176 replies to this topic

[atari2600land]

I'm posting this here to get wider exposure. In case you don't read the bB forums, I have been working on a game called 2600tris. I want to make this game as good as possible, so I need criticism/complements, just any feedback would be appreciated. At the title screen, press the right difficulty switch to A to activate a 2-player mode.

Attached Files

•  2600tris_11182009v2.bin   32K   178 downloads

[e1will]

Nice responsive controls. Are there different difficulty/speed settings?

--Will

[atari2600land]

Not at the moment. Since there is no score except for the number of lines, and the only difference between levels is the speed of the block dropping and the score (which isn't present), I haven't added it in yet.

EDIT: I meant at the beginning. The game does get faster as you progress, though.

Edited by atari2600land, Thu Nov 19, 2009 5:40 PM.

[jeffgamer]

atari2600land, on Thu Nov 19, 2009 3:23 PM, said:

I'm posting this here to get wider exposure. In case you don't read the bB forums, I have been working on a game called 2600tris. I want to make this game as good as possible, so I need criticism/complements, just any feedback would be appreciated. At the title screen, press the right difficulty switch to A to activate a 2-player mode.

I'd recommend that you check out the bin for Edtris, a Tetris clone produced years ago. Might as well see what you like and don't like about how he did his program so that you don't just duplicate the wheel but, instead, improve upon it.

[rmaerz]

After I got used to controls in Stella, it worked pretty well.

Is the second playfield on the right for two player action?

On the opening screen, what is the black cannon looking object?

The obvious is a rainbow of colors for the different shapes.

Also, can the playfield be expanded? There's a bit of space that could be used up between the bottom and the score. If this makes game play easier, consider compensating by increasing the speed.

Lastly, the "next shape" indicator at the top middle - I think it may be easier if it were lowered towards the middle. It'll be a shorter distance as far as eye movement off the playfield to the next shape indicator.

[rmaerz]

Here's an idea - for the title screen, what about spelling out Tetris using the shapes that are in the game?

[atari2600land]

rmaerz, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 9:34 AM, said:

After I got used to controls in Stella, it worked pretty well.

Is the second playfield on the right for two player action?

On the opening screen, what is the black cannon looking object?

The obvious is a rainbow of colors for the different shapes.

Also, can the playfield be expanded? There's a bit of space that could be used up between the bottom and the score. If this makes game play easier, consider compensating by increasing the speed.

Lastly, the "next shape" indicator at the top middle - I think it may be easier if it were lowered towards the middle. It'll be a shorter distance as far as eye movement off the playfield to the next shape indicator.

Yes, there is a two-player mode. Have the right difficulty switch set to A to get it working.

The black thing is supposed to be a joystick. One joystick means it will be a one-player game, and two means a two player game.

bB doesn't really let you have different shapes be different colors.

Yes, the playfield can be expanded.

I'll lower the next shape thing.

And I have played Edtris. I got 1,013 lines on it once, something I definitely can't do on my version. The blocks at the title screen spell out "2600tris."

[atari2600land]

New version.
* playfield has been deepened.
* the next blocks have been lowered.
* fixed some problems with player 2's colors.

Attached Files

•  2600tris_112009.bas.bin   32K   108 downloads

[rmaerz]

atari2600land, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 11:38 AM, said:

New version.
* playfield has been deepened.
* the next blocks have been lowered.
* fixed some problems with player 2's colors.

Great job. Using the emulator controls do this game a disservice. But, that's a non-issue because I know using a joystick there will be no problems. Two player mode looks like it would be a lot of fun.

I'm not a programmer, so even if you explained it I probably still won't get why the shapes cannot be different colors.

Again, great job.

[Zach]

The controls are much better over the previous versions. I prefer a faster drop with the joystick down, but that's just me. It's too bad about the shapes blinking as they fall. I suspect it's difficult to fix without a little assembly intervention. (I wouldn't mind being wrong.) How much assembly have you studied, atari2600land?

[atari2600land]

Zach, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 1:57 PM, said:

How much assembly have you studied, atari2600land?

I don't know anything about assembly.

[rmaerz]

atari2600land, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 2:06 PM, said:

Zach, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 1:57 PM, said:

How much assembly have you studied, atari2600land?

I don't know anything about assembly.

Me neither!

[atari2600land]

RevEng found a way to make the blocks not blink when they go down.

