For today I made the camera follow the boat.
Using particles for the water sparkles that helps to see the motion.
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With this first quick test level I could feel how is to rowing the boat for longer distances… and is actually fun!
Imagine that you can’t do collision with solid obstacles or your boat will crack, after 3 times you sink… that’s will add lot of tension to the game, and focus on precision and anticipation instead of high-peed.
Had a little dalay today of few ours because a little issue with float point precision…
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Instant death would probably be better for ads if you are making the game to be f2p!
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Oh! that’s the reason on mobile most games are instat-death! 
Thanks for the tip, that proof my lack of experience with mobile games.
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Yes, then the usual thing is “watch an ad to get one extra life where you left off one time only”.
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Sprites Scaling down 0.5x performance:
I was a bit worried about high definition displays on devices. (Since people are buying whatever companies want them to buy, like this 806ppi phone) Maybe because I grow up with CGA, I still like to see my pixels… well:
Documentation suggest to use graphics content of the game as double size, then scall down 0.5x. Then my worries were that the modest innocent low resolution phones will suffer lower performance to please the big expensive ones…
Good news: There is almost not performance lost
Tested with @britzl bunnymark project on standard resolution phone.
With sprites at %100 I get 8,000 bunnies at 29.8 FPS.
Scaled all bunnies on photoshop, to %200, added then tested like this and I got 18.3 FPS for the same 8,000 bunnies.
Finally scaled by code at runtime the bunnies game objects to 0.5x, and I got 28.6 FPS.
For me is conclusive, no more worries, everything would be scaled down. Maybe you all now that but this is news for me 
Now we just need a setting on atlases to scale down all sprites images at once.
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How are your collision objects setup? / What are the problems?
You can use https://www.defold.com/community/projects/58981/ to make custom shapes.
Remember that you can have multiple collision objects of different sizes and enable/disable them as needed.
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Great! thank you, That is my next need, custom shapes to make a kayak an other types of boats… currently using basic shapes only.
I was scaling the game objects only on X and Y axes, collision objects ignored the transformation, now I know that need to scale uniform and always include Z axis too. Problem solved.
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We have coins:
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Looks like you do not have enough contrast at the moment.
Changing water color
–
Then testing adjusting brightness / contrast for everything after
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Yes! Totally agree!
It’s like every day I think to change the ocean color to the like it’s close to the beach, and I never do it
Thanks for the images to show me the contrast problem!
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Is the ocean waves randomly factored game objects or particlefx or shader? The same question about cirvular waves from boat? 
Particles everywhere!, I guess it has better performance this way. Don’t know how much I can abuse of them 
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So did you create another material with different tag for them so they could be rendered in render script below other sprites (tiles tag) or are the sprites rendered in gui actually? Just asking, I’m curious
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Yes, your right, that was my first brave adventure editing the render script!
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I have implemented very simplified controls mode!
Anyone willing to test it, would be very appreciated!
This is how both modes works:
Simulation mode:
Left-low half of the screen controls the left oar by dragging it, when you press it sink in to the water.
Same for the right side.
Casual mode:
Simply press or press and hold left side to move left oar to advance forward. Same for right side.
You can download the APK here: https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=XZr3YA7ZS6vbEKCQn1BsNcBCyXndcJSRxKgX
Thank you!
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I had to put anything gamedev related on hold, because of: Real life. I needed to go back full time 3d modeling for food!
In case you find it useful I have these few 3D lowpoly characters good for games, free for download on my web:
(There you can also find links there to the commercial bundles)
Have many more ideas to implement using Defold, I hope I can come back soon.
I keep reading the release notes of every new update… Defold is every time cuter.
Regards,
Denys
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When you are a solo dev and don’t have time and resources to fishing a game, always the most “smart” thing to do is think about 5 new more ideas and start another project! 
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