Dodge The French Info And Devlog #1

Hello everyone! Noemi here, with the first ever Dodge The French devlog! Because this is our first ever devlog, I'd like to explain everything we have in Dodge the French so far, as well as our plans for the future and a little about myself and the studio. So first thing's first, what do we currently have in Dodge The French? Well I'll be honest, not nearly as much as we want to. Let's take a look at what we've got right now.

First off, we've been using electron for our current builds, it's not ideal, but it's the easiest way we found to quickly make and test a build for the game. Speaking of testing, we're currently in need of playtesters for the game! If you've got time to spare, and would like to help out you can find out how here on our website! Anyway enough with the rambling, let's get into what I said we're going to talk about.

---------- Current Features ----------

Number One: The Main Menu

As you can probably see, the main menu is quite bland at the moment, only featuring an unfinished logo, a start button, a shop button and a settings button, all of which can be interacted with. I will talk about these one at a time, starting with;

The Logo

Looks like a simple unfinished logo, right? Well you're correct! We haven't decided what the logo should look like, or what exactly it should be, so we made this simple logo that says the name of the game! Fun fact; if you click on the logo, it rotates 15 degrees! Isn't that an interesting detail? Alright enough with the pointless hyping up of the game's logo, let's get into the more important stuff, such as;

The Settings Button

Now this may sound surprising, but when you click on the settings button A WHOLE NEW MENU APPEARS! Let's take a quick look at it.



Now if you look very closely you may notice that most of the settings don't have a slider or any way to interact with them. This is because you can't interact with them! I keep forgetting that I should probably add some way to configure the game, so I keep working on other features. Now I know what you're thinking, "At least you can enable subtitles, which I'm sure does nothing, right?". Well you're wrong! The game has no voice acting or voice lines, other than a Frenchman going "hahaha" in a stereotypical French fashion. The last thing you've probably noticed is that back button in the bottom right corner, I bet you'll never guess where that brings you! Go ahead guess, I'll be waiting... Have you guessed? Alright well what's your answer? The main menu? How did you guess? Did Bill Gates put you up to this? Well it doesn't matter how you got it right, as long as you did. Now let's move on to the next area, which is;

The Shop


That kind of looks like a shop I guess, but what do those icons mean? And what's with that number at the bottom, and what currency is that? Well if you'd be quiet for 5 seconds I'll tell you, those icons are the abilities and upgrades you can buy, all of which have different prices and do different things. Let's get into them now, shall we?

The first button looks pretty neat, what does it do? Well first off, thank you! I made it myself. Second off it's an upgrade, well more of a downgrade I guess, but not for you! It's for those pesky Frenchman, you see this upgrade makes their baguettes smaller! It makes it a lot harder to hit you if the baguettes are smaller, right? Well only if you can see them, if you have bad eyesight, it may make the baguettes more likely to hit you! Pretty neat, right? Now that's about it for the first button, let's move on to the second one.

The second button is in a different art style, why is that? Well I wanted to make each of them have a different art style, just to confuse people. Now let's get into what this button does. It's another upgrade! This one is a bit different though, it gives the player a shield! The shield itself is also upgradeable, up to four times. But what does the shield do? Well it slows down baguettes of course! Now you're probably wondering why the shield only slows down baguettes, and for that I don't really have a good explanation. I basically just decided that the shield shouldn't work like a regular shield and should instead act as a glue trap that pisses off the Frenchman while they try to lob more baguettes at you. Now that's enough about the second button, let's move on to the third.

Ah, the third button, the final one in the row, and the coolest one as well. This button increases the difficulty, and the earnings of each round of Dodge The French, meaning the rounds can be shorter, and more difficult. Now I have my own personal opinions on this button, mostly because it's the only one in the game so far that I didn't come up with the idea for. Now you're probably wondering how much the difficulty increases by and let me tell you, it's not much. The Frenchman throws the baguettes slightly more often, and that's it. But hey, at least you make more money, right? Yes, you do! You make exactly one more than you did before each time you purchase the upgrade! Now enough about these buttons, what does that number on the bottom mean? Well I'll tell you, just give me a second.

That number at the bottom is actually very important, it's the amount of money you have! Without that money, you wouldn't be able to buy anything in the shop! But what's that strange currency? It sure doesn't look like Canadian Dollars! Well it's actually the Euro, which is the official currency of France! What, did you not realise this game takes place in France, where all the Frenchman are from? Shame on you! Go to your room! Now you're probably wondering how you get this wonderful currency? By Dodging The French of course! That's the name of the game, why wouldn't it be how you get money? Now let's get into the the fifth and main area in the game. What? You're wondering what that button that say's "Back" on it does? Well it takes you back to the main menu, silly! Now let's move on to:


The Main Game!


