In case you haven't been watching its progress, my remake of Jeretris has reached a nice point in its development where I can stop and perfect a handful of time-based game elements, specifically: - What determines a level promotion - How to calculate the score (from lines cleared, pieces dropped, t-spins, etc.) - How/when the Gravity changes - How/when/whether the block freezing interval changes And, of course, -DAS I'm about to replace the naive keyboard input system with something less stupid a key press event immediately triggers a game action, and starts a timer. If the key is released, the timer is stopped and reset. But if the key is held down, the timer exceeds a certain time and the game action is quickly triggered repeatedly. (I'll only use these timers for repetitive actions and not rotation.) So let's start with user input; should the auto-repeat behavior of certain keys speed up as the game speeds up? Let's talk about actual numbers here frames, or preferably milliseconds.
By the way, you'll notice the color system is done (though not necessarily put to exceptional use). Hitting backspace during gameplay should make things interesting.
Together, these are called a "speed curve". Speed curves differ greatly from game to game, and some games (such as Tetris The Grand Master series) allow selection from multiple speed curves before play. This is "lock delay", and the speed curve generally tweaks the lock delay along with the gravity. Again, this differs from game to game or even within a game. Tetris Worlds had several modes that differed mostly in scoring (Tetris, Hotline, Square). There is Game Boy scoring, and then there is what appears to be Guideline scoring as seen in Tetris Worlds (first to use the 1, 3, 5, 8, 12 sequence), Tetris DS (which introduced the complete system as we know it), and Tetris Zone. In some games, most notably TGM series, the speed curve controls the DAS delay. See also Glossary, TGM legend, and TAP on the wiki. Tetris DS is typical of modern slow-DAS games: 183 ms initial delay, 83 ms repeat period, on a 60 fps base.
I would say DAS with a 130~140ms delay would be fast enough to be considered fast without causing problems for novice players. The actual speed of the movement while DAS'ing should be 1G IMO.
I would go with three single-player modes: "Marathon" or "Normal" mode (think Tetris DS): linear speed/gravity curve, 0G->20G, and then the game ends with a score. This should be familiar for SRS players. Boring if you ask me, but what the hey. Master mode (think TGM series): speed curve that goes up and down two times, and speeds up dramatically the second time, stays at 20G for a long period of time where ARE and lock delay get shortened (see our wiki here and here). In the last minute you can put in some "gimmick" challenge like monochrome blocks (indistinguishable), big blocks, disappearing blocks, invisible blocks, or anything like that. It's your game, invent something fun . When the challenge is completed, a grade could be displayed, or you could stick with a scoring system. If you want to implement a grading system, you might want to talk to LOst, he's fascinated by game grading and has written a few of his own. Anyway, this mode will probably keep TC guys interested in playing your flash game . "Insane" mode, "Hard" mode, "Speed" mode, "20G mode", whatever you want to call it: a mode that starts in 20G and sticks with it. For ARE, lock delay, etc. you could use a linear curve, or you could adopt master mode timings (but without the gravity changes of course). Go nuts, as long as it's hard to play.
I don't think there's a delay on the quick drop, but I'm not sure. I just tried Tetris DS, and I think there is a slight DAS, but I don't think there needs to be one.
I don't want to bore you guys with the details, but the way that the Jeretris project ties into my larger project establishes some limits on what variations of gameplay I can offer the player. I'd like to perfect Marathon mode so that it's fun, if not exactly thrilling to you hardened TGM veterans. Fortunately, once the larger project takes shape, I'll be able to offer gameplay variations of a sort, but only then. New build is up. DAS the way I like it. Time to figure out some curves.
DAS still feels to slow. The delay is at least twice as long as I would want it to be. I find it far faster to tap, even if I'm moving right to the edge. Also, the pieces should lock a lot faster when you hold down after they've hit the stack. And it's personal preference, but I prefer the new hold piece to display in the hold box instantly when I swap, rather than after I've placed the piece I swapped it with.
