Wall running explanation?

[Ikagura Ikagura]

How come some old games had the player going faster when going against a wall at a certain angle?

 

[Boo Man]

when you move diagonally you move one pixel forward and one pixel sideways
instead of just one pixel forward
so it can be faster

 

[χKai]

Have you ever tried wall-running? It works the same way in real life.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

when you move diagonally you move one pixel forward and one pixel sideways
instead of just one pixel forward
so it can be faster

And here I thought it was a quirk of the Doom engine and its endless clones.

Beautiful explanation, man.

 

[Graw]

when you move diagonally you move one pixel forward and one pixel sideways
instead of just one pixel forward
so it can be faster

To add to this. Modern games tend to use linear interpolation to avoid this issue. Basically you find the magnitude of the direction vector with

[I]sqrt[/I](x²+y²)

Then you normalize the vector by dividing x and y by the magnitude calculated above. This gives you a new vector that you would use in your movement code.

For example, if your direction is (1,1) then you'd do.

sqrt(1²+1²)=1.414
1/1.41=0.707
So your new direction vector becomes (0.707,0.707).

 

[MajesticSiN]

Have you ever tried wall-running? It works the same way in real life.

This is true
I've done it exactly three times