gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

Announcements And Comments > My game: Polyominoes

#67887 - quickcup - Sat Jan 21, 2006 3:09 am

Hey guys.

I submitted my game a few days ago but it either didn't get through or the admin are on vacation. j/k

Anyway, here is the game http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~02bestan/polyominoes.zip and here is my original message. Some criticisms would be appreciated.




Hello,

This is a game I have been working on since 2003. I am an undergrad cs student hoping to submit this as an independent project for credit, therefore your comments and criticisms would be especially appreciated.

-About the game-
Yes, Polyominoes, is indeed the one millionth Tetris clone known to man. However, it features unique modes, and for being a homebrew, it is fairly complete.

-Features-
- 4 unique modes of game play
- 3 different sets of shapes to play with
- menus and presentation
- artificial intelligence
- 2 player link play (not fully tested)
- many options
- sound, music, and special effects

See the instructions in the zip for more detailed documentation.

If anyone could try it on real hardware that would be awesome.
Thanks.

Last edited by quickcup on Sun Jan 07, 2007 3:52 pm; edited 1 time in total

#68247 - quickcup - Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:58 am

It occured to me that some people might be hesitant to download the game because I didn't put up any screen shots. I edited the original post to include some now.

#68256 - keldon - Mon Jan 23, 2006 10:26 am

quickcup wrote:
It occured to me that some people might be hesitant to download the game because I didn't put up any screen shots. I edited the original post to include some now.


Yes. Showing a gamer a screenshot of tetris is quite like the effect of carefully placing cupcakes and doughnuts in shop windows. Especially since I cannot find my tetris cartridge at this moment in time - I think I will now go and download.

EDIT:

Nice effort here. Music and graphics are good. The speed/timing feels unnatural, especially when trying to drop pieces and sometimes the response feels a little delayed.

#68625 - sumiguchi - Thu Jan 26, 2006 2:46 am

This game is great! Really nice job - very polished, cool animations, lots of different gameplay options and is very fun to play!
Quote:
Some criticisms would be appreciated.
1.I wish I could rotate a shape as soon as it was onscreen - currently you have to wait for it to fall one line.
2. If I hold the dpad down key, it moves too slow. I would prefer behaviour where you hold the dpad down and it moves down once like it does now and if I continue holding it, make it move fast (& smooth) until it hits to bottom, or until the dpad down is released.

Oh yeah, I don't mind this so much but when there are two play area's, you can cheat by moving the peice back and forth between the screens (no matter how far down it is, using R or L will reset it to the top on the other screen).

So thats my critisism/opinion! Anyways - those minor things aside, this is a very nice game!
cheers, sumiguchi

#68641 - shen3 - Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:48 am

I agree with the rotation problem above about not being able to rotate the piece as soon as it appears on the board. this is a pain.

Additionally, rotating the piece 180 degrees results in the piece being in a different position relative to the board. This is very annoying, since it means instead of each peice have 2 different positions, they now have 4.

This makes it harder at the higher levels where you need to move + rotate very quickly.

You can see the effect of the rotates in the preview box. after 2 90 degree turns the pieces top left square is in a different position.

I also didn't like the fact that the preview piece rotated, as it was distracting. I initially wondered if the position of the preview piece effected the inital position of the piece when it got put on the board, but it doesn't seem to. I would prefer if the preview piece didn't rotate.

Overall, it is a pretty good game, keep up the good work

Shen

#68837 - quickcup - Fri Jan 27, 2006 1:14 am

Thanks for trying it and giving your opinions guys.
I agree with most of your points and will keep them in mind when I get time to work on it again.

#68922 - keldon - Fri Jan 27, 2006 10:44 am

quickcup wrote:
Thanks for trying it and giving your opinions guys.
I agree with most of your points and will keep them in mind when I get time to work on it again.


Shouldn't take too long to fix them. I did my rotations over a specific block in my tetris clone. To be honest I am not even sure if that is how the gameboy version did it but it feels ok. Generally I aimed to duplicate the behaviour of that when possible as it is by far one of the best versions to date in terms of timing and feel.

#69054 - tepples - Sat Jan 28, 2006 4:24 am

keldon wrote:
I did my rotations over a specific block in my tetris clone. To be honest I am not even sure if that is how the gameboy version did it but it feels ok.

The NES and Game Boy versions just seemed to store the block in all four positions. At least that's what my own NES tetramino game and GBA tetramino game do.

Quote:
Generally I aimed to duplicate the behaviour of that when possible as it is by far one of the best versions to date in terms of timing and feel.

Slow autorepeat of sideways movement killed the fun of the Game Boy version for me. All my own games use a 30fps key-repeat.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#114401 - quickcup - Sun Jan 07, 2007 3:51 pm

Just thought I would update with what ended up being the final version. I have cleaned up the interface and added a debug mode, but also removed the 2 player game cause I just couldn't get it working correctly.

http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~02bestan/polyominoes.zip

#114404 - keldon - Sun Jan 07, 2007 4:18 pm

The irony of timing; I'm also working on a tetris clone too. The tetris engine is complete and I can already play it; but I expect to complete all added graphics features and release it tomorrow.

Also have a look at the shuffling thread posted in the coding board. And have you thought about the random bag generator? It is a nice way of creating sequences of shapes.

#114406 - tepples - Sun Jan 07, 2007 6:05 pm

Constructive criticism:
  • All tetrominoes start out one space to the right of where the Game Boy starts them.
  • Rotating the tetromino in the preview window could be confusing.
  • Sometimes pressing rotate and move together does not do both actions.
  • Ever considered nudging the piece one space to the left or right when rotation fails?
  • No mechanism to "hard drop" (move the piece all the way to the bottom in one step).
  • Lines should "fly out" or "trace" at the same time, not individually, to reward bigger clears with better times.
  • A few times, the game froze after the title screen.
  • There's a lot of completely blank space in the ROM, which can be seen with a tile editor, a hex editor, or an audio editor.
  • Mixing rotation with morphing with the O tetromino produced a glitch once.
  • Skin choice (tetrominoes/tetrominoes2/retrominoes) could have been made separate from shape choice.
  • Transitions in menus are a bit slow.
  • This game is a perfect candidate for tile mode, yet you use extended rotation (bitmap) mode 4.

_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#114448 - quickcup - Mon Jan 08, 2007 12:42 am

Yes, certainly some valid points but many are products of either my limited understanding of the hardware or functions that I personally don't care about as a tetris player. I see the glitching with the morphers now. Probably just a small bug.