Rosti LFC is right that Tetris DS appears to apply a short delay on shifting down, but most games don't. Do Zone and Splash? Or you could call them Light, Standard, and Heavy. That's what The New Tetris does (tetromino flashes red when first held), and that's what TGM3 does (tetromino is drawn gray like garbage when first held). Lockjaw follows TGM3.
DAS still seems a little off--besides the large delay it doesn't seem to accept input in the other direction while DASing in another. In other words, you can't hold right to DAS to the side, tap left, and have your active tetromino one cell from the right side. Even if you quickly remove your finger from the one direction to tap the other, the input is not accepted. Other than that, however, it seems to be shaping up nicely as far as control is concerned. I second the thought of showing the current held piece in a disabled state after pressing the hold button. As for some game mode ideas, one mode I always thought would be rather cool is some sort of "time survival" mode, in which you start with a certain amount of time (3 minutes, maybe?) which counts down, and line clears recover a small amount of time. As you get further and further into the game, the speed would increase (whichever speed curve you like), the scoring would increase (to reward players who survive longer), and the time recovery for line clears would decrease to make it increasingly more difficult to survive, until eventually lower line clears don't reward you at all and even a tetris will give you a minimal gain. It essentially gives a limited-timeframe game to allow for meaningful score competition, while allowing you to be fairly friendly to newer players and entertain the veterans all at the same time. ~EI EDIT: Oh. I'd like to request a second CW rotation button a la TGM (in this case, similar to World behavior where it's CW-CCW-CW). I found myself on more than a few occasions pressing what I have mapped to A and C in Heboris, slamming up, and finding that I had rotated one time too few. No big, but it would make me a happy player. =P
It's not like the world needs another Lockjaw. Or Heboris. Or what have you. Besides, once the good old Jeretris flair returns to the game (kind of a low priority), I think you'll find reason enough to waste your time playing Marathon. New version with a new hold is up. I'll investigate the DAS thing EI mentioned, when I'm back from getting new glasses. (They're pretty slick, Rick.) As for this: -does anybody second it?
Well, this one's rather unique in that it can be accessible from anywhere and that it's in Flash. I was thinking of putting Jeretris on my hyves and/or myspace to entertain bored visitors .
Yeah. If there was a browser-based flash version of Tetris that was a TGM clone (and preferably had Death Mode) I would probably play it a lot when I wasn't at home.
Well, I'm not even asking for a TGM clone. I'm just asking for the possibility of picking ARS in the options, and Master and 20G modes. In my eyes, any nut can ActionScript some lame old tetris clone together, but doing an actual thought-out tetris that knows what it's doing and does it well with proper configurability, there's something I can applaud.
Y'know, I hadn't thought of that. I'll consider it, how's that? But do your visitors know how to play well enough to do anything other than Marathon? Also, Jeretris can only make a local preference file for the site it's on, not for sites in general. So if Andy, Betty and Carl put Jeretris on each of their profiles, and you play Jeretris on each one, you'd have high scores and settings for each site. Local ones, too the high score is on your machine. BTW, if I do a web high score table or something, I'll need to figure out how to keep people from posting fake scores to it. So for now, it's not part of the Jeretris plan. But I'll look around for a solution to that. EDIT: Also, the game's visual footprint is kinda big, isn't it? I mean, it can be scaled down and all, but I might want to branch development and make a more specially formatted version for the web.
Well, I know an ex-girlfriend of mine would play it, and she plays team-based Tetrinet in some kind of clan-like fashion (like you might remember from the Quake days) and she's fast. I couldn't convince her to try TGM though, so I wouldn't be able to put a tag on her actual tetris skill. I have the idea she'd be horribly bad at 20G though, as Tetrinet only does one-way rotating, and maps it to the bloody spacebar by default.
Never know till you try, though. So. Let's get down to business. New version's up. I got the DAS to act less like a prude, and I'm keeping my eye on it. I've started the falling speed at 1/64th G, and it works its way up to 20. I think. I'm just fooling around with it right now, and I'm sure that at some point the delay of one thing won't play nice with the delay for another. Trying it out and hearing your feedback helps the most.
