24 replies to this topic

[Bjorn Morrison]

This is Frank. It's a mashup in which you play Tetris while at the same time platforming on the blocks you are arranging to collect gold coins.

Category: Platformer/Action
GM Version: GM8.1
Vista Compatible: Probably.
Screen Resolution: Native 640 by 360, scales to 1280 by 720 and fullscreen. Not anti-aliased.
Game Executable: MediaFire hosted executable or YoYo Games Sandbox
File Size: 8mb

UPDATED 27 November 2011 - fixed bug of Tetris block getting stuck in side wall, added respawning Frank and bubble to protect him from Space Invaders.
UPDATED 18 October 2011 - 10 more levels (total of 20), more sounds added, anti-cheat mechanism, collision fixes, splash screen.
UPDATED 10 October 2011 - added sounds, fixed some bugs, locked levels once more (there's always 3 unlocked), let Frank display his love of 90s music in the main menu.
UPDATED 9 October 2011 - Prettied up the graphics a bit, various bug fixes.
UPDATED 3 October 2011 - Clearer instructions screen (F1), unlocked all levels from start for you to try, various bug fixes.

What's in this game?

• A novel simultaneous game play idea - WASD to move, rotate and drop blocks whilst using arrow keys to move and jump Frank.
• 20 varied levels - something new on each level including new abilities for Frank, different win conditions and even more mashups, with Space Invaders joining the fun.
• A save system - unlock levels, beat your own high scores which are persistent between play sessions.
• Frank - our hero.
• Songs - Robo-voiced songs that comment on your progress! It's like a terrible Broadway show.

If you'd be so kind to play Frank, and give me some feedback, I'd be very grateful.
Thanks,

Bjorn

Screenshots:

Edited by Bjorn Morrison, 29 November 2011 - 03:15 AM.

[Bjorn Morrison]

Ok, so it's not the most inviting screenshot, but this WIP is to test whether this mashed up game mechanic is fun or even feasible. And for that I'd need someone other than immediate family to play. My wife is getting sick of me going on about "that silly Tetris thing", and my daughter is only 7 months, so hasn't gotten the WASD controls worked out quite yet.

I'd really appreciate someone downloading this and giving it a quick go.

Thanks,

Bjorn

[Thirt33n_37]

This was interesting, and whilst it took some getting used to the controls, I eventually started getting the hang of it. I don't have a huge amount of time to keep playing it, but it's definately something I'll be watching.

One thing I'd suggest is some better graphics. And that doesn't necessarily mean "everything must be realistic and shiny!", it just means that the flat graphics and the amount of gray can make things seem a little less fun. I'm sure you understand that.

Also, that help screen was a little confusing. Try introducing one idea at a time. For example, you could show the instructions for tetris pieces, then take that bit away when the press a button and then the instructions for moving Frank appear, etc.

Good luck with this, it could be pretty awesome.

[Bjorn Morrison]

Fantastic feedback! Thank you. I agree with all of it, and the one idea at a time is so obvious that I am literally hitting my forehead right now.

Graphics are coming - but I didn't want to pretty things up if the simultaneous controls were just too hard/weird for people. Music and SFX too. I'm a gameplay first kind of guy.

Thanks again,
Bjorn

[ash47]

Was a little slow for my likings, would be more cool if the AI placed the tetris blocks imo

[creatip]

Bjorn: I'd like to try your game (and hit you back with my 2 pennies) but my Norton AV won't let me download it: “Threat type: Insight Network Threat. There are many indications that this file is untrustworthy and therefore not safe.”

Edited by creatip, 30 September 2011 - 04:12 PM.

[Supertoad25]

Uh, level 3 glitched, it only started spawning green boxes, and when it says it going to spawn orange blocks, nothing happens.

[Bjorn Morrison]

Was a little slow for my likings, would be more cool if the AI placed the tetris blocks imo

Thanks for taking the time to play it and leave your thoughts Ash47.

The speed of the game is very slow for the first 2 levels, to give people a chance to get used to the controls and concept. For a seasoned player of platform games, expecting a platforming game, the platforming is very sparse and slow in the first few minutes of play, I admit. It does get much harder from level 3 onwards, when you are balancing fast moving block placement with trying to make jumps, especially when you are only ever really glancing from one object to the other.

I have experimented with AI controlled block placement, and apart from the logistical nightmare of trying to avoid situations in which Frank cannot get out of places due to blocks blocking him in, I felt that the simultaneous control of both the blocks and of Frank would be an innovative and fun core game play mechanic.

That's not to dismiss your suggestion, in fact I might resurrect that code for a single level, just as a change of pace.

Thanks again for your feedback,
Bjorn

[Bjorn Morrison]

Uh, level 3 glitched, it only started spawning green boxes, and when it says it going to spawn orange blocks, nothing happens.

