Okay, so I was messing around with Multiversus the other day, trying to get a handle on the whole “collision detection” thing. It’s more complicated than it looks!
I started by just jumping into a few matches, you know, just playing normally. But I was paying extra close attention to when my attacks connected, when I got hit, and when stuff just kinda… whiffed. It felt inconsistent at times, like my fist would go right through someone, or I’d get smacked by an attack that looked like it totally missed.
Then I got a little more methodical. I went into the lab – the training mode – with a buddy. We picked different characters, some with big hitboxes (like Iron Giant) and some with smaller ones (like Arya). We started testing really simple stuff:
- Basic punches and kicks: We’d just stand there and throw attacks at each other, slowly moving closer and farther apart to see where the hits would connect and where they wouldn’t.
- Projectiles: Bugs Bunny’s pies, Superman’s laser vision… we wanted to see how those interacted with character hitboxes. Did the size of the projectile matter? Did it have its own hitbox?
- Dodging and moving: This was the tricky part. We tried to figure out how dodging affected hitboxes, if there were invincibility frames (those few moments where you can’t get hit), and how moving around changed the way attacks connected.
We spent a good couple of hours just doing this, over and over. We’d try to recreate situations we’d seen in real matches, like, “Hey, remember that time your sword went right through my head? Let’s try to make that happen again.”
It’s surprisingly complex! Hit Detection is diffcult, but the time invested was a blast.