dorkster/freeblocks

FreeBlocks is a puzzle game with similar gameplay to Tetris Attack.

freeblocks's Issues

Mouse/touch input

It would be neat to support a point-based control scheme.

Special effects on level change

When the level (i.e. game speed) changes, there can be an effect to alert the player. A sound effect, maybe different backgrounds/graphics.

Too easy to skip by the "game over" screen

Since the player is pressing the ACCEPT button to move blocks, they can often activate the "continue" option on the game over screen before they can even read what it says.

An example of this happening (@ 1:35): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARM0KPaD7sQ

Drop game: Can pick up blocks that are being cleared

When blocks are in their clear animation, they can be picked up.

Android port

This would require #34 and #35.

Animate blocks when they are swapped or falling

Animating these types of events would add some "juice" to the game.

GCW-Zero enhancements

• Exit out of all menus, quit game from main menu, using select (SDLK_ESCAPE)
• Pause in game using start (SDLK_RETURN)
• Update game icon

SDL key mappings here: http://wiki.surkow.com/Tutorials:SDL#Buttons

Release procedure

I've noticed you made some nice changes recently, which should be released soon. Let's work out a release procedure and some details.

• Frequency - how often do you want to do releases?
• Binary hosting? Sourceforge is mature and has analytics, but github also allows attaching binaries to releases, which is simpler. For the GCW-Zero release, it's more convenient for the official repo to maintain a single link to the latest release.

Configurable keys

Hi and thanks for your work, freeblocks is quite nice already :)

I think it could use configurable keys, as the default Z and X keys can be quite cumbersome on some keyboards:

• French keyboard: AZERTY, the Z is on the top row while the X is on the bottom row
• German keyboard: QWERTZ, same issue, but you even have to stretch your fingers more ;)

A related request would be to add support at least for the Return key in the UI. If you haven't read the README, it can take some time to find out which key does what.

Use CMake

This will make it easier to develop using other platforms

Change block set to use shapes

The current block set uses colours only to differentiate. If the blocks incorporated different shapes, this will make it easier to tell apart, as well as improving accessibility.

The original Tetris Attack used inset shapes:

Other match-3 games use different shaped blocks (different jewels, candies, animals).

Unfortunately Kenney's blocks don't have enough shapes for all 6 colours, so a new block set is required.

Drop game polish

Initial implementation: #41

There is a list of possible improvements on that PR. I will list the ones I think are priority:

• music
• background
• animations
• sound effects
• held block display
• mouse/touch controls

Level select

Choose the starting level to begin the game with

Highscores files being overwritten when changing game modes

As the title says.

Handle multiple key presses

The game seems to handle only one key press per frame; this means if the player presses two directions together, the cursor will only move in one of those directions. This makes the controls feel sluggish.

I believe this has something to do with the controls in gameMove() being exclusive.

Block shine animation

In many match 3 games, there will be some sort of block animation; for example, see Bejeweled: http://youtu.be/BnljGFVDAuo?t=23s Panel de pon: http://youtu.be/s5diMK79kPE?t=3m37s

Here I've mocked up some simple shining animations for the blocks:

http://jsfiddle.net/60wuv5wo/

Switch to SDL 2

The GCW-Zero supports SDL 2 these days, so there's no reason not to switch.