Thanks Supertoad25. I've play tested level three for the last hour and cannot reproduce this bug. DO you have any more details please?

Had you finished any other levels? Had you restarted the level (R key)? Had you died during that level? Had you escaped out of other levels and then started level 3?

Thanks for letting me know, I'll keep investigating.

Shape generation is random - one of 7 shapes is chosen, displayed as the "next" piece and then created for play when the current piece has landed. It is very possible to get a run of many Green square shapes in a row, however I can't find why the next shape has not appeared for you in this instance.

Thanks again for taking the time to leave feedback, did you enjoy it otherwise?
Bjorn

[TheUltimate]

Oh wow this game is awesome! I've always liked games that offer something completely new. It took a minute to get used to the controls, but after that it was pretty entertaining! You definitely need to add to this. I liked the little level descriptions .

The Tetris game and the platformer work really well too, no major bugs or anything that I could find, although one of the levels didn't give me a red Finish coin. Just something random, but if you remember the original Tetris games, you'll notice that blocks fall WHEN you hit down instead of having a short delay, and that holding left or right will move the block faster.

Anyway, one thing you really need are sets of levels with different game modes, like Classic Mode (what you have now. Just call it Classic Mode, it sounds better than Main Mode or whatever), Points Mode (get a certain amount of points within a time limit without getting squished or trapped), Take-Out-Enemies-With-Blocks-While-Trying-To-Get-The-Coin-In-The-Top-Corner Mode, Endless Mode, or whatever else you can think up of.

◊ TheUltimate ◊

Edited by TheUltimate, 04 October 2011 - 01:10 AM.

[Bjorn Morrison]

Bjorn: I'd like to try your game (and hit you back with my 2 pennies) but my Norton AV won't let me download it: “Threat type: Insight Network Threat. There are many indications that this file is untrustworthy and therefore not safe.”

Hey Creatip, I'm sorry you couldn't download it. I assure you my game exe is virus free, and others have had no problems downloading it.

The program is a Game Maker 8.1 created exe, and the only thing I can think of that might alert a virus scanner is that it creates 2 files in the directory it is run from: settings.dat which saves options like screen size etc, and Default User.sav, which saves level progress. None of this is harmful.

Perhaps your Norton AV is set to not allow executable file downloads, which is conservative, but valid.

I've since uploaded a new file, Frank_RC2.exe, maybe you can give that a go. If you still have troubles, let me know and I'll upload a zipped version.

Cheers,
Bjorn

[Bjorn Morrison]

Oh wow this game is awesome! I've always liked games that offer something completely new. It took a minute to get used to the controls, but after that it was pretty entertaining! You definitely need to add to this. I liked the little level descriptions .

The Tetris game and the platformer work really well too, no major bugs or anything that I could find, although one of the levels didn't give me a red Finish coin. Just something random, but if you remember the original Tetris games, you'll notice that blocks fall WHEN you hit down instead of having a short delay, and that holding left or right will move the block faster.

Anyway, one thing you really need are sets of levels with different game modes, like Classic Mode (what you have now. Just call it Classic Mode, it sounds better than Main Mode or whatever), Points Mode (get a certain amount of points within a time limit without getting squished or trapped), Take-Out-Enemies-With-Blocks-While-Trying-To-Get-The-Coin-In-The-Top-Corner Mode, Endless Mode, or whatever else you can think up of.

◊ TheUltimate ◊

Thanks so much for this feedback TheUltimate. That made my day when I read it.

I'm glad you read the level descriptions. I'm just trying to add some personality to what is a pretty 'gamey' mechanics based game.

I've looked into the red coin not appearing for you - that may have been a level where you need to clear 5 or 20 rows before you can finish the level. I rewrote the logic for both cases that can happen:
1. you clear the required lines before you spawn a coin above the line, and
2. you clear the required lines after you spawn a coin above the line.

Should work in all cases now.

I always preferred the Tetris clones that let me drop the blocks at high speed with down, but then still allow me to place it if I released down. I've gone with that, but I'm aware that the instant drop is the classic Tetris mechanic. I don't have hold to slide left and right in yet, and will do so soon. Thanks for reminding me. I can hopefully pilfer most of the code for that from the hold to drop function.

For real Tetris nerds, I think I have the basic movements correct, including behaviour when rotation is blocked by walls or placed blocks. I can't stand Tetris clones with pieces which move columns when you rotate them, or which don't adjust to rotating near walls.

I'm reasonably happy with the platform engine, however still manage to get stuck on a block once every 30 minutes of testing or so. Can't quite figure that one out.

I'm looking at different modes, or even just grouping similar levels together in the main menu, and those are great suggestions, thanks! Take-Out-Enemies-With-Blocks-While-Trying-To-Get-The-Coin-In-The-Top-Corner Mode is brilliant, and I'm working on rudimentary enemy AI now. I think it will be a clone army of evil Franks.

