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Kinda fun story - I accidentally made a (terrible) autopilot for the space station interior. #playdate #gamedev #indiegames #pixelart

Dan - Wishlist Frogball Now! Link in bio

@atomic-arc.com

3 June

A bit of background: Playdate has very basic collision detection which can't handle much other than AABB collisions. This means that there isn't a standard way of handling collision for the slopes which is a problem given that it won't be much of a game if you can fly straight through the obstacles.

Dan - Wishlist Frogball Now! Link in bio

@atomic-arc.com

To get around this, I defined a centre line and acceptable deviation per section (red lines in the video) and then all I had to do was calculate how far from this line the player is. If they're outside the acceptable deviation, they've hit a wall.

3/6/26, 2:35 pm0 reposts0 likes

Dan - Wishlist Frogball Now! Link in bio

@atomic-arc.com

3 June

Once I've found a collision, I just need to push the player toward that centre line and voila; half-decent, non-AABB collision with no impact on performance. If you code it correctly. I did not code it correctly.

Dan - Wishlist Frogball Now! Link in bio

@atomic-arc.com

3 June

Instead I applied the force regardless of whether a collision occurred 🤦 So what you actually get is a little push each frame towards that centre line. Its easy to fix, but I also kinda like the idea of having an autopilot power-up, so maybe you'll see a less terrible version somewhere down the line