[HN Gopher] Show HN: Tetris, but silly
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Show HN: Tetris, but silly
Hello HN! You can read this [1] blog post if you want to know more
about some ideas that I have for this thing. This is just an
experiment right now, there isn't any real game (yet). Any feedback
would be appreciated, do you think this could become something that
would be fun to play? [1] https://unit520.net/posts/dead-trees-an-
absurdist-block-layi...
Author : Unit520
Score : 246 points
Date : 2022-05-05 16:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (unit520.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (unit520.net)
| nathell wrote:
| Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/724/ ; there are
| implementations (google "Hell Tetris").
| hubblesticks wrote:
| Love this! I tried this on my phone and instinctively tried to
| turn my phone to make the pieces slide around (after seeing the
| falling/sliding physics), expecting them to react to the gyro in
| the phone. Then realized, right, this is a web app!
|
| Great work, fun!
| stavros wrote:
| I'm confused by your comment, web apps can access the
| accelerometer fine.
| hubblesticks wrote:
| Sorry not a web dev or programmer, didn't realize that! Well
| then, that would be cool to enable.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, agreed, it's a cool API.
| Unit520 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, using the phone's accelerometer is
| actually a great idea! As others mentioned, there are web APIs
| for that these days, I'll try to include something like that in
| the next version.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I didn't know how to trigger https://unit520.net/deadtrees/ at
| first (focus the page then use arrow keys). Oddly the first page
| load hung at a static canvas that stretched as I resized the
| window, while reloading worked. F12 showed a (false positive)
| warning:
|
| > wasm streaming compile failed: TypeError: WebAssembly: Response
| has unsupported MIME type 'application/octet-stream' expected
| 'application/wasm'
|
| Is this something you want to fix?
| Unit520 wrote:
| Thanks for reporting!
|
| Yeah, I'm aware of this error, it seems to be related to the
| shared hosting I'm using, I can't replicate it when serving
| locally. But as long as it is "falling back to ArrayBuffer
| instantiation" all is good, and I didn't investigate further
| because this fallback mechanism actually loads the WASM module
| faster than the "streaming compile" method (these things are
| provided by Emscripten).
|
| I have no idea why it didn't load on the first try for you
| though.
| bambax wrote:
| This is an amazing idea. So original and yet so simple and
| "obvious" in a way... Excellent execution, too. Bravo.
|
| (I didn't understand one could interact with the fallen pieces
| until I read the comments here. Maybe some hint somewhere would
| help...?)
|
| (Also, parameters on the left are distracting; better have good
| defaults and let the user play. Being able to move the pieces
| with the gyro when on mobile (as suggested in another comment)
| would be great.)
| Kiro wrote:
| I love it but I don't know how original it is. Tetris with
| physics like this is very common to implement as a project when
| learning Box2D.
| code_runner wrote:
| I think goofing around the discovering stuff adds to the fun!
| [deleted]
| WithinReason wrote:
| Reminds me of the game Tryptich:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4uZuA1_d0
| dwringer wrote:
| I think this is great and a lot of fun. The only improvement I
| could suggest is that it only seems to clear the _bottom_ line.
| If I have an incomplete bottom line, but the row above it settles
| and fills up, it never clears and the rows just keep stacking
| higher.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree. It's a fun game. My case with a second complete row
| https://imgur.com/a/sQEQPKM
|
| After a few games, it quite playable [without using the mouse,
| that I classify as cheating]. I cleared like 10 or 15 rows and
| then bad luck stuck :( .
|
| [spoiler alert] The trick is to try to almost complete the
| first row. And then aim the new pieces toward the bigger holes
| in the first row, and toward the inclined blocks in the second
| row so they open the hole. It's like using the new blocks as
| hammers. But after a while, if you are unlucky the second row
| is too even and has no inclined blocks and it's too difficult.
| Once the 2nd and 3rd row are complete, you are doomed.
|
| A row counter and detecting other complete rows would add a lot
| playability. [Fun game anyway, I'm going to play a few more
| games now.]
| anyfoo wrote:
| Oh, so that's what it was.
|
| My bottom row was a lost cause, but when I managed to fill up
| some other rows, they didn't clear, and I thought clearing is
| not implemented at all and stopped playing...
| etra0 wrote:
| I had the same issue, but luckily, with your mouse you can move
| some of the blocks so you can adjust them to break the first
| line, and then everything collapses and it's kind of fun to
| see.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I had the same issue. Good fun though. I remember playing
| bouncy Tetris where all the blocks had a jelly like
| consistency.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| This is great. Add shaking, and it'll be perfect.
| dymk wrote:
| Maybe sound effects for the real masochists
| DrPhish wrote:
| Love it. Tetris is such a well worn cultural institution that its
| ripe for parody.
|
| Reminded me of this Japanese comedy routine involving Tetris[0]
|
| Totally doesn't need any Japanese language skills to enjoy
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpi3JbQiWU
| gotaquestion wrote:
| I turned on CC hoping for translation, and it was captioning in
| Japanese. Lol.
