Marc Melvin’s Blog

The current version of Tetroid has hit somewhat of a brick wall in terms of ability to move forward, and the fact that everyone is making extremely clear in their comments to me is that it is lacking several key features that should’ve been there since the beginning. Since I had never planned on releasing it in the first place, I skipped over some of the seemingly fundamental design elements needed for a successful mobile game, the biggest of which would be the pause feature.

With that being said, I’ve decided to take an all or nothing approach and rewrite Tetroid from scratch, this time following the recommended practices provided by Google. Here are some of the features that I’ll be focusing on:

• There will be a pause feature in the next version, both manual and automatic.
• There will be plenty of room, performance wise, to add in sound effects and animations.
• Multiple styles of play (not just classic Tetris) that should keep the game interesting.
• Online high score system to make it competitive.

This game was my first Android game and my first mobile game, so I’ve learned a lot in the process. I’m going to take one last stab at going back and doing it right from scratch, then I’m going to move on to my next project which should be a much more original, and hopefully way more fun, mobile game.

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!