Denial

PAL version


NTSC version

Traditional block game for unexpanded VIC 20

Dropout is tuned for fast play and implements many block game features that were not yet common in the golden 8-bit era:

- SRS (Super Rotation System: each piece has 4 orientations, except square)
- Hold function (swaps current piece with the last piece stored in HOLD box)
- Wall kicks (smoother play near walls or locked structures)
- Lock delay (pieces do not lock instantly)
- Infinite spin (movement and rotation reset the lock delay, easier to move)
- DAS (fast key repeat with delay)
- Ghost piece (white outline showing where the piece is dropping to)
- Pre-rotation (Rotate controls are read during the 100 ms line clear delay)
- T-Spin recognition (T-Spin clearing 2 lines is worth more than 4 lines)
- Most L, J, S, Z twists are possible, not all thoroughly tested though
- Scoring system similar to many recent block games, except no combos
- TGM-style randomizer: previous 4 pieces are less likely to appear again


Four game modes:

[F1] Standard Long Play - start slow, level up to insane speeds
[F3] 40 Lines - clear 40 lines as fast as possible, under a minute is great
[F5] 2-Minute Challenge - score as many points as you can in 2 minutes
[F7] Master Mode - start at level 15, if you make it to level 24 you're good


Keyboard controls:

[Shift] Hold - move current piece to hold box / swap with hold box piece
[Z] and [X] Rotate counter-clockwise / clockwise

[J] and [L] Move left / right

Hard drop - drop piece instantly
[M] Soft drop - speed up piece falling


Joystick controls:

Up - Hard drop
Down - Soft drop
Left/Right - Move
Fire - Rotate piece counter-clockwise


PAL/NTSC differences:

- PAL version does a graphics hack to display 12x8 pixel square blocks
- NTSC version uses native "flat" pixel ratio and 8x8 blocks (and 60 Hz timer)

Have fun!

http://www.cncd.fi/aeeben/download/dropout.zip

This looks brilliant!! Going to download and have a play tomorrow; many thanks

Wow looks awesome, downloaded. Sadly I'm not gonna play this until later, works calling...
I'm very impressed buy the many different options, in this unexpanded version, great

Plays really nicely on my VIC too! Excellent work!

Very nice game and highly polished to make it playable!

Of course this:

aeb wrote:- PAL version does a graphics hack to display 12x8 pixel square blocks

interests me the most. From what I can see you mean 8x12 pixel blocks (x by y) not 12x8. I see from a quick peek in the VICE-monitor that you seem to flip-video and color-ram using $9002 timed to the raster beam, supposedly to flip between multicolor and hires after half a char has been displayed vertically. Correct?

I knew that aeb is a fanatic tetris player.
Works great and this font is super nice.

tokra wrote:Very nice game and highly polished to make it playable!

Of course this:

aeb wrote:- PAL version does a graphics hack to display 12x8 pixel square blocks

interests me the most. From what I can see you mean 8x12 pixel blocks (x by y) not 12x8. I see from a quick peek in the VICE-monitor that you seem to flip-video and color-ram using $9002 timed to the raster beam, supposedly to flip between multicolor and hires after half a char has been displayed vertically. Correct?

Almost correct. And yes, I meant (edit:) 8x12 not 12x8

It's in 8x16 char mode and then swaps between $1c00 and $1e00 screens every 12 lines. Blocks are then drawn to 2 screens when needed and the background character (empty block) is shifted when needed (all arranged in a lookup table). Color memory at $9400 and $9600 are identical.

Excellent version, congratulations on this aeb. It took me almost immediately. I'll drop it in my SD card ASAP .
Also, great looking characters - 8x12 correct the squashed default perfectly.

aeb wrote:- PAL version does a graphics hack to display 12x8 pixel square blocks

tokra wrote:From what I can see you mean 8x12 pixel blocks (x by y) not 12x8.

aeb wrote:Almost correct. And yes, I meant 12x8 not 8x12

For what it's worth, graphics resolutions are most often specified by "columns x rows", i.e. 1920x1080 for a Full-HD display for example. I'd suppose it was sensible to describe the size of smaller screen elements in the same way.

Just mathematicians happen to use "rows x columns" to describe the size of matrices.

That being said, the method bears strong similarities to tlr's FCB mode - just there it's used to increase the colour resolution to 8x4 high-res or 4x4 multi-colour pixels. In any case it's a good thing when people take care of VIC's non-square pixel aspect ratio.

Cheers,

Michael


P.S. will try out Dropout on real hardware ASAP.

Thanks for this!

Just had a go. Very slick, reminds me of the game-boy version.

One of the best Tetris clones I've played on Commodore 8-bit. I love that pieces don't stick immediately and that down doesn't immediately stick the piece to the bottom (features missing from just about every Tetris I've played on C64). Bonus that it works on NTSC and PAL, and all in 3k. Well done!

Misfit wrote:Works great and this font is super nice.

All games should have the Namco arcade font

aeb wrote:

Misfit wrote:Works great and this font is super nice.

All games should have the Namco arcade font

aaa.. Now I understand why it's so familiar (and cool)

fuzzybad wrote:One of the best Tetris clones I've played on Commodore 8-bit. I love that pieces don't stick immediately and that down doesn't immediately stick the piece to the bottom (features missing from just about every Tetris I've played on C64). Bonus that it works on NTSC and PAL, and all in 3k. Well done!

That's because I believe (and I'm sure someone will correct me if wrong) that the home computer versions were first, and the "speed up drop" as opposed to "hard drop" and delay before sticking were only introduced in the arcade versions of the game. Other home versions since have used some of the later features, whereas a lot of C64 versions have stuck to the original concept.

Fantastic, can hardly believe that it was a VIC20. Hitting restore brings strange results.