DASH - the 2d Platformer Creation Tool [Update #018: Parallax Scrolling & Slappers!] news

Hello! If this is your first time, there is already lots of content to explore with updates every Wednesday and Saturday live on Twitch. Go follow and get notified as I begin the stream. All development streams are uploaded to the Baby Duka YouTube Channel. DASH stands for Danger Action Speed Hero - the ultimate 2D, low-res platformer creation tool. The official reveal of the prototype was on 1st of February 2018. I'm a solo dev doing all the stuff myself so far ♥

Join the stream to become an official tester/DASHer: The goal is to have the vertical slice ready the 25th of April 2018. If you're not already a DASHer and want to be a part of the early test stage, please join the dev streams Wednesdays at 8pm - 10pm GMT or Saturdays at 6pm - 8 GMT.

Finally Some Parallax...

Like many other things I would've loved to have the parallax scrolling backgrounds in the game way before now, but better late than never. I've played around with the numbers and DASH has reached a higher and more impressive level now imo. The parallax magic! In game maker it is easy to handle the layers of backgrounds etc. Still if you're new to it, I'd suggest you take a look at GravityShift Games' (aka SlasherXGames) tutorial. If you're interested in learning some of the basics of creating a level editor and platformer math you should get deep into his videos. He is truly awesome.

This is how the Jungle looks now:

The 'Get Slapped' Mechanic:

After refining and playing around with the Slapper (who now is one basic enemy out of two) I got quite good at using the slap-power to gain altitude in my jumps. I'm not 100% sure about this mechanic but it's fun.

Enemies Now Spawns Directly By Default:

These are the weeks of yes-I-finally-got-it-done times! So another to remove from the list is making Slappers spawn directly when game starts. Also they are now (afraidOfHeights). Meaning they won't walk off the platforms or ground's edges.

Some Optimization:

Of course a tile-based game (even on good machine) will require a lot of memory to be used. Simply because the player manually places lots of objects which (at least some of them) have a lot of stuff to do during the game. I tried to simplify the tiles and how they load etc for us to be able to make large levels with lots of stuff going on. I'm working on it but not there yet. There still is a limit to how many tiles you can put down before the frame rate starts dropping slightly. I'm currently seeing the first drop to 57/58 when you place ~90 tiles (excluding everything but the tile-instances i.e. particles, game tokens etc) in a 1280x500 pxs room. I will get much more into that later but here is something funny which happened as I was trying to cool down the data in the tile-instances:

Game and Deadly Set Updated:

I moved the enemy tiles into the Deadly set instead of the Tools set. Feels much better.

Also, the alternative deadly/spike-block is now updated and I call it the Spike Box (see gif above).

New Tool Set System:

I've duck into the very important Tools tiles set. This is where you set up the frame of the level's story sort of speak. You can choose where the player(s) will start and where to put the goal (like the girl friend in Meat Boy for example). A new thing is that the goal spawns by default unless you place a trigger and connect it to the goal tile. When you do so, a line is drawn between the trigger and its target (in this case the goal). This is a bit like the P-switch from Mario or the lever in Abe's Oddysee.

Also the player-start tile is now different depending on which hero you are playing with. Pretty neat.