Hey, I played around with this yesterday. Some random, thoughts, hopefully not too messy and rambling:
I like the combo of the sprite character and the 3D backpack. I’m not sure the orthographic camera is great for 3D platforming though, at least for me it’s really hard to gauge depth at certain angles and it made the segment with the platform pillars more difficult to jump across than I thought it should be. Also, I understand the appeal of a button that sets the camera to better frame the platforming but I usually find it more useful to snap behind the character in these games than to their side, in profile (and if I want a side view, using the camera analog stick is sufficient (I think the orbit speed here may be a tad too fast btw but that’s a minor quibble)). As level design develops, the value of that feature will probably become clearer.
As for single button gameplay, it’s an interesting constraint and totally valid (unless Balan Wonderworld has ruined the idea for people lol) but I’m not sure the way dashing and jumping works is ideal. Having to do a little dash forward before run-jumping doesn’t feel immediately natural especially approaching the edge of platforms…unless you really want the player to train themselves to commit to a jump knowing that it won’t initiate until a few steps ahead of them. It’s an odd action to delay like that in a 3D platformer where it’s the central verb and I expect a snappy execution but it could be an interesting quirk requiring that kind of timing + spatial awareness (shades of swinging a sword in King’s Field (maybe it would be cool to do a FROM-like platformer with those kinds of input/timing considerations though hm!)). I do really like mashing that dash button and zipping around though, it feels a bit vehicular, nice. Going back to jumping though, what if you tap to jump and hold to dash? I guess in that case, you’d have to either handle jumping as an OnButtonRelease command or…well at the end of a dash, you could either cancel that OnButtonRelease jump when dashing is held a certain amount of time or else auto jump at the end of a dash if the player is still holding the run button (cancelling the OnButtonRelease jump when they go from holding the run button to not holding it anymore). Or you could initiate dashing with a double tap and then hold the button. That could either cancel the jump and start the dashing or incorporate a bit of the interrupted jump’s vertical force into the dash initiation. I don’t know! Lots of ways to go about it.
Some (possible) bugs:
- Your “dash dust” continues along the ground, following the player from below even when they’re in the air, I’d expect it to stop doing that. Unless you want it to act as a drop shadow of sorts but…I’d just expect a regular drop shadow at that point (which would help greatly with judging angles/distances).
- Start at the base of an incline. Move up the incline a bit and turn around to face the level ground below where you just were. Now, with the intention of jumping, dash down the slope and onto the level ground. The jump doesn’t execute.
Hope that’s helpful or at least some decent food for thought. Takes a bit to make these kinds of games feel good and nuanced, especially with a one-button execution, but I look forward to seeing more!