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[Anton]

Dasher is a platformer for mobile phone.

It takes its inspiration from games such as Super Meat Boy, N, and Celest.

The core of the game revolves around completing fairly short levels in the least amount of time possible.

To do so the player can jump, wall jump, and dash through the air.
One key component of the game is the control scheme, which avoids the use of a virtual button, instead using a combination of tap and swipe.

Android Demo

Please feel free to try it and tell me what you think about it.

All the levels so far

here is the itch.io

The Key points I want in the game are:

• The dash
• The smoothness (I would like my game to run at 60 fps on as many mobile phones as possible)
• The flow and the simplicity of the controls

To do:

• Display the time limit
• Add a mechanic of Par time (like in SMB I would like to unlock a hard mode for each level if you're fast enough)
• Implement some kind of replay at the end of a level
• Add some transitions when the player dies or finishes a level
• A ton more levels. I would really like to have 100+ levels but I'm no level designer
• Add some nice transitions between the menus
• Rework the controls so they behave better when the player touches the screen with multiple fingers
• Add a settings menu
• Find a business model (right now I feel like making a demo and then going premium but I'm not sure)
• Add some SFX
• Add some music ? (not sure)
• Redo the colors
• Add some VFX (particles, trail)
• Add some background effects
• Overall making the game more visually interesting while keeping it simple (I'm not an artist and I want to use as few textures as possible anyway)

About me:
     I'm Anton and I'm making this game mostly by myself using Unity. It is the first time I've worked this long on one of my own games and I would like to go all the way to release with this one.
This is my first devlog also. I hope it'll help me stay focused and motivate me to finish the game.
I look forward to having some feedback, especially on the colors, as I'm color blind, and I have terrible taste when it comes to colors. There is too much information to display for me to go black and white on this project.

[koalefant]

I absolutely love the movement and what you can do with simple click+swipe  . The minimalistic style is very appealing and keeps the focus on the motion. I would buy this game when it is done. 

[Cavaleiro]

Very interesting way of spicing up the movement on a touch screen. Looking forward to more updates. Cheers!

[Anton]

I absolutely love the movement and what you can do with simple click+swipe  . The minimalistic style is very appealing and keeps the focus on the motion. I would buy this game when it is done. 

Very interesting way of spicing up the movement on a touch screen. Looking forward to more updates. Cheers!

Thanks a lot for the kind words!

I hope I'll finish the time system within two days. this is my next mile stone.

[Anton]

I've implemented the timers yay!
I've added a bunch of bugs also bhouuuu!
that's whats happen when you don't code your menus well enought.
right now, the bugs I've spotted are minor so I won't bother right away (maybe I should keep a list of all the bugs... hmmm)


Next I'de like to do a catalogue of the existing levels with a screenshot and a small description. This should help me not doing the same thing twice and it I'll force me to think of a gimmick for each levels.

[Anton]

I uploaded a new version!

what's new:

• Added a dash metter to better comunicate how the dash work
• Reduced the drag distance for starting dashs, I hope this will make the dash feel more responsive
• Tweaked the levels, overall the game became a bit easier

On my side
I've started working on a tool to help me build the game and maintain a build version number


All the levels so far
http://imgur.com/a/JlZEL

My next objectives :
Implement a save system and to make a bit more levels I think. also I might redo the way the character colide with the lethal boxes to make it feel better.

[Windybeard]

Just tried the demo and its an interesting game, If you were to improve the the visuals (considerably) this would be really awesome. You could do alot with this. Good luck!

[Anton]

Just tried the demo and its an interesting game, If you were to improve the the visuals (considerably) this would be really awesome. You could do alot with this. Good luck!

Thanks!
I'm aware that the game isn't pretty at the moment, this is the major complaint I get each time I show the game. I'll try to work on that next week or the week after. Truth be told, I'm not sure what I want my game to look like so it'll take time.


Update :

I've added a save system (not present on the web version).
A bit of technical blurb:
I decided to use FlatBuffer ( https://google.github.io/flatbuffers/index.html) to serialize my saves. It is an interesting piece of software and I wanted to see how to use it. I am far from mastering it and there are some magic code I don't fully understand yet. I expect some bugs, especially when I'll add new data in the saves.
I hope I'm not putting myself in a corner, especially since I can't test on ios yet.

Next will be some research on how I could improve my menus.

PS: I really should keep a list of all the bugs and all the idea I have for the game.

