Our 2D game character grew 3% taller every time he walked
The development team for the game Leonardo's Moon Ship encountered a bug where the character Leo grew taller when walking. This issue stemmed from inconsistent animation canvas sizes, causing visual discrepancies in Leo's height and position. The team implemented a fix by calculating per-animation metrics to ensure consistent scaling and positioning across all animations.
- ▪Leo's character grew 3% taller when walking due to animation inconsistencies.
- ▪The animations were created on different canvas sizes, leading to visual misalignment.
- ▪The development team fixed the issue by computing per-animation metrics at load time.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
May 21, 2026Leo wouldn't stand stillWe’re working on an adventure game, Leonardo’s Moon Ship. The player character, Leo, has the usual pile of animations: idle left and right, walk in four directions, a couple of stair anims. Since implementing the basics of the character, Leo has had this slightly cursed behaviour where he’d grow about 3% taller the moment he started walking, then shrink back when he stopped. His feet would also lift off the ground by up to 27 pixels depending on which way he was facing. Not enough to be obviously broken in a screenshot. Exactly enough to make the game feel wrong. That’s the bug overlaid on itself. The red ghost is the naive setup. The blue is the fixed version. When Leo’s idle they sit on top of each other.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison.
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