Thanks again for your feedback, it really did bring a smile to my face to know that you enjoyed it.

Bjorn

[Greginator5000]

This game is really great. It mixes my favorite genre (Platforming) and my favorite classic game (Tetris). Oh and I absolutly love the music!!!

Keep up the good work

[Bjorn Morrison]

This game is really great. It mixes my favorite genre (Platforming) and my favorite classic game (Tetris). Oh and I absolutly love the music!!!

Keep up the good work

Cheers mate, kind words!

I was worried about the music, glad you like it.

Bjorn

[wakeskater_X]

Haha, I'm not a fan of the music, HOWEVER I am a big fan of the game - Great Idea! It's one of those things that honestly I'd thought before "that'd be cool" but you've implemented it really well.

A few things I'd like to see happen:

T-Spins: Where you can spin a T block into place right before it sets.
Longer set time if you perform actions: I'm not sure about classic tetris, but on most modern tetris games, you can slide a block in more than one space, but you can;t on this one cause it sets after a specific time. Like .2 seconds if you move the block in any fashion, then the next time you press a button it waits, .1 seconds, then .05 until it's too quick to keep it from setting.

Overall it's really fun! I keep missing silver/gold because I can't get a long brick quick enough to tetris my way back down to 0 I set myself up, but I can't pull it off in time.

Great job man, KUDOS

EDIT *IDEA* Not sure how you would implement this, but how freakin cool would it be if you could do a 2p battle with this. Have each player control the blocks above their opponent and try to crush them while trying to not get crushed at the same time!!! But yeah online with GMK kinda sucks so it'd be hard to do.

EDIT2: Hey I featured this game in my blog as the indie game of the week. Hope that is okay, i really liked it, i just referred to this forum post and talked about your game a little.

Edited by wakeskater_X, 13 October 2011 - 08:38 AM.

[Bjorn Morrison]

Thanks Wakeskater_X, I'm glad you played it long enough to work out strategies and go for gold.

T-spins are usually used for score based Tetris games, and mine's more about platforming, but I'll do some research and try and reward the player for doing them. As far as moving blocks after they land and before they lock, you are right, I don't have a diminishing timer system (thanks for the knowledge of how modern Tetris games do this), but you CAN move a block at least three times before it locks. It may actually be too generous an amount of time.

Two player is a great idea. Online would be tough, but maybe it could work splitscreen. I'll look into it. At the very least, a round based attacking/defending version would be easy to do.

I had a look through your blog, thanks for the shoutout and good luck with SBX and your Unity projects. And the job search. You are doing absolutely the right thing by working on your Indie project, and documenting it through your blog. My one bit of unsolicited advice is maybe to do some collaborative work. Bigger gaming companies look for designers that have experience working with others (preferably in games, but other experience is great too). There is so much give and take, so much inter-team communication, knowing how to talk to producers, artists, programmers and other designers, that showing that you work well with others is very important. Good luck.

Thanks again for taking the time to play and leave feedback,
Bjorn

[wakeskater_X]

Thanks Bjorn,

Are you able to do T-Spins right now with your game? It wouldn't let me, but maybe you can idk.
Thanks for checking out my blog too. I actually just asked someone from GMC to do a platformer with me and would love to put a team together for an Idea I have for a fun platformer, but without people nearby in Colorado, it's tough to do ^^;. Although it would be good experience to use the whole asset importing and exporting that GMC has, I've never used it.

And thanks for the feedback in turn!

~WakeskaterX~

Edit: Just got a bug in level 3 after hitting restart at the beginning cause I didn't like the block. When I would press R again I didn't get any blocks and the game was super laggy. Also I would occasionally only get green blocks and then only 4 and then they would stop. I even escaped back tot he level menu - where there was no music, and everything was super laggy and only green blocks or no blocks

Edited by wakeskater_X, 15 October 2011 - 08:55 PM.

[Bjorn Morrison]

Thanks for the bug reports. I can't replicate them, and it's frustrating me!

I've re-done the restart level code, hopefully that has picked up whatever was causing the lack of blocks being generated, and the other bug you found. Hopefully.

The latest version has the option to turn the music off too.

[mads2194]

Unique and challenging game. I like how you mixed tetris with platforming, but it feels quite overwhelming at times, mostly when you get close to the top. It`s fun how your tetris knowledge says "put then so that you clear lines" but the game needs more tetrimino lines as coins spawn higher and higher.

[Bjorn Morrison]

Thanks mads2194. Making people rethink how they play Tetris was one of my main goals, because you are right, there's a natural tendency to try and arrange the blocks neatly into rows. I guess that's why the original Tetris game play strikes such a chord.

Even now I still catch myself automatically moving a block into a position that would be good for Tetris, but not ideal for Frank.

Glad you liked it and were challenged, thanks for commenting,
Bjorn