Cultris clone in development

[super]

Hello everyone.

As the topic states I'm currently developing a Cultris clone. It runs with SMFL/OpenGL and will be crossplatform Windows/Linux/Mac. My working Project name is SpeedBlocks (anyone know if this is used already?).

I decided to do this for a few reasons. It's aimed to be much more lightweight. Currently I'm running it with Vsync at 60fps and it consumed around 10-20% CPU and not much memory on my Chromebook C720P (1,4GhZ dual-core, 2GB ram, Intel HD Graphics).
I want to make a more interesting ranking system.
I want to support tournament hosting that syncs between the server and forum.
More things in mind but I'll keep the list short and show what I feel is high priority.

So far what is working is:
Account creating through a forum, connect to the game with same account and your stats are tracked.
The core of a ranking system, HearthStone inspired with a monthly reset.
The basics of Options, joining a server and playing against other ppl ect.

I am currently working on finding somewhere to host the server. Feel free to Contact me if you have suggestions, tips or a host available.
I'm also looking for someone who could help me out with graphic design as this is not something in my toolkit. Interested? Throw me an email/PM.
I need PNGs for menus/backgrounds/pieces, Everything basically.

Right now I'm hosting the forum on free web hosting and running the server from my home computer just for development and testing.

I will update here as things progress. Any questings? Shoot.
Hopefully there will be a Beta launch within the near future.
I usually play on Cultris under the name super!

EDIT:
Yesterday i added a new feature I've been thinking about. We could call it "Lines-sent adjustment".
In the scenario with 5 players in the room:
Player 5 sends 40 lines -> all other players receive 10 lines each.
After this player 4 dies.
Then player 3 sends 40 lines -> the server will here detect that player 5 already sent 40 lines to 4 players, so player 3 will get an adjust of -10 lines resulting in -> all other players receive 10 lines each.

Basically, in a FFA, at the end of the round, if 2 players have sent the same amount of lines, they will always have received the same amount of lines aswell.

I'm thinking of 2 possible application: Either leave it as it is to make things "as fair as possible" or decrease this adjustment as the round progresses, so in the beginning of the round the adjustment would be big, gradually decreasing until after a minute the adjustment is in all cases 0.

This is mainly to (to some extent) make it less profitable for a player to stack up, and then wait with starting the combo until other players have sent there lines.

[iljain]

GJ.

[PabloNex]

Hey I found this http://www.laerdal.com/es/doc/131/Speedblo...zador-de-cabeza
It's a head immobilizator (no idea what's that)

[kb1900]

This is awesome! *take my money meme*

I'd love to see the beta when it's ready.

I think some things that would attract a lot of players is:
1) maintaining how customizable your blocks, spawn orientations etc are
2) moving the spawn slightly higher than it is on c2
3) more game modes. Perhaps a cheese spin off where the player who sends more lines whiile down stacking will get some extra score. Or the winner could be a formula of speed + combo + blocks used. Also maybe a combo game mode where players don't send each other lines but just try to get the highest first combo possible
4) maintaining how smooth the actual game play is (I think this is the biggest asset of c2)
5) maybe make garbage more interesting. Right now most players downstack by just spamming pieces until they get a good one that "fits"

[Franckooow]

Good luck! I only hope you keep the things that makes Cultris be different to another Tetris games, like no T-spins, no hold blocks, or no more than 1 next piece.

[super]

Thanks for the inputs.

My plan is to keep it similar, because that is also the things I really like about Cultris.
So just like you said Frank, no T-spin bonus, no hold, only 1 preview, also no piece bag system, instead I've made something similar to what Cultris has. Pieces are random but depending on history, so 2 of the same in a row is very unlikely and long term it will always even out to equally many pieces of each kind.

As to your suggestions KB
1) definitely, it's already in place. One extra thing here is that repeat delay and repeat speed will be adjustable by milliseconds to custom values + left/right will have one repeatdelay/speed and down will have another. Both adjustable separately in other words.

2) the field height is at 18 right now, but i have also been thinking of changing it to 20

3) I would love to see more game modes myself, but this is a bit further down on my priority list atm.

4) one of the main ideas was to make it more lightweight, so I really hope it will deliver here.
There is always a different "feel" to different games, but as it stands right now it's in my opinion faster and more responsive then cultris.

[kb1900]

this is very exciting

[Okey_Dokey]

Good luck! I only hope you keep the things that makes Cultris be different to another Tetris games, like no T-spins, no hold blocks, or no more than 1 next piece.

I disagree here to some extent. I wouldn't go for bag randomizer and reward T-Spins but I would give the room creator options to choose 2 and maybe 3 next pieces and to enable Hold (in this room). I heard from a lot players that they don't play Cultris because of 1 preview and hold. Other room options I would consider useful:

• players having different garbage and randomizer seeds
• disabling 180 degree kicks
• limiting the autorepeat rate (however the initial delay should be fully customizable)

Cultris 2 is a polished and well programmed game. If you do everything the same way like it does, then you will have very much trouble to get a player base (because you must surpass it in most regards and I don't think this will happen). Cultris 2's strength and weakness at the same time is its time based combo system. It allows the use of garbage canceling/blocking without making it overpowered in FFA but at the same time it increases skill gap. Usually, if you play a Tetris game 50% faster, you'll send 50% more lines. In Cultris you'll send at least 100% more lines (because you make higher combos which means more lines sent per cleared line). I have difficulties finding opponents on my level; people are either too strong or too weak. And Cultris 2 is not fun to play if you are too slow (you'll barely ever see someone playing online with an average BPM of 100 because they get crushed). It's hard to build a community around a game that is played by the very best players only because having too many of them online will discourage new players. Another thing I dislike about Cultris 2 is that it barely rewards multiline clears (Double, Triple, Tetris) and that it doesn't punish misdrops enough. Anyway, if you want I can elaborate on a non-time based system (which could be another option for room creators).

