fired up my usual setup, thinking, “this won’t take long.” Ha! Famous last words, as always.
First thing, I just slapped a basic shape on the screen to represent the ladder. Then I needed a little guy to climb it. Getting him to move up and down was easy, but making it look like he was actually on the ladder, that was another story.
The Messy Middle Part
My first attempt was, well, garbage. The character would kind of float near the ladder, or sometimes go right through it. Not exactly the immersive climbing experience I was hoping for. It was clear I needed to be a bit smarter about how the game knew the character was trying to climb.
I started by trying to detect when the character was at the foot of the ladder. If he was there and I pressed the ‘up’ key, he should start climbing. Sounds simple, right? But then getting him to stop at the top, or to get off midway, that’s where things got fiddly. He’d either overshoot the top or get stuck halfway up, refusing to move.
And those 14 rungs! I actually tried to make the movement snap to each rung. So, one press, one rung. That meant I had to figure out the spacing and make sure the movement distance matched. It was a lot of trial and error, nudging values up and down. I spent a good while just watching my little guy jerkily move up and down this virtual ladder, often getting stuck between rungs. It was pretty frustrating, I tell ya.
- Figuring out how to ‘attach’ the character to the ladder.
- Making sure the up/down movement felt somewhat natural.
- Handling getting on and off the ladder without glitches.
- And, of course, sticking to those 14 rungs.
That “Aha!” Moment (Sort Of)
After a bunch of headaches, I realized I was overcomplicating some bits and underthinking others. I simplified how I was checking if the character was on the ladder. Instead of some complex boundary check, I just made a simpler zone around the ladder. If he’s in the zone and hits ‘up’, he snaps to the ladder’s center line and starts climbing. Good enough.
For the rungs, I eventually just made the climb animation cover a certain distance that looked like he was moving from one rung to the next. The “14 rungs” thing became more of a visual guide for the length of the ladder rather than a strict gameplay mechanic for each individual rung. Sometimes you gotta pick your battles, right? It still looked like he was climbing a 14-rung ladder, and that’s what mattered for this little experiment.
So, What Did I End Up With?
Well, at the end of it all, I got a character that can approach a ladder, climb up it, and get off at the top or bottom. It’s not silky smooth like in those big-budget games, obviously. There are still a few quirks if you really try to break it. But for a quick personal project, the “14 ladder” now pretty much does what it says on the tin. He climbs, he gets to the top of those 14 rungs, and he doesn’t fall through the world. I’ll take that as a win.
It was a good reminder that even simple ideas can get tricky when you actually try to build them. But muddling through and getting something, anything, to work is always a decent feeling. Now, what to make him climb next…
