Marc Melvin’s Blog

Tetroid v1.0.4 for Android is released to the marketplace.

I have been disappointed lately at the quality of games on the Android platform. Specifically, I haven’t seen too many “classics” in the mix, simple games like Tetris, Chess, Checkers, etc. I’ve been meaning to jump into the Android SDK and start messing with it, but last night was the final straw for me. I had to make a playable game for my phone, see the capabilities of the device for myself, and if something good came out of it that I could release to the world, I would jump on the opportunity.

With that being said, I built and released my first Android game last night, from scratch, into the marketplace. It is a Tetris clone that I called Tetroid, complete with a cute little Tetris Android guy for an icon. In about 7 hours, I had to reacquaint myself with Java, learn as much as I could about the Android SDK, and build a playable Tetris clone (including beating my head against the wall to come up with what turned out to be an EXTREMELY simple algorithm for rotating any shaped piece on the fly). Tetris is something I’ve always laughed at other developers for building because of its sheer logical simplicity. Well, I am happy to report that it has started out to be a fun and challenging project, one that I plan to continue working on dilligently over the next few weeks when time permits.

Almost immediately, I have seen the power of the Android marketplace to reach the community. My inbox has been flooded by people praising me for finally building a Tetris clone for Android as well as flaming me for the lack of features. In addition, I’ve received offers to help, lots of positive feedback (which I used to create the nice little to-do list that you see below), and possibly made a few friends in the process. Not only that, but the comments in the marketplace itself have been both enlightening and positive as well as downright rude and ignorant. But I have a feeling that all of this will make me into a better developer in the end.

So, with that being said, here’s my list of to-dos for the upcoming releases of Tetroid:

1. Add trackball support.
2. Add motion gesture support.
3. Add options menu to enable/disable all these options as well as adjusting sensitivity.
4. Make blocks smaller, increase height of playing area, maybe make all of this adjustable if I can.
5. Make game get faster/harder as it progresses.
6. Create a top score service to track scores of everyone around the world.
7. Add optional “special” pieces to add a bit of a twist to the game (like bombs, for instance).
8. Add optional sounds/music support (maybe).
9. Add special effects to the blocks for better visual feel.

It is a pretty hefty list, but I’m already well on my way to completing a few of these right now. For anyone aspiring to create Android games, I must urge you to do so no matter what excuse may be stopping you! It has been an unbelievably positive experience, and I’m not even 24 hours into it yet!

If you have played Tetroid, please leave me a comment or two below and let me know what you think! I will be using my blog to report updates on the game’s status as it progresses, so please subscribe to my feed on the right to stay updated!