Solar Sprint

Explore the planetary system of Solas in this action-packed endless runner!

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Inspiration

Inspiration comes from the unlikeliest of places. For me, it was when I was surfing the web and suddenly the power went out. Lo-and-behold out pops the Chrome Dino game!

That, and the fact that the theme of the hackathon was 'Snakes and Hackers', gave me the idea to make an endless runner. Of course, me being me, had to add in the whole "planetary system" thing to it.

What it does

Solar Sprint is an endless runner at its core. You can play in different settings (different planets) and each setting challenges you with its unique set of enemies. You can log-in to store your high-scores.

How I built it

The whole web application runs on the Django Framework. The game itself is written in Javascript, rendered via HTML's canvas element.

When playing, the game first downloads all the assets and then only does it begin. The platforms can be spawned at 5 different levels, while the enemies are spawned after the first 100 meters at different probabilities. One can press the space key to make the character jump.

The web-application runs on the Django Framework, and uses the sqlite3 database. The users can log-in to store their progress.

Challenges I ran into

The main challenge I faced was of time-management. I had tons of ideas and not enough time to complete them all. More than once I was forced to revert back to previous commits. That combined with the fact that I wasn't able to provide all the functionality that I wanted to, made me increasingly frustrated.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

So much to be proud of! Completing my first hackathon! Making my first gaming web-application! This was my very first hackathon so I wasn't even sure that I'd be able to actually submit anything. So even doing this is a huge accomplishment. Participating and completing your first hackathon is a rite of passage in the Computer Science community so yay for me!

What I learned

Lots and lots. I had a very perfunctory knowledge of Django, so this project helped drill those in. Strengthened my Javascript and CSS. In addition I also learned what it felt like participating in a hackathon. Frustrating at times, but extremely rewarding at the end, it turns out!

What's next for Solar Sprint

A whole lot of stuff! More planets, meaning different settings to play in. The ability to change Sprinters (characters). Giving some incentive by adding the functionality to unlock planets and characters by running certain distances, and so on. So keep an eye out for that!

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