Week 8: Movement

Week 8 — the precision a single continuous signal gives up when it's asked to control both timing and magnitude

12 April 2027

Movement doesn’t add a new way to read the button — it adds a new way to spend a signal you already have. Hold-duration or momentum, mapped onto a spatial value like jump height or run speed, do the job a joystick usually does, using the same one bit of input this whole course has insisted on.

The trade-off worth naming is precision: a single continuous signal asked to control both when something moves and how far it goes gives a player less independent control over each than two separate inputs would. That loss isn’t a bug to route around — it’s the actual content of this week’s design problem. A mapping succeeds when the coupling between timing and magnitude feels like a deliberate skill (a longer hold reliably means a higher jump) rather than an accident of reusing a signal that wasn’t built for this.

Outline#

• movement as spending an existing continuous signal on a spatial mapping, not a new capability
• the precision trade-off of controlling both timing and magnitude from one signal
• what makes a spatial mapping feel deliberate rather than accidental