About the Grid-based movement system

[milkyroute]

Simple question, do we keep it?

Summary of the Discord discussions:

@cyriellecentori

Well I don't think it is useful either. I don't have any clear opinion on the subject yet, but I just don't think it's necessary and it complicates the programming. I don't know if more freedom of movement would be very useful in-game, but I just think it wouldn't hurt and facilitate the programming.

@olivier-grech

There's some issue with "not-grid-based" movement
Animation can look weird if you only move a few pixels for example
The player would have to "aim" to go in a narrow passage
It could be hard to decide if the player interact with something in front of him to the left or in front of him to the right
Plus Pokémon game have grid-based movement so...
(at least up to 4th gen I think?)
Plus I think we handled most of the issue related to grid based movement already?
I mean the character movement works
Are you having trouble with NPC movement?

@cyriellecentori

For the first, this weirdness appears in another games but didn't bother me (I'm thinking of Undertale or Earthbound for example, if we're changing the system I think we should inspire from these games)
For the narrow passage, now you mention it I'm even thinking of it in an advantage: we could make narrow passages to secrets or to increase the feeling of exploration in a dense forest for example. But that feature is not crucial either.
For the interaction, I think Undertale and Earthbound handle the thing quite well.
And for the grid-based movement of Pokemon, I don't think we should prevent ourselves for changing some things because it is a pokemon-classic thing.

I don't really have any difficulties with grid-based movement except that it takes more time to do, it's not especially harder, it's more time-consuming. But I'm not saying we should change, if I'm bringing this here now, it's because I don't want to be in the middle of the development and realise keeping the grid is a bad idea. So talking about it now is useful to take a decision now, while we can change easily if needed to (and if no change is needed then that's nice), then we won't think about it anymore.

I'm personally neutral on the subject, I have arguments for it, and arguments against it. But this thread is here to take a decision so it's done, we will have took the time to think about it and made our choice.

[olivier-grech]

Grid-based movement makes it easier for the player. As a personal anecdote, I tried playing Earthbound on my phone on an emulator, and it was a terrible experience. Now of course we're making a computer game, but still, that's one less think for the player to worry about.

It makes sense for Earthbound (since avoiding enemy on the over-world can be a strategy) and for Undertale (which has some action sequence), but it doesn't for a Pokémon clone in my opinion.

Plus, using grid-based movement has some advantages, I was thinking especially about tall grass being easier to implement, but some other minor Pokémon map elements might be easier to implement as well with grid-based movement (the small ledges you can jump when going down a road, etc.).

I think the grid-based movement was implemented in original Pokémon games because precise movement on a small screen such as on the Gameboy is hard to manage. Granted, we're not doing a Gameboy game and we're not forced to copy what Pokémon did 1:1, but I feel this would be change for the sake of change, which I don't like.

[milkyroute]

So, the final decision is we keep the grid-based movement system.

The decision is taken and we won't come back on it later.