Native Blocks - Finished!

[Arcade]

Hello everyone

I recently started working on my first game, and I think I've gotten it to a point where I can demo my progress so far! I'm not very creative with coming up with a good name, so I'm just calling it Native Blocks. It was inspired by the Puyo Puyo series of games, specifically the Sega Genesis game called "Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine". For those who aren't familiar with those games, the premise is that you have a playing area where blocks fall, similar to the style of Tetris, but only 2 blocks at a time. You try to make 4 blocks of the same color touch each other to make them disappear. This is a 2 player competitive game, so when you make blocks disappear, there is a good chance of a garbage grey block falling on the other player's side. The only way to get rid of the grey blocks on your side is by making a match that touches it. If you make a chain of more than 4 blocks then a larger number of grey blocks will fall on your opponent. If you make a combo, such that one chain disappearing causes the blocks to fall and make another chain disappear, it multiplies how many grey blocks get sent to your opponent.

Hopefully all of that made sense. Here is a video demoing it. Note that my screen capturing software makes the frame rate look worse than it really is:


I currently have 3 AIs implemented (easy, medium, and hard). You can either play against one of the AIs or you can simply watch the AIs play against each other, which is shown in the video. There are a lot more things I want to implement eventually, assuming I don't lose my motivation and move on to another project  .

Anyways hope you guys like it. Let me know what you think!

[eXpl0it3r]

This looks quite cool!

I wonder though, the Medium AI seems quite strong already, can it be still be beaten?

[Hapax]

This looks like a lot of fun!

I do wonder, though, if the slow-down that occurs when the blocks split apart is intentional. It seems like it may distract slightly. Might just be me though

[Arcade]

This looks quite cool!

I wonder though, the Medium AI seems quite strong already, can it be still be beaten?

Thanks! Heh to be honest, even the Easy AI is a bit too hard. I've played the game tons of times while testing and I can only beat Easy every now and then. I plan on adding several more AI personalities, so I'll be sure make a least a few on the low end of the difficulty spectrum.

I do wonder, though, if the slow-down that occurs when the blocks split apart is intentional. It seems like it may distract slightly. Might just be me though

Thanks for the feedback! It actually is an intentional delay. It kind of felt weird to me without it, probably because the game I modeled this after also has that delay and I'm used to it. I plan on eventually making the blocks have a crumbling animation instead of simply disappearing, so maybe the delay due to the crumbling block animation will feel less distracting.

Edit: I originally thought Hapax was talking about when the blocks disappear, but I realized he might have been talking about when the blocks split due to one block falling further than the other. That is also intentional for similar reasons. It is due to the block transitioning from player control to gravity controlled.

[Hapax]

[Hapax] might have been talking about when the blocks split due to one block falling further than the other. That is also intentional for similar reasons. It is due to the block transitioning from player control to gravity controlled.

This is indeed what I meant. I was thinking that maybe it would continue at the speed its already moving when its partner lands. However, if it's intentional to be this way, fair enough! 
Thinking about the reason it does slow down, I decided that the explanation is that is has to break away from the other block 

[Arcade]

I finally got around uploading the game to dropbox so others can try it out  . Right now I only have a 64-bit Linux build, but my next goal is to get it compiled on Windows as well.

Anyway, You can download the 64-bit linux build from the following link: Edit: Link removed due to being out of date.

How to run
Extract the zip file and run NativeBlocks.sh within the Export folder. I don't know if this is the best way to distribute my game for now, but I included the SFML libraries inside the zip file so that computers without SFML installed can still run it. That bash script simply sets up the included library paths and then runs the game.

How to play
Right now the controls aren't configurable or explained anywhere in the game, so to navigate the menus simply use the mouse. When playing, use the arrow keys to move the blocks and 'z' or 'x' to rotate them.

I hope someone has the chance to test it out and let me know what you think  .  Let me know if you're able to beat any of the AIs  . Also let me know if you find any obvious bugs.

[Arcade]

Windows 64-bit build now available! Download from the following link and launch NativeBlocks.exe to play (and see previous post for how to play)
Edit: Link removed due to being out of date.

