Author: Carlos Reid

Posted on: 03/14/2025

The Problem:

During this week's development on Relicbourne, I encountered a movement issue where the player's movement speed gradually slowed down when rotating the camera. If the player continued turning while holding forward movement, they would eventually lose all momentum and stop moving entirely. This was a major issue because it disrupted gameplay, making movement feel unresponsive and inconsistent. If left unfixed, players would become frustrated as they would lose control over their character just by rotating the camera. Given that Relicbourne is an isometric roguelike, maintaining smooth and predictable movement is critical for overall game feel.

The Solution:

After debugging the issue, I found out that movement direction was being calculated using the full camera rotation, which includes Yaw, Pitch, and Roll. Using the full rotation caused forward movement to weaken as the camera pitched up or down. So instead of using the full rotation, I extracted only the Yaw component to prevent movement vectors from tilting up/down. This fix eliminated movement slowdown when rotating the camera. The player can now move consistently in all directions, no matter how much they rotate their view.