Now you may have noticed a few things, and don't worry, I'll explain everything as soon as I can. So let's go over everything that's onscreen, namely that joystick, a nasty looking Frenchman, a cool looking white circle, and a number. Let's go over each of these in order.

The first object, that joystick. Now the joystick isn't the only way to control Dodge The French. There are more ways, but this is the only visual one, so it's the one I enabled. So as you can see, it's in the bottom left. This is where I've noticed most games have their joysticks, which I think is kind of weird because most people are right handed and I feel it would be easier for them if it was on the other side. But hey, who am I to judge, I'm just copying what other people do, and there must be a reason for it. Now you've probably already seen a joystick before, so I'll just move on to the next item onscreen.

The nasty looking Frenchman! Just look at them, aren't you upset, of course you are! That annoying Frenchman wants to lob their stupid baguettes at you and ruin our trip to France. But we cannot let that happen, we must retaliate! We need to dodge that baguette and save the world. That's right, dodging baguettes is going to somehow save the world. I can't go over it here, as I signed an NDA with the government, but believe me, if I was allowed to tell you, I would. Now let's move on to something I can tell you about,

Like that cool looking white circle! I'll let you in on a little secret, that's actually you. Well technically it's me because I'm the one playing the game in that screenshot, but believe me, it would be you if I wasn't the one playing the game. Now as the player there's about one thing you can do, which is move around. Now there are a few ways you can accomplish this, namely with your mouse, with the joystick we mentioned earlier, and with any gamepad that your operating system supports. Now your goal is to Dodge The French for as long as possible, in order to earn as much money as possible. This is because as I mentioned earlier, you can buy upgrades in the shop with this money. Speaking of money, what's that number at the bottom of the screen?

Well it's your score of course! The longer you Dodge The French, the more money you earn, meaning the more upgrades you can buy! Now I've already mentioned what money is for earlier, and what you can do to increase earnings, so I don't really have much to say about what it's for, so I should probably move on to the final thing that you may have noticed in every screenshot I've shown you.

The Window Titles!

Every timer you open the game, you get a sexy looking windows title at the top of your screen. There aren't a ton in the game right now, so I'll list all of them here, and try and explain what they're a reference to or why they're in the game.

#1. Dodge The French - The title of the game, doesn't need an explanation.

#2. Don't Dodge The French - A silly little prank, I'd suggest you don't listen to it.

#3. DTF - Game Of The Year Edition - A silly little lie, there is no GOTY Edition of Dodge The French.

#4. DTF - Burny Guy - Honestly I have no idea why I added this or what it could possibly be a reference to.

#5. DTF - MacOS - A reference to the fact that Dodge The French will never release on MacOS.

#6. DTF - Hamburg, Germany - A city in Germany that kind of reminds me of the word "Hamburger".

#7. DTF - Flibbit - A random title someone gave me in a Discord server I asked for titles in, there are quite a few of these.

#8. DTF - Piss Cigarettes - Another one suggested by a random Discord server.

#9. DTF - Inspector Spectre - This is a reference to a random time when I randomly said "Inspector Spectre" to a friend.

#10. DTF - Get The Bread!!! - Something you probably shouldn't be doing in Dodge The French.

#11. DTF - Flibnar - Another random title from a Discord server.

#12. DTF - Magic Thighs  - Discord, again,

#13. DTF - Squish Me Between Them - A reference to the title #12, and another message from Discord.

#14. DTF - Lay Off The Benadryl - Some sort of allergy medicine, from Discord again.

#15. DTF - Sometimes I be Shittin' - Honestly it's pretty true, from Discord.

#16. DTF - Mr. Poop - Very funny name, hahaha!!!

#17. DTF - John Sauce - Another very funny name, hahaha!!!

#18. DTF - Coco - Cocoa but spelled wrong,  I've been told it's a name but I'm not buying it, From Discord.

#19. DTF - Burgjer - Burgjer.

#20. DTF - Always Pissin' - Happens when you drink a lot of water.

#21. DTF - Dark Chocolate - Like light chocolate, but dark.

#22. DTF - Born To Shit In Walgreens, Forced Not To - From Discord, honestly one of the funniest ones I got from there.

#23. DTF - 711 Run Goes Hard - Some sort of gas station in the U.S, I'm guessing people like to run there.

#24. DTF - Born To Starve, Forced To Eat - Reference to the fact you need to eat to stay alive.

