One of the classic games now is available in ManiaPlanet: Tetris. I think most of you may know the basic concept of the game: The falling blocks have to be arranged so that they build full lines, which then gets removed from the field... And this as long as possible. But of course, the ManiaLink offers a lot more than only the basic game
Features:
Different Game Modes
The Tetris-ManiaLink does not only support a single game mode, but different ones. More modes will be added in the future to have always something new on the ManiaLink. A detailled description of the modes can be found below.
Save your Highscores
The Tetris-ManiaLink is able to save your played highscores -- Separately for each game mode. You are able to browse through the complete highscore, and to sort it after any criteria, so that you may e.g. look which player removed the moste lines for his or her highscore. To be able to save a Highscore, you need to have at least 1000 points, and you must have sucessfully finished the mode if it has a limit.
Ghost Block
Where does the block appear, if I would drop it right now? (Default key: Space) Exactly this question will answer the Ghost block, displaying the final position of the falling block as a kind of shadow. As of default, this help is disabled, but you may easily enable it within the Options if you need it.
Hold Block
Depending on the game mode, you are able to "hold" a block (default key: "M"). This means, that you keep this block a little longer, continuing with the next one, and to use the hold one later. If there is a block you are unable to place properly, store it temporarily in the Hold, and place it later -- But be aware: Once put out of the Hold, you are unable to put that block back in another time
Classic Tetris music
In every Tetris, there must be the classic Tetris theme, that music, which you will never ever forget once you heard it
Free configurable controls
Each player has his or her own preferences of how to control the game, and so the Tetris-ManiaLinks offers the possibility to freely define the controls for the game. You are a lefty? No problem, the controls are very fast and easily changed from the default arrow keys to the WASD keys.
ManiaPlanet Design
The ManiaLink is designed to integrate itself into ManiaPlanet. Most important was the adoption of the game menu, to let the Tetris ManiaLink seem to be part of the game itself. The background, of course, is transparent, so that you have a (nearly) free view on the Canyon replay -- Which may distract you from the actual Tetris game ^^
ManiaConnect to recognize the player
To save the Highscores and the Options, the Tetris ManiaLink uses ManiaConnect to identify your ManiaPlanet account. So you can be sure, that your played Highscore really gets associated with you, without any login process. The only condition is that you allow access to the basic information of your ManiaPlanet account, such as login and nickname. Another advantage is, that you always have your options -- Even if you would switch the computer.
Bookmark Feature
For all those of you who cannot remember "tetris" (or are too lazy to input it every time :p ), the Tetris ManiaLink of course offers a bookmark button, to make the ManiaLink available right from the main menu of ManiaPlanet. And for all others, it is recommended to bookmark this ManiaLink, too: It is already under construction to use ManiaHome to send you the latest news of the ManiaLink, so that you can stay uptodate about any new features
Game Modes:
Endurance -- Play as long as you can Features -- Preview: 5 Blocks -- Hold Block: Yes -- Limit: None
In the Endurance mode the most important thing is to hold out -- Not an easy task, as the concentration decreases with time and blocks get missplaced. The increasing speed of the falling blocks does not really help, to clean up the chaos.
This mode can be seen as the default mode. There is not a real goal (you play until you are gameover, i.e. until the blocks reach to the top of the field), and the more blocks you play and the more lines you remove, the higher your points will get.
Classic -- Play the good old Tetris Features -- Preview: 1 Block -- Hold Block: No -- Limit: None
The classic mode is very similar to the Endurance one (the reason, why those modes are available from the beginning), with the only difference, that you only see the very next block, and that you cannot hold one. But sometimes less is more: Where you can hold an unwanted block in the Endurance mode, you have to place it right now in the Classic one -- with the risk to place it wrong.
Additionally this mode is that one introduced with the first version of the Tetris-ManiaLink.
Time Attack -- Exactly 5 minutes... Features -- Preview: 5 Blocks -- Hold Block: Yes -- Limit: 5 minutes
The Endurance and Classic mode takes too long, until the game is over? THen have a look at the Time Attack mode: Exactly 5 minutes are given to get your best possible highscore... And not a single second more.
High Speed -- Hurry up and clear 75 lines Features -- Preview: 5 Blocks -- Hold Block: Yes -- Limit: 75 lines
The goal of the High Speed mode is, to clean up 75 lines as fast as possible. But don't worry: The blocks are not falling with maximum speed, as the name of the mode may let assume. Why it is nevertheless called "High Speed"? This is pretty simple: Which each second passing, you will loose points. So if you want to keep your points, you have to hurry up reaching the goal. And so it is you, who will let the blocks fall with a maximum speed
Pressure -- There will be errors... Features -- Preview: 1 Block -- Hold Block: Yes -- Limit: None
The Pressure mode is basically the same as the Endurance one, with the difference, that you start with the half of the field already filled. Oh, and each 10 blocks played, a new incomplete line will appear on the bottom of the field. How calm will you stay, if you see the end getting nearer, as you are not able to clean up the mess fast enough?
Hint: In this mode, the falling blocks will not speed up with time. Instead the number of blocks, after which a new line appears, will decrease. So this mode challenges your Puzzle skills more than anything else
Nightmare -- The dark side of Tetris... Features -- Preview: 1 Block -- Hold Block: Yes -- Limit: None
How well can you remember the gamefield, which you saw only moments ago? If your eyes loose the ability to see, you memory becomes your only ally...
With the Nightmare mode, you have to play most of the time blindfolded: The gamefield is covered behind a black fog, which makes seeing it impossible. Only those, who are able to remember the field, will be able to get a Highscore. But there is light at the end of the tunnel: With each removed line, you will be allowed to see the gamefield again for one block. Hurry up: The block is already falling and won't wait for you
Screenshots:
[The forum cuts off the screenshots a little bit... Open the Manialink in ManiaPlanet to get the full versions ]
The main menu of the Tetris ManiaLink, with the adopted design of ManiaPlanet. Next to the latest News, the latest Highscores and the Top10 of each mode is displayed.
When clicking on "Play Tetris", the available modes will be shown, all with a short description and a nice icon ^^
The Tetris game itself, here shown the Endurance mode. In the menu on the left side the current Top10 is displayed, and, if you are not within there, your best rank will be added at the bottom of it.
When clicking on "Highscores" in the main menu, you will see the latest points played by any players, and next to it your own last records.
Also available is a full list of the highscores, one for each game mode. This table can be sort by clicking on the column header, so that you can e.g. look who took the most time to complete their score. The own highscores are highlighted in each table.
Within the Options, you may hide or show the grid and the Ghost block, and you may configure any keys for the actions you want: Simply click on one of the lines, and press the desired key, to define it.
So this is all for now. Have fun when playing the Tetris, and let's have a look who's the best TrackManiac in that classic game
May the Tetrominos be with you. FT»Marcel
Last edited by m4rcel on 23 Jan 2013, 19:21, edited 6 times in total.
Very nice script! My suggestion: prior to reading your post, I didn't find out that Up would rotate the block. So I suggest you make it a little more apparent (escape too). ;)
I thought that the Up key for rotating the block is kind of default, but now the controls are displayed before the game is started (Another reason is that now you can pause the game with space, which have been requested somewhere else.)
The Tetris ManiaLink have had a very big update few days ago, and now I want to announce it to you, too. I updated the first post with all the new information and new screenshots, so please refer to that post if you want to know the details
The biggest new feature is the Highscore, where you can view how good your score is compared to the other players. As the new version is not very old, there are only few highscore to that moment... Please help me filling the table
After nearly a month after releasing the new Tetris Manialink, today I uploaded the first update for it. Basically the most changes are behind the scenes (most likely code optimizations), but there are also few things which visually changed:
Custom Icons for the Game Modes
I took the time and created custom ions for the two game modes. The both are based on the known icons, and now have an infinity loop to show the "goal" of the modes to play as long as possible.
Better Usability and Hover Effects in the Menu
Until now, you had to click either directly on the label of a menu button, or its icon. Now I increased the sensitive area of these buttons, additionally visualized with a better hover effect. So it now should be easier to hit the buttons of the menu :p (Only exception is the "Back" or "Close" link at the button, where I didn't want to loose the blue hover effect.)
Dialog boxes
New on the Tetris Manialink are the Dialog boxes, asking for confirmation or blocking certain actions. For example, if you now click on "Back" or the Highscore after completing a game (with more than 1,000 points), Tetris asks you if you really want to drop your played highscore. In the Options, errornous settings (a certain action does not have a key assigned) will no longer be saved, instead a nice dialog will prompt you the error ^^ (Until now, the errornous setting were saved right into the database )
At the end, I want to give you a little statistics:
Until now, 95 players played at least one round of Tetris.
23 Highscores have been saved so far. Thereby the Endurance mode is a little bit in front with 118 records.
The most records have been played by Σﾅ Ð»Ã®ä¹Œã€’ÎµÑ ã®Â² (misterdede), exactly 28 records. On The other hand, destroflyer has the fewest records -- Exactly none xD
The head developer of Nadeo, too, played a round of Tetris: Florent currently is on the 32nd rank of the Endurance-Ladder
A new version of Tetris has been released today. Sadly, I was not able to already integrate new Game Modes into it, but at least I prepared the ManiaLink to get new Modes in the upcoming days or weeks... So stay tuned
Some of the major changes in an overview:
It is now possible to rotate the Block counterclockwise. The default key for this action may not be the best, but I did not want to move the basic control away from the arrow keys. Of course you can rassign the keys as you want in the options (Thanks to haenry for this feature idea.)
The rules of the selected mode and the current controls assignments are now displayed before the game is started. The rules may not be important for now, but this will change with the upcoming Game Modes... some day
A bug or feature of Maniaplanet has been modified: In ManiaPlanet, you are able to emulate a click on the element currently below the mouse cursor by pressing the Enter key. As this behavior is not needed on the Tetris ManiaLink, I was able to workaround it with ManiaScript. (Thanks to Konte for the basic idea of the workaround.)
I tried to optimize the Tetris Engine a little bit, which results in a slightly different "feeling" of the game. I don't know, if I was finally able to get a little more performance out of the game or not... At least the code is looking a bit nicer, before it finally gets compressed :p
Numerous additional changes behind the scenes, which may not interest you at all
Of course I'm happy about any feedback, feature requests or critics to the Tetris ManiaLink. Feel free to post it here or send me an Ingame Message
m4rcel wrote: It is now possible to rotate the Block counterclockwise. The default key for this action may not be the best, but I did not want to move the basic control away from the arrow keys.
This time you don't have to wait so long for the next update. As already announced, I finally added two new modes to the Tetris ManiaLink: Time Attack and High Speed. If you have enough from the endless modes, you can try to beat the Highscore in the new ones
Additional information to the Modes
Time Attack -- Exactly 5 minutes... Features -- Preview: 1 Block -- Hold Block: Yes -- Limit: 5 minutes
The Endurance and Classic mode takes too long, until the game is over? THen have a look at the Time Attack mode: Exactly 5 minutes are given to get your best possible highscore... And not a single second more.
High Speed -- Hurry up and clear 75 lines Features -- Preview: 1 Block -- Hold Block: Yes -- Limit: 75 lines
The goal of the High Speed mode is, to clean up 75 lines as fast as possible. But don't worry: The blocks are not falling with maximum speed, as the name of the mode may let assume. Why it is nevertheless called "High Speed"? This is pretty simple: Which each second passing, you will loose points. So if you want to keep your points, you have to hurry up reaching the goal. And so it is you, who will let the blocks fall with a maximum speed
Additional changes to the ManiaLink:
All the available modes do not match any longer into the Menu on the left side, so you have now to click on "Play Tetris" to see a nice overview of all available modes. With an additional click, you can then start one of those modes as known from before.
The same problem was in the Highscore listing: There you now have only the Icons of the Modes, a click on one of them opens the full Highscore list as it was before.
On the index page of the Manialink, you now have the Top10 Highscores of each mode printed (before it was Top5). I also added a nice transition effect to these highscore lists, so that the change of them looks more interesting
As always, have fun playing a round of Tetris, and may the random-function be on your side :p FT»Marcel
With the todays update, I added a simple Shoutbox to the Tetris Manialink. The main reason for this is, that I get very few feedback from the players - It seems as the way to the forums is too long for most of them.
This update also solves a problem which the Manialink encountered during the last days: A very active (and very good) player is currently flooding the Highscores, having the Manialink send many Notifications to this players buddy and the (former) Top10 players (including myself). For this reason, I completely deactivated the announcements of new Top10 highscores, to avoid any further flooding of Notifications.
As a long-term solution, I will rework the Highscore feature of the Manialink. Currently, each player is able to have as many Highscores as he or she wants, which exactly leads to the problem that a very good player can "flood" the Highscore as currently happening. After changing thie Highscore system, each player will only have at most one highscore per mode, i.e. the best Highscore he or she was ever able to reach. (This change will of course need some time to be implemented, so deactivating Notifications must do it for now.)
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