Technology1 min read

Dash: An Endless Runner That Races Through Your City

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The mobile game template offers lanes where runners jump over hurdles, slide under barriers, and navigate traffic across custom or real-world street maps. To address live community needs, the package incorporates an integrated track editor, an in-game shop, push notifications, and peer-to-peer WebRTC voice chat for synchronized races. Course creation requires an automated bot to successfully complete the custom track before publication. Fair competition is preserved by having the server independently simulate gameplay to validate scores.

Key points

  • Custom tracks made with the integrated editor must be proven beatable by an automated bot.: Custom tracks made with the integrated editor must be proven beatable by an automated bot.
  • Deterministic Java rules exclude floating points and clocks to guarantee identical physic…: Deterministic Java rules exclude floating points and clocks to guarantee identical physics simulations across all devices.
  • Leaderboards are protected from cheating because the server verifies performance by repla…: Leaderboards are protected from cheating because the server verifies performance by replaying submitted seeds and input logs.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

Skirmish showed that most of a mobile game is app: the sign-in, the menus, the shop, the friends list, the pushes and the server. Dash is the second game template, and it is a different kind of game: an endless runner. A runner dashes down a track of lanes, jumps hurdles, slides under barriers and changes lanes around traffic. You can generate it from the Initializr today, under your own name and package, and the source is MIT-0.

A level that turns into 3D

The trick I like most in Dash is that a level can start as a side-scroller and become a 3D runner halfway through. The first stretch of Neon Causeway looks like a flat platformer: one row of hurdles and barriers, seen from the side. At 300 meters the camera swings behind the runner, the lanes open up, and the rest is a chase-camera runner.

There is no second game behind that. The simulation always has lanes, heights and distances, and a hurdle is cleared the same way from either angle. A level only carries camera cues,…

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