Jump through / one way platforms

In this article we’ll see how to implement jump through / one way platforms.

As you might already tell from the name, one-way platforms behave like platforms only when hit from above. They don’t even act as obstacles when you travel horizontally so we can absolutely ignore them in the X axis movement part of our code.

The on_jumpthrough script

This script checks if the object is colliding with a one-way platform 1px below its bbox_bottom. This is not enough though, because we must not collide with such platforms whenever we’re 1px (or more) inside them.

This script also take care of very close one-way platforms; the player might be inside one platform and on top of another one: in that case he must stand on the one-way platform anyway and not fall through it.

///@func on_jumpthrough()
///@desc returns the id of the colliding one-way platform or noone if none

var on_platform = collision_rectangle(bbox_left, bbox_bottom + 1, bbox_right, bbox_bottom + 1, oJumpthrough, false, true)

if !on_platform
	return noone
	
var inside_platform = collision_rectangle(bbox_left, bbox_bottom, bbox_right, bbox_bottom, oJumpthrough, false, true)

if !inside_platform
	return on_platform

if on_platform == inside_platform
	return noone
	
return on_platform

The clear advantage of keeping all these platforming behaviors separate, is that we can edit our on_ground() script and reference our newly created one.

///@func on_ground()
///@desc return instance_id of the colliding ground object or noone if not colliding

return on_wall() || on_slope() || on_jumpthrough()

We just add another testing condition to our on_ground script and from now on, the whole platformer engine will take into account these one-way platforms.

Getting down from one-way platforms

To get the player down from one-way platforms, we modify the jump behavior of the player (which is defined in its ground state)

if keyboard_check_pressed(ord("X"))
{
	if keyboard_check(vk_down) && on_jumpthrough()
		y++
	else
		yvel = -3
	
	state_current = playerStateAir
	exit
}

Whenever the player is standing on a jump-through platform and presses jump + the down key, we push the player one pixel inside the platform and then we change its state.