Interesting concept. I would have used different colours for the pieces based on what I think is the closest equivalent to regular piece colour in terms of vibe, although I agree with orange and yellow. Cyan piece I would have made purple. Red, I would have chosen cyan. The grey/blue I would have made a dark blue. I was struggling to do the equivalent of a t-spin because the lock delay isn't long enough when soft dropping, it feels instant. If you wanted it to fall instantly and lock instantly, then you should have added a hard drop button.
I think you're picking up what I was putting down with the color scheme, just from a more modern frame of reference. Since I my mindset was a "80's puzzle pastiche," I used a Sega-like color scheme: "L" orange, "J" blue, "O" yellow, "T" cyan, "I" red. I agree the "J" color could be made a bit less grey; I initially just chose colors off the default palette of the art program I loaded up.
Makes sense about soft drop. During the jam period, I just implemented a Sega-style 1G soft drop and moved on. I can definitely make some adjustments; a Nintendo-style 1/2G or 1/3G soft drop would make it a bit easier to get the piece close to the ground without forcing it to lock.
Either way, I certainly feel you on the difficulty of executing spins; the reward is so much higher with these piece shapes, but they're tough to hit under gravity lock. I wanted to explore something like Nintendo/Atari style gravity/locking behaviors, but it feels like I'm resisting the "carcinization" of puzzle games; sea creatures want to evolve to become crabs, and classic-style block games want to evolve to have Sega/TGM mechanics like lock delay. :p
Your explanation makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining your thought process! I did briefly look up all the different things you mentioned.
I still prefer the modern Tetris colours, because that's what I'm most familiar with. But even if you tried to follow the modern colour scheme, it would be difficult since it's not the same pieces, and I'm sure not everyone would agree with my reasoning :p
Since you mentioned an alternative timeline, it got me thinking how someone could take the new concept and simulate the evolution through different eras and devices. It would be a lot of work, but a very cool and fun art project.
Although, if it were realistic, it would probably evolve into Tetris pieces because of how balanced they are compared to other variations. They are truly the crabs of the block stacker format.
We're on the same page, haha. Our discussion of different ways to cut the mechanics also gave me the thought that it'd be amusing to have a "UFO 50" style framing for different game modes. :p
But yeah, it all does rest on the premise that hinged trominoes would somehow have been more practical or natural than conventional tetrominoes. Thought experiments like this just reinforce what we already knew about the functional/mechanical benefit of tetrominoes. Alternative piece sets can be made to work, but will often have some sort of rough edges (e.g., this game's "T"). If it seems to us as a more challenging variant of the genre we're already familiar with, then how plausible is it that this would have been conceived of as the "path of least resistance" for our hypothetical alt-timeline designers?
It works incredibly well with the weird shapes! I guess it’s a bit less fast-paced in the beginning than the tetromino variant.
Maybe a smaller play area could make up for the generally smaller pieces? Because the maximum amount of lines you can clear here is 3 right? At the same time with the increasing speed maybe that would be too much. I’m not sure!
My goal for the piece selection was to find a set with similar character or function to our familiar seven tetromino friends. (In playtesting, I even experimented with getting the piece count up to six with strictly distinct mini-L and mini-J pieces with two rotation states each, but it ended up being important to unify them into a singular four-state piece to deal with how much of a villain the "T" can be.)
Thank you for the feedback on the speedcurve. I'm going to take another look at the gravity table to address the pace of the early game. I think in trying to focus on adjusting the mid/late game speed within the "alternate history design and programming practice" framing I had for the game, I had overlooked the slow speed of the early game. I can tweak things to get a better fit to what I was aiming for.
The playfield is juuust a bit "smaller than regulation." It's 9 wide to fit three 3-wide pieces cleanly. Keeping the conventional 2:1 height/width ratio, pieces now spawn at a height of 18; this does result in pieces landing at a slightly brisker pace at the same level of gravity, similar to the gravity disparity between GB Tetris and NES Tetris (row 17 spawn vs. row 20 spawn, owing to the former's reduced vertical screen resolution). I did consider experimenting with even shorter or narrower playfields, but ultimately decided it felt about right as-is.
nice variant on the classic and good fun. if you could, please add the Fullscreen button? otherwise, perhaps drop speed can increase over time (or quicker if it already does). i don't mind sweating a little more in my fun :)
Sure! I'll look at the docs to see what's the best way to add a fullscreen toggle from the Godot side. When I tried adding itch.io's built-in fullscreen toggle, it was interfering with input.
In the current version, the speed level increases every 5 lines cleared. The early speed changes may be a bit subtle, so I'll think about adjustments to the starting speed. Although the start of the game might feel relaxed, the mid-game and late-game speed is quite brisk!