| junar wrote:
| If you search "Jinnai Tomonori Tetris", there are versions of
| the video with English subtitles.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Awesome!
| aasasd wrote:
| My favorite variation on 'silly Tetris' is Triptych:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4uZuA1_d0
|
| Quite similar to the OP actually in terms of physics, but with
| three-in-a-row as the game mechanic.
|
| The game can be found on Internet Archive, as usual with old-ass
| games: https://archive.org/details/trpsetup
|
| BTW, the left panel in 'Dead Trees' seems to have some problem
| with Retina screens: I can barely discern anything on it. Perhaps
| the author would want to apply some kind of zoom to compensate.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Pointless & frivolous. I love it.
|
| There used to be some plugin where you could click a button & be
| shown a random site that someone had tagged as being interesting
| for some reason. It was a great way to find all sorts of stuff
| off the the beaten path like this, but for the life of me I can't
| remember what it was called to see if it still exists.
|
| Does anyone remember it, or whether or not something similar
| exists today? I used it around the time Web 2.0 was just
| coalescing into a major thing.
|
| EDIT: StumbleUpon! Unfortunately it seems a bit closed off, gated
| by a login & invite code. And the items on the public site look
| like they're just photos...
| travisdock wrote:
| Stumbleupon?
| Hodglim wrote:
| You might be thinking of StumbleUpon?
| (https://www.stumbleupon.com) I used to spend hours on that
| site!
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes! That's it! I can't quite tell if their site now is
| defunct or simply broken.
|
| It used to be my go-to distraction when I had a job where
| there was _literally_ nothing to do. (I had been hired into a
| group where the team lead had already automated everything.
| The one thing we had to do was bounce the servers every
| Friday & perform nationwide DB replication w/ local sites.
| The group was preserved because a of a pending transition
| that would eventually yield more work, but that was > 0.5
| years in the future. The team lead was a good mentor though,
| and the person who taught me strategic laziness & the
| constant goal to automate yourself out of a job... Under the
| theory that you'd then find more interesting things to work
| on instead. But with an EOL'ed system there were no new
| projects that could be started)
| xigency wrote:
| This is really cool but I have some feedback: being able to drag
| the pieces removed all of the challenge, so it wasn't really fun;
| only the bottom row will clear - this kind of breaks the game
| when not "cheating" with manually dragging pieces.
|
| Overall, I think if you fixed those two points this would be a
| great and challenging game.
| lucb1e wrote:
| This is fun! Creative idea and nicely made.
|
| https://dro.pm/k.png -- Is this a bug, or are you basically game
| over once you have a gap in your bottom row and the rest will
| never line up perfectly enough to disappear?
|
| Edit: resolved it by layering a third full row, then smashing it
| by luck in the right way to make something drop down to the
| bottom one. So yes, bottom row always just needs to be filled.
|
| Edit2: Some tricks
|
| - drag a block
|
| - hold down the arrow down button (until the page goes completely
| blank and you get Aborted(Assertion failed:
| draw_list->_VtxCurrentIdx < (1 << 16) && "Too many vertices in
| ImDrawList using 16-bit indices. Read comment above", at:
| ../extern/include/imgui/imgui.cpp,4269,AddDrawListToDrawData))
|
| - play with the controls on the left of course :)
|
| Also loving that there is no loss condition. The game doesn't
| tell you when you've lost, you can decide that for yourself!
| goodusername wrote:
| It was pretty amusing to try and guess how to smash the pieces
| into order, thanks!
| szundi wrote:
| Just press and hold the down button if you are stuck.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Thank you for this, bookmarked this one. Going to be an awesome
| resource for slapping in the face to all those evangelists that
| chant "browser games are the future" because once you keep
| pressing down arrow and the screen is filled with rectangles it
| crawls to a stop at several thousand of them, while a similar
| implementation in native C++ using Unreal Engine 5 will not break
| a sweat even at dozens of millions on screen.
| dymk wrote:
| I love seeing imgui in the wild used in stuff like this
| dugmartin wrote:
| I had fun going "full auto" with the left, right, down keys. It
| fills up the screen with a bunch of exploding boxes at first and
| then alternates between stacking boxes up as it jitters and
| suddenly wiping out a bunch of rows on the bottom. Super fun.
| dotdi wrote:
| A funny thing happens if you just press the down arrow and keep
| it pressed. The game area quickly fills up with squares, and then
| it just continues to add more shapes until, after a minute or so,
| the whole page turns black.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I likewise broke it, bravo!
| abathur wrote:
| I also used this to brute-force completion of lower levels :)
| balaji1 wrote:
| doesn't break for me. I am able to continuously clear lower
| rows. So now I finally feel good playing tetris.
