Sprint

[GlassOfWater]

Sprint is Just a game I'm working on with C++ and SFML. it is very much still under heavy development.

Jump and run style platformer, where gravity can be toggled in 4 directions.

some screenshots




Download Here: glass-pixel.com (Windows only for now)

[StormWingDelta]

Man that's disorienting with the 4 way gravity and the controls changing with it too. It's fun though.   Try setting up a map generator of some kind even if it's fixed having one on hand will make your life easier if you're going to use tiles.

[eXpl0it3r]

Nice another game with SFML! :-)

I really like the graphics, the music and the game idea.

Man that's disorienting with the 4 way gravity and the controls changing with it too.

I hadn't even noticed that the controls changed...

A few things though:

• Downloading the map list or a map takes like forever, although it's only a few bytes...
• When downloading something the whole application freezes, e.g. you can't close it.
• The loading screen in between levels is really annoying, since you can't actually see it (shows only for a few milliseconds) it feels like some flickering.
• The key mapping is horrible. Once because many European keyboards use the QWERTZ layout instead of QWERTY, thus the Z and Y will be swapped. Second because you don't use standard keys for standard actions, it kind of feels like a bad console port. You can always map Z (or Y) to selecte, or X to exit, but please also bind RETURN and ESC, it's just more natural and way faster, e.g. you choose something from the menu and use the arrow keys, the natural response to the select is pressing RETURN with the same hand. The same applies to the exit command, it's faster to just hit ESC instead of 'searching' where the X is on the keyboard and then press it.
• The map format could get greatly improved.
• The Ayedit advertisment on the website is really confusing...

I hope to see some more from this project!

[GlassOfWater]

Thanks heaps guys, really glad you like it its my first real project and first time using sfml

Try setting up a map generator of some kind even if it's fixed having one on hand will make your life easier if you're going to use tiles.

I have written a tile based map editor for it that I'm using to make maps at the moment, a map generator would be pretty awesome no idea how to make one though

• Downloading the map list or a map takes like forever, although it's only a few bytes...
• When downloading something the whole application freezes, e.g. you can't close it.

yea, I know but have no idea how to make it any faster, I'm using sf::Ftp to connect to the map server.

• The key mapping is horrible. Once because many European keyboards use the QWERTZ layout instead of QWERTY, thus the Z and Y will be swapped. Second because you don't use standard keys for standard actions, it kind of feels like a bad console port. You can always map Z (or Y) to selecte, or X to exit, but please also bind RETURN and ESC, it's just more natural and way faster, e.g. you choose something from the menu and use the arrow keys, the natural response to the select is pressing RETURN with the same hand. The same applies to the exit command, it's faster to just hit ESC instead of 'searching' where the X is on the keyboard and then press it.

defiantly a good idea, will do this, thanks

• The map format could get greatly improved.

Sprint is the first time I have ever written to or read from files so I'm very new to it, not sure how to improve it but I will look up some tutorials and see what I can do.

• The Ayedit advertisment on the website is really confusing...

Yea, its a trade off as my friend made the site for me. I don't have the slightest idea when it comes to webpage development so in exchange for him making the site for me he put an add for his site on it.

really appreciate all the feedback

[Haze]

That's a great little game, good concept with nice retro graphics.
It works fine on Linux using wine.

- The maps are not really challenging, maybe the gameplay could be extended by adding enemies, spikes...?

- Why are you downloading and storing png's for map previews? Couldn't you just build automatically a preview from the .map file, so you could avoid loading from hdd and downloading images in the custom maps menu .

- Same remark as eXpl0it3r regarding the keys bindings, space and/or return should let the player select the focused item.
Moreover, in the custom maps menu, pressing "return" takes you back to the main menu, that's confusing.

- Found a little bug after after playing a downloaded custom map, it seems like the view is not reset and is still centered on the player position.



I'll sure look for updates

[eXpl0it3r]

yea, I know but have no idea how to make it any faster, I'm using sf::Ftp to connect to the map server.

Yeah FTP isn't the fastes way to exchange stuff, but you could at least put the FTP fetching in a seperated thread so your application would still respond to user inputs and you could animate some waiting indicator, which will tell the user: "I'm not dead, I'm doing something."
And since you're only downloading things it could be better to use HTTP.

Sprint is the first time I have ever written to or read from files so I'm very new to it, not sure how to improve it but I will look up some tutorials and see what I can do.

A simple improvement would be, not to write every single information on a new line but instead pack together on one line what fits together, so one could also read the raw information to grabs what's going on.
Another step would be to reduce repetitions. If you look at a map file many many lines are just zeroes. You could pack them horizontal. If there are x tiles that contain tile y then instead of writing x lines with changing position but with the same y, you much rather just 'write': on this line there will next x times a y.

Found a little bug after after playing a downloaded custom map, it seems like the view is not reset and is still centered on the player position.

Yeah this happend to me also once,  but since I didn't find a way to reproduce it, I didn't post it...

There are still some other bugs which I can't reproduce either, but maybe you can think of what's happening.

• When loading something from the FTP server it can happen that the application dies, probably due to connection problems/timeout which doesn't get catched. You should defently break the connection after a few seconds if the connection doesn't work properly...
• As I was writing this post I had Sprint open in the background and suddently I got a Windows error dialog, I can't remember what it said and I can't reproduce it, but it seems you're doing something wrong in your code, since it was an 'official' error prompt it's most likely in connection with the usage of the STL (e.g. index out of range for a std::vector, or similar).

[aBallofWin]

Nice game! As well as the problems mentioned, when you jump and hit something above you, it will continue to hold you there until the jump loop has finished. Maybe this is by design but if not, you could make it bounce back down when colliding with an object above the player!

[kurasu1415]

All I have to say is , "Beautiful Art!". I just love the way it looks. Keep up the good work!

[RedTheGreen]

Looks good so far. I think this has potential.

I noticed you're linking against dynamic libraries; was this intentional?

[eXpl0it3r]

I noticed you're linking against dynamic libraries; was this intentional?

Why shouldn't that be intentional? It's even good practice to do so!