Top-down movement overview

In this short series, you’ll learn to code a top-down character’s movement.

You’ll learn to change the character’s texture based on the player’s input direction and how to make it collide with walls.

We’ll explore two movement types:

1. Eight-way movement, which is mainly used in free-roaming top-down games like The Legend of Zelda.
2. Four-way movement, which is more common in classic arcade games like Pac-Man.

This is an example of four-way movement.

You will learn:

• How to use the KinematicBody2D node for movement.
• How to synchronize a character’s movement direction with a texture.
• How to restrict movement on the vertical and horizontal axes.

We’ll build upon what you learned in an earlier project, To Space and Beyond!

In the next video, we’ll set up the character’s scene.

Locating the Lesson Files

To get started, open the project “Learn to Code with Godot: Practices” in Godot and, in the FileSystem dock, expand the TopDownMovement directory. We will create a scene together. See you in the lesson!