| drdec wrote:
| Aborted(Assertion failed: draw_list->_VtxCurrentIdx < (1 << 16)
| && "Too many vertices in ImDrawList using 16-bit indices. Read
| comment above", at:
| ../extern/include/imgui/imgui.cpp,4269,AddDrawListToDrawData)
| dragontamer wrote:
| Thoughts:
|
| 1. Tetris -- Obviously different than Tetris
|
| 2. Not Tetris -- https://stabyourself.net/nottetris2/ Similar,
| but less destructive. Not-Tetris is closer to the original
| Tetris.
|
| 3. Tricky Towers -- https://www.trickytowers.com/ . More similar
| to this game than Tetris. Tricky Towers blocks aren't
| destructable, but the physics and very "limited" platform space
| makes a real game. Special powers (ex: vines) to "solidify" some
| blocks together really make building higher-and-higher better.
| The "puzzle" mode of trying to get the most number of blocks with
| the least height is also very fun.
|
| 4. This game -- This is a sandbox for now, the unique part is
| "impact physics" which can break apart blocks if enough weight /
| damage were dealt to them. Not a real game yet, but clearly on
| the path to something fun here. Not sure what the gameplay loop
| should be, but Tricky Towers is the closest game to maybe draw
| inspiration from?
| braingenious wrote:
| This is so fun! It kind of reminds me of Crayon Physics Deluxe,
| which I played obsessively when it came out.
| Unit520 wrote:
| Thank you all for your nice comments and suggestions, be assured
| that I read every comment even if I didn't reply to you
| personally!
|
| I'm glad you liked it and will continue to work on it some more,
| you had some great suggestions that I certainly want to try out.
| lnyng wrote:
| Is it possible to make use of gravity sensor on phones?
| mrlonglong wrote:
| If you hammer away at the boxes such that it fills up the entire
| screen the weight of all those boxes is enough to crush the ones
| at the bottom.
|
| Coolness to the max!
| _benj wrote:
| Nice! I tried it the patient way and, with enough luck, lines
| actually clear when they are completed!
| mustafatorun wrote:
| cool
| stanislavb wrote:
| Tetris, but good and old https://goodoldtetris.com
| ronald_raygun wrote:
| I think putting a grid on the background would help with
| alignment and such
| therealmarv wrote:
| One bug: Full rows above button row are not counted.
| swah wrote:
| I always loved this kind of game and playing with the libraries
| demos (IIRC box2d) back in the day.
|
| Is this using a port of that? I wish there were more not gaming
| uses for these kinds of interfaces.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Any feedback would be appreciated, do you think this could
| become something that would be fun to play?
|
| Combine this with Hatetris, perhaps? Oh, wait, you said "fun"...
| butz wrote:
| This game reminds me of Triptych
| (http://chroniclogic.com/triptych.htm).
| samadmin wrote:
| I think this is pretty entertaining. Definitely a nice twist. I
| get the impression it might need to be made a bit harder somehow.
| I'm not having problems clearing levels (though I'm definitely
| enjoying doing it).
| [deleted]
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| Just hold space (on desktop anyway)
| sethammons wrote:
| I slid the sliders to the extreme and held space bar and
| managed to crash it to a black screen :)
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| This reinforces my core belief that people, if given the
| opportunity, love a good button mashing app.
| greggsy wrote:
| There's a game called Sand Balls that is incredibly
| therapeutic. It's not hard, and doesn't have too many annoying
| upsells. Just physics fun.
| _Microft wrote:
| I like it!
|
| For other players: you can pull and push pieces around if they do
| not align into proper lines by themselves. Clearing lines works!
| shaunxcode wrote:
| nice. I figured out just holding down space eventually starts
| clearing a lot of lines until it crashes.
| ninju wrote:
| Yeah...not clear in the instructions or the UI
|
| You can click and drag the fallen parts to complete a row
|
| Cool!!!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Moving blocks with the mouse feels a bit of a cheat!
| bee_rider wrote:
| I enjoyed it.
|
| It seems like only full rows in the bottom are counted or
| something? Or maybe I had a subtle alignment issue. But
| eventually I got a small gap at the bottom. I ended up with a
| bunch of full rows, all the way up. Eventually the blocks got
| over my "dropping point." So, I created a bunch of blocks all at
| once near the top, compressing all rows below. This caused
| something to squish into the bottom row, freeing up a little
| space. 10/10, best compressive tetris mechanism ever.
|
| A shake button would be nice.
| bee_rider wrote:
| If anyone gets in a jammed up position, try putting friction
| very low, and release velocity to -15, to slam some pieces into
| the stack and jumble them a bit (so they can relax into a full
| column).
|
| At first I thought only having the bottom row delete when
| filled was pretty annoying, but actually it might make the
| game, it really plays up the difference from normal Tetris.
|
| Some variance in the block weight might be nice (2x2 should
| obviously be heaviest, or you could make the individual...
| blockletts have different density. Maybe represented by their
| alpha or brightness or something?)
|
| I'd like the ability to launch a 2x2 block at a 45 degree
| angle.
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