I don't often develop on Windows, but needless to say it was... quite an adventure trying to get everything set up and building. When I finally got everything installed (mingw32, make, cmake, git, and who knows what else), I went through the process of learning how to build SFML, and all of my other dependencies. Luckily I eventually figured it out and got everything to compile and link! It was a (not very) fun surprise, however, to find that ming32w doesn't implement std::random_device on windows (well it's implemented, but it doesn't seem... well... very random  ). Anyways, long story short, I think I got all my Windows-specific problems worked out now. I guess it was a good learning experience.

I hope someone has a chance to test it out!

[Arcade]

Sorry to keep bumping my thread, but after taking a short break I came back and made some updates. The new major additions include:

• A sound and music system. Most of the sounds being used right now are just ones I found various places on the internet. I took a shot at composing the intro and gameplay music myself, though, which I've never done before. I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with the sounds and music yet, but at least I have the framework in place now.
• An updated AI system. I've made it much more flexible so that I can make more varied types of AI personalities. More importantly, it is now easier to make beatable AIs  . For this build I have created a Beginner AI, which the video below shows me playing against.
• Various minor bug fixes and improvements

Here is a video showing some of the progress. Not a whole lot has changed visually since the last video, so it might not be super interesting, but you can at least hear the sounds and see the new Beginner AI. Note that my screen recording software shows my mouse slightly lower than where it really is, so it looks like I'm not clicking buttons when I really am.



This time I didn't package up the new updates to distribute. I decided to wait and only do it if anyone is interested in trying it out, so the links I provided in previous posts are not up to date.

[Mario]

Nothing wrong in bumping your own thread if there's indeed something new you're posting about. If it's content (and you're not doing it too often), noone will complain, just don't start doing things like "Bump!".

[eXpl0it3r]

It's really nice to see this project progress!

You might want to consider updating the first post (you can edit it), so if anyone gets to this thread the first time, they don't have to dig through the thread to find the most recent news.
And yes, as Mario said, bumping your own thread for updates it totally fine.

[Arcade]

I'm slowly but surely still making progress as I find the time. This time around I focused on making minor graphical improvements to try and give it a more polished look (though there is still a long ways to go). The changes include:

• I implemented a way to have "transitions" between different rooms. You can see one example in the video  as a fade-in transition between the menu and actual game.
• I made the blocks have a subtle glowing pulse animation when touching another block of the same color. It becomes more pronounced as more blocks touch. I'm still trying to decide if I want to make the pulsing more intense or not. I do want it to be visible, but don't want it to be too distracting.
• I made an indication for when a player makes a chain reaction. You can see many examples of this in the video below. I will likely revisit this one to make it a little prettier.
• I gave the blocks an animation for when they disappear. Each color block has its own animation. This one might is less noticeable in the video because of all of the distracting chain reactions.

The video shows two Hard AIs playing against each other. You can see how good the Hard AI is at making chain reactions.

[Arcade]

I have begun implementing a "Challenge" mode. I know I have had a Challenge button on the main menu visible in my last couple of videos, but it didn't do anything until now. The idea of the challenge mode is that you try to beat each of the AIs one by one. Eventually I would like to implement High Scores which list how many AIs you beat and how many attempts it took, but for now it is pretty basic.

The video shows what I have so far. The relevant parts of the video are at the beginning of the video where I select to play the Challenge mode, and then again at around 1:15 where I beat the first AI and it transitions me to the next.

[Arcade]

I've begun implementing the beginnings of an options menu. Right now the major feature in the options menu is a way remap the game controls. The short video below shows me remapping the controls to use my gamepad/joystick.

[eXpl0it3r]

Looking better and better. Keep it up!

[Arcade]

Thanks eXpl0it3r. I know this game isn't as exciting as some of the others posted on these forums, but I'm trying to stick with it and actually complete a game for once .

I decided to try something new with the graphics this time, as shown in the picture below. I'm also in the process of giving names and pictures to the (now 10) AI players to give the game a little bit of a personality. I only wish I was a better artist. Trying to make decent looking art is taking up a lot of my time.

One other major change that I've done is make the gameplay speed increase as you go through the AIs in Challenge mode. It gets quite fast by the time you get to the last AI. Unfortunately though, the last AI being the smartest, also uses the most CPU time so it has a hard time finding someplace to go before it runs out of time to move. I'll need to either spend some time optimizing it or perhaps just make it less smart and simply rely on the fast game speed to make it a difficult opponent. I may need to do the latter anyway because I'm not sure if the last AI would even be beatable in its current form if it could think fast enough