Attached Files

•  2600tris_112009v2.bas.bin   32K   109 downloads

[gravitone]

atari2600land, on Thu Nov 19, 2009 3:23 PM, said:

I'm posting this here to get wider exposure. In case you don't read the bB forums, I have been working on a game called 2600tris. I want to make this game as good as possible, so I need criticism/complements, just any feedback would be appreciated. At the title screen, press the right difficulty switch to A to activate a 2-player mode.

Hi, I'm new to 8-bit programming, the 6502, and 64kb ram to work with!, Right now im trying to code a tetris clone for the atari Lynx (great little machine), and if I could be so bold, would like to hear from you about some pointers when it comes to datastructures you used to handle the board, piece rotation, pieces, etc. I'll list what I have so far and tell me what you think if you have some time. It would be great to hear some thoughts on what I've come up with.

I thought about using a 10x18 byte "board". This array hold values of either 0 (no piece), 1 (fixed piece), 2 (falling piece). Each piece consist of: 4 blocks, each containing 2 bytes (x,y) for coordinates. The First piece always serving as the rotation point. I've thought about making a 224 byte datablock that holds the x,y coordinates for all 7 pieces for each of the 4 rotation "states" a block can be in. Collision detection will kick in after each movement is issues. Checking adjecent blocks on the board for every block in a tetris piece. I want to make 2 detection routines. 1 for vertical and 1 for horizontal movement. As soon as a solid block is detected below the falling piece it will turn into a fixed value, the piece variables will be cleared in memory, and a new piece will be created by my piece generation code.

I seem to be going off track with irrelevant specifics so I'll leave it at that for now. I still have the collision detection for my rotation routine to work out (existing pieces on the board and board edges) but that Shouldnt be too much of a problem. Most of it is down in pseudo code right now that I'll work out over the weekend if I have the time for it. Hope to hear your thoughts on this.

Best regards,
Richard Visser

[atari2600land]

Before you go on with your project, I'd like to tell you that there is already a Tetris clone for the Lynx. That being said, though, I'm not sure what you want. If you want my bB code for the game, I can post it here if you want me to.

[gravitone]

atari2600land, on Fri Nov 20, 2009 4:24 PM, said:

Before you go on with your project, I'd like to tell you that there is already a Tetris clone for the Lynx. That being said, though, I'm not sure what you want. If you want my bB code for the game, I can post it here if you want me to.

sourcecode would be great. I know there is already a tetris clone out there, but I'ts a good start for my to familiarize myself with a lot of the inner workings of the lynx, particulary the sprite hardware, and in the meantime, improve on the tetris clone out there. I'll have something to show after the weekend hopefully.

[atari2600land]

Here is the .bas file for the most recent version.
-chris

Attached Files

•  2600tris_112009v2.bas   26.56K   91 downloads

[atari2600land]

Got rid of blinking all together. Could someone please test this to see if it works on real hardware?

Attached Files

•  2600tris_112009v3.bas   26.64K   79 downloads
•  2600tris_112009v3.bas.bin   32K   110 downloads

[atari2600land]

Added some SFX. When a line clears. Also, in 1-player mode, once the level changes, the little song from the GB version of Tetris will play. Please please please test this on real hardware, someone!

Attached Files

•  2600tris_112209.bas.bin   32K   117 downloads

[rmaerz]

Sorry guy but I can only test it in emulation...

There's too much on the sound effects. I would drop the effects when rotating a shape and either choose a short, less abrasive sound when a shape is dropped in place. The effect when you clear a line is OK, but I'm curious as to what other effects could be used instead.

[MIKE5200]

Any hopes on making a 5200 version?

Thanks

[atari2600land]

Sorry, I don't know anything about 5200 programming.

[sandmountainslim]

I just played a round of your game as well as Edtris.
Your game starts off at a much better pace than Edtris and looks much better but something about the controls are almost TOO responsive for me. A piece will flip two or three times in midair when I only mean to do one partial turn. I know nothing about programming so I have no idea why this is.
Forgive the non-programmer criticism, just telling my experience Keep up the good work. This is very promising and would like to see it on cart.
Wp

[atari2600land]

I wish I could make it as smooth as the versions I posted here, but I think it needs to be flickering somewhat because of the cycles count. And I will return to working on this, and work on making the shapes flip again. Thanks for your comments.

[atari2600land]

Here is the latest version. I tested the cycles count and all is well. I tried to make it so when you press the fire button longer, the longer it takes to flip the shape. This should help with the problem sandmountainslim described.

Attached Files

•  2600tris_112809.bas.bin   32K   129 downloads