Fall

The fall of the nine game cycles: arms thrown up and out, legs kicking and a scared face, looping every 0.8 seconds for as long as a game has the character falling through the air.

A cartoon person and a dog floating above the grass with arms thrown out and a scared face, legs kicking.

Use it in a cartoonOpen it in the block editorThe pack file (JSON)

What it is for

Fall is the fall of the nine game cycles: a game plays it the instant a character is airborne and dropping, as opposed to rising through Jump (in place)'s own fall phase. It loops every 0.8 seconds for as long as the fall lasts, which in a platformer can be any length at all, so unlike the jump it never needs a fixed end.

The principle it shows: overlapping action

Nine separate waves drive this pose, all at the same 0.8-second period but each starting at a different point in it: the arms are opposite each other (one wave, one at half a turn out of phase), the legs likewise, and the shins a quarter-turn out from the legs again. None of them are perfectly together, so the arms and legs do not read as one synchronised flail; they read as four limbs each doing their own uncoordinated thing at once, which is exactly what a real, panicked fall looks like.

The program, line by line

settings: h = 540, leg = 0.24
when it starts
  show the side view
  look scared
  set right arm 108, left arm 126, left forearm 22, right forearm 22, left leg 20, right leg 20, left shin 44, right shin 44, left foot 18, right foot 18, head -3, mouth 0.35, dy (-0.02*h)
  sin wave on left arm · every 0.8 s · amp 10
  sin wave on right arm · every 0.8 s · amp 10 · phase 3.141592653589793
  sin wave on left leg · every 0.8 s · amp 10 · phase 3.141592653589793
  sin wave on right leg · every 0.8 s · amp 10
  sin wave on left shin · every 0.8 s · amp 10 · phase 1.5707963267948966
  sin wave on right shin · every 0.8 s · amp 10 · phase 4.71238898038469
  sin wave on tail · every 0.4 s · amp 10

Try this

  1. Kick the tail every 0.2 seconds instead of 0.4. The whole fall reads more frantic, as if the character only just started falling and has not settled into it.

    In the program: wave · every 0.4 → 0.2

  2. Double the left arm's swing from 10 to 20 degrees. One arm now flails noticeably wider than the other, as if the character is grabbing for something on its way down rather than just falling.

    In the program: wave · amp 10 → 20

How it differs from Fall down and get up and Jump (in place)

Fall down and get up is a one-shot pratfall: the character drops to the ground, lies flat and climbs back up, then the move ends. Fall never touches the ground on its own; it is an airborne loop a game keeps running for as long as the character is actually falling. Jump (in place) has its own brief fall phase built in, but that one is a fixed arc toward a landing a game controls; this Fall is the open-ended loop a game reaches for when it does not yet know how long the drop will last.

Works on

Worked out by the build: it plays the move in the engine on each body and checks what moves on screen. Nobody types this table.
BodyMoves?What moves
2 legs (a person)yeswhole body, turns, arms, legs
4 legs (a dog)yeswhole body, head, front legs, back legs, tail, ears
no legs (the monster with no legs)yeswhole body, turns, arms, tail

c4c:beh:cycle_fall · version 1.0.0 · c4c-free · by Jabbertoon