Most of us feel excited when we hear names like “Angry Birds“, “Fruit Ninja” or “Temple Run“. Probably everyone with a Smartphone today is familiar with these games. To think of the developers, they had to code through complex logic and create separate builds for different platforms. All these required extensive coding knowledge and expertise. If you are a novice or just a casual developer, building games like these could mean a lot of pain.
Dash is a cross platform game development tool that makes creating games easy and a lot more fun. This is a tool that can be used by experts, novices and enthusiasts alike. Dash requires no previous coding knowledge and is logic driven. It is based on an object oriented model which is very developer-friendly.
All the essential how-to tutorials are described in detail in the product’s official website. The game development process on Dash takes you through three basic steps.
Set up the scene
The first step you take is create a great environment for your game and its characters. You can do this by adding predefined backgrounds from the library, or create your own custom background.
Add objects to the scene
After setting up the game environment, the next step is to include your characters and other objects that play a part in your game. You can design your own characters or include some predefined ones from the library. For game artwork (scene and character), Dash even has Dropbox integration that lets you fetch images from your Dropbox account.
Define object behavior
Now you need to define how the game character and other game objects respond to the environment. Being an object oriented model, Dash makes it possible to set behaviors for different classes of game objects. This allows a lot of reuse. The basic interface has two modes: Editor and Code.
Editor mode lets you to modify scenes and characters while Code mode lets you to define their behaviors. Rather than having a conventional code editor where you write programs having certain syntax and semantics, the Dash Code takes a more graphical, logic driven approach.
Whenever you double click on any object in the Editor mode, it opens the Code mode. Here, you may define object behavior and properties using some logical blocks. You can also enter Code mode by clicking on the CODE button in the top right hand corner from the Editor screen.
Commonly used logical blocks on Dash
Forever: The Forever block can be used to define some action that loops over itself indefinitely. In coding terms, it’s like an infinite loop statement.
Whenever: This block can be used to trigger an action when a specific event occurs. For example, you can set your character to move ahead whenever the right direction key is pressed.
If: This block performs an action that only when a particular condition has been satisfied. Conditional blocks are common in all programming languages.
If Else: This is an extended form of the If block. In this block, there will be two different sets of actions. In addition to triggering an action when a particular condition is met, it also executes an alternate action when the condition is not met. You can use many more such logical blocks with Dash. See the entire list on DASH Documentation.
The entire game building experience is a whole lot of fun and excitement with Dash. This is because it relies on a graphical drag and drop interface rather than a text/code editor. Even the Code mode in Dash has a similar drag and drop interface.
Supported Platforms
Dash is the cornerstone for a new generation of development platforms that is built on the foundation of purely graphical tools. It has the power of the cloud built into it. What’s more, you can create games for any platform from any platform. You can also watch the video tutorials in their website to understand Dash better. Currently, the Dash team is working hard to bring in new and improved features that will be useful for developers and enthusiasts alike.
Building a development tool like Dash takes a lot of effort, dedication and (not to forget) expenses. Yet, this team of young, energetic developers have come a long to create such a powerful platform. This project is still under active funding; and you can help it become a reality by funding their project. If you really feel that this project is worth investing upon, you can do so by following along the link below.
DASH – Creative Coding | Indiegogo