Behind the scenes: The cannon

This is part 3/7 of a series of articles written by Eve, the Clever Endeavour Community Manager, about the making of the A-cobra-tic Update for Ultimate Chicken Horse, which was released in March 2020. Each article reveals some of the process of making new content for the game, and shows in-progress images of each of the A-cobra-tic features that have never been shown to the public before.

Jump in to learn about the cannon

Similarly to the flamethrower’s diagonal hazard, the A-cobra-tic cannon’s design was motivated by our desire to add a diagonal “mover” type of block to Ultimate Chicken Horse, as a counterpart to the fan, which pushes you in a cardinal direction.

The thought of a barrel cannon à la Donkey Kong Country was what we all initially had in mind, because it’s a game mechanic that has been proven to be objectively cool. Nevertheless, we had an early period of doubt about the feasibility of it.

When we imagined a DK-like cannon, we pictured it holding characters and moving along a track or swinging back and forth in an arc, until the player pressed the jump button to shoot out of it. However, we soon agreed that we didn’t want to introduce an item that required that kind of input, since it’s unlike any other mechanic in Ultimate Chicken Horse, and could easily lead to confusion.

I grew up here

We also feared that we would need to spend too much time making the physics and animations work for multiple players using a cannon in short succession, and had major concerns about networking everything properly for online games. Because we wanted this update to be completed relatively quickly, those factors almost scared us away from making a cannon altogether.

Instead, the team agreed to prototype an item that was more like a boost pad. We wanted something that you didn’t need to enter and then voluntarily exit. Instead, you’d simply be pushed in one direction when traversing the block’s area, as if you had moved into a fan’s wind, except the effect was diagonal and there was no solid object preventing you from passing in any direction.

in diddy kong racing, those are known as “zipperS”, while mario kart calls them “dash panels”. The more you know!

Conceptually, this brought us closer to another type of block people had previously requested: mirrors or trampolines that deflect projectiles into a new, straight direction. See for example this submission from Rammerz on Steam, sent in June 2016:

the blueprint background is such a nice touch!

Contrary to a fan’s wind, which changes the path of projectiles and players in an additive manner, we wanted to make a block that would force a clean new diagonal trajectory after going through it from any direction. Below is Ben’s early boost pad prototype, showing two types of projectiles entering from different angles and exiting in the same line:

it was very expeditive

This worked well, with one big caveat. As the programmer art shows, we had absolutely no idea what this boost pad should look like, or what actual contraption could have this effect. This posed a problem, because we feel it’s important that all blocks remain fairly self-explanatory in a quick-paced game like Ultimate Chicken Horse, where players want to react to things almost instinctively as they come.

Meanwhile, Kyler had gone rogue and decided to prototype an automatic animal cannon, despite our initial concerns about that design. He insisted that it would be easy enough to implement, and we had to give it to him: it looked pretty sweet already.

the UCH version of a “barrel cannon”

So we abandoned the boost pad design, and Ben and Kyler combined their forces to perfect the automatic cannon and make it work with players and projectiles alike.

Admittedly, we went on to tweak just about every bit of the mechanics of it over the next few months, from the exact physics of the exit trajectory to the colliders on players as they emerge, and everything in between. Some of our fears were founded: making the cannon work perfectly was no easy task, and it demanded serious efforts in internal quality assurance as well as the help of our trusted beta testers to iron out all the details of cannon mechanics and networking.

It also took us a few iterations to get the art and the animations just right, though we had a much clearer idea of what we wanted from the start than with other blocks.

original vs final shape and color

from cartoonish smoke rings…

… to a more sensible puff

While the cannon did end up requiring extra precautions and plenty of testing to make sure that it worked correctly with multiple players and projectiles, locally and online, we definitely don’t regret committing to that design after all. There’s a reason it’s a recurrent item in 2D platformers: it simply is fun! Once we tried it out, we knew it was worth putting in the work to do it right.

We were rewarded with a warm reception for this extravagant new block, which garnered tons of enthusiasm from Ultimate Chicken Horse fans. When A-cobra-tic came out, we saw many of you make entire levels based on this block alone, which is a true testament that it was worth all the trouble. This is the kind of thing that keeps us going, so we thank you for this show of appreciation!

Thank you for reading this behind-the-scenes article! If you liked it, you can check out the previous ones on the flamethrower block and Snake character; and you can look forward to next week’s exposé on the Space level.