Another thing I would like to see are more meaningful outgame statistics. Make average BPM just take the last ~1000 played games into account. Add last time seen online. Add an attack per minute statistic. This statistic should also count blocked lines and downstacked garbage lines but shouldn't take the extra lines sent in longer games into account (in Cultris 2 the damage output increases the longer a round lasts; after about a minute a 5 combo will send an additional line).

I want to support tournament hosting that syncs between the server and forum.

If you mean by that sort of automated quickfire tournaments (tournaments that will be finished within 1 hour, only players who are online at the start can participate), then this would be a nice feature. If you mean syncs for those 1 month tournaments, then it's just a waste of time (e.g. see the fail of NullpoMino League Edition).

[apm10]

Another thing I dislike about Cultris 2 is that it barely rewards multiline clears (Double, Triple, Tetris) and that it doesn't punish misdrops enough. Anyway, if you want I can elaborate on a non-time based system (which could be another option for room creators).

It rewards the players more than you think. The best players will start their midgame combos with more than a single line clear most of the time, as they'll track exactly when their current combo timer ends and make a short stack afterwards. This is how they get 9s and 10s midgame often, merely by starting their downstack combo by clearing 3 or 4 lines in the beginning of the combo.

[super]

I am going to start with one ruleset, as this is a requirement for ranking players.
If things go well and there seems to be a demand for it adding custom rulesets to the player-created room would be a nice feature.

[kb1900]

can we expect an alpha release once you get a host and stuff. id love to test.

i will have to disagree with Okey on the availability of custom rulesets. I think it would be great to experiment with custom rulesets in the testing phase but what makes the C2 fanbase so loyal is the fact that the game doesnt have t-spins, hold, extra previews etc. it makes the game very unique compared to all the tetris clones out there (TF, TOJ, jstris etc.).

[Okey_Dokey]

i will have to disagree with Okey on the availability of custom rulesets. I think it would be great to experiment with custom rulesets in the testing phase but what makes the C2 fanbase so loyal is the fact that the game doesnt have t-spins, hold, extra previews etc. it makes the game very unique compared to all the tetris clones out there (TF, TOJ, jstris etc.).

Actually, there are only very few no-hold games out there that have extra previews (the only ones coming to my mind are Tetris Plus, Magical Tetris Challenge and Tetrizoo). So having options for extra previews would make it more unique.  

I also think that programmers clone games they like too often. There are countless guideline, TGM and GB clones out there that behave like the original in almost every way. And then the programmers wonder why nobody plays them.

[piper]

It just depends on what super is trying to accomplish with this.  So far we know 4 things he's trying to acheive:
-Lightweight  (I assume to be faster and smoother)
-Different statistics system than currently on c2
-Integrated tourney system (i assume to better support competitive play)
-Similar game mechanics to Cultris 2 (im adding this one based off of his comments)

Questions like player adoption and use case have not been answered such as:
-How many players want the same thing as I do?
-Who am I targeting this clone for? (TF, c2, etc.)
-What type of players would enjoy this? (pro, average joe, noob)

With what super's mentioned so far, it doesn't sound like it will be radically different from C2.  I do agree that if much is the same, adoption from c2 players might prove difficult.

Personally, the only gripe I have with c2 are the servers.  If I could personally host a server or have a dedicated north america server, that would really help with latency issues. which have been really problematic for me.

Not sure if you already though about this super, but have you considered talking with Simon on some of the features you would like changed?  Don't know if he's down for a major update or releasing a new C3 altogether.  That would really clear up any adoption issues associated with a clone.

[super]

Good questions piper. I'll try to give some more insight.

I have not been coding much at all for quite a few years, so I started taking it back up some time back. This is my first bigger project since then, so I just went for something that seemed fun.

I've always had a feeling that Cultris II is really good, but you could do so much more with it. I'm thinking mostly of statistics/ranking/tournaments ect. The setup that's there works well, but feels a bit rigid. I would like to see weekly small-size tournaments with tournament points and tournament seasons. Bigger torunaments with "BigTournamentPoints" for yearly rankings and a seasonal (month-by-month) ranking system for FFA to keep it more alive and interesting and available to people who both want to play alot for a short period and a little bit for a long period (or both). Maybe also a yearly overall FFA ranking based on all the monthly placements.

Also there are some performance issues with it. Don't know how many of the players are affected but I know a few people who stopped playing cause of performance issues. Myself I've always played from fairly crappy computers and it's been noticeable.

So i wanted to see what a c++/opengl based version would perform, with some additional effort put into optimizing all the drawing.

With some months put into this, and starting to see the results I'm feeling very hopeful. There's still quite a bit of work left but it's getting close to a first releasable version and at this point I'm mostly interested in getting it tested by some more people to see where it lands.

I have not contacted Simon more then just informing him what I'm doing and asking if I could post about it on the Cultris II forums.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]can we expect an alpha release once you get a host and stuff. id love to test.[/quote]

Yes! The things that need to happen first is:
A few days more work to tie up some loose threads.
Find somewhere to host it.
Get access to a WM setup I can use to compile for Windows/Mac, on my computer now I can only build linux binaries atm.

[Danieru]

Hey, really cool that you are doing this Super!

If you need people to test your game I can volunteer, keep up the good work