The game is an applet game, and runs on java 1.1 or later. It looks like a tetris type game at first but it’s not. Let me know what you think.
i quite enjoyed it. A little slow to start with and I got a bit annoyed with the up arrow control - i’d rather the down arrow took this action as it feels more logical. I would have then probably changed the up arrow to cycle through the orientation (whilst still keeping A and D functions the same).
I’ll play some more later. 
lots of fun.
BTW: All worked fine on my apple system.
OS X 10.3.4, Java 1.4.2_04
;D
I Liked this a lot! Nice game.
Worked fine on Windows XP Java 1.4.2
Regards
me
mazemaster @ www.mazeland.net
I noticed the other tetris game posted recently uses the up arrow to rotate and down probably to drop. Space also is the drop key (seemed more intuitive). Pushing down just moves the piece one step, which I don’t think I want to change. Changing the up arrow to rotate right is probably reasonable since I think most people will tend to always rotate the same direction anyway.
Nice turn on the Tetris theme. The only problem (already mentioned) is the startup - it took about 10 seconds once the applet finished loading to actually show something.
This always bugs me, as Java applets have a natural tendency to throw an exception and go limbo, therefore if an applet stays silent for too long I usually call it a day and move on to other things…
What is the reason for the long startup time? Generating the tiles out of a larger master image? If it is anything like that, I am sure the startup can be made faster.
Yeah, startup loads an image or two, there isn’t a good reason why I don’t have a loading screen for that, I hadn’t even considered it an issue (I’m on dsl here so…). I will try and work out the loading issues tonight.
That’s a pretty neat game! My only comment is that the keys are kind of sluggish on my 900MHz Mac. This makes the game somewhat more difficult than necessary. Otherwise, good job!
Nice game. It’s a good twist on the theme though I have to admit I didn’t finish my game as I found the going a bit slow.
Yeah, I need to speed the game difficulty increases up, eventually you lose because the cement/steel blocks start to add up and other parts get rarer.
By sluggish do you mean that when you push the button and hold it in, the piece moves to slowly, or do you mean when you push a button there is a noticable delay before something happens?
I did put an intentional delay on the controls to keep the piece from instantly being on the left or right side if you pushed a button. If you press a key rapidly every key press should count, it’s just for holding the key down that it has the (intentional) delay.
If it’s the other problem of the game responding slowly I’ll have to figure out how to make it use less CPU time (I’m pretty sure I’m wasting a LOT of cpu time somewhere).
Ah, that explains it. Although I don’t quite understand why you did this. Wouldn’t you want the piece to respond as soon as the button is pressed?
If you’re worried about typematic repeating, you can always add variables to detect when the key is pressed and when it isn’t. This would allow you to effectively ignore the multiple keypress events that occur. You could even generate your own typematic delay by recording the last time you generated an event from the key, then ignoring the key until some threshold (say 250ms) has passed. This would eliminate the “pause” that often occurs between when the key is first pressed and repeat events get generated. It also allows you to control how fast the piece moves.
Nice game! work fine Win2k
The piece should move as soon as the button is pressed, what I meant was I simulate a typomatic delay, I just made an adjustment, let me know if it helps the controls.
No one has posted any high scores (sadly I had to spend a bunch of time on that part… had a few problems with the URL class). Time to get to work on the other issues raised here (loading screen).
I did put in a loading screen, it needs prettying up, but it should knock a big chunk of the wait time off loading.
The controls feel much more responsive now. Thanks!
Nice game !
It’s a great alternative to classical tetris games !
Chman
I was never a big fan of tetris, but somehow if you add fire and bricks exploding it becoms much more fun ;D