[Anton]

Update :
Few
It's been a while since I've posted here.
I'm not sure of the frequence I should update this thread.

Anyway I've done quite a bit of work :

• The home screen now feature a level select screen.
• I've added two new levels :
  
  
  
  
  
  • I have reworked the in game UI
  • I've made a custome shader / animation for the end node of the levels (Shader)
  • There's a new look for the death zones
  • The end of a level is less abrupt now (a small animation play before the end screen)
  
  A new version is available on itch.io
  
  If you test it on Android could you please give me a feedback on the framerate (does it look smooth)? I've got some problems with my phone.
  
  Next :
  
  • It's been more than a month that I've been working on non gameplay stuff. I should make more levels now
    
  • I should also start figuring out the colors I want for the game.
    
  • Maybe I should rework the UI to make translation easier (less words = less work)
    

[koalefant]

I have tried hard but I couldn't get apk from itch on my phone. I wonder if it is just me, if anyone else is having similar issue, maybe, direct link to all here would help?

[Anton]

welp:
here is a direct link for the apk
http://antonroy.fr/Dasher/Builds/Dasher_0_0_053/Dasher_0_00_053.apk

i've had this problem before where people couldn't download my game, I don't know what cause this. I've tested the links myself and it worked fine -.-
could you maybe give me a sypmtome of the problem ? where does it break ?

[koalefant]

Thanks! I was clicking on a red Download button in Chrome on Android and nothing would happen. Seems to be working on my Desktop though.

[Anton]

Weird, this seems to work fine on my phone :s
would be cool if someone else could tell me if they succeed or fail.
may I ask you what phone are you using ? (I don't think I can do anything but maybe ...)

[koalefant]

Just tried on my phone with a direct link - works without any issues. Feels quite good.  

One thing that annoyed me during first levels, before Swipe was introduced, it that it is easy to use it by mistake and then die. And dying is a frustrating way to discover a new ability. Maybe the Swipe could be disabled in first levels before it is actually needed...

Just tried the demo and its an interesting game, If you were to improve the the visuals (considerably) this would be really awesome. You could do alot with this. Good luck!

I have completely opposite opinion on this - I love these minimal and clean shapes and animation. I think it looks awesome on the phone. I wished more visual diversity in later levels however, different palette or different visual elements...

Keep up with the good work!  

[freank]

Good !

[Anton]

Good !

Thanks

@koalefant :
I've split my project page into two (web and mobile) when you have time, could you try the mobile link and tell me if it works better

[Grhyll]

Nice execution of a simple concept

[koalefant]

@koalefant :
I've split my project page into two (web and mobile) when you have time, could you try the mobile link and tell me if it works better

I have got one step further on the mobile page. It looked like it downloaded apk, but it was very small, and when I looked inside it is just an XML with an error:

Code:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><Error><Code>ExpiredToken</Code><Message>The provided token has expired.</Message><Details>Request has expired: 1474974395</Details></Error>

Tried this multiple times with the same result.

[Anton]

Nice execution of a simple concept

Thank you

There is a new version available, I don't use itch io anymore for the android version, I don't know why it was broken (I hope this time it'll work)

What's new:

• A new stats screen at the end of the last level (it should feature more stats in the future)
• Two new levels
• A new background system

So, the background was the big part of my week. I tried to do something fancy yet simple.
My main inspiration is Alto's Adventures. Of course my implementation isn't as complexe but I really liked the paralax in that game.
I think what I've done is not ugly.
Also this provide me with some tools to do some variety at a cheap cost. (instead of mountains I could evoke some buildings or clouds etc ...)

However my bigest concern right now is the framerate of the game. Since I've added the background, I'm at 50fps on my OnePlus3 android phone. I wish it was 60. I need to improve that but I ran out of optimization ideas for now.

If you try the game on your phone, can you do the level 2-1 and tell me the number that is shown in the bottom of the result screen ? (spoiler it is the average framerate during the level)

[Anton]

A new version is available

Update :

I've added a bunch more levels, putting the total number of levels to 30.
This should not move a lot in the future as I intend to focus more on improving the levels I have now. Also I'm out of idea for new ones without coding.

Should this game making it to release, this is the content witch would be free, I think. (Meaning I should make several times this number of levels).

I'll also do some more optimization, the game still does not run well on my phone.
Once this phase of polish is over, I plan to do a post in the playtest section to query more feedback.
Right now I'm not sure where I am on the difficulty scale. Also I need to sort the levels by complexity and difficulty.