Friday the 13th - A Tetris clone (game testers needed)

[Michael_B]

Hello,

I'm Michael from Germany and I first want to thank you all for the great Wiki. I spent hours reading all the details about Tetris.

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/8858/f13.png

In the beginning I wanted to program only a little Tetris clone that's why I came here. But the more I read about Tetris the more I wanted to implement certain features and now I'm at the point were my first release version is published.

I hope to find some beta testers for my program, especially for the rotation system including all the different kicks. Here are the features implemented so far:

DAS SRS (with kicks) Random Generator (7 system) Ghost Piece Hold Piece Soft Drop Hard Drop Finite Lock Delay T-Spin detection Combo detection Back-2-Back detection Hurdle detection
The game is developed on a Windows Vista machine using C# and the XNA framework, so the target audience is Windows Vista and Windows XP (SP#2 or newer). You also need the newest .NET framework (v3.5) and the XNA (3.0) runtime library.

This is the first time I'm deploying a game with XNA. I heard the installer downloads all the required libraries automatically but I couldn't test that. Your experience with the installation procedure would be a valuable piece of information for me.

The game includes a "level.txt" file were you can setup different scenarios for testing. You can also inject specified pieces into the running game. More details are included in the "readme.txt" in the zip file. There is no real scoring system at the moment, the game just gives messages about what's happening. The piece preview is also not implemented in this release.

I'm a hobby developer and I don't know where the project is going in the future. My main motivation for developing the game is to learn game development in general and programming for the XNA framework. For sure I will implement the following features until version 1.0:

Scoring system Piece preview Sound effects Music Better graphics At least 2 different game modes
From there on it depends on the demand of people if I will do further releases. Some features I can think of were:

More game modes 2 player (local) AI Support for Game Pads
You can download the game from here: http://rapidshare.com/files/210285705/Friday_the_13th_v0.5.zip

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,
Michael

[caffeine]

I like the name. =]

[tepples]

I like the name. =]
It teaches me (not) to make really generic names for my productions (http://www.pineight.com/nes/#t).

[TWF]

Tepples, you spelled it differently so it's fine http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_exclaim.gif

[lgb]

Neat screenshot, looks clean and uncomplicated. I'll try it out later.

One of the first features you should implement next is change-the-name-before-The-Tetris-Company-shows-you-how-it-is. Essential for any "Tetris clone", I'd think.

[muf]

Nice effort, but I don't see the point of using XNA for anything other than 360 homebrew.

[tepples]

Nice effort, but I don't see the point of using XNA for anything other than 360 homebrew.
Nice effort, but I don't see the point of using Java for anything other than applets.

Perhaps someone just likes C#.

[muf]

Nice effort, but I don't see the point of using Java for anything other than applets.
I agree completely.

[Deniax]

Nice effort, but I don't see the point of using XNA for anything other than 360 homebrew.
Nice effort, but I don't see the point of using Java for anything other than applets.

Perhaps someone just likes C#.The Blockbox server & highscore server is running on Java http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif

[Michael_B]

Thanks to all for your interest so far, I hope you enjoy playing the game!

One of the first features you should implement next is change-the-name-before-The-Tetris-Company-shows-you-how-it-is. Essential for any "Tetris clone", I'd think.
I take this statement examplarily for all the other posts relating to naming. Though I don't want to sell the game, I didn't think about any legal issues. I will change the name, thanks for the heads-up.

Nice effort, but I don't see the point of using XNA for anything other than 360 homebrew.
XNA is a game development framework for Windows, XBox 360 and Zune.

[tepples]

Both unmanaged C++ and XNA can run on recent Windows PCs. But if you're not specifically targeting Xbox 360 and Zune, you can probably get a larger audience with unmanaged C++: Mac, Linux, older Windows PCs, Windows subnotebooks, iPhone, etc.

[Michael_B]

I renamed the game, what do you think? http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

Both unmanaged C++ and XNA can run on recent Windows PCs. But if you're not specifically targeting Xbox 360 and Zune, you can probably get a larger audience with unmanaged C++: Mac, Linux, older Windows PCs, Windows subnotebooks, iPhone, etc.
Your argument makes perfect sense but as I wrote in my introductionary post my main motivation is to learn programming for XNA. The framework let me keep my focus on game mechanics and game play and I don't have to take care about the underlying sub systems.