It has been less than a year since I released my first game, Chaste Tris, on github, itch.io, and Steam. Although it has not received any attention, I am quite proud of the achievement of making my own Tetris clone.
But just recently I did it again. I made my own clone of Puyo Puyo by modifying the source code of Chaste Tris and changing several things that made it behave like a Puyo game. The game can be downloaded from both of the following sources.
Here is a demo of me doing a 10 chain and an all clear.
Usually it is hard to do such things but because of the deterministic nature of my Puyo game, the same puyos come in the same order every time. It also helps that there are only 3 colors. More colors are possible though if I were to edit the code to allow them.
It’s official. I have now created my own Puyo game.
I would not have thought it possible but by adding delays between my puyo falling and puyo matching functions, I was able to fix the bugs and now puyo correctly match and disappear if there are 4 or more connected. The key was the recursive flood fill function that I wrote myself.
The game is made from modifying my Chaste Tris source code and changing the blocks and the way they behave. The collision detection works exactly the same which shows me how similar Tetris and Puyo are in their puzzle game mechanics.
But they are completely different because the goal is to match colored puyos of 4 or more rather than clearing lines.
The source code is available on github and anyone can compile and run it on any platform if they have the tools and know how to compile C programs using Raylib.
I haven’t yet compiled a Windows version yet because I feel like I would do that only when the game is tested better and includes some form of scoring system and documentation.
But basically everything is controlled with Z,X, and the arrow keys.
Those of you who have followed my blog know that I’m a serious Tetris player and even created my own game known as Chaste Tris.
However, there is a person who created such a Tetris game unlike any other. The name of the game is Apotris. It is a Gameboy Advance ROM which was made entirely by someone not affiliated with video game companies who simply learned how GBA games are made. This means that the usual legal issues about using ROMs are avoided because the creator akouzoukos has made it available to everyone and often updates the game.
And perhaps what makes it most interesting is the fact that it is a ROM that can be played using an emulator. This means that not only can any PC capable of running a GBA emulator play it, but it also allows for Tool Assisted Speedruns. Only special emulators are capable of the movie recording features required to do this.I personally use Bizhawk because it was recommended by TASvideos
High Score of 2,143,000 points for 150 line Marathon mode in Apotris
If you don’t know what a Tool Assisted Speedrun is, basically it means the emulator has features to save and load the game at any time and also the ability to record a movie as the input at each frame. Most emulators also support frame advance which means that you can step through each animation frame of the game and input buttons at that specific frame.
As you might imagine, this is especially helpful in Tetris because it allows looking at the blocks to plan out specifically where they need to go even under high gravity because the game is paused.
Of course it is worth mentioning that my game can do the exact same thing and was designed for the same purpose.
CT Stacking to 1100 Lines
You could even think of my game as sort of a limited version of Apotris that does the job of playing perfect Tetris games. But akouzoukos is by far a better programmer whereas I’m more of a Tetris player than programmer. I love his game so much and I wanted to spread the word of it because I’m sure others crave the ability to play Tetris with less stress and perfect scores in a way that mainstream officially licensed Tetris games never allow because almost nobody can play at the high levels where blocks drop and lock before you can press a key or button!
LST stacking is very score efficient in Tetris but also brutally hard to pull off. There is no real pattern to rely on like there is in ST Stacking. There also are not very many resources on LST stacking by comparison to other openings or playing styles. At the time of this writing, the Hard Drop wiki lacks a page on LST stacking. The best guide is currently written in Korean.
As part of the post, this video was included which inspired me to make a serious attempt at LST stacking.
Because the goal is to be able to do LST stacking using my own game Chaste Tris, I needed a special opening which is possible even with an early T piece. In my game the order of every bag is always ITZJOLS. Because of this, some of the TKI openings simply don’t work. However, a reversed form of TKI Flat Top does work! I have been studying it because it seems some variation of TKI opening is always used to start LST stacking.
My goal is the highest possible score. This means that I need every single T block to be able to achieve a T Spin Double.
Below is a video of my best record so far using LST Stacking in Chaste Tris.
What makes LST particularly difficult compared to ST is that when I am ST stacking, if I get a T block before I have a place to spin it then I simply place it on the left side stack. But when I’m doing LST stacking the goal is that every single T block will be used. This would not work for ST Stacking because it requires building the stack high enough to even set things up. But LST requires all kinds of madness as you can see from both of the videos I have linked in this post.
I just recently discovered a new way of achieving a Mechanical T Spin Double loop in Tetris. So far I have 4 videos which showcase how this can be achieved. In fact copying the videos exactly is the most reliable way to do it. It requires some luck as to what blocks come before other but if you get past the beginning stages it is transformed into the Mechanical TSD except with no gaps and a longer back to back chain scoring more points and sending more garbage than even a traditional Mech TSD. Additionally, not one single T piece is wasted. Each one is used to score a T Spin Double and it’s possible to even get 40 lines using only T Spin Doubles if you really try hard.
It is based on the reliable TSD opener but the fact that it takes certain block order to work makes it actually unreliable in vs mode. But in single player modes you can just keep restarting until you luck out.
Chastity White Rose 