Comments
Interesting concept. I would have used different colours for the pieces based on what I think is the closest equivalent to regular piece colour in terms of vibe, although I agree with orange and yellow. Cyan piece I would have made purple. Red, I would have chosen cyan. The grey/blue I would have made a dark blue.
I was struggling to do the equivalent of a t-spin because the lock delay isn't long enough when soft dropping, it feels instant. If you wanted it to fall instantly and lock instantly, then you should have added a hard drop button.
Well done, it's a good little prototype!
Thank you for the feedback! :)
I think you're picking up what I was putting down with the color scheme, just from a more modern frame of reference. Since I my mindset was a "80's puzzle pastiche," I used a Sega-like color scheme: "L" orange, "J" blue, "O" yellow, "T" cyan, "I" red. I agree the "J" color could be made a bit less grey; I initially just chose colors off the default palette of the art program I loaded up.
Makes sense about soft drop. During the jam period, I just implemented a Sega-style 1G soft drop and moved on. I can definitely make some adjustments; a Nintendo-style 1/2G or 1/3G soft drop would make it a bit easier to get the piece close to the ground without forcing it to lock.
Either way, I certainly feel you on the difficulty of executing spins; the reward is so much higher with these piece shapes, but they're tough to hit under gravity lock. I wanted to explore something like Nintendo/Atari style gravity/locking behaviors, but it feels like I'm resisting the "carcinization" of puzzle games; sea creatures want to evolve to become crabs, and classic-style block games want to evolve to have Sega/TGM mechanics like lock delay. :p
Your explanation makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining your thought process! I did briefly look up all the different things you mentioned.
I still prefer the modern Tetris colours, because that's what I'm most familiar with. But even if you tried to follow the modern colour scheme, it would be difficult since it's not the same pieces, and I'm sure not everyone would agree with my reasoning :p
Since you mentioned an alternative timeline, it got me thinking how someone could take the new concept and simulate the evolution through different eras and devices. It would be a lot of work, but a very cool and fun art project.
Although, if it were realistic, it would probably evolve into Tetris pieces because of how balanced they are compared to other variations. They are truly the crabs of the block stacker format.
(\/) (°,,,,°) (\/)
We're on the same page, haha. Our discussion of different ways to cut the mechanics also gave me the thought that it'd be amusing to have a "UFO 50" style framing for different game modes. :p
But yeah, it all does rest on the premise that hinged trominoes would somehow have been more practical or natural than conventional tetrominoes. Thought experiments like this just reinforce what we already knew about the functional/mechanical benefit of tetrominoes. Alternative piece sets can be made to work, but will often have some sort of rough edges (e.g., this game's "T"). If it seems to us as a more challenging variant of the genre we're already familiar with, then how plausible is it that this would have been conceived of as the "path of least resistance" for our hypothetical alt-timeline designers?
It works incredibly well with the weird shapes! I guess it’s a bit less fast-paced in the beginning than the tetromino variant.
Maybe a smaller play area could make up for the generally smaller pieces? Because the maximum amount of lines you can clear here is 3 right? At the same time with the increasing speed maybe that would be too much. I’m not sure!
Anyways, good job!
Thank you very much!
My goal for the piece selection was to find a set with similar character or function to our familiar seven tetromino friends. (In playtesting, I even experimented with getting the piece count up to six with strictly distinct mini-L and mini-J pieces with two rotation states each, but it ended up being important to unify them into a singular four-state piece to deal with how much of a villain the "T" can be.)
Thank you for the feedback on the speedcurve. I'm going to take another look at the gravity table to address the pace of the early game. I think in trying to focus on adjusting the mid/late game speed within the "alternate history design and programming practice" framing I had for the game, I had overlooked the slow speed of the early game. I can tweak things to get a better fit to what I was aiming for.
The playfield is juuust a bit "smaller than regulation." It's 9 wide to fit three 3-wide pieces cleanly. Keeping the conventional 2:1 height/width ratio, pieces now spawn at a height of 18; this does result in pieces landing at a slightly brisker pace at the same level of gravity, similar to the gravity disparity between GB Tetris and NES Tetris (row 17 spawn vs. row 20 spawn, owing to the former's reduced vertical screen resolution). I did consider experimenting with even shorter or narrower playfields, but ultimately decided it felt about right as-is.
nice variant on the classic and good fun. if you could, please add the Fullscreen button? otherwise, perhaps drop speed can increase over time (or quicker if it already does). i don't mind sweating a little more in my fun :)
thanks for sharing!
Sure! I'll look at the docs to see what's the best way to add a fullscreen toggle from the Godot side. When I tried adding itch.io's built-in fullscreen toggle, it was interfering with input.
In the current version, the speed level increases every 5 lines cleared. The early speed changes may be a bit subtle, so I'll think about adjustments to the starting speed. Although the start of the game might feel relaxed, the mid-game and late-game speed is quite brisk!
excellent. thank you :)