How do I make my platformer character dash in all eight directions?

Hi guys, I’m pretty new to GDevelop and I’ve figured a lot of things out.

I want to find out how to make my platformer character dash in all eight directions, like where if you press the dash button it will dash in the direction you face, but if you hold the dash button the player will freeze in place for about a second or until the dash key is released, and the player can choose which direction to dash in using arrow keys.

I’ve tried asking this question in the discord but the answers are not that helpful, so I came here for help

Do you guys know how I can do this?

There are separate conditions for “Key Pressed” and “Key Released”. So, when they key is pressed you could freeze the player and show a direction indicator. Then in a separate event use “Key released” to perform the dash.

but i have no idea how to even indicate what key(s) are being pressed, and i don’t even know how to make a dash function either

To confirm, you want this on a platformer and not a top-down game? Because platformers are for players standing on a platform, with movement directions are usually left, right and jump. This itself make it unusual to dash through a platform in the 3 of the directions going downwards.

Just add a new condition and type “key” in the search bar, it will list all of the conditions related to keyboard input. You can use the regular “Key pressed” to detect a specific key, which you can then select from a list. “Key pressed (text expression)” is for detecting keys based on a string, which is good for making your controls able to be changed by the player, but you can wait until later to mess with that.

Making a dash ability by hand is a little more complicated. I’m pretty sure there is a Dash behavior that adds on to Platformer, you might want to try using that first to see if it fulfills your needs.