#25. DTF - Let There Be Light - A quote from Wheatly from Portal 2 "Let there be light. That's uh... God . I was quoting god."

#26. DTF - Don't Eat - Don't.

#27. DTF - Endless Piss - Happens when your bladder has infinite piss in it.

#28. DTF - The Arbyss - A reference to Arby's, from Discord.

#29. DTF - GoodTimesWithScar - One of my favourite members of hermitcraft, I'm sure he'll be glad to be referenced in this masterpiece.

#30. DTF - 10 Reasons Why Clickbait Is Still Relevant - There are no reasons, it just is.

#31. Using A Toaster In The Bathtub Can Make Your Toast Soggy - It's true...

#32. Well At Least Our Schools Don't Look Like Call of Duty - It's a meme, I saw it first in a CallMeCarson video.

#33. Scientology - It's not science, it's something else.

#34. Dave - Dave.

#35. Jimothy - Fairly uncommon name.

#36. Glassblower - A profession.

Now you're probably thinking, that I lied to you when I said there weren't that many, and you'd be right. It's not nearly as many as most other games that have random window titles, but it still is a decent amount. If you have any more to suggest, you can tell me in our Discord server. I try to be fairly active on it. Now that's pretty much it for things that I currently have in the game, but there's still quite a few things I'd like to add, so why don't we talk about those now?

---------- Planned/Upcoming Features ----------

Number One: A more efficiently made compiler.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm currently using Electron to build Dodge The French. And as some of you probably know, Electron is really efficient and a very severe ram hog. This is why I plan to switch Dodge The French over to using Tauri, which is a rust made framework for essentially this exact purpose, now enough with the boring code talk for now, let's get into the stuff you actually care about!

Number Two: Some Sort Of Baguette Farm.

I thought it would be really funny if I did something like the zen garden from the first Plants Vs. Zombies game, but instead of growing plants you're growing different types of French breads that you sell to the French at extortionate prices. Which as you can tell by the fact that it wasn't in the screenshots, hasn't been added yet. It's probably going to be one of the last things I add, so you probably won't hear much about it for a while.

Number Three: More Upgrades And Items In The Shop.

There isn't very much stuff you can buy in the shop, so it's probably pretty obvious that I'm going to need to add more of them. I don't have many ideas for stuff to add to the shop, so if you have any good ideas you can tell me about them in our Discord server, I'd love to hear your suggestions, so if you have any ideas at all, please tell me!

Number Four: More Settings In The Settings Menu.

As you probably say earlier, there are only four settings for the game, three of which don't do anything, so I should probably make them do things. I've got quite a few things that will go in the settings menu, so if there's something that I should add that never got added, please let me know. 

Number Five: Better Textures, And More Music.

As you can probably tell, most a lot of the textures in the game are unfinished, and look pretty bad, so as you can guess, I'm going to need to improve the textures that don't look good so people don't complain. As for the music, that's the only part of the game that I don't make, it's handled by my goof friend Rubix925, who you can also find in our Discord server.

Number Six: Your Suggestions.

I can't possibly make this game good without ideas and improvements for the community. I'm not a very creative person, so I usually have to rely on others for ideas and inspiration for the game, as I've already said several times, you can suggest features for the game in our Discord server, and if they're any good I'll probably add them to the game. Now as I said in the very beginning, I wanted to talk a bit about myself and the studio, so let's move on to that.

---------- About The Studio ----------

Most of the stuff I'd usually say is already written out on our website, forver.org so I'll try and keep this short and interesting. So, as you might already know, our studio is known as "The Man Studios", we are an indie studio comprised of three people, Me, Rubix925 and Johnny. Where I am the founder and lead developer, Rubix is the sound and music designer and Johnny is the Brand Manager (Although I'm the one that actually does most of the brand management). Dodge The French is our first major project and it's the only other thing we do other than run the YouTube channel. That about wraps it up, so let's get into a bit about myself.

---------- About Me ----------

A lot of the stuff I'm going to talk about here is also on our website (forver.org/false), so I'll be keeping this short as well. As I've already mentioned, I'm the lead developer of Dodge The French. And as I haven't mentioned yet, I prefer she/her pronouns, I'm from Canada and I'm sexual. That's about it about me, so let me link our Social Media accounts and I'll be off!

---------- Where You Can Find Us ----------

Our YouTube Channel
Our Twitter Account
And Our Discord Server

So that about sums it up, I've told you what we've already added to Dodge The French, what we want to add and a bit about the studio and myself. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and have a wonderful rest of your day!