This project is a simple c++ implementation of the famous Tetris. It run in the terminal (aka command prompt) and use Extended ASCII (a widespread character encodings) to recreate a simple user interface.
- clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/S1M0N38/tetris.git - navigate to cloned repo
cd tetris - complie files
g++ -lncurses src/main.cpp src/tetromino.cpp src/game.cpp -o tetris
- navigate to cloned repo
cd tetris - start tetris game
./tetris - exit tetris game with
ctrl-C
This version of Tetris meant to be as close as possible to the ordinary ones. Here are the references that I consult to recreate the game mechanics and some brief explanations of the design choices.
Tetrominoes are literally the building blocks of Tetris. From a mathematical point of view a tetromino is a geometric shape composed of four squares, connected orthogonally (Wikipedia). In this game, the tetrominoes definition are stored in tetrominoes.h under the tetrominoes 4D array. This array include all tetrominoes of classical Tetris (seven) and their possible rotations (four each). A single rotation of a specific tetromino is store as a 4 x 4 array filled with zero except for the position occupied by the squares of the tetromino. The non-zeros value are some special int value. These number are the same ones that appear in the colors escaping sequnces: a special sequence of characters able to generate colors in (pretty much) every terminal. So chosing the right number is important in order to generate the desiderable color. I try to stick to the original tetromino-color combination, but there is no orange so the L-tetromino will be white.
Super Rotation System, or SRS, is the current Tetris Guideline standard for how tetrominoes behave, defining where and how the tetrominoes spawn, how they rotate, and what wall kicks they may perform. Henk Rogers developed this system in order to unify all new Tetris games under the Tetris Guideline.
Strategywiki - Tetris Rotation Systems
In traditional games, a level-up would occur once every ten lines are cleared. [...] After a level-up, points awarded are increased and the blocks fall slightly faster. For example, NES Tetris operates at 60 frames per second. At level 0, a piece falls one step every 48 frames, and at level 19, a piece falls one step every 2 frames. Level increments either terminate at a certain point (Game Boy Tetris tops off at level 20).
My FPS is limited to ~ 10 FPS by the <ncurses.h> halfdelay function (the minium waiting time for the user input is one tenth of a seconds). So at level 0 I decide to update game status every 10 frames, at level 1 every 9 frames, at level 2 every 8 frames and so on... When player reach level 9 or above, level index continue growing but the game cannot update its state faster so the block doesn't speed up.
The game graphics is designed with portability in mind. There are no special
chars and the tetrominoes colors are the ones supported by the majority of
terminals. Initially I thought to render the tetrominoes using the box-block
(█) but some fonts print them in a disconnect way so I decided to print the
blocks as whitespaces on a colorful background. The render function runs over
the board 2d array (20 x 10) and print:
- two whitespaces on the default background if it finds a zero
- two whitespaces on a colorful background if it finds a nonzero value
An advantage of this text based graphics is that is fairly easy to change the graphics size: just increase or decrease your terminal font size.
The scoring system is the same one used on the Nintendo's versions of Tetris; more rows you clear at the same time, more points you get.
| level | pts for 1 line | pts for 2 lines | pts for 3 lines | pts for 4 lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 40 | 100 | 300 | 1200 |
| 1 | 80 | 200 | 600 | 2400 |
| 2 | 120 | 300 | 900 | 3600 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
| n | 40 * (n + 1) | 100 * (n + 1) | 300 * (n + 1) | 